StatikIEV

Baseball is an odd duck, analytics as they advance can (and will) mess with lots of these 'old timey' important stats. Having your elite arms end games regardless of circumstance seems like a pillar that needs to fall...seems like having your best throw a couple innings whenever the game is tied would be far more meaningful. Why can't elite relievers someday win 20+ a year? I think we could see 30 again. I know I would rather see our best take over when one of our trash starters manage to hold a tie into the 5th or 6th inning, or when we offensively burst back into a game against a quality opponent...as opposed to seeing them when we are up by 3 in the ninth. Why isn't a tie game after the 6th inning the moment the elite arm sees action? Is there data that says this isn't the optimal moment?

Just curious if anyone caught the audio/live mic mid 9th inning on yesterday's game (Aug 30th vs Seattle) when there was supposed to be a commercial. Down 9-2, we were treated to not only a Craig Monroe solo ("pour me another round, line 'em up and knock 'em down"), but Mickey York saying, "he might as well be pushing meth," just before doing a live segment on the post game. If interested, I have the clip still...although I confess to never actually uploading anything to the site here.

I am going to cautiously go against the flow here and say the minor league development system of late hasn't been that bad. Not saying great...but this year sucks at the pro level, especially given expectation (as did the last xx years), so I think the reflex is to call everything a dumpster fire in the moment. We have been fairly lopsided to bringing in pitching depth the past few years in the draft (and acquisitions)...and I'm not sure one can call the results in this area a failure at this point. Now, I could point to a lot of injuries...but even still, what has managed to somehow stay on the field hasn't been too bad. The bullpen pitchers specifically have had a lot less time on the IL (relatively speaking) and well, pretty good results. When all the results are in someday, even for the SPs, are you comfortable going on the record today saying Skubal, Mize, Manning, Jobe, Madden, Turnbull, Brieske, Flores, Bergner (and the other half dozen lottery tickets we have) are all busts? I dare anyone to go on record and give out a number less than 50 WAR on the group. Now, hitters...yeah...woof. When we have taken them (outside of this year), it's been very high...specifically speaking to Torkelson and Greene (because I don't wanna split hairs on the others endlessly) Tork and Greene's early failures have been spectacular (sidenote: we are pretending hard that Greene is doing well so far...but really, he's been hot garbage too for a supposed 1st overall prospect. .2 WAR for a quarter of a season? ...and dropping fast. Our boy has a serious, Baddoo-sized hole against strong curveballs/higher end breaking stuff..and MLB has figured it out of late. Hopefully his skill level is such that adjustments can be made). However, they are both very recent former #1 prospects..and the adage that hitting (and winning) is contagious, and you have to give young hitters some MLB ABs and experience before you know what you have got is true. Newbs generally suck for a time...regardless of skill level. A good amount of trouble with them is likely a mix of inexperience, pressure...and more significantly we are giving them BAD MLB EXPERIENCE 24/7...watching our legion of underachievers, who are supposed to be major leaguers, be put in the lineup EVERYDAY, and go up there and fail ALL season long (insert Grossman, Candy, Schoop, Baez, all-singles-Miggy, Barnhardt, no-power Meadows,etc)..coming back to the bench and moping around. Every. Frigging. One. Of. Them. (maybe outside of Haase in the past couple weeks). So yeah. Management sucks AL sucks. Hinch is suss. Their pro talent assembly skills, lineup assemby, and cheapness to date is epically bad. There isn't even an excuse...which is why I'm putting Hinch in the 'suss' category now. As an example... let's get Baez, when all our division rivals combined started the year with 1 lefty starter and Baez is a career 730 OPS against righties...that should be fine right? That's worth 23 million! As always, he is over 900 against LHP this year.. too bad he has only gotten 80 abs against lefties. No excuse for this. Batting old man Cabrera 3rd and 4th all year, every game? I mean, I get it...everyone loves the teddy bear and we still have to pay him out...but he weighs 280lbs, is immobile, has nothing left in his legs...has 13 XBH as a full-time DH in more than 350 PAs so far...THIRTEEN! There is no current ballplayer you give 350PAs to over 100 games that could do worse....this dude is our 3/4 in the lineup guy? He should be Pujol'd, AKA he comes out to wave..and get ABs against soft throwing lefties and when the game is out if hand (or a guy on 3rd and 1 out...preferably no one on first at the time). And if he gets a day off...oh, how about no power Harold, or Grossman, or vertigo/covid/bad achilles Meadows pencilled in there? No excuse. The young guys, especially the pitchers, see this nonesense, these non merit/non baseball based decisions being made, and forced failure being put upon them and the team...they sit there and quietly take it. No wonder hopelessness and failure finds them. But I can still excuse, or not find 'that' much fault for those in the org who have been attempting to find talent for the team and who they have assembled. The group of pitchers and players developed and drafted the past 5-6 years are not battle tested yet, they haven't been given their due reps as healthy MLBers on a functional/sound pro club. I'd be petrified to box them all up and ship them to a sound fundamental ballclub, that makes rational decisions at the major league level and see how they turn out...and I think if others were honest with themselves...they would be too. So yeah...I guess I had somethings bottled up. /rant off. /clean house

Dang, I thought for sure this was going to be one of those 'making fun of Miggy's age' / images through time meme threads. ...not going all let my effort go to waste at this point, appropriate or not

I'm with you 100 percent here. That's why my 'gentle suggestion' to the team is to open up all the pitchers org wide (ex-skubal) and take the best positional fill opportunity that presents itself. Every team wants, and highly values, legitimate pitching prospects...and they will offer high quality players in return, but GMs are hesitant to do this because of the possibility they are moving a 'John Smoltz'...which get them fired, or much maligned in the future. The reality because of this...is trades rarely happen, but if we get what we want today, we accept those odds as the cost of playing ball. Ie) Fulmer, although doing lovely for us atm, has little value when it comes to bringing in a multi-year/controlled impact player...dude is broken 50% of the time, so he isn't reliable...and when he is going well, he thinks he is worth double what you are paying him and can't wait to leave town. In other words, most of our 'known commodity' pitching names in today's lineup on the field are functionally useless to us on the trade market. The guys that will bring 'real' players are the likes of recent first rounders... Madden, Mize, Manning, Jobe, and combos of Olson, Smith, Soto, Faedo, Brieske, Wentz, Perez (?), Flores, Bergner, Hurter, etc. with other organizational/big league fodder like Fulmer-types for a half season. Is one or two of those guys listed great? A 20, 30, 50+ WAR guy...yeah sure, maybe one of them. It is for that reason that the 'big brain' analytical teams of the league would fall in love picking through our 'untapped pitching depth'...and would be more than happy to box up an above average/capable positional player, that is in the midst of a ~2 to 4 WAR year THIS year, that they know they will be unable to sign, and will lose this player in a couple years. I will take that 6 to 12 WAR player over the next 3 years at the positions we currently have negative returns on the field...that's a significant and marked improvement, and the other team can have what they covet...a long term controlled, lottery ticket for greatness. ...or Illitch can open his wallet some more, but that seems unlikely until Cabrera is launched into orbit in 2024.

This year is pretty much a write-off today, but for sure we will know if we can put a fork in it by the deadline/Aug 2. IMO, we have a need to replace at lease 1 of the 4 positional horsemen of incompetence (Schoop, Grossman, Candelario, Barnhart) immediately. We have drafted and stocked our butts off for pitching depth during our tank-a-thon (to the detriment of positional strength). And quite frankly, despite the frequent flyer points we are getting for our pitcher's time spent at the doctor's office, those that have avoided the IL have still performed decently enough, and we seemingly now have an endless stream of talent, both getting healthy and coming down the pipeline. So just how many quality SPs will be in camp in the Spring of 2024? Pretty sure it's like 100. My point is this, let's trade some shiny pitching things to replace at least 1 of the horsemen of suckatude...sure, we have a couple prospects that 'could' pan out at C, 2b, 3b, OF, but they are all solidly in the 'maybe good enough, let's see what happens' camp'...and that's it. Also, it's not like we have real prospect depth at any of these positions if option 1 doesn't work out. We could have moved a pile of pitchers for real positional talent the past few years...but we just did nothing and watched them depreciate themselves with us (waves to Fulmer, Turnbull, Boyd, Jimenez, etc., etc.). So who cares? We only mark Skubal as untouchable...trade ANYONE else (pros or minors) for a 'controllable and competent' fill at any of those 4 black hole positions. Not saying we trade all our depth, but let's send out a league-wide memo that they are all available, and pull the trigger on the best option presented back to us to fill ONE of those positions...then we can put the fence back around the other 99 pitchers who are still left with us. ...just my 2p. That is, unless the Tigers got wind of a secret MLB plan that in 2024 there will be 324 games played, every day will be a doubleheader...and we don't want to be caught without arms.

Just a bit of an odd game for West Michigan so far tonight. Thru the first 4 innings, WM has 8 runs on 3 hits and 5 walks. Some solid baseball happening there. ...don't see this everyday

This. My 'getting older' moment was missing the last step on my main floor staircase...falling an incredible 9 inches. Didn't even give it a thought at the time, felt fine...but the following day was the start of 9 months of back pain.

You don't get to be the all time record holder for consecutive error-less games in the outfield (and any position) by taking chances. I think it was the right call by Baez even though it didn’t work out, Grossman is kind of a let-it-drop specialist IMO.

Maybe it has just been the lowering of my standards the past ~4 years (...or even my apparently wild optimism in Spring Training), but I would now consider Torkelson finding his ground, and Greene having a productive 2/3rds of a season, a win (salvage) for 2022 at this point...even if we set up shop in 4th place in the Central. If those two can both figure it out this year at the pro level, at least it gives a base to jump off from (and/or burn everything else around them down). If they scuffle, then I fear we head into a another multi-year winter...and what makes futility even more scary, is that we aren't guaranteed the warm embrace of a 1-1 pick anymore if we 'put in the work' to finish last. I know it isn't true...but it really feels like the individual results of the next few weeks have long term implications.

I know he was serving as the 27th man, but does it just feel wrong to return him to Toledo when he exited the game injured while throwing the shutout? Also, how does that work...do they ask him if he is ok, then have him sign a form/waiver to go back down?Seems like if you are injured on the pro team, you'd have the benefit associated with that level (medical and service time) until you are cleared? I confess I'm not sure how that works in this situation as the 27th man.

Basically it was just a blog with a single employee when I started it (before EVs were a thing/big). But eventually it turned into a full 24/7 news outlet, analytics, live reviews/test drives, event coverage/debuts, etc outlet in 6 languages (~20M/visits month) with way too many people working at it. So I'm really not sure what to call it these days. I just say media so people don't think it's a blog I did in my PJs in my mother's basement. At its heart...it's just a fancy blog I guess, lol.

I think all this is a high probability too. The point I was attempting to make (perhaps not so eloquently) was more to the odds of a longer duration of a contract than we have seen, and thus then length of potential tenure with one team in the case of a new, young generational player today ...over the likelihood of a specific generational talent combination like Tram and Lou existing on the same team in their formative years. That as you point out...is a very remote occurrence. As others have mentioned, and is a very fair/unknown data point, is what will teams do with a generational asset when they have it locked into a favorable, ultra long contract? Both in asset value and/or cost of the contract. This we haven't seen played out. Using a specific example, if Tatis continues to be Tatis when he returns, and he puts up Trout numbers next year and the year after, will the fact they still have him under contract for the next 10 years further, age 26 to 35 at an 29.9M AAV, eventually pressure the 'smart people' on the team to leverage their club advantage for an even potential greater return when opportunity presents? To your second point on the 'cost', I don't think this comes into play for true generational talent...really for any of the clubs, save a handful. The point of these contracts is to save money (potentially a monster pile of it) by opening up your team's future risk profile in exchange for the young player's need for security and/or greed (depending on your prospective I guess). If the play pays off...the money is a non issue IMO. Is paying Wander Franco $25 million in 2033, at 32 years old (especially if he is the yearly 5-8 WAR player as projected), a burden to a team when the 3rd lowest payroll in MLB today is almost $70 million? 10 years from now all teams will likely be north of 100 million. 25M for a phenom (or 50 for 2) seems very doable...especially when accounting for the additional indirect value of the 'franchise' player (merch, gate revenue and loyalty of fans). What is the fair market value of a 32 year old elite player in 2033? 50 million a year? 60? 70? Again, I think this further underlines your point the potential for these types of contracts, if successful, to be used as trade leverage...although the inverse can also be true; the reason for giving the contract in the first place (exchanging control for more cash), means that another re-up for more years could in exchange for a higher AAV could present itself again. Ie) if Franco is putting up an 8 war at 32 and has two years left at 25M...maybe it makes sense to add a couple years more at a higher number. ...but I digress. Apologies for the long reply.

Heya, Yes same ID more or less...it was probably just Statik at the time (the IEV stands for shortform of InsideEVs.com...an electric car media company I founded back in the day). I guess I was not-so memorable (was active betwen 2005 and 2010)...I'm back again, but I will try to pepper in the odd quip or profanity-laced tirade so that I am more notable, heeh. Agree with all you have said here.

Not so sure...at least when it comes to generational talent such as you mentioned playing on the same team long term. Same for having new faces on that infographic in the future. Seems to me like the analytics of things are now changing, and spreading into things not on field... notably risk/reward contractually on youth. Specifically, leveraging control years, and a player's need for either instant gratification and/or security,for the (theoretically) club-friendly decade+ contracts when it comes to players that are large skill outliers to the norm. The odds of two generational talents coming up together is what is ultra rare (and what we may not see again...or for a very long time anyway)...but I think the odds of two such youngsters ultimately having long careers together on one team is much more probable today then it was at any other point in the last 20 years or so. /insert Franco, Tatis contracts here Disclaimer: I think it's important to not make the definition of 'star player' too broad here. Good to great players aren't likely to get this sort of treatment, they will still probably hop around to 2, 3, 4 teams over their careers in exchange for teams still fully enjoying their team friendly controlled years...but we likely will see 1 or 2 'monster' contracts given out every year to the young and uber-gifted (who arent pitchers)...IMO. So, as a scenario, let's put on our make-believe hats, and say Tork stops 'sucking wind,' goes on a tear and hits 50 HRs this year and 60 next year...while Greene comes up in June and posts 5 WAR, then 8 next year. I postulate that team would intensely focus on re-allocating the freed-up 'Cabrera money' to locking them both down for the next dozen years...as opposed to enjoying the cheap, controlled years of the duo, and deploying that saved cash elsewhere...as teams have been want to do the past few decades Sidenote: Not sure if anyone recalls, but I had ~7000 or so posts before ~2010 at the 'old' forum...been lurking silently for a decade plus. So...'hey again', (= /wave