sabretooth

Huh? How did he "whiff" on Lyon and Chamberlain? Lyon was very effective for his one year here, and Joba did decently enough for his time here as well. Damon was fine too....2.4 War for one year is fine.... If your standards are that high then pretty much everybody acquired by AA has been a whiff.

Oh, and Avila sucks. Not the Catcher...he was fine.

I forgot about Martin and Fiers....I liked those signings from the beginning and they worked out well for AA and the Tigers. But a bunch of his early FA signings performed badly and hurt the Tigers on the field in 2016 and 2017. Upton was decent enough. Yeah, I wasn't talking about extensions.....as you mentioned Pudge and Maggs, but there was also Kenny Rogers, Todd Jones (who was effective for several years), Damon was fine -- he was a 2.4 WAR player for $8M for one year....Valverde was very effective for two years, Al Alburquergue, Benoit, Hunter was pretty decent for two years, Rajai Davis, Blaine Hardy, and of course JD Martinez (which AA also gets big credit for). Fielder was massively expensive due to the VMart injury in the spring, but also very productive, and they flipped him for Kinsler which worked out well. DD's whiffs were Brad Penny (to be fair, it was only a $3M contract for 1 year for a 5th starter), relievers like Percival, Nathan, and Gorzellanny....relievers are a pretty big crap-shoot; Nathan and Gorzy were pitched a fair amount and lost some games, those two and Penny are the DD Free Agent acquisitions that performed badly. All the rest of his FA acquisitions performed well enough on the field. Nobody seems to know what the **** happened with Willis' extension...made no sense....if that's DD's fault then that's a super-bad one....but not a FA signing. The extensions were a mixed bag....some hits and misses....how Mike I's personal judgment weighed on those, not sure....but as for getting FA talent, DD did a very good job. I forgot about Fiers and Martin, but otherwise I think my assessment is correct regarding FA acquisitions and their on-the-field performance.

The FA signings under DD were very good overall, with only a couple of exceptions. The FA signings under AA have been very poor through 2019, but Schoop and Cron were good signings from the get-go.

Bernie would have been wasted in Detroit at that time.

Great Scott! I completely forgot about this....what a colossal almost-blunder by Watson.

Since we're moving the regular season towards being a very long exhibition season with reduced significance for the post-season, how about we shorten the regular season to like 20-30 games, hold it in the spring, call it a pre-season or Spring Training or something like that, and then have an expanded season of say, 150-160 games (maybe 162? Just a thought) where the last few teams (maybe 4 or 6 at most in each league) with the best record play each other in an elimination tournament to determine the championship. Complicated, but I think it's worth a shot.

yeah, that is pretty stupid. I thought that ghost runners were limited to whiffle ball.

hate the expanded playoffs after this year tho

With Candy's mega-resurgence this year, Jones suddenly learning how to hit a little, Reyes emerging as a decent option, and the surprisingly decent BP, you are probably mega-right, barring mega injuries.

Yay

Big Ten Football after all

Right.... I will definitely settle for playoff competitive most of the time, and making the playoffs some of the time...I dont have numerical thresholds or anything formal...I just want the sense that the owner and GM can get it done and are moving in that direction, and are in fact competitive most of the time. No 5 year mega losing BS, no giant rebuilds. Just a good adaptive approach to finding, acquiring, developing, and assembling good talent and a good team. Thats what good owner/GM duos do.

Actually, yeah....there was some young up-and-coming anticipation, and it was an interesting collection of players. I would of course prefer to be the Toronto Blue Jays of 2018-2019...as surprising as the 2006 Tigers were, compared to Toronto's fairly predictable success in 2020, nebertheless it seemed clear to me in 2005 that the combination of Mr. I and DD were moving in this team and the right direction. I have absolutely zero confidence in Chris I and AA. Toronto is currently doing it the way you're supposed to do it with a lot of young talent... Unfortunately we don't have the organizational capacity to develop that much young talent.... So I would absolutely settle for spending some money to fill the gaps.....but that aint gonna happen here either. I have no faith....at this point I'll just take an entertaining team however they can build it. I cant see a 60 win team being entertaining. I can see a 70+ win team as entertaining....depends on a lot of things...its not so much about the number of wins....but the number of wins coincides with the things that make it more entertaining. I'll probably focus on minor league teams as you suggest.

Fair enough....I was poking fun at the seeming "all or nothing" attitude of people on this board who either want to see playoffs or a top 1st rd pick at the end of every season. I would much prefer a 75 win season with some youngsters on the rise than another "dive! dive! dive!" In short, rooting for losing sucks.