SeattleMike

2 minutes ago, mtutiger said:

Don't have nearly enough information either, but on the surface, I'd have a hard time not putting Jung at #1, ahead of Jobe. MLB Pipeline kinda backs that up, as they have Jung as a 60 overall and Jobe at 55 overall.

Colt Keith has been great this season when healthy, but I don't think he's a #1. Guessing he'll crack the Pipeline Top 10 when they rerank, but more like 7 or 8

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. 

7 hours ago, Motor City Sonics said:

We've reached the point of the season where we pause.    A pause interrupted by two games in Oakland this week.   Two games the Tigers won't win because they never win in Oakland.   

 

Where are you at this point? 

What is your mind set?  

 

Are you.........

Apoplectic.   You expected at least a .500 team this year 

Disappointed.  You knew they wouldn't be much better than 2021

Satisfied.  Few teams have had to deal with the incredible amount of injuries (some of them bizarre) this team has this season. 

Hopeful - Still a lot of youth that has to figure it out at this level and no way several guys have their worst year at the same time again. 

Hopeless - It's really bad and it's probably not getting better in the second half or 2023

 

I feel Apoplectic and Hopeless at this point.    And I'm just f**king sick of the suck in this town with ALL of our teams.   All four major pro teams are at the bottom of their sports.   I see hope for the other 3 teams.     The Wings had a surprising first half last year and totally crumbled in the second half.  New coach. More young talent coming.  Some decent free agents that should strengthen the depth.  The Yzer-plan.      Three straight great drafts for the Pistons now.  They have a very good young nucleus now.  This is the only way a non-glam city is going to have a chance in the star-oriented NBA where everyone wants to play in the pretty cities.   They also look like a group of team-oriented guys, which is the only way it's worked for us in the past in the NBA.   The Lions should be entertaining. No lack of energy on that team.  The coach is a goofball, but an entertaining one and his guys play for him.  What's wrong with trick plays. What's wrong with Tecmo Bowl playcalling.  If you're going to suck, at least be fun.  

The Tigers?  All the current cards in the deck have now been played.    No young star coming anymore.  They've all been here now and most of them have been very disappointing.   Probably not their fault, they were dropped into the middle of a disaster of a lineup.  Can't hide 'em.  We thoughy Green & Tork would be Lou & Alan and it's felt more like Kapler & Fick.   Hell, give me Granderson and Higgy and I'd be alright with it.    I know these 2 are better, but there is little support in the lineup.  The Castros aren't supposed to play every day but they're doing more than much of the rest of the lineup, and that ain't much.  Team just feels cursed.   The draft is now, the trade deadline in a couple of weeks.   I don't care about Chafin, he was a guy signed to be a chip, but Fulmer and Soto, I am very afraid at how badly Avila will screw these deals up.   Don't have to trade them Al.  If you don't get anything you want, just keep them.    I am hoping that after the trade deadline has passed, that Al will be let go.   If not then, then after the season ends.   If that doesn't happen my levels of anger and hopelessness will be as high as they were in the early 2000s.   Not excited for the return of Jake Rogers & Spencer Turnbull. Ryan Kreidler has come back to earth this year and Kerry Carpenter will probably do the same thing next year.

 

It's bad folks.........Really bad.  

 

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. 

3 minutes ago, John_Brian_K said:

"Tigers threaten, but do not score"...clutch hitting is a thing right?

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

2 minutes ago, Dtrain72 said:

I have become 100% fine with AJ going elsewhere after this season...and it pains me to say that, but this team is garbage in every facet, and AJ's part of it.

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

7 minutes ago, kdog said:

I don't care if Schoop has 300 DRS. You can't be that crappy of a hitter.

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. 

29 minutes ago, 1984Echoes said:

Although he didn't play as many games in Detroit (or stayed in Detroit) as Higginson...

I think of Bobby Higginson the same way I think of Steve Kemp.

Very apt analogy. 

18 hours ago, Tenacious D said:

Many pitching positives, which makes me think we can weather having Mize out next season, and perhaps Manning, too.  

Flores and Madden may be able to contribute at the MLB level.  Garrett Hill and Bergner aren’t far behind.  We should be getting Turnbull and ERod back.  If Faedo and Brieske show they belong, we’ll have some depth, particularly when Lynn Henning masterminds trading Tarik Skubal for a bat.

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

5 hours ago, LongLiveMaroth said:

Saw this on Twitter, obviously I am not thinking Pacheco is staying at SS, probably ends up at 3B but that being said he is pretty close stat line wise with Mayer. That being said Lawler and Merrill look pretty good but these are all SSS. 

 

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

6 hours ago, gehringer_2 said:

Mayer and Lawler are off to big starts, Mayer’s K rates might be more than you want to at A ball. At the time from what I read, the question was whether either was going to stay at SS. You see a number of scouting reports that are sort of self-contradictory. The player “has a body that will fill out for power”, but then project the bat with that power as plus for a shortstop. 

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. 

1 hour ago, mtutiger said:

14 runs, 17 hits.

Could be a mirage, but thats a big difference from 3000 Day.

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

35 minutes ago, chasfh said:

The Ilitches bought the team in 1992. They have owned the team for 34 first-round draft picks, and 23 of those picks have been right-handed pitchers.

They selected six straight RHPs over a five-year stretch in 1994-98, five RHPs during the four-year stretch of 2007-2010, and four more RHPs in four straight years 2015-18.

They used their two first-rounders in 2021 on RHPs as well, so they are in the middle of a RHP streak now.

That’s downright pathological.

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

3 minutes ago, mtutiger said:

On the plus side, the White Sox have basically burned through their entire bullpen against the Rangers today.

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

2 hours ago, chasfh said:

I said it before, I’ll say it again: the Ilitch ownership tenure has been, on balance, a disaster. 

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. 

59 minutes ago, gehringer_2 said:

Going into today's game, the top 9 Tiger players by WAR (BR) are all pitchers. The 10th was javy.

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. 

29 minutes ago, mtutiger said:

Not sure if this is sarcasm or not, but he also hit a missile for a double last night to drive in a run.... nearly left the yard.

He's gonna have his ups and downs, but he's better than the alternatives and it doesn't seem like his confidence is hurt or anything, so no issue with him learning in the bigs

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

1 minute ago, Clinkeroo said:

Do something, Al.

Your product sucks.

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. 

1 hour ago, gehringer_2 said:

What's hurting is that Cabrera has cooled off again. He's still the only hitter we have who can even get close to 'carrying' the team. Maybe Tork gets there, but not there yet.

Baez can carry a team for a month or so.

18 minutes ago, gehringer_2 said:

Brant Hurter:  6 IP 3H 1ER 0BB 11K for Lakeland. FTs win 8-4

Erie goes nuts tonight - scores 17 runs on 22 hits:

Olson 5 IP 2H 1R 0 ER 2 BB 8 K; Dingler 1/2 2BB

 

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

1 hour ago, RatkoVarda said:

No sure it gets worse, but I doubt it gets better.

Three at home vs Baltimore, which is much improved. Then they go to TB, before 48 straight against Cleveland and Minnesota

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

23 minutes ago, AlaskanTigersFan said:

This is the one time I wish I was dead wrong. 

Now, having said that, I think Next year will be a lot brighter. We aren't barren by any means.

Baez
Torkelson (he'll be fine)
Greene
Daniel Cabrera 
D. Dingler

Thats going to be a pretty solid core. I have faith in all of those guys. We might be able to add Grossman to that. Everyone else IMO isn't MLB quality.  I really hope people don't lose faith in Tork. Plenty of people have failed at the MLB level in their first call up. He will be just fine.  

Kreidler might be able to be added on that list. But I'm not nearly sold on his hitting ability for some reason.... I'd bank that Daniel Cabrera will be better than Kreidler. Candy isn't a Division 1 Starter but he is a Division 2 type guy. 

I think the Tigers are going to have to deal some arms for some hitting prospects. Only two more years of Cabrera's contract too. So we will have some room to make waves in FA next off season as well....... 

What do you see in Daniel Cabrera? 

2 hours ago, Longgone said:

Yes, the only thing really going on is that the Tigers have gotten off to a poor start for the second year in a row. Is this someone's fault? Not really, it's life. Shit happens. Like Sparky said, the first 40 games are a crapshoot, and you only hope to be around .500 till everything shakes out. 

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. 

10 minutes ago, gehringer_2 said:

It was inevitable that while they were congratulating themselves on the low ERA of the BP that the walks they were getting away with eventually would burn them. To many arms in the pen have not been able to throw strikes.

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. 

28 minutes ago, BBFCFM said:

It’s embarrassing how they cannot drive runners in scoring position in

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. 

31 minutes ago, Dtrain72 said:

Gawdamn this team is fucking garbage.  Fire everybody, burn it down.

Didn't the Tigers already try that? 

6 hours ago, chasfh said:

Semi-related to this, I tried this new hack and despite the additional moving parts, it worked out really well.

I typically watch the Tigers broadcast through MLB app on Apple TV so I can implement the audio overlay. I simply cannot bear it hear Shep and rotating cast of grizzled old players for even a single second if I can avoid it.

The issue for me is, I also dislike the Tigers video, or more exactly, Bally RSN’s video. They take up a ton of real estate at the bottom with not only the score box, but the 24/7 crawl underneath it, which features a distressingly high percentage of non-baseball and even promotional items. TBF, this is true for a lot of Tiger opponents, too (e.g., Guardians, Twins, Royals, etc.)

But now that I’ve discovered how to easily implement the Bluetooth mode on my TV’s soundbar, I’ve figured out an effective way to overlay Tiger audio over the opponent’s video when we play a team with a cleaner screen, like the Dodgers. SNLA shows only a score box in the lower right corner and a logo in the upper right, with a crawl only maybe once an hour for a couple of minutes. The rest of the screen is clear of such obstructions.

What I do is, I put the Dodger’s video on the TV, call up Dan Dickerson on my MLB app on my phone, and cast the audio to the soundbar’s BT mode. From that point, it’s only a matter of pausing the one source to let the other catch up to it, and voila: Dickerson and Petry calling the game over a clean opponent’s video.

It worked great last night except for the one inning where the video was delayed and not matching up to the audio, and then I had to change it back with the next inning. I assume the Dodgers TV director paused the telecast a few seconds to allow some promotional spot to finish, then made the telecast “live” again for the next inning.

But yeah, once I got there, it was like a dream telecast. No more annoying constant live crawls; in fact, no more big chunk of real estate given over to junk at the bottom of the screen leading to a compressed picture above it. It was great.

And bonus: there were none of the constant cutaways to the booth or to the stands for any of those distracting interviews the Tigers telecasters like to do, I guess to take the pressure off Shep and Whoever having to pay too close attention to the game, which, I don’t know, maybe hurts their heads or something. The Dodgers TV people don’t go in for that nonsense.

Gonna do it again today!

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.