gehringer_2

(?) Riley had a 600 OBP at lead off today.

7 hits, 6 bb and 2 bombs is good output day for this team. They just didn't catch the ball well enough today - though of the errors the one on Keith looked more like a bad hop.

piss poor

too many misplays today

Torkelson turning in Mr Stone Hands

you betcha!

Baez ties the game.

Tigers getting zero BaBIP luck

a little smile from the baseball gods that would have put that over throw in the camera well would have been nice....

Please no more headshots featuring Natalie's chewing gum.

forecast has it gone by 6;45. 7:20 to get the tarp off. Would they wait that long to finish it?

teams do get into cap hell, those are about the only waters to fish.

LOL! As he hit the ground ball I was typing "stranded a leadoff triple yesterday and leadoff double today... but they threw it away before I finished!

Just to yank your chain a little, I will argue that my whole approach is that it's statistics that argues that a team that consistently finishes years hitting better than they start them has some forcing function at work early in the season (a roster full of Tony Clarks would truly be an anomaly!). It's easy to just say these hitters are all bad, but they were not bad for significant segments of last year, it's not valid to wish away their previous success in defense of the status quo either. But again, that is why the strength of the evidence turns to a degree on what happens over the next month or so. The possible whys are speculative. Finding causation is usually harder than finding correlation.

Tiger making some loud outs but so far just one run.

exactly - Yzerman talks about the guys you'd like to get never being available. But that still argues that maybe you don't spend the cap just to spend it unless you can keep things to one year so that if somebody you want does become available next year you have the option to move. Rienhart would be interesting - He not playing center but he is listed as one. Better wing than center or Panthers just short of RH sticks?

Save the replay of Canha making a nice running catch in LF for Lee.

busting Parker inside but he almost gets a hold of one anyway.

that's why I'm not focusing on the analytic aspect because there is no particular reason to suppose it's that per se, it may be more the idea of what the 'control the zone' mantra ends up meaning to hitters - do they take it to the point of paralysis instead of a point of practical value? There are any number of things beside scouting that go into how the players do prep/film/work, batting practice, approach their AB. My issue is does the org recognize they may have a problem or are they in denial? You can't fix something if you won't recognize something isn't working. After three years of poor hitting starts out of the box, I think there is a growing rebuttable presumption they need to look at their prep work - again, depending on how this group actually plays out.

well, he did swing at a hittable 1st pitch strike, just didn't do anything with it.

well, that is why I'm interested in where the O ends up. If they come around and start getting better, then what I want is for Hinch to go back and think about the whole process from Feb and the transition into the regular season and use his best brain to try and figure out how to avoid putting his hitters at an early season deficit in the future - i.e to recognize that maybe there is an induced problem and not just double down on more of the same next season - and that may well have nothing to do with analytics, it may be more a matter psychological prep. But I will want him to be considering change.

But maybe this doesn't give the pitchers enough credit? You can't give away every AB where the pitcher doesn't make a bad mistake, you have to be prepared to compete at the bar the pitcher sets or you might as well go home that day. (this BTW is sort of the description of the Tigers making too many pitchers look like Cy Young) If you could only *know* what is coming, but all you have are tendencies*, and pitchers smart enough to deliberately pitch against them at will. The data will never go away, but as long as it actually remains 'sport' neither does having to deal with the human element in the competition. 😉 *unless you played for Hinch's Astros......🤣

I sort of go back to Buddha's point about not wasting money on mid level guys. Swing for the fences with one signing of a guy young enough to be here for a while and good enough to make a difference and promote guys to fill in the rest. If you lose a little more for one season so be it.

How much good does that bit of information actually do a hitter? He has to recognize the pitch. If he does, his expectation about it is immaterial, because he sees it for what it is. If he doesn't recognize it, he's still swinging or not based on a guess. OK, I'll stipulate that early in the game, if you are ahead in the count and decide to sit on a pitch, then you should sit based on tendency. But once a game has played out for while, what is and isn't working for that pitcher in that particular outing will in most cases become more important data for the hitter than the pitcher's overall tendencies. But I don't even think that is what the Tiger hitters suffer from. They are taking too many hittable pitches and getting behind early too often and then uncertain about what they are swinging at too often when they do swing (the dreaded "in between" swing). That really has nothing to do with advance scouting reports, it has to do with basic approach, confidence levels, and how coaching and management expectations and feedback relate to that is probably a lot more subtle than anything to do with the hard data or preparation of advance scouting. Now, if none of them do anything other than what they are doing now, or in a career after leaving the Tigers, then we will know they were all simply poor hitters. But if in a few weeks or two months this team is starting to hit league average scoring levels like they did after June last season, then I will argue the coaching staff is responsible for some kind of poor psychological season prep!

it looks like a fast moving narrow front. Even if it gets there it should pass quickly.