Leaderboard

I really couldn't care less about how the team markets him, or whether he makes himself more available than other players for media interviews, I am rooting for him to succeed. He's been terrible thus far, but he's not the only one... and with the way that the fan base seems to just tee off on him in particular, his role almost acts like a heat shield for everyone else (except for Javy) who aren't performing to the level.

I take it you mean Jackson Jobe? because if its Kobe I got questions

I used to wonder how long it’s going take for Baseball to realize that deadening the ball will go a long way toward reducing injuries, among other ways to improve the game. Now I wonder at what point they already figured out that deadening the ball will do all that, but rejected it because they saw right away doing so would reduce home runs and strikeouts, both of which they need to feed the Quick Pitch marketing machine. Yes, I am cynical about the good faith of Major League Baseball.

1 down, 5 to go. I'm glad accuracy at shooting at empty nets isn't a playoff tiebreaker.

last few years...two horrible games turns in to an 8 game losing streak. Let's see if they've improved enought to stem the tide..split against the Pirates and come back home.

Along those lines, I noticed a neighbor that flew a Trump flag four years ago has put a Biden flag up this weekend.

As much as people talk about Matt Chapman, he's not enough to overcome the totality of the young talent sucking all at the same time.

Torkelson has been a total disappointment far, not so much even the results but that he is doing exactly the opposite of what he needed to do this season, which was become a better hitter - higher OBP, a tougher out with men on base. Instead he has gone completely the other way, swinging out of his shoes, pulling everything, making a ton of outs. The sell out for the long ball may get him 30HR in the end but he'll just turn himself into Rob Deer with a buzz cut.

All valid points but most probably we will never know since the Home Run is too vital to the game and if pitchers blow out their arms MLB snd owners will just see it as an incentive to not pay high salaries for stating pitchers. If I was an owner I would be very hesitant to pay top dollar over many years for pitching and I think that's beginning to play out and will become the norm soon. Look what the Tigers are doing under Harris. Low one and two year deals, develop a bullpen of "multi inning" relievers, Avoid "Closers" who command big $$, develop your draft picks and work the waiver wire and have bullpen days. Forget about multi year big dollar deals. Arod signed for 4 years 80 million. Harris could have added one year and done that easily but refused, same with Friedman and LA at the trade deadline refusing to add one year to ok the trade. Baltimore which is loaded passed on all the big names and traded for Burnes for one year. Sure there are outliers, Yamamoto and Nola for a couple but one brings huge gate receipts and promotional money to LA and the other is a retuning star. Starting pitchers are targeting 5 innings / twice through the lineup now so why pay huge dollars for that ?

It might help the offense if the guy with a .394 OBP was leading off instead of batting fifth or sixth.

This is my take on the issue. Why do pitchers throw at max velocity with max movement on literally every pitch? Because they want to induce swing and miss. Why induce swing and miss? Because any hitter in a lineup today can jack bombs, and giving up bombs is the worst outcome a pitcher can experience. Part of that is due to the increased size and more powerful swings of hitters. Part of it is because of shorter fences. But the biggest, most controllable part of that equation is the live baseball. So, to me, the easy answer is: deaden the baseball. If the home run becomes less of a threat, pitchers won’t have to induce swing and miss on every pitch. Sure, they’ll still have to throw max effort to get swing and miss out of Aaron Judge and Shohei Ohtani. But they could actually pitch to contact to down-the-order hitters. That would mean less need to throw at max velocity and max movement. For the lesser hitters, it can be more like “here you go—hit it and get yourself out.” Less velocity/movement means less stress on elbows and shoulders. Less stress means less injury. Less injury means better careers, longer careers, and more engagement by fans with players across their careers than is possible in the current “next man up” era. And bonus: more pitching to contact means fewer strikeouts, more balls in play, more action, and a better, more aesthetic game overall. One counter argument to this is: chicks dig the long ball, and dudes dig strikeouts. That’s why they make up 60% of all highlights on the Quick Pitch clip show, and Quick Pitch is nothing if not a marketing tool. And longer careers also mean higher salaries that the owners—who own the whole game, including how the game will be played—would have to pay. And they definitely don’t want that. Another counterargument, which you brought up, is that pitchers will not necessarily want to … ahem … lay down their arms. And I can see this point. If the ball were deadened today, pitchers would not change their pitching approach tomorrow, or next month, or maybe even next year. Certain pitchers today would never change and would keeping maxing out until they limp away from the game. But eventually, pitchers coming up to the majors would figure out, probably in concert with their data science coaches, that maxing out indiscriminately is a bad long term strategy, even if it’s the right thing to do in certain situations, or to certain hitters. Max effort wouldn’t go away completely. But if a #9 hitter comes up who’s slugging barely .300, pitcher could lay up on the guy and invite him to put the ball in play, if he can. So who knows what Baseball will do. I don’t know, I’m not psychic, man. All I know—all I think I know, anyway—is that deadening the ball would eventually make a big dent in the problem of way too many pitcher injuries.

Flaherty's fastball is getting hammered. Carpenter needed to cash that run in the first. The guy couldn't throw a strike and Carpenter swings at the first pitch.

A dropped pop up, and then a routine grounder where they dropped the pitch to second. Ump also screwed him with a terrible call that would've resulted in a strikeout and but instead ended up a walk. Then he he struck the fourth batter out before being pulled.

hey this team is trying to make the playoffs dont bring that Ju-Ju in here 😉

Live from St. Peter Field.

I don’t think Craig Monroe is very good but he’s not as awful as people are making him out to be. He’s a little below average and not the worst color guy ever. If we want a pile on, I’m really not liking Bobby Scales on the radio. It shouldn’t be hard to sit next to the master and let Dan do his thing but I’m not digging him.

What I remember about the no-no is that Jack walked 6 and at one point walked the bases loaded and almost got thrown out for arguing. It was almost exactly a year after Milt Wilcox lost a perfect game with 2 outs in the 9th. I wonder how many pitches he threw that day............140 ?

I don’t know, a two-year-old article written by a beat guy who needs access to the team for his job doesn’t exactly strike me as gold standard stuff, particularly since the article was written during the Al Avila regime. Like Toddwert, I have seen a lot of the same criticisms of Monroe in other forums that I have seen here, and overwhelmingly, people dislike him by something like 9-to-1. I find it hard to believe that despite the overwhelming negativity we see of his performance, that this regime, the Scott Harris regime, is thinking, Craig Monroe is great, he’s the best, couldn’t improve on him if we tried. Speaking only for myself and no one else, that doesn’t pass my personal smell test. On the other hand, what you are basically saying is totally true: no one inside the Tigers organization has told either me or you that Craig Monroe is terrible; no beat writers are writing articles saying he’s terrible; and colleagues like Dan Dickerson and Jason Benetti are not being quoted in interviews saying he’s terrible. There’s no way to know, proof positive, whether they think he’s terrible, and there is in fact written evidence that at least Dickerson is quoted saying glowing things about him as recently as two years ago. All the documented evidence available to us points to Craig Monroe being entrenched with the Tigers indefinitely, and the only evidence we have to the contrary is that practically everyone we know personally who watches Tiger broadcasts hates it when he’s on the broadcast, and beyond that, us just extending our palms toward him and saying, aw, come on, just listen to him! I think the one thing we can all be fairly certain of is that, barring surprise developments, Craig Monroe will survive at least this entire season in the Tigers broadcast booths.

all this injury news has me wondering when the axe is going to start fall on the home 9.. every pitcher adding extra velocity has me concerned

Had a good heart to heart with a super MAGA person I always try to avoid talking politics with last night, but he says he's not voting for Trump because of the narcissism.

Just some quick highlights from yesterday. Hao Yu-Lee with a HR, Luke Gold with a HR and Jaden Hamm with a good start.

Regardless, unless they promote Bobby Scales to TV work, given the PR reality, I would put the odds of a team in a majority AA city without a single AA player showing its only public facing AA presence the door, to be effectively zero.

LOL. The org can decide what they think, but the player gets the last word on what he turns himself into.

I'm telling you, Bert, if you're not trading on your looks for a career as an old man fashion model, you're missing an opportunity.

I thought he had two or three more years on his contract... That buyout actually looks attractive. And we could wait right until before the season just to make certain Cossa can earn at least the #2 goalie spot to start the season, or that we don't have an injury that opens up a spot anyways... I don't know why I thought his contract was longer than that...

I agree with this 100%. They should be blaring this message across every loudspeaker that they can get their hands on. I think they are doing this. But it's at a low level right now. I'm going to guess it's going to get louder and more pointed as we get closer to the election... So I'm not really worried. But my patience is starting to get a little "impatient". I'm just so sick and ****ing tired of hearing "trump, trump, trump, trump, trump, trump, trump, trump, trump..." 1,000 times a day no matter which way I turn. Can this grotesque anti-democratic scum just go the **** away? So I NEVER have to hear about him, or think about him, EVER again?!?!?! But yeah, on your messaging point ewsieg, I agree 100%.