Tiger337

The Tigers williingness to have a higher payroll is generally good for fans. It should of course be spent wisely, but if the Tigers take a chance on some 1 or 2 year deals to make them more competitive the next year or two, I am not going to worry about how much money could have saved. It's the longer term deals where we can get screwed.

You do seem to support what Tigers management does whether it be Avila or Harris. It's a fair stance to take since they have a lot more information than us. Questioning them is more fun! 😀

I do remember you critiquing the Candelario move.

That is correct. It is like a political debate. If you are a Harris supporter, you will give him credit for everything that goes well and if anything goes wrong, it's because the previous administration screwed up. And the opposite is true of Avila supporters of which there are not many. I am personally glad that Avila is no longer the GM amd am hopeful that Harris will do better. However, many things that happen at the major league level in the next year or two will involve Avila acquisitions, so it's going to be difficult to parse out credit and blame.

Then Avila needs to get some of the credit for whoever they get in return.

The human factor is that pitchers have more control over results than batters do. You can always find outliers in any data. Figuring out who is going to be an outlier is really difficult though. Thinking that Baddoo is going to be one of them when going about against a lefty seems like a bad gamble.

According to The Book, pitcher streaks are more predictive than batter streaks.

I don't care about no Bayesians. This is the USA.

If it's the same pitcher, then yes it makes a difference. I am assuning Baddoo was removed because they brought in a lefty.

The problem is that these states end as quickly as they begin. A player on a hot streak will only continue to hit until he is no longer hot and that can happen in his next at bat. Tango, et al showed in The Book that being on a hot or cold streak has little predictive value. Players have a strong propensity to hit at their norms regardless of their recent past. Now, if the manager actually sees a real change and thinks it can continue, I guess he can roll with the hot streak. In general though, a hot streak is not indicative of a changed man. I didn't watch the game today, but I assume he was removed for a lefty? How many of his previous 7 hits were against lefties?

Bennett Sousa is why you want your son to be a lefty.

He doesn't seem like an especially nice guy. He has had some run-ins with fans on social media.

Yes, I do like that Harris targets players with different skill sets. They are still terrible at getting on base, but I think it's a step in the right direction.

I agree. Tigers fans learned from Randy Smith that having high draft picks does not guarantee that you get good prospects.

He also got many other players that are being billed as parts of the team's future - Skubal, Manning, Mize, Parker Meadows, Keith, Rogers, Jung. Jobe, Madden, Flores.

How do we know that he is rescuing guys?

I think there are a few people who won't question Harris on anything and they tend to be pretty smart people in general. When something like that happens, I am am always going to ask questions! That is a big part of what makes this forum fun for me. I don't know much about management decisions. None of us do and that is by design. The data tell me that Candelario and Rodriguez are pretty good players and I not satisfied with how things turned out with them.

How was Friedman responsible for other possible deals that Harris could have made? Maybe Harris could have realized that Rodriguez would have been difficult to work with and worked out a deal long before the deadline. Maybe he did try to do that. I don't know. I just don't see why he has so quickly reached a level where he can not be questioned. I am not unhappy with him at all, but he seems to be getting deified like Hinch was in 2021 and it seems unjustified at this point (for both of them).

Rodriguez was not Friedman's player. I wouldn't expect him to have much control over it. If the same thing happened to Avila, there would have been no excuses. Everyone would have been laughing at him.

I am satisfied with Torkelson's progress this year, but he still has a long way to go. He still doesn't hit enough for a first baseman, especially one who is a sub-par defender. He needs to get on base more.

If he's going to get an A grade, doesn't he need to make sure things are not beyond his control? An A grade suggests that he is an elite GM in the game.

I think his big picture plan of collecting young talent was similar to Harris' plan. Harris might be better at player development, but almost all of the developing players were acquired by Avila.

Grade is really incomplete at this point, but I'll give him a B-(with C being average) Positives - Seems to be genuinely analytics driven especially in staffing seems to work tirelessly in an effort find hidden gems. It sounds as if he had a great draft (according to experts), but there are so many unknowns there Player development went well his first year, altough hard to know how much of it was him. Negatives - I was hoping he'd take more chances in free agency/ trades regarding hitters. Somebody has to say it...Should have kept Candelario Failure to trade Rodriguez at deadline. I know there is a lot of blame being thrown around, but I think he has to own it. Overall, he seems a bit tentative in making big moves. That is excusable with a new team to evaluate, but it's something to watch going forward.

I don't think this thread is going in the direction that Echoes expected.

Damn, I suspected something was wrong when it happened. I thought it was his shoulder.