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So I'm reading this thread and I'm seeing a fear that TORK! might end up being like Rob Deer: super low batting average, quite a few homers, a ****-ton of strikeouts, along with a hope that he won't be so bad and he'll end up like guys who had similar profiles but still decent careers. So I look up his numbers and I see eight strikeouts in 49 trips, and I'm thinking, huh. That doesn't seem so high. I look at his SO% and BB% specifically, and they are coming in at 16.3% and 6.1%, respectively. Those are both lower than MLB overall, but also lower than his last season's numbers. And I'm like, huh. So I go to his Savant card, and I see that he is swinging less on first pitch but swinging more overall; making more contact in the zone but less outside it; his overall chase rate is up, but he's letting more middle-middle pitches go by him unswung at. But most concerning, I think, is that both his exit velo and max velo are way down; his hard hit rate is also way down after being among the best in baseball last year; he has zero barrels in his first 49 plate appearances (he should have four or so instead); and his XSLG, based on quality of contact, is half what it was last year and is among the lowest in baseball overall. Add that all up, and it looks to me as though there's an attempt to remake his overall plate approach to be more selective and to concentrate on putting his bat on the ball when he does swing, versus letting 'er rip. That might not be the worst thing for him, specifically, since he probably has the kind of power where he can jack a ton of bombs without putting everything he has into his swing. If he eases up and concentrates on meeting the ball better, he can cut his Ks down and raise his batting average while hitting just as many homers off the increased number of balls he puts into play. That may be the hope, anyway. But so far, the results are less than whelming. Granted, this is a small sample size and he could have gotten these same results in less than 50 plate trips without trying to change a thing. But given all the differences in these various metrics and how they relate to one another, it looks to me as though there's a conscious effort to re-do his approach, and these are the results so far. I don't know what this means for his future, but I think this is worth keeping an eye on to see whether he continues along this path, which I would assume given it's so early in the season, and whether/when they abandon it and let him go back to what brung him to the Show in the first place.

Yeah, the bad old days when, as a woman you’d submit applications for a personal credit card , you also needed to include the signature of a husband, a father, or some other man of worth…., all so the “little lady” can have a cc of her own (well, kinda). Totally humiliating. Was early 20’s on the ‘70’s; now early 70’s in the 20’s. So, if your thought is that we’ll be too old&tired to fight, you’ve not properly assessed the level of white fire anger women my age are - we fought for these changes back in the 70’s for ourselves, but going forward for our sisters, daughters, nieces, granddaughters , friends. Accepting what the new order wants to toss at us as the first of their “final solutions” is just unacceptable. Totally. **** no.

You know all this talk about Spencer reminds me of another 1st round draft pick by the Tigers who was much heralded as the greatest thing since sliced bread coming out of college. He too made his debut at age 22, and struggled mightily his first 3 years in the majors. More so than Spencer, and it can be argued he was a worse defender than Tork. That player went on to a 17-year career, 2 WS championships, and an MVP award. That of course was Kirk Gibson. I think everyone one of us would be thrilled if Spencer had that career. Or even the career of Bob Horner. Point is that not everyone, and maybe only a couple of people a generation come up and play like gangbusters and keep it up for their entire career. He is still figuring things out, and there will good and bad days. Way too early to write him off.

Yep. It won’t be it help him but some hedge fund or other anonymous outfit. “Too big to fail”. Remember a couple of years ago when regular joes messed around with game stop stock and all the hedge fund managers were like “dude… that’s not fair” I saw the beginning of a thread that asked “what are things that when poor people do if it’s considered trashy but when rich people do it it’s considered classy?” Examples like “speaking two languages at home” and “not paying taxes”. This is another case. When you or I use bad judgement or have just bad luck on a stock, that’s life. When the super rich do it then we must put in safeguards. Trickle down and such.

I'm not sure I have ever heard these six words strung together in this exact order before. 😉

I personally wondered why it asked if we liked Scott Baio as an actor.

Looks like they played through the eclipse in Lakeland.

"I'm calling on Katie Hobbs to immediately clean up the mess we just made and repeatedly congratulated ourselves for making"

I've been giving this a good deal of thought, and I realize that it's possible that the pitching coaching is just far ahead of the hitting coaching. But from a smell-test standpoint, I find that less likely than another hypothesis I've been gravitating toward: as a group, our hitting prospects are simply not as good from a big-league standpoint as our pitching prospects. It's not as though all players are tabula rasas that can all be molded into Hall of Famers under the right circumstances and coaching. Different players have different ceilings. Some will indeed top out at the Hall of Fame level; others top out at the minor league level. When it comes to groups of people, that's just the way things are. My hypothesis is that when it came to player acquisition through the draft, international, minor-league free agents, trades, whatever, the Avila regime may simply have had a better idea of how to acquire pitching talent than hitting talent. I think it might have had something to do with the types of pitchers and hitting they preferred. Avila was known to draft pitchers for speed and spin toward the end, perhaps resulting from the data analysis Jay Sartori put together. But when it came to hitters, Avila always did like scrappy guys who were more run manufacturers than he did on-base guys or big boppers. That's why our system was lousy with that kind of hitter, at least until last year and this. So maybe it's not that the Hinch coaching team is incompetent when it comes to working with hitters. Maybe it's that they simply had less to work with when it came to the hitters they inherited than they had with the pitchers. Here's some more sample size fun for you: this, from FanGraphs, shows all Tigers hitters with at least 20 plate trips, ranked by wOBA: There are twelve such hitters on the Tigers. Five of the top seven are Harris acquisitions. Of the two that aren't, Carpenter was a 19th-round pick so I wouldn't consider it an Avila coup; and the other is Riley Greene, a slam-dunk 1/5 pick. All five at the bottom are Avila pickups. They have all working under the same hitting coach team who all report to A.J. Hinch since February. Again, sample size, so maybe this means nothing and will be completely disproved within the next few weeks. And TBF, this is a blunt table that doesn't take into account the commitment Harris has made to bottom-fiver Colt Keith. But I think this is at least worth watching over the next year or two.

Rain in the forecast in Detroit the next two days. Keeping him lined up to start a doubleheader game?

right. My point just being that max physical effort is not the key in much sports competition. A basketball player doesn't generally hurl the ball at the basket, a successful QB doesn't make every throw at max velo. Baseball is supposed to be a skill game. Any hitter that swings as hard as he can on every pitch or makes every throw in the field at max effort is also going to find himself back in the minors - effort moderated by skill is a core of baseball performance. But somehow the game has allowed itself to evolve to where there is too much performance value in max effort all the time for pitchers as compared to command, sequencing, guile, and other less physically taxing aspects of the art. So it goes back to restructuring the game so that a pitcher that keeps hitters off balance and induces a lot of weak contact and picks his spots to throw gas, can still be just as successful as a pitcher that racks up a lot of K's.

It seems to go against states rights when red states also make it illegal to go to other states to get abortions.

Unlike Tork, @Sports_Freak doesn't miss middle middle.

Nobody said that!! 😁

This was on Amon-ra's scouting reporting and the Lions still drafted him: "Very little grit in his run blocking."

So I'm not an idiot after all?

Sorry for that. I was getting most of my info from the usual folks on twitter.

Sadly, when I read your intro line I thought this was going to be any one of Duren's offensive plays from the past 30 games.

The extreme on the right are Trump's base, and they make up at least a quarter and maybe a third of his party. The extreme on the left are definitely not Biden's base, and they make up probably single-digit percent of the Democratic Party. Biden's true base is the establishment middle of the party, and they make up the substantial majority. The job is to get them to come out. Hanging the election on whether the extreme left votes for Biden is like hanging the election on whether the extreme right can be moved off Trump. Neither is going to happen, anyway, so the Democratic Party should go after what can be got, not after what can't.

ESB is a free agent and will need a good camp somewhere to make a roster into the season. Wouldn’t shock me at all to see the Lions bring him in for a shot.

Since the ruling came down and it initially became clear this was a huge liability (ie. 2022 KS Referendum + 2022 Midterms), they have been trying to find a middle-ground position on it. The uncomfortable reality that they aren't confronting, and really aren't able to confront given the composition of their party, is that Roe *was* the middle ground. Or it certainly is viewed that way by the median voter at this point in time. I think if they endorsed some sort of week-limit that acted as both a floor and a ceiling, that theoretically could work? The coalition wouldn't go for it though, and nobody trusts the party or it's principal on this issue IMO

That's the thing, they can't get there, because the religious foundation of their abortion/IVF position starts from a point already at the limit. If 'Life beings at conception' is why you believe abortion should be regulated, you are immediately at: "Abortion needs to be totally banned." There is no logical method for how to get to a shaded view like R v W from that starting point.

Marijuana is also on the ballot in FL.

All things being equal, I think that is a little too low a bar. You have a 26 man roster and players who stick will average maybe a 10 yr career, so the benchmark to keep turning over your roster is more like 2 - 2.5 players every year. If you want to be generous one of those could come from an international signing, and of course the Tigers have not done well there at all, which only exacerbated their lack of draft success in prior regimes. So I would say the benchmark should be a bench player, a starter, and an international on average per year. If you are below that you are probably losing ground. Now of course, all things are not equal, and if you are a team that would rather trade older high priced talent than keep it, then you can make a big dent in your draft needs.

Honestly I think Trump understands the political aspect of this issue better then most in the GOP. It's the one issue that I think he would love to completely flip the script and be pro-abortion on. In true populist form, he see's it as a losing issue and wants to be on the winning side of it. It's not like he has any personal convictions over it. Regardless if he continues to try and soften his public stance on abortion, the counter should just to continue pointing at SCOTUS and remind everyone of his role there.

for the OCD people out there, good news yesterday - we get a couple of these a year - a clean sweep as all 4 affiliates played and won, as did the Tigers

True. But they took advantage of Bednar's issues and figured out a way to win. Ugly offense for 8 innings and opportunistic for 1. Good enough. I think we've seen plenty in the past where a Tiger team doesn't take advantage of what could be be gifted to them. We definitely have seen their defensive issues in the past.

The most Andre Drummond thing ever.

Well, Jeez, what a fabulous day for women in Arizona who now get to totally immerse themselves in the culture of what 1864 encapsulated. What fun. Back to the good old days of the Pre-Statehood. -aka- The Territory of Arizona and the draconian Howell Law that will throw into jail anyone complicit in causing an abortion of a pregnant woman…. for a prison sentence not less than 2 years, nor more than 5 years. So, for today’s populace, here’s what is happening: should you be the driver that brought your family member or friend to the clinic, you’re going to jail. Should you be the nurse who checked you in and took your vital signs and brought you into the room, you’re going to jail. Should you be the doctor that performed the procedure you’re going to jail. And yes , if you are this woman who had this procedure performed on them you’re going to jail too. So says the Arizona Supreme Court. So said Kari Lake in 2022 (although now can anyone tell what the **** she’s in favor of now? You’d have to be a genius to figure out that drivel that was vomited from her extremely stupid face today. She learned to lie from the master, and now wouldn’t recognize the truth if it grabbed her by the *****. ) So, conclusion- **** the Arizona Supreme Court, and you, too Kari Lake.

How about the integrity of the product you put on the floor? this is supposed to be entertainment that people pay a lot of money to see. its disrespectful to the fans and the league.

Bob Horner would be a decent outcome for Torkelson. I'll take a 127 career OPS. Sluggers are usually streaky, but all their production counts the same in the end.

Jung with #2

are they really just sitting cade for no reason? the league cant be happy with that. and if there is an actual injury, how many times can he get hurt?

"Hey, Rockie, watch me pull a win outta my ass"

Couldn't resist

In our pitchers defense, they are watching our hitters fail miserably at such pitches. Reasonable of them to think it might work for them. Unfortunately, they aren't facing Tigers hitters.

we know its your favorite thing to juts arbitrarily take and remove stats to prove your point, but those months count. he was also 23 with basically no lineup protection.

I hear that, but at the same time, Greene, Meadows and Rogers tools don't mean a hill of beans when the offense, collectively and systemically, are not performing. That's where we are at right now... the Tigers performance at the plate isn't just a Spencer Torkelson problem, it's a systemic problem.

He doesn't have any defensive value or speed. His only value is the hit tool. I would expect an .820 OPS at the minimum or he is replaceable. The issue I have is he doesn't make consistent contact when the power stroke disappears. You aren't getting the consistent production. Greene and Meadows have some defensive value, speed on the bases, tools...Rogers is a good framer and defensive catcher. Tork has none of that.

I might have been persuaded to give Rittenhouse a bit of slack if he had quietly disappeared after his trial. The fact he is touring the country, probably collecting significant speaking fees and generally cashing in on his fame is enough for me to continue to condemn him

It's surely disappointing but what can you do? Nobody else from that draft is lighting it up. Nobody else on this team is lighting it up. Is it a Spencer problem or a team/org problem in not giving them the tools and support another club would? He knows as well as anybody here or on twitter what he's doing and not doing and needs to do.

We're 10 games into the season. Lets not get carried away. He struggled early last year too.

And Bates does it again! 62 yards.

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

Beyonce is just proving that current commercial country is so formulaic that just about anyone can do it. And based on the album cover, she's pandering to that commercialized patriotic narrative in that genre.