SeattleMike

Santana OPS by month since May: May: 711 June: 780 July: 859 For season 686 (shows you how awful his April was). How an 18-year-old playing at A ball (where he is the youngest position player in the league) with his profile is not listed on every Tigers top 10 prospect is mystifying.

This season has left me perplexed. The record is not a surprise at all, given the injuries to the pitching staff. What is a surprise is the central reason for the lousy record. I figured the offense, which was slightly below average last year, could move into the average range. When Avila traded for Meadows I thought the offense would be fairly tough, top to bottom. No superstars but no duds. That most of the offense is 20-40 percent worse than league average is head scratcher. Anyway, before the season I expected 75-80 wins. That could still happen. Candy and Schoop could still get hot. Baddoo could as well. Tork could come back have a strong August and September. As could Greene. None of this is pie in the sky stuff. Usually there are a couple of guys overachieving whose regression oversets a few others who get hot. There is no one who screams regression at this point, at least on offense. The pitching is anyone's guess. Lots of regression possibilities there. But also some hope. Rodriguez? Manning? Bounceback from Skubal. Over the last 50 games the Tigers are 4 games under. Could play .505 baseball over the next 70 games? I think so.

The Tigers have so few rallies that the LOB failures are magnified.

The offense is garbage. The pitching/run prevention is MLB average." Every facet" is hyperbole.

He has never been close to this bad as a hitter. And he is still only 30. Maybe he's done, but I would bet he has a season next year closer to his norm. If he does he's worth keeping.

Very apt analogy.

I'd put Olsen ahead of everyone above except maybe Flores.

Santana kind of holding his own at low A as an 18-year old. Encouraging.

Mayer with a 137 RC+ at low A. Pacheco with a 131 RC+ at same level. Pacheco is a month younger. Understand Pacheco will not stick at SS but, as you suggest, there are worries that Mayer may not either. Who knows? Maybe Tigers picked up a Mayer's clone in the second round and will hit with Jobe as well. We can dream.

They only had three extra base hits that day (one HR). Lots of seeing eye singles. Today was HRs and line drives galore.

Who could ever forget the all-college-relievers draft?

All they will need is a couple of average MLB quality arms available tomorrow and it should be smooth sailing for them.

The number of 90 loss seasons under Illitch ownership has been staggering. More than a third of the seasons under the Illitchs have ended in 90 losses or more.

Wily Peralta is third, with a 0.8 BR WAR. The guy has pitched 22 innings with a walk rate of 5.2 BB/9 and he has the third highest WAR on the team? Bizarre.

Torkelson has the fourth highest OPS+ on the team. He's not raking at all but odd to single him out as a problem.

Is it possible to play three games in Yankee stadium and not hit a HR? You know your offense is historically inept when that happens.

Baez can carry a team for a month or so.

What if Olson really has tamed the walk monster? Does he have top of rotation stuff?

Saw stat during broadcast: The Tigers are now 4-28 against the A's since 2017.

What do you see in Daniel Cabrera?

This is the crux of it. Analyzing Hinch's moves at the micro level or complaining about Avila and the macro picture are fine. But they miss the reason the Tigers are 8-19. Guys who in the past hit HRs have pretty much stopped hitting HRs. How is this management's fault? In MLB, the Tigers are last in HRs, last in slugging percentage, and of course last in Rs/game. No one could have predicted this, not after signing a guy who hit 34 HRs last year and trading for another who hit 27 last year. Between the two of them they have hit 3 HRs, after 27 games! One would expect about 9-10 HR from these two at this point (allowing for the decline in HRs across the league in 2022). Even allowing for expected regression among guys like Grossman, Baddoo, Schoop, and Candy even the most pessimistic projections would have expected more than 4 HRs among this group. This is a complete power outage than makes no sense but has sure been damaging. Hopefully all of these guys will start reverting to the mean. If they do it all at once things could get fun.

Middle of the pack in BB/9. Near the bottom in K/9. Second best in HRs allowed. Screams regression. Shame the offense and starting pitching couldn't take advantage of the bullpen's 3-week stretch of smoke and mirrors.

Games like today happen. If the Tigers continue to put 13 guys on base, with some extra base power, as they did today, they will start scoring more runs. Problem hasn't necessarily been hitting with men on base it's been getting men on base and hitting for power. Maybe today is the start of something.

Didn't the Tigers already try that?

I watch the games, usually taped, on the MLB app found on Roku. It allows me to choose the audio for the broadcast. I listen to the radio broadcast( who wouldn't?), which this year is almost perfectly synched to the telecast of the game. No fiddling needed to match the two. As far as I know this option is only available through Roku. It's made my viewing experience so much better.