gehringer_2

51 minutes ago, tiger2022 said:

Kershaw has 80.9 WAR and Verlander has 81.7 WAR.  Who was a better pitcher?  Verlander is 5 years older than Kershaw.  One just retired and the other is playing another year

But that is why the criteria for the Hall are soft. I think there is a certain value to the game in guys that have really long careers. It puts a larger body of fans into a common experience of having seen that player play - and I think that has a sort of intangible value beyond counting stats. And there has always been a certain tension around guys who are totally dominant but flame out and guys that very good for a very long time.  Koufax only has 53 WAR, but he was best most people that saw him had ever seen. 11 of Ryan's 27 seasons were at less than 2 WAR, so he built his total on a lot of mediocre seasons, but he was part of the fabric of the game for 27 freaking years.

I don't think there is a need for hard choices on those questions. It is after all, the Hall of 'Fame', not the Hall of 'Stat'. Coming back to Ryan, there were relatively few  seasons when he was actually among the best pitchers in baseball, but he was certainly the most famous pitcher in baseball for most of his era.

33 minutes ago, tiger2022 said:

Cabrera should have retired at 34.  

I could have seen him play maybe that year or a couple more because there was still a chance he might find a way to get healthy - the batting eye was still there. But the last two years were certainly terrible. Part of that was probably the Tigers also - they should have given him his money and put him on disability but they wanted to milk 3000 hits etc.

2 hours ago, Stormin said:

" You can get into the HOF if you hit 377 HRs, .862 OPS, 139 OPS+ and are a slow base runner and a poor fielder?  Why didn't the Tigers let me play second base?   -- Signed Norm Cash" 🙂

I don't even remember Cash as being a particularly poor fielder at 1B for that era - certainly was pretty fair on foul pop-ups. Granted -  If he'd been playing today he'd have been DH'ing in his over 35 yrs.

15 minutes ago, Nate7474 said:

I think the fan base and frankly the organization for some reason aren’t really behind Mize. I chalk it up to being a 1st pick and underperforming expectations as well as injuries. Tork I think gets under appreciated as well for that same 1st pick reason. Me personally I think Mize is a good 2/3 type pitcher who a good team should win the majority of his starts he just isn’t going to dominate another team very often. 

interesting thing with Casey  is that since he came back from his TJ he has learned to be effective against LHB, who hammered him early in his career. He has a slightly inverse OPS platoon split - but managers continue to send LHB to face him - he faced more LHB than RHB in total last season.

6 hours ago, sagnam said:

Eagles won the Super Bowl last year and made the playoffs this year. It’s a weird angle to take, but OK. The Lions missed the playoffs. They failed. Throwing your hands up like, “welp, nothing at all we could have done differently, hopefully we get lucky next year” is a loser mentality. What could they have done better? What decisions held them back? These are valid questions.

 

As Nate said, it looks like the RB usage has driven one half of our inseparable duo to want out of town. Is he cooked? Or was it inability to see the value of Montgomery? In mid October, “Gibbs has played 230 snaps this season, or 62 percent, while Montgomery has played 143 snaps, which equates to 39 percent of the team's action.” Would Gibbs have been more productive later in the season if he wasn’t overused in the first third?

Both RB saw their success rate fall by about the same % - which goes right to the OL. But Gibbs rushes per game were about the same as last season. A chunk of the shift was that Montgomery lost rushing attempts to not to more runs by Gibbs but pass targets to Gibbs.

32 minutes ago, CMRivdogs said:

Some owners are now suggesting a salary cap

https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/6986854/2026/01/20/mlb-owners-salary-cap-push-dodgers-kyle-tucker/?campaign=16554845&source=athletic_breaking_targeted_email&userId=213687

Follow link for full story

what is the opposite of a 'virtuous  circle'? A 'veering of vice' maybe? The problem here is the problem for these owners is not the players, it's their fellow owners, and the way out the mess is revenue sharing, not a salary cap, but the old boy ownership club ties apparently being thicker than water - if not fully 'blood' - they won't explicitly go after their fellow owners.

So instead of a solution, they'll get a strike, which will cost everybody money. And in the end the settlement won't really settle anything because the root problem will still be there waiting to rear its ugly head when the next contract expires.

48 minutes ago, Tenacious D said:

It’s easy to forget about Jobe, but given the success rate of TJ, he should be a big part of what we do in ‘27.

they seem persuaded that Anderson is going to hold his own. I don't know if there are enough comps of guys coming to the MLB from Korea to have that kind of confidence that a 2.25 ERA there is enough to translate into success here, but they seem to think so.

3 hours ago, romad1 said:

OPINION: Trump’s Recent Disinhibition Raises Real Questions

I believe that conclusion was reached here a while a ago. 

1 hour ago, NorthWoods said:

Our biggest weakness remains RF/CF.   Clark can't arrive too soon.   Or put McGonigle at SS and move Javy back to CF.

I think this has a pretty fair probability. Even without McGongle, if McKinstry and Javy are both 'not terrible' with the bat and Parker is, which is another not unlikely combination - javy is also going to spend time in CF.

1 hour ago, buddha said:

i'm 53 years old.  its been that way ever since i started watching basketball.  the only time the celtics dont get calls is when they play the lakers.  then the refs are too confused about who to favor so they just call the game.

Boston needed one more call than they got tonight.

Great take on DeBrincat from McLellan in the post game "He drags a lot of his teammates into the game, every night".

25 minutes ago, buddha said:

the only angle i can possibly convince myself will work is the "vancouver retains a ton of salary" and "the swedish guys bring out the best in him."

i can almost talk myself into it at that point.  but then i still go back to him basically crying in a corner because jt miller was bullying him.  the last time the canucks were in the playoffs he was a complete no show.  he signed that huge deal and fell off a cliff.  is that who i want?

do i really need a perennial lady byng candidate to lead my team?

otoh, he wouldnt be the leader of the team.  he could fade into the background and produce on line 2 or 3.  but if that's who youre trading for, do you really want to pay that guy 11 million per year for the next SEVEN years?

i dont.  if you wanted to mortgage the future for a "star" then you should have ponied up for hughes.  if you want to take on a distressed asset, then find one who doesnt make 11 million per year.  

I don't care about the money, it's not that big an increment, the only question is whether he can turn his career around away from Vancouver. The team was clearly banking on that happening when they moved Miller, so that argues no. OTOH, that locker room may have been so polarized by the time they moved Miller that it wasn't going to make any real difference to his alienation from the team. McLellan seems to be a pretty good coach, but if you're are going to turn around EP you probably need a Scotty Bowman. This team is close enough I don't think you need to take such a big risk of lousing things up. I'd pass based on knowing the little amount we do, but the front office does get paid to know more about the sub rosa than we do.

14 minutes ago, buddha said:

war has always overly benefitted starting pitchers who accumulate innings.

the fact that park effects can change year to year without any physical change to the park itself or change to the general weather patterns tells me that players who play in the park have as much or more influence on the "park effect" that season than the modelers would have you believe.

two comments on that: 

Weather is local, changes from year to year, and is what drives some of the park effect anomalies you see. The year Target opened we were in MnStP, everyone was paranoid by August that the park was playing way too huge. It was just a really weird year in Mineapolis - lots and lots of cool nights in a place where summer is usually really hot. It's never played that big again.

I agree there does seem to be something to a team effect on park factors. COPA definitely seems to play big when the Tigers are bad, more average when the team is average to good. I'd guess that when the home team is lousy, visitors with a lead just feel less pressure to score more so I believe in some cases you do get a certain amount of cross correlation that you don't want to be there.

11 minutes ago, Tiger337 said:

Both Iwakuma and Sale had better ERA+ and K/BB than Scherzer and Scherzer was surely penalized for playing in a pitcher friendly park.  

I suppose if they wanted to make things more transparent, they could publish how the park factor correction was for each player. They can be pretty big, esp for pitchers.

48 minutes ago, NorthWoods said:

Agree.   If Skubal's 1st choice was to stay in Detroit it seems there would have been at least minimal good faith negotiations Boras or not.   The lack of any contact tells me he's mentally out the door, another reason why I think a trade is the best course here.

That aspect doesn't worry me so much. Even if he is disconnecting mentally from a *future* with Detroit,  if he is angling for a record setting deal, he is going to be driven to perform in the '26 *present* to get it.

7 hours ago, chasfh said:

I could see where, if Skubal loses the arb case and gets the $19 million the Tigers imply he’s worth, and then they turn around and bring in Chris Bassitt for something more, Tarik might be at least a little annoyed.

If it's true that Skubal/Boras didn't even make a pre-arb counter offer to the Tigers, to me that means they already look at any contractural relationship with the. Tigers as being in the rear view mirror.

5 hours ago, Mr.TaterSalad said:

Come on, **** off New England. They have a 15 year, multi-Super Bowl run with Tom Brady and now they're likely going back in less than a decade. Meanwhile, we're sitting at home not even in the playoffs yet again. Some fans have it sooooooooooo good. Unbelievable.

yeah - Pretty good when your old management takes Brady, then a generation later it turns over and your new management  picks Maye, another big drop back passer who is already at top of the stat sheets in his 2nd yr.

One of Elmer's stronger games tonight - not only mixing up a little to defend his mates, but a good number of take-aways.

Reimer not going to keep his new gig very long if he keeps dropping low enough for guys to shoot over his shoulder like the Wings did.

37 minutes ago, Stormin said:

I am sure the Tigers could get good prospects, but probably not a team's #1 prospect.  The Tigers went down this path on the JV trade when the Astros declared their #1 prospect untouchable (Kyle Tucker) and the Tigers settled for Franklin Perez. 

Right. The actual comparison is 6-7 War from Skubal in '26 plus whatever the comp pick turns into in the future, vs the value of 2 or 3 other prospects, which  in total still have an excellent chance of giving you less than 6-7 total over any future. If you were a bad team where 6-7 isn't going to get you anything in '26, then take future, but if you are a good enough team that the 6-7 wins gets you to the playoffs and thus a shot at the WS, take the wins and the pick and let the future further out sort itself out.

24 minutes ago, chasfh said:

We’ve are at capacity with our electrical panel and I went to ChatGPT for some guidance on approach, and I mean, this really helped a guy, who knows practically nothing about it, a lot.

https://chatgpt.com/share/696d29c4-59e4-8004-8d42-bc005e8e18b1

I don't know how I could trust it for things when about which I didn't already have a feel for whether it was right or wrong.

One thing I have to get used to is that it seems to assume people don't ask questions accurately, because even when you give specific multiple criteria with conjunction ('and'), it seems to ignore that on the first pass and you have go back and repeat, that you want do want a list of things with X AND Y properties, not a list of things with X OR Y properties. 

56 minutes ago, lordstanley said:

 

that's gonna hurt.

45 minutes ago, Tigerbomb13 said:

Florida elects some special people

I think they should just close all the airports in FLA right away.

(assuming Edman has a car to get out.......😉)

1 hour ago, lordstanley said:

Last night Montreal was down 2 with 5 minutes to go and beat Ottawa, the Leafs were down 2 in the 3rd and beat Winnipeg, and the Bruins were down 2 going into the 2nd period and beat Chicago. 

 

Are we seeing not enough 'game management'...... or too much? 🤔

41 minutes ago, casimir said:

Ha!  Maybe that’s his major?

That degree is 'Communications' to you, buddy.

Just now, Tiger337 said:

It's not different from other jobs in that respect.  It's just that there is a lot more money involved and the results are public.  

right - and also the ratios involved are so huge. If you are working for Amalgamated Widget, and the guy in the next cubicle doing a similar job gets a bigger raise then you do, it's not likely to be to 30x what you are making like it is between a future HOF player in his rookie yr versus a washed up unproductive player that got lucky like Cobb.