gehringer_2

Hinch gives off conflicting signals with regard to his advice to his hitters so it's confusing. He did talk about the need for his hitters to be able to switch to 'plan B' within an AB. Assume he's talking about exactly what you mean - hunt/guess/pick a zone/whatever while you are ahead, but then go into protection/extend the AB/at least rattle the pitcher mode once you are behind. But he's also always pushing to only swing at pitches you can drive. So take your pick. But that isn't even my biggest gripe. They were so pleased about themselves extending pitchers to high counts early in games, but I think they are overboard on the value of that. Some teams have BPs so good it really doesn't do you any good to get there - esp in the playoffs. Sometimes (like in the one playoff game) you do get a pitcher to 60 in two innings and then you go down two straight innings in 9 pitches. Meanwhile, how many cookies did you take on 1st pitches that put you in a hole for the AB and forced you into 'plan B' before you ever swung at the one good pitch you got? Other than maybe Riley and Gleyber, I think the rest of them need to MORE aggressive on the 1st pitch. Stop giving away strike one. It has already been documented that early on, when the offense wasn't so hot out of the gate, they were taking more 1st pitch strikes than any other team. They still tend to fall right back into that habit.

OK - so by the numbers, Assume Mize is Mize, Olson was 1.7 WAR in 68 IP. Can he be 3.7 WAR in 160? Jobe was 0.4 WAR in 50 IP, can he supply at least 1.4 in a full season? So you have 3.0 back. Can Melton be better than 2 WAR? That would be 5. Can they sign 2 WAR? I would think so. That would be and additional 7. Flahery was 1 WAR. If he stays he should be better, if he goes 1 WAR shouldn't be that hard to improve on. They have some assets, but they have to get them on the field and keep them off the IL. Harris hit that as a major emphasis, but I don't know what pitching health magic the Tigers think they can find that hasn't already been tried and failed. Because after Montero I'm not seeing much depth if people get hurt next season. Brieske? Madden, Guenther? 😑 Of course the flip side is that if Skubal is still here, with Olson back and Melton joining the staff, they could be the 95 win team we thought we had last season.

even when they were 25 over in August they were below 500 in games not started by Skubal or Mize. OTOH, I don't think the world turns black on the day Skubal inevitably departs. Depending on Jobe's timetable, if you have a rotation that starts with Olson, Mize, Jobe, Melton you may still have a playoff team with only one or two reasonable additions. Or maybe not, but the current potential staff is not all chopped liver behind Skubal.

I saw McGonigle and Anderson assigned, No Clark

What are we going to do with Max Anderson. He may be the most reasonably ready reasonably high contact RH bat in the system right now.

end of the beginning or beginning of the end:

decent interview by Harris and Hinch. One thing that left me scratching my head though was what Harris meant about 'improving the environment' for MiLB players on call-up to the Tigers. He raised it as a significant concern but never really fleshed out any specifics of what he was talking about. And there still seems to be a lot of daylight between Harris' "control the zone" and Hinch's "Get a good pitch to hit". Seems to me you are not controlling the zone if you are waiting for one pitch in one place, but whatever.

They've talked about it many times, but won't pull the trigger. The obvious thing to do is move the mound back maybe 18". That would give the hitter about 10-12 milliseconds more. Really everything in terms of the shifts in hitting stems from the fact that pitchers are more athletic and throw harder. Talk all you want about spin but it's the need to be ready for the FB that makes the spin effective. The only direct way to compensate for the increase in velo is to give the batter a little more time and the only sensible way to do that is a little more distance. If they really are dead set against changing the diamond for legacy reasons, then at least lower the stitching on the ball to reduce the available break.

good on the umps for getting it all right in real time. What I can't figure out is what the runner on third was doing. He should have beaten a throw from 400' feet with a relay easily but for some reason he broke back to third after starting to come home on the tag then turned around again. No possible reason to do that. He has to tag on a catch and run on a hit. Total brain fart.

Great to escape with a win when they didn't play that great, but I am so tired of Rasmussen. Isn't there any one the Wings can put in *his* place. Was watching the game on delay - late in the 3rd, tied. Domi starts a rush down his right wing and Rasmussen is dead in line about 30 ft away, waiting for him, and what does he do with this opportunity to absolutely stand Domi up, take him to the boards, at least pinch off the rush? Absofreakinglutely nothing. He lets him skate right by without so much as touching him. Domi didn't even have to take a step out of his way. This man does not have the heart of a hockey player. Please someone make him go away. Elmer can't possibly be worse.

Thiessen is in general a total goof. But Wapo has been almost devoid of any direction the last few years as Bezos can't decide what he's doing there.

🎗️Well turned phrase of the day. Where else but MTS can you find erudition like this?

precisely

Yup. "Privatization of profit, socialization of losses" should have become a much more powerful political driver than it ever has. I guess the public is too dumb, too asleep, too parked in front of their favorite Netflix, too busy worrying about who competing in the women's shot put? IDK.

and the inverse to this is that duty always ends up falling to Seider, which he is certainly good at, but it's also a waste of his other skills to have him playing a stationary game at the goal front so much.

I think this is a good take. Mo has the capacity to play a 200 foot game, but not if the guy he's next to doesn't have the speed to rotate back fast so Mo can take off on openings. I would make good speed next to Seider a bigger priority. It would open up a lot IMO. I don't think he needs a physically punishing mate as much as the wings seem to like - or at least not always. it's overkill for what it costs on the other aspects.

Dangerous to compare anyone to Verlander. In fact I think this recent stretch with Verlander, Scherzer and Kershaw all in the league at the same time has been a quite the outlier that has maybe skewed our perceptions of what is likely. There are a fair number of guys that have a few outstanding years, but even most of them never achieve the extended greatness those three have. In fact with the relentless drive for more spin, it seems likely even fewer guys are going to last. Though that might be a factor in Skubal's favor - he does not throw a lot of side spin - only about 12% sliders.

well you sure don't get many "Oh, where did that come from?" moments of unexpected creativity/success from a Moore coached team. IDK how much of that is completely necessary to be good, but a lot of the best teams have it.

right

LOL - mangling that is pretty bad. 🙄

That's the dirty little secret about capitalism - the more money you have, the easier it is to make more. You actually have to be aggressively foolish to lose a fortune under any conditions less than an general economic collapse like 1929. That's why long term successful capitalist societies must have a lot of progressive taxation and spending on public goods and social capital (health and education etc) - otherwise the trend into oligarchy/banana republicism is a built in inevitability.

I think there is a built in tension between long and short term trends such that no matter how data driven you try to be, there are inevitable contradictions that can't be resolved. Maybe Hinch doesn't like the match ups he get the next inning, but what if Melton is really on his game? That contradiction can't be resolved with any certainly. There is always going to be conflict between the longer term probabilities and what the game in front of you is telling you about why local conditions may be invalidating your history. As long as humans/weather/health are all variables in the equation, you are just stuck with that reality. I think the fan bias is pretty much always in the direction of "He's doing well, don't mess up a good thing", and if anything the analysts bias is just as strong toward "don't be fooled by what you see, this is what is most likely to happen." Either can be wrong. That tension will never be resolved. Kerry Carpenter is a poster child for this. Long term he has a lot of identifiable trends, but on some nights when he is hot he can and does hit everyone and everything (11 games with 3+ hits). That a nightmare for an opposing manager with analytics data. That fact is on some nights he is literally a different person. That's hard to account for an any model that assumes he's a constant entity.

I think "Biggest pitcher deal ever signed' has some ability to stand by itself even in the absence of other bidding, but your point is taken.

I think this is correct. At the core, they are interested in the benchmark, not how it's achieved. But that still means they want a whole lotta green. 🤑

So what's funny about Olsen/Olson is that it is the same name - it just two different arbitrary transliterations for the same pre-literate Scandinavian culture clan name. Two monks in two different places, one decided to register an 'Olsen' and the other an 'Olson' in a baptismal record some place, and the die was cast for centuries of confusion.