casimir

Saves are an overrated stat.

Jim Eisenreich retired for a few years at the beginning of his MLB career due to Tourette’s.

The first hit was such a struggle. But he seems to have found his footing a bit since then.

We were in Niagara Falls, ON over the weekend. There were issues with debit/credit cards and/or point of sales machines that day in Canada. Fortunately we weren’t affected, but it just brings to mind one of the possible low percentage of happening yet highly painful risks of traveling.

There may be some rust to work off when he gets back, but he’s a 122 OPS+ over his career to date. This includes that shortened 2020 and powerless 2022. He’s only 27 years old. If his resume isn’t a fluke, if he can return back to health, 120 to finish up the final two seasons of control should be the minimum expectation.

Gregory Soto is the non legend all star for the Tigers. I would suggest Andrew Chafin and Joe Jimenez have had better seasons than Soto. Heck, Michael Fulmer and Alex Lange are arguably better numerically than Soto.

We need them because we are too far from each other for bro hugs.

I didn’t watch it, so no idea how Hutchison looked. But I’d bet they’re just trying to squeeze every inning possible out of every pitcher just to get through to the break. I think the move for Soto was questionable. Fulmer gets the first two, it should’ve been a clean inning save for the error. Walk Abreu? Ok, he’s a demon bs Detroit. While neither Fulmer or Soto are lights out, I think you keep going with the guy that pitched 3 outs on 12 pitches, lefty/righty hitter be damned.

I think it was mentioned that Grossman was signed in part because of Hinch’s recommendation. And while we’re dealing with the here and now, it’s easy to forget what kind of season he turned in last year. So I doubt there’s going to be a DFA unless Carpenter keeps up his torrid 2022 and/or Baddoo gets on that kind of streak. Allegedly the Yankees were interested in him not too long ago. Now there are rumors about Benintendi being the apple of their eye. So, teams are probably willing to wait out Detroit DFAing Grossman or moving on to someone else. As far as 1B, Cabrera clearly ain’t going out there. Schoop hasn’t been over there this year (and really, with good reason). It appears to be CastroH and Clemens for now. And as ridiculous as this is to say with the CastroW experiment in the OF, I’m not sure moving Grossman to 1B in the middle of a season makes sense. It’s questionable with CastroW, but in that case, he could be here beyond next season (don’t kill the messenger), and there were few other options when the experiment started. They could put him over there and try, but they have to live with the growing pains while maybe not getting any of the possible gains out of Grossman.

Yes, blame can be put on Grossman’s defense and/or the inability to pitch out of things in the 8th in the micro, but the lack of offense hangs over once again.

Wow. Go out and get some sun.

Comparing a 22 year old Torkelson to Hessman’s career seems just a bit of a stretch.

Seems strange to be happy about a loss, but, hey, whatever floats your boat.

That’s a deep batting stance. Dare I say it’s a batting crouch?

I’m not buying that ticket.

Throw out the Ivey injury (which doesn’t sound serious, so that’s fortunate), and this is an uplifting post to read. I kind of agree that Duren being brought along slowly might be most beneficial for all. At the same time, it’s going to be difficult to watch this season, particularly early on, and see him not getting minutes (if indeed that is the plan). I suppose we might need to expect that a little bit for Ivey as well. He’s not as raw as Duren, but he’ll still need to get acclimated to a longer season. Maybe that means missing some side of back-to-backs rather than short nights, I don’t know. Damn, isn’t this great? I think there’s legitimate reason to be optimistic as a Piston fan. There’s still quite a path to travel yet, but it seems so much better than the stumbling in place that we’ve seen for years and years.

They fell behind early. It’s the middle of a 19 games in 17 days stretch. They lost this game after 6 straight wins. They’ve all but put an advert in the papers in order to patch up the pitching staff. I like the premise of digging into the opponent’s bullpen when there are still games left in the series. At the same time, it’s baseball, and every team has a crap game now and again.

I was looking at his past numbers and came up with the 120. I am throwing out this season to date because there’s just nothing to gain from it. Throw in the fact that he should be around his prime hitting seasons, and I think 120 is reasonable from a few minute glance at baseball reference. The caveat to that, though, is a change to something like batting approach or the baseball itself. A majority of the team is below career averages/expectations, so there is some question there. And the baseball, well, MLB and it’s shenanigans, so there is some question there.

Who knew Sparky was ahead of his time?

Ah, who can forget the air raid sirens blared after Tiger home runs at Tiger Stadium?

I vaguely remember this picture. Two things I would never do: hit a ball that far parade around untethered on the roof of Tiger Stadium

I’ll guess an around 120 OPS+ with splits favoring hitting high in the lineup vs RHPs and low in the lineup (or sitting if the bench permits) vs LHPs. Try to live with his glove in 2023 and DH him in 2024. Free agent after that.

If they were to platoon at DH, I would think Meadows would still see time in the OF, the extent to which is likely to depend upon Cabrera’s bat and other OF options (in some form or fashion). They’re probably looking at an OF of Greene, Baddoo, Meadows, and maybe Reyes as the 4th OF? Can’t imagine Hill or Cameron have much more runway to make the MLB due to their performance. Does CastroW factor into the OF mix? Carpenter is a wildcard. Then there’s also 3B which looks more unsettled then heading into this season. Will they just go with Candelario’s last season of control and hope he rebounds? Are they going to need to platoon there? I would think Schoop is kept as his hitting numbers seem to suggest a lot of bad luck this season. The hard hit rates and BABIPs don’t exactly fall in line with the slash numerals. I guess thinking out loud about this now, what offensive changes besides a healthy Meadows and a (hopefully) returning Baddoo are expected this off-season? A healthy Rogers behind the plate? Changes need to be made, but what can we reasonably expect?

Ain’t gonna win them all. Start another six pack tomorrow and shave another coach’s head later this week.

Sitting Schoop is a tougher one because of the defense he is providing. I wonder how much of the pitching success is due to the improved middle infield defense. Someone threw out the hitting line that Clemens has had after he got his first hit. Maybe there’s a platoon among 2B/3B involving Schoop/Clemens/Candelario that makes sense? The decline of Candelario stinks in the short term, but it seemed he was sort of an iffy long term 3B due to his lack of power for the position. Maybe in a weird way this is actually beneficial to the Tigers for the long term? It’s obvious now that he isn’t a player to include as a core piece. And so there’s no reason to offer a longer term deal to him, whereas that possibility might have existed with a reason 2022 out of him.