sabretooth

The only potential positive I could take from this fiasco is that Chris is making a statement that he will never fire-sale his top assets off like that again.

Holy Cow...dude, they were YOUR TOP ASSETS you idiot!!!!

Yes, glad to believe that Chris is responsive to external pressures related to on field performance. I was and remain afraid that he feels that he can succeed at accomplishing his personal goals (low risk profit) regardless of how the team performs or how fans and season ticket holders feel about the team.

I think you're right about how the Lions handled it, but Sheila had 0 experience as her rationale, whereas Chris has enough experience with the Tigers and Red Wings where he would never think of himself in those terms. I don't trust Sheila only because she lacks experience, and the Ford family always seems to mess it up. I don't trust Chris because of his specific dramatic failures with the Tigers to date over 7 years. I think Chris is going to have to get himself out of this mess.

If its Menzin then we are doomed. If its Theo then we have a very good chance. If its some Rays or Astros or Dodgers or Cardinals protege, then it feels like a coin flip or worse odds to succeed.

Good move. Clean break. No fiddling around or waiting. A clear message to the fans and the team. Let's see if he can make an excellent hire. If it's internal then that would be a huge shame. Let's hope that Chris is ready and able to make a big splash here with a proven GM and avoid Boston's mistake.

I also wonder if we've tapped the limit of what is physiologically possible from pitchers in terms of producing velocity, spin, and movement. The slider has displaced the curveball as a sing/miss pitch. But slider usage for starters is maxed at about 25%...with few exceptions. One advantage of the apparent baseball deadening is that pitchers are able to focus on something other than producing swings/misses. Groundball production I hope is an area of opportunity. The emergence of pitchers who throw a significant percentage of sinking fastballs (not splitters) in the low 90s (and even a few mid-90s) I hope can advance in the game and work as an arm-saver.

I think its also safe to say that pitching has never been harder on pitchers or on hitters.

I think that's probably also true...the two sides of these hypotheticals is why WAR and wRC+/OPS+ are great, because they present total historical performance in its proper context.

Chas is right that it would be difficult for 1940s hitters to catch up to todays pitching.

Here today for my sons 14th Birthday...what a blast! I was 14 years old in 1984. This has been a GREAT day 😁

Didn't understand it then, still don't understand it now.

Oh Javy....wut

Was Reyes signaled to go home on that??

Baez!!!

The ol' 2 errors by Diaz Rally

I hope he retires.

DD had a viable farm system. It produced MLB regulars (excluding relievers) at the rate of 2 to 3 a year, which is OK, but the players were generally not strong. In any case, as the analysis below demonstrates, DDs farm system was far more impactful (directly on field and indirectly by way of trades) by his sixth year as GM (2010) than Avila's has been over the same period. The players that DD drafted and traded prospects for had collectively better prospects for immediate and long-term production as of the close of 2010, than AAs draft picks have in 2022, AAs sixth year. (I'm not listing or talking about relievers, my glance at both DD and AAs tenures looked about the same for relievers, FWIW) I'm going to look at DDs draft picks from the perspective of what information/perspective was available in 2010, not based on what they did afterwards. DD's drafts produced the following position players in MLB by 2010: Maybin (who was traded for Miggy and FWIW was a decent regular by 2010) C. Thomas (who had been a decent regular in 2009 but was in the minors by 2010) Joyce (who was a decent regular by 2010) Rhymes (who was a decent regular in 2010) Wells (who contributed 1.5 WAR in the second half of 2010) Avila (a poor hitting/strong D starting C in 2010) Boesch (a decent regular in 2010) S. Sizemore (who was poor in 2010, but was considered to be a likely starting 3B) Starting pitchers from DDs drafts: 9. Verlander (great of course) 10. Luke French (who had 5 good starts in 2009 and was traded for Jarred Washburn) And in the wings: - Nick C. - Dirks - D. Smyly - Jacob Turner That's 10 MLB players who had received at least fairly regular time in the MLB in or before 2010 or would in the following season(s), and four other guys in the wings who were anticipated to help the MLB club soon. By 2010, DD had also traded prospects to get high-impact MLB players like: - Miggy (Maybin and others who amounted to nothing) - J. Peralta (G. Soto, who amounted to nothing), He also acquired A. Gallaraga for Mike Hernandez (who amounted to nothing), who was a decent starting pitcher for several years. That's 17 guys that DD had on the MLB club in 2010 who were drafted or acquired from the trade of draft picks who were contributing in 2010 and/or were about to contribute to major league clubs. In AAs first six years (including his first draft, 2016), we have the following MLB regular position players: Tork Greene you could kinda make an argument for K. Clemens, though he's been played less this year on a lousy team that needed anybody, versus the prospects in 2010 who (with the exception of Maybin, Sizemore, and Larish, who had been traded) played greater roles on a decent 2010 team with fewer "holes" to fill. We also have the following starting pitchers: 4. Manning 5. Faedo (TJ surgery - recovered) 6. Mize (TJ surgery - recovering) 7. Skubal 8. G. Hill 9. Brieske (TJ surgery - recovered) In the wings: - Kriedler - Carpenter - Dingler The other guys are A-ball at this point, at least several years out. That's fewer than 10 MLB position players or starting pitchers contributing to MLB clubs in AA's first six years, fewer than 2 per year, and 3 guys in the wings, who are unlikely to match what Dirks and Smyly did in the next couple of years, and I don't think any of Kriedler, Carpenter, or Dingler have remotely the potential that Nick Castellanos apparently had in 2010 (and went on to fulfill). Saint Avila's strong suit and focus, drafting and development, has been a near-total bust.... ....whereas DD, who was supposed to be the devil incarnate who neglected and raped our poor farm system, actually produced more on-field value from it **while the team was focusing on winning** than Avila has managed while the team has been losing nearly every year. I know that people are going to say that it's unfair to lump Verlander, Miggy, Peralta in with the prospects, but that is how you BUILD A WINNER. ***Even if you exclude Verlander, Miggy, and Peralta as trade products from drafted prospects from the equation***, it's STILL not at all clear to me that AAs draft picks at this time are going to do even as well as the rest of what DDs drafts produced directly in on-field performance. I'm not giving Tork the benefit of the doubt at this moment, not until he starts to hit MLB pitching just a little bit.

Yes, I totally forgot about that....the cursed ping-pong games 😄

As far as the hitting goes, there's external factors like the change in the baseball, yhe league switch for Baez, injuries, and other factors, but nevertheless the extreme inability for anyone not named Haase to consistently drive the ball creates a reasonable suspicion that a coaching/approach issue has somehow messed with players to the breaking point.

Yeah, Henning's anti-FA attitude would describe a few guys on MTS. It's a "money is the root of all evil" derivative. While I don't *like* Free Agency, and I do like it when players stay with teams longer, Free Agency is one of the major tools that have to be used successfully in order to build a winner. And basically no team ever becomes a winner by building organically without the benefit of pricey veterans from trades/FA. The closest example to the "pure" team was the Royals, but even THEY needed to trade for and/or sign a bunch of key guys like Shields, J. Vargas, Guthrie, Volquez, E. Santana, and Wade Davis in order to enjoy their 3 winning seasons (practically their **only** winning seasons in the last 30 years). So, yeah, the "pure" approach simply isn't attempted anywhere and would never work if it was without all of the basic elements of successful roster construction.

Yeah I wasn't even imagining anything as sweeping as what you are talking about....I was thinking more along the lines of coaching and influence to try and keep slider utilization at a level which corresponds to the player's known history. I'm also wondering if there is existing or emerging research and medical indicators of player physiology that could inform coaches to help them optimize each pitcher's pitch profile. Conversely, I would guess that attempts to *strictly* control pitch utilization would be an exercise in futility or even counter-productive to performance and even health.

Yes, I agree. Hitter approaches like major launch angle changes, pull vs. spray hitting, pitch selection....these rarely ever change for a particular hitter, and when they do, it seems to take at least the better part of a year for the hitter to stabilize and/or improve his performance level as a result. The far more common way in which a team adapts hitting approaches is by getting new hitters that fit that approach.

Yeah, they started with a base of young guys and a number of them recovering from TJ surgery. But there were other healthy guys like Mize and Turnbull who broke. Like the hitters cratering due to the deader ball this year, the past 7 years of jacked-up baseballs also took their toll on our pitching. It's sad that the pitching injuries racked up this year, probably the result of youngsters largely coming up through the ranks and competing in the minors and MLB with juiced baseballs. By the time the balls were deadened this year, it was already too late to stop the inevitable injuries from years of over-torquing young arms. The league-wide switch to the deader ball needs to stay in place, and pitchers need to be able to throw 6 innings every five days without blowing out their arms. As it stands, our coaching staff (in the minors as well) needs to be aligned behind research and metrics that preserves arms for innings coverage, especially now that the balls are more pitcher-friendly.

Yes, there is a potential upside to this unforetunate experiment, but it hinges on keeping guys healthy. Admittedly, some of these pitchers came into this season coming off injuries or with mechanical issues that caught up, and the Tigers couldnt do enough to protect them when things snowballed. If Fetters has the answers to all of this, then they could make the rotation work, but I really think that they need at least one or two more quality arms, and I think they are unlikely to go get them. Hopefully Eduardo can pitch a full season effectively in 2023.