sabretooth

freaking little league rally

what the hell with the $&*#@ ball boy running into Reyes path???

Yeah, Baddoo is a major potential asset for this team, a young athletic guy who can cover a corner position with average hitting and defense if he's playing up to his potential.

My goodness, this umps high strike calls.

The difference between Andrus and Schoop/Candy is that Schoop/Candy both had really nice years in 2021, and thus are only a "moment" removed from recent success. Schoop/Candy have at least recently demonstrated that they might be good everyday players in 2023. Andrus might be a better player in 2023, but that is **only** if Schoop/Candy are absolutely terrible, and if that's the case, I'd rather have someone taking their place in 2023 that could have a chance to be a part of things after 2023.

If Candelario and/or Schoop were on other teams and a new GM wanted to bring one or both in as gap-fillers for a 1-year contract, I probably wouldn't be opposed, but I wouldn't be excited. That's where I am now....I wouldn't mind getting rid of them, and I'm not going to be upset if they are still around for one more year. They will both be in their 30's by the end of 2023 and both look like they are heading for oblivion. Maybe one of both of them "find it" again for a year or two, that's what you hope for.

I'd take anyone that a good new GM feels has a chance to be a useful player going forward, and it can be for a 2 or 3 years, doesn't have to be long-term. Also doesn't have to be an all-star or any particular age bracket. Andrus doesn't really check any of the boxes for us at this point. If he was 7 years younger he might be a decent bench option, but he's not.

Kiner-Falefa is a pretty good utility player, basically he's the Victor Reyes of the IF -- versatile, always with an 85 OPS+, predictable, below-average in almost every way. The only difference is that Kiner-Falefa has put up good defensive numbers whereas Reyes, despite passing the eyeball test, always seems to be below average on defensive metrics. Anyhoo, the next GM had better be counted on to get guys like Reyes and Kiner-Falefa to fill out the roster, sure, but his main job has got to be to find above average everyday players and get this team in the winning column. That may not come from high-priced FAs, but he'd better find it somewhere.

Swanson would command a lot of $$$ due to his recent performance level and scarcity, but based on his career he probably projects out to an average SS....basically he's turned out to be the Brandon Inge of SS without the great glove. I'd prefer him over Schoop but that's not saying much.

I'm all for bridging the gap to the next 2Bman, but I'd like to see them take a flier on someone younger who at least has some chance to turn into a long-term solution or perhaps a backup. Andrus (or anyone else in baseball for that matter) might be better than Schoop might be for the balance of this year and next, but he has exactly zero chance to be a good player of any kind again. We have to use our options wisely, and Andrus ain't it IMO.

Grossman was always a pretty decent player. And yeah, I think you take a guy from the depths of hell (2022 Tigers) to Elysium (2022 Braves) and he's gonna feel it.

Baez is a flashy player that played for a high profile team that won the WS. Schoop played in obscurity for bad teams, without the flash, and even his own teams fans failed to appreciate his value (myself included until very recently). Its such a shame and unpredictable that Schoop has been soooo awful with the bat this year.

Yeah, the major differences of course are in athleticism and style, but the results are very similar.

Sounds about right...I think I'd give Perez, Dingler and Colt a bit more time, maybe a Sept call up. I advocate using this opportunity to make value acquisitions and trades for younger veterans that wont hold any prospects back. There might be a Carlos Guillen out there.

Compare Schoop to Baez from age 24 to 29 and they are extremely similar. Baez averaged a couple more HR per year.

I have confidence that he has 115 OPS+ in his bat, no doubt. Whether he can maintain that as he approaches 30 I worry about. His fielding is not bad but oy does he make his share of bad throws. Maybe.....two years of above average Bullpen performance is likely not a fluke in my opinion; as you know, my long-standing theory is that the Manager is largely capable of determining BP performance if he has the relationship with the GM, the skills and energy, and a pitching coach that he works well with. I don't have numbers handy to back this up, but I have looked at it extensively in the past, and in the case of the Tigers, Leyland and Hinch had markedly better bullpen outcomes than the Tigers Managers who were immediately before (and in Leyland's case, immediately after him), while they shared the same GMs with the Managers before and after them. I am confident that Hinch and Fetters are guys who will reliably produce a good bullpen. Boy I hope so. I think they almost HAVE to give him another shot so they are not forced to plug Kriedler in there full-time right away. Probably true. Anything is possible with him. I sooooo want this to be true, but so far he looks sooooo awful. He was one of the most talented College hitters in a generation....he shredded minor league pitching too.....he can't be THIS bad.

yeah, easily.

I'm sure you are right, but even if he's above average defensively and below average offensively he would still be someone to leave in the lineup next year. At this point the best that you could do is to try to bridge the gap in 2023 with Schoop and see if W Perez is your answer at 2nd in 2024. I would love to go out and answer these problems with free agents or trades, but there just aren't good options for either at this point IMO for 2023, unless our new GM can wheel and deal something DD style like Santiago for Guillen c.2004. Hell I'm not confident at all that we have anyone as good as Omar Infante coming up through the ranks in the IF, and he was getting regular time in the 2nd half of the season on one of the worst teams in history in 2003. Nothing against Omar, I would love to know right now that one or more of these guys coming up in the IF (Perez, Kreidler, Lipcius, Keith, Workman) can be counted on to have a nice productive if mediocre career like he did.

Re-posting from a Game Thread so I can find it more easily later: They cannot go back to scratch, what would be the point of trying to promise everybody another 5 year rainbow? You might as well rename them the New Royals and dare people to see an eternally poor product. And yes, it starts with REASONABLE assumptions as you laid out above. - Tork, Greene, and Meadows have to each be 2-3 WAR guys, as they were projected to be in 2022, and anybody that says that any of these 3 guys CAN'T do 2-3 WAR each in 2023 doesn't know what they are talking about. This is not a prediction, this is a screaming need and a reasonable expectation. - Baez's last two months (115 OPS+, 4+ WAR if he plays his normal D for year) is what we are going to see from him for at least 2023 and no dramatic dropoff through 2024. - the Bullpen continues to do as well as they have from the beginning of 2021. 2B, 3B, and LF: - Schoop continues to provide plus D and somehow is able to stop being a black hole as a hitter and do something more like 80-90 OPS+, which is still bad, but would be a 2+ WAR player with plus D. Sadly, there really isn't another option in the FA market or in the minors ready-to-go in 2023, and they are paying Schoop $7M. - They are able to cobble together a non-black-hole situation at 3B, maybe through a combination of Harold and a middling acquisition like Joey Wendle, and maybe they get lucky and Lipcius comes up at some point in 2023 and doesn't suck at 3B, and/or maybe they give Candy a bare-bones one-year contract for the league minimum and see if he can figure out how to hit a baseball again. - They are able to sign one of the few decent FA OFers or trade for someone decent. The OF is generally where you hope that D. Cabrera and/or Carpenter also fill a gap decently for 150 PAs or so. - The Starting Rotation is going to be a plug-and-pray situation. Hopefully among Skubal, Manning, Turnbull and Brieske, there's enough healthy starts to cover at least 60 starts with decent pitching. Hopefully they can fill one other slot decently with available healthier options. That would leave a need for at least one other guy more likely two. I hate hate hate to depend on Eduardo again, but he may be a necessary option. That still would leave probably one other guy, a FA or trade acquisition. Given what little there is to trade, probably a modest FA acquisition. That's a 3Bman, LFer, and at least one SP....probably two FAs (LF and SP) and a trade acquisition at 3B. If Meadows, Tork and Greene get it done then they are in the mid-70's...if they hit lighting in a bottle with the other positions maybe they luck their way into a winning season. It aint much but it's probably all they have to go on at this point.

Yeah, exactly. He's the leader of the Lollipop Guild.

I think it's fair to speculate that Miggy and Baez may have influenced the team hitting-wise to (a) avoid taking pitches and (b) swing for more contact and softer hits. I have never seen a team where every f'in hitter from Miggy on down has the same hitting approach as Adam Everett. NEVER take a pitch. Baez at least cuts loose with some mighty swings sometimes, but it's usually in the pursuit of pitches he doesn't hit at all. The rest of the team has adopted the worst hitting approaches of what passes for our "best" hitters. I cannot wait to see Miggy go. Baez has at least cut down on his Ks. What this team needs more than anything is a complete hitter. Tork was supposed to be that guy. Maybe yet.

Look, I wanted to get rid of Schoop, but his elite D makes him valuable.

Schoop currently has the team's highest WAR among position players. Even given how horrifying his offense has been, relative to this team, it's some of the best $$ they have spent.

Well from May 10 to June 9 (113 PAs) Schoop did have a slash of 255/292/453/747 with a wOBA of 320 and an OPS+ of 109. The trouble of course is that for the balance of 2022 (both before May 10 and after June 9), Schoop has done this over his other 322 PAs: 190/219/266/485....arrrgh Schoop looks like Adam Everett the year the Tigers played him full-time....nice glove but non-existent bat. The only difference was that Everett's bat wasn't much worse than his normal non-existence, but his glove, while good, was no longer elite. Schoop looks like he's trying to do what Miggy is doing (guiding the bat for soft-bloopers) and it's not working for either of them. And if I hear one more person tell me that Miggy is hitting some batting average slightly above .250 as if that makes him a passable hitter I'm gonna scream.

Yeah, the FA market really sucks this year. The new GM is going to have to pull off a couple of trades and hope that they help fill a gap or two.