Hart

I still love Ausar's future but the fact teams teams are daring him to shoot is messing with his head. He can't drive aggressively because teams are collapsing. And he ends up with some awkward looking drives.

I would have expected Cade to come out more aggressive after Monday night's performance.

Yeah...that was a bad break. Hard to blame Langdon there. He knew we were screwed without more shooting and did the best he could with what he had to work with.

Totally agree about THJ. I am not sure why we swapped him out for Levert. I guess we haven't see enough of Levert yet but give me Hardaway's three point shooting over whatever it is going to be that Levert provides us.

Not having Ivey sucks but they didn't have Ivey most of last year. Losing Beasley is just the killer IMO. Even against good defense, he could still usually get a three up that had a reasonable chance of going in. The Cavs just suffocated us in that second quarter and we had no answer.

I can take a bad game from Cade. That's not a big deal. But 4 games in, he looks like the same player as last year. If there was going to be improvement to go from really good to great, it is likely we would have seen it by now. Hopefully an injury is bothering him because it's kind of a letdown that we have not seen another step from him this year.

Fair. But how has he only shot 2 free throws? If you are the star and your team can't get a basket for 6 minutes, you have to get to the line.

Pistons need to throw their bodies into Cleveland when going up at the basket. Don't make it easy for their shot blockers.

Cade needs to drive every time. The refs will give us some calls out of sympathy at this point.

I am all for grinding out ugly wins but this is too much. It's frustrating that Cade can look this bad when we need him to lift us out of this funk. There is a lid on the basket right now.

Ausar is looking like he is making a big leap this year. Star in the making. Still have not seen Cade's best this season. Another 5 turnovers tonight and only halfway thru the third.

Is there anybody in the league better in that situation? He's got to be in the top 5 at least.

The bench feels really thin. And now Holland has 3 fouls.

So far, the only guy who looks like he has improved this year is Ron Holland. I hate that Cade is our point guard. It takes away his aggressiveness as a scorer.

The Pistons just look slow. That is one thing that Ivey could definitely help with.

Theoretically, Robinson should be able to replace Beasley. But until I see Robinson on a nightly basis, I am skeptical. Beasley could get up a three very quick and was very clutch.

As far as controlling the strike zone from a hitters point of view, I get impression the most of the hitters today are guessing a LOT of the time. They are guessing if it is going to be a strike. And they are guessing what the pitch it is going to be. There are not a lot of guys that are really good at identifying a pitch quick enough to swing or not swing after the pitcher releases it. Gleyber Torres seems like one that can do this to me. The key for most guys is choosing to shorten up your swing at the appropriate time so you can at least make contact to put the ball in play or foul it off. Just my opinion.

I'm surprised by people being down on Harris. We are clearly a bottom half team in payroll. No GM is going to trade top 10 overall prospects for rentals or relievers in that situation. And you are basically relegated to lottery tickets in free agency. Until Illitch spends some money, he has very limited flexibility.

Of course. The question is would you take that or two top prospects with a lot more years of control.

It Cade makes another leap and truly does because an ALL NBA first team type of player, that definitely would raise the ceiling of this team and I feel like there is a lot more riding on Ivey then. Need a jump from him also to become a true championship contender. I am trying not to get too caught up in Cade's preseason. It is still preseason.

That's kind of what I was thinking also. Seems like a steep asking price for a rental.

I think you got to get Aidan Miller in any trade with the Phillies. Not sure if he will stick at shortstop but third base is a need for us as well. And he was great the second half of the season.

This is such a hard decision. One thing I hope the front office does consider before deciding to let Skubal go is that if he does continue to track for a hall of fame career, he goes into the hall of fame with another team. It's nice to have great players to celebrate 30 or 40 years from now. We have that with Whitaker and Trammell and Morris. We will have that with Verlander and Cabrera. We are going to lose that to a large degree with Skubal if we move on from him.

I think Kerry Carpenter may be getting off a little easy by fans. He had a .291 obp. That's worse than Greene's .313 obp. His strikeout rate is not near as bad as Riley's but that walk rate is hurting us. Combine those two with Javy Baez/Trey Sweeney, and that's a lot of ab's used up where guys are not getting on base. I do agree with others we should shop Greene to see what he would bring back.

Keith still somehow managed an OPS of .746 this year, which I would say is solid for a 23 year old in his second year of development. I do think his overall statistics are better than what it felt like watching him everyday (which happens with a lot of players when you platoon so much). Next year is a big year for him. I think we need to see a big step forward from him before he becomes just another strong side platoon guy that doesn't play good defense. The Tigers probably won't give him enough of a chance to hit lefties though.