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The one I had several years ago was by a doctor who must have been in a hurry. I remember them asking me to count backwards from 100, and I remember going “100 … 99 … 98 … oww …”

I’m in the camp that years are more likely to mark a contract as bad than dollars are. we don’t know yet if this qualifies as bad, of course, but raise your hand if you thought Tucker would get a two-year deal including a player option this winter. Now bring your hand back down, because you’re lying.

How’s this for Exhibit A as to how the market has changed: A guy who was let go after a below-replacement-level year gets two years, the second one being his option.

There will be no promotion and relegation. However—if there could be—the major leagues could be dramatically expanded, to maybe 40 or more teams. There could be four levels of ten, or five levels of eight. With that number of teams, could be tables instead of divisions, with a truly balanced schedule. One downside of this system is that, if done as in Europe, you might never see the best teams in baseball come to town if you are in a lower division. Well, how about this: Adopt a point system, three points for a win against your own division. Play at least one series against every team in every other division. If you beat a team above your division you get an extra point per level for each of those wins added to your season total. Beat a team below your division, you get one fewer point per level. So, say it’s a five-level system of eight teams each. You’re in level three. You get three pints for a win against your level. If you beat a level one (Premier League?) team, you get five points; level two, four; level four, two, and level five, one point. This way, playing a team from another division would not be a “friendly”, sort of like in English football, but there would be a practical concession to the different levels of team ability. I love noodling this kind of stuff.

Another thing about the relegation system is that it creates a whole new degree of interest in bad teams trying to avoid relegation. Some European leagues have (or have had in the past) actual relegation playoffs that draw a low of fans and TV viewership. There are a lot of downsides to the P/R setup, but interest in the fate of bad teams at the end of a season would be a new and intriguing add.

Or until we are in a position to need one or two final pieces to seriously contend for a ring.

I think Drury could have fit pretty well on the Tigers, defense notwithstanding, and I think the Tigers might have liked him for a year. But maybe not for two.

"Nanny socialism for me; dog-eat-dog capitalism for thee ..."

A successful team builds from a solid foundation of homegrown players and trades, and complements them with the right free agent signings that plug the holes that need to be plugged. I would expect the Harris Tigers to do the same. It's what Avila tried to do when he and ownership were bamboozled by the fool's gold that was the post-May 8 2021 Tigers. They thought the homegrowns were done cooking and the long-term free agents would then come in and lead us to the promised land. Wrong on both counts. One of the interesting things I'm going to watch for is whether the overperformances of 2021 or the underperformances of 2022 are closer to reality for certain Tigers who were on those teams. Erik Haase was practically the only guy who took a step up last year versus prior; just about everyone else went splat.

That’s true as things stand now, although he’s also been a hot topic since the end of the season.

Sure, and if they prove to be solid starters this year, we might get something decent for them at the deadline. I don’t think either of them fits into the current vision of the rotation of the future, and I don’t know how well they would have to do to force themselves into that conversation.

Brandon Belt and A.J. Pollock are Excel clients. Both of them would technically fill a need expressed by Harris. 1/12 would be an overpay for either of those guys. I would not recommend either.

We really don’t have a line on decent free agents. Boyd and Lorenzen are the kind of one-year guys we can hope to flip in July, which is fine because, fast ending to 2021 notwithstanding, that’s the stage we’re in at the moment. It’s going to take a bit of time and some proof of concept to get a decent guy who wants to come here to help us win for a few years.

I don’t know, a lot of people were breathing fire here about how terrible he is and how we had to dump him.

People feel very strongly about him. He was by far the most interesting non-tender.

Not many I can think of. I would never suggest they do.

Makes it way easier to get away with graft.

Teams that totally avoid free agency don’t win as much as teams that know how to effectively sign key free agents.

OK, that’s fine, we can leave it there, although don’t be surprised if I continue to acknowledge it at times, and I won’t be surprised when you continue to push back on it.

It’s based on all the years under the prior administration, which was well-reported in the national media while being pretty much ignored by the access-dependent local guys. You might have heard about it. Sure, the Avila people are mostly gone now, but the smell is still lingering around the organization, and the Harris front office has to work through that and establish that they are not more of the same. The changed talk and the hires are a good start, but they still have to prove themselves to complete the turnaround, which they were never going to accomplish within the first six weeks of the offseason. Once they do accomplish that, though, they should have a fair shot at getting the top guys at market value, instead of having to overpay to lure in the remaining free agents that are left, such as the Baezes and the Eduardos.

There may well be more than one, and they may also rotate to other positions. Malloy may be one, Kreidler may be another, Ibañez yet another, Schoop may get some reps there, the way people are talking. The way Harris is assembling the team for 2023, versatility may be the watchword.

I’m willing to give Harris some rope on the upcoming year since bad teams with bad reputations usually have a tough time getting good free agents to sign, for obvious reasons. They need to prove themselves to be serious about recasting the organization from top to bottom, even beyond announcing the right hires. That’s gonna take time, maybe even more than a year.

Sure, he’s old news now, I agree. But attended to the right set of circumstances, this kind of thing can wax as well as wane.

He may have had lots of money before, but if he wanted to take his personal wealth into the stratosphere, he could always use the help of a nation-state hostile to America, and with trillions of dollars at its disposal.

Would the government just look the other way with the hope that Trump exiles himself? That strikes me as off-brand, but also, the danger is that if Trump’s Q score somehow increases as people come to believe he was politically martyred, he could become even more dangerous as a leader-in-exile, outside the reach of US control. If he were to go to a country hostile to the US, which I believe to be the leading probability if he does leave, he could do way more damage to America than he ever could under house arrest at one of his properties here.