casimir

Detroit Pistons (18-50) vs Miami Heat (45-24)

He may not even be healthy enough to pitch much at the MLB level anyway.

I suspect they will agree to an incentive laden one year deal.

I think the BAbip sticks out a bit to me. Above league average the past two seasons. So, I would be willing to chance that being around league average (depending upon what would need to be traded away). Plus, let's see what Chris Fetter can do with him.

I didn't think that was possible, but, alas, you learn something new every day.

Hmmmm...... And it sounds like Correa and the Astros aren't necessarily done with each other. I kind of wonder if they might agree upon a one year deal and then Correa can revisit FA next offseason?

Agree. I think Funkhouser in particular was the beneficiary of a lot of good luck last season. He's been good at keeping the ball on the ground and in the yard, but he issues way too many walks while his strikeouts lag behind.

Los Angeles Clippers (39-34) vs Detroit Pistons (18-49)

I’d be fine with that. Here’s the other thing with bringing in additional arms. At the beginning of the season, pitcher stamina is going to be weaker than a normal April. Stock up with veteran arms, use options for maybe ready pitchers, do whatever is needed to get through, say, Memorial Day. Through short term incentive laden deals or deals with buyouts or whatever to guys like Greinke/Sanchez and see what happens. If they can help eat up innings and can be kept for the season, fantastic. If they’re not worth keeping past Memorial Day, ok, hopefully they’ve eaten enough innings to have not overburdened the rest of the pitching staff.

You’re a swinger, eh?

What’s up with Moya?

The odd number of games vs all other leaguemates makes good sense to create natural tiebreakers.

Per Cots: Have we not learned from the extension that was signed? One all star season out of that 8/$246M extension. Come on, the Tigers need to do better than this going forward.

I don't think they need to go through a cycle of good then suck. I want them to build something sustainable year in and year out. I want success from the team, I'm not worried about some middling over aged bat chasing down milestones.

It snowed yesterday. The first spring training game thread cannot come quickly enough.

That risk lead the Tigers to the crap Cabrera years, the crap MartinezV years, the crap Zimmermann years, ....

We can debate the actual pieces, but I like your overall theory of allocating for several players.

I would think players want a known home address for this season pretty quickly. Although let's be honest, there's probably been some backchannel conversations during the lockout. If there haven't, if everybody stuck to the rules, there was probably plenty of chatter ahead of that,

And that could become the problem. If they have Mize, Skubal, Manning, Torkelson, and Greene hitting their primes, they're going to want to keep what they can and they'll have a declining value contract in Correa on the books (if he's still healthy, let's not forget that part of his resume). It's wise to construct a contract that way, a bell shaped curve that offers some financial protection. But if a contract has a base value that high, even bell curving it makes it awfully risky.

Manning is the 5th SP. Let's not assume he is more than that until he shows otherwise. Greinke is interesting because of his ability to pitch as opposed to "just throwing". There is a minimal amount of MPH that a P is going to need to get through a MLB outing. Whether or not he still has the minimal amount and can sustain it through the season, I don't know. And I don't want to compare their careers because Greinke has had a much better career than Kenny Rogers. But this kind of seems like it could be a similar kind of free agent move for the Tigers if the velocity isn't an issue.

The 4th was garbage, but they probably shouldn't have been in the game then considering the lack of bench. 2/15 FG including a bagel/6 on 3s. But, despite that, the first 3 quarters were a blast. There was some serious back and forth, and it made for a compelling watch if you didn't have a rooting interest. This has been a different team since the addition of Bagley. I don't know that all of the credit for that should go to Bagley, but they've been in every game after they gave up 132 to Memphis and 141 to Charlotte in back-to-back home losses in mid February.

I bet MLB moves the whole week that was missed onto the end of the season. I think they’ll find shoehorning that week into the current season with only adding 3 days becomes too problematic. The logical days where Detroit is out west don’t coincide with days off for Seattle/Oakland. They can try shuffling series and all of that, but it’s probably too much of a puzzle to deal with.

Everybody knows that's how bull riding was created.

But it only rewards division winners. It doesn't reward a situation like last season where the Dodgers won 106 games were seeded worse than the Brewers (90 wins) and the Braves (88 wins) because of geography (Giants, 107 wins). Seed the teams according to winning percentage. 1 & 2 get byes, 3 vs 6, and 4 vs 5. Then rerack things for the next round like the NFL does it instead of having the rigid bracket that they are planning on.