casimir

Suarez did have some minor league playing time in Cincinnati's organization (246 PAs), but the majority of his minor league career was with Detroit (2,205 PAs). Now, that's not to say once he arrived from the minors he was a complete player. Certainly he developed some in the majors. I think its fair to give Detroit some credit for Suarez. At the very least, he did make his MLB debut with Detroit. His minor league numbers were such that his promotion to Detroit wasn't a shock. Could be a situation where Cincinnati finished that development off or further improved him beyond what Detroit could have been able to do.

Yes, you're right. I could have stated that better. The similarity between the two is indeed with respect to the development as a Tiger minor leaguer. The nonsimilarity between the two is that Joyce returned some value and Suarez returned some crap.

Similarly, how about Eugenio Suarez? Well, not quite similarly. Joyce and Suarez got very different returns.

Can he be MVP and still be underrated?

I heard this yesterday and forgot to post the box score. Wilt Chamberlain's double triple double, minimums of 20, on 02/02/1968.

Charlotte Hornets vs Detroit Pistons

84Lives needs a break. We thought you could handle it for a short bit.

It might not seem bad. But the results are pretty plain to see and hard to argue against. We should have seen contributions in the majors and depth at the high minors by now. That isn’t the case. Avila has had plenty of time. The organization isn’t where it needs to be. How many more seasons of bottom 5 records does this team need to go through before the farm system churns out some quality? It takes more than drafting high to build from within. It didn’t happen. We can hope all we want with the prospects in place. But at some point, the hope needs to be replaced with results at the major league level. Until then, the organization doesn’t deserve the benefit of the doubt. It hasn’t earned it.

(E) Avila didn’t do well enough at his job and was justifiably released and we can go on with life hoping that Harris is the right person to run the organization going forward.

But the system should be better than 5 years ago. The Tigers have had the advantage of picking earlier in the draft than most other teams for over 5 seasons now. That is, of course, assuming picks were made well and prospects were added by other means and development occurred. Just because a couple of prospects made their way to the majors, it doesn’t excuse the Tigers to fall towards the bottom of the barrel if due diligence is happening elsewhere.

You forgot Trayce Thompson.

Well, there's really only one way to go from here.

Hilarious? Laughing to keep from crying?

Just heard an "on this date" from yesterday about the National League moving to a 162 game schedule in 1962. The American League did so in 1961. They expanded in different seasons (Los Angeles Angels & Washington Senators in 1961 and Houston Colt .45s & New York Mets in 1962). So that 1961 World Series was played by teams with about a week's worth of difference in games played. The other coincidence about the schedules is that Maris' 61 home run season came in the first 162 game season. For as much asterisk talk as there is about expansion and schedule length, I don't know that there is mention of the fact that it was the first 162 game regular season played.

That's a fun looking box score.

That’s probably good life advice.

Not sure if the Mets tried that. Anderson was out of Oakland after the 1998 season. The Phillips flip flop inning happened in 1999. And I was wrong about LaRussa being the manager for Oakland for that game. He was gone after 1995. Art Howe was in charge in 1999.

Hold on now.... They are former Tigers. We're not allowed to have this discussion, are we?

Seems like they could have just run the Motor City Cruise out there tonight. What's the difference?

In his prime, Phillips was awesome. Switch hitter, worked counts, had some pop, stole a few bags, could be moved around the diamond. So fun. There was a game in his second go around with the A's, they were playing in Detroit. In one of the later innings, LaRussa shuffled he and another IF back and forth between 2B and 3B based on the hitter for Detroit. It wasn't a current day shift, although the Oakland IF was shifting a bit from line to line. Phillips and this other A were essentially swapping defensive positions during the inning. Oh, yes, its this one.

I'm drawing a blank on who could have been the Milwaukee representative on some of those nonMolitor Brewer teams. That might be interesting to look back at. Sure, having Ripken as the seemingly annual starting SS takes away one slot. And then there's never a shortage of OFs when Yount moved to the grass.

Hall of Fame SS/CF Robin Yount is on a podcast that I am listening to. Guess in your mind how many all star games he made. Got it a number? OK. It ain't that many. Only 3 times. Seems odd to me that a hall of fame position player would have MVP votes in 7 seasons, including it in a season where he wasn't named to the all star game, and only 3 all star game appearances.

It doesn't look like rosters are posted, but there is a pretty prominent photo of Cabrera on MLB's WBC link.

Same, but with the way politics has been cascading into a grease fire, what will we end up with for options?

Forfeit. They ain't messin' around with the tank.