gehringer_2

Sure, Maton and Vierling and Nevin and Ibenaz and McKinstry may turn into solid adds and in 6 weeks it will be clear that Harris is a bottom feeding talent procurement genius. I'm just waiting to feel the vibe. 🐻

It's not only a matter of the marque free agents. It's generally the case of there not having been much of anything done large or small that made you think, "Hmmm, that was clever." You can't help but contrast the Tiger's off season to that of the Lions, where Brad Holmes has been impressing at each turn. So we'll grant that baseball is a tougher environment, I still kept holding out hope right up until last Thursday he would make at least one move of some kind that gave me me one of those "Hmmm,.." moments on the Tiger's ledger - but none have come.

The other point is that just because a couple of better signings don't turn your team into a winner doesn't mean you don't start somewhere. Every team is built up through acquistions and development over time, you don't coast along and then bingo - in one year you suddenly have a filled out roster. It doesn't matter that had they signed or traded for a couple of better players they might still have been swept by TB if those moves were progress toward a better team down the road in the end than the last off-season's underwhelming haul is likely to be. They are a better team today and even potentially later when it matters with Austin Meadows and ERod than they would have been without them even if there is no brass ring this season or last. Unless your only strategy is to continue tanking for top picks - and even if it is - at some point you have to start building. If you're going to tell me that the guy we hope is one of the bright young minds in the game could do no better than waste his first off-season 'cause reasons, that's just a depressing take. Which is pretty much where I am.

More than Foley, I took from how you posted it that it doesn't really matter who Hinch plays when. If I got the feeling he was at that level of dismissal of game outcomes, I'd be checking out for of the rest of the season!

Nevin to off to a hot start, should see him soon.

TBF, the Foley comment was partially facetious, but still, do we want to be 10-30 by the time it's all sorted out? If you're not going to play to win, get out of the game.

It didn't need to be a Correa, but - they didn't add *one* bat of any kind that was even a verified replacement level hitter. Soto and Jimenez went for discount lottery tickets.

1st suggestion might be not to use Foley in leverage. It's keeps coming down to this. Sure, all we can do is wonder, but against a guy like Springs today - I think I'd rather after the failure the 1st time through the order they throw away all their plans and just play 'see ball - hit ball'. All the guessing and taking sure as hell wasn't working. Again, pure speculation, but I continue to get a vibe that the Tigers over-prep the young hitters.

I have a some sympathy around the fact that the Tigers probably saw Bally's collapse coming and knowing your single biggest income stream was in jeopardy should have motivated any good management to stay somewhat conservative - but there is still a lot of room between being planning to be 'somewhat conservative' and not upgrading the line-up with a single major league bat.

LOL - !st run scored by the guy that provides *no* line-up flexibility. I rest my case.

So far Foley is perfect through, 3/3 inherited runners scored. 'Lineup flexibility' has netted us zero runs and non 3b Maton was just unable to make another play that led to a run.

well, they do currently project to score 108 runs for the season. Would that be historicially bad?

If you throw over twice, you might as well thow the third one and either give him the base or pick him off. EDIT: LOL _ as Chas just posted.....

They might want to drop Foley off 60 miles short when they come north to Detroit.

You would think that if a guy doesn't throw very hard, and you can't pickup his pitch speed, you'd basically go to dink mode and just stay back and try to dink him to death. I know, what am I thinking- - that would require the ability to shift gears in game. Part of the problem with being down by only one - they'd rather all keep trying to tie it on one swing.

I guess the best thing we can do for the Tigers at this point is start talking about Springs throwing a no-hitter......

well, Rays have a run, that should about do it.

I know I won't get much agreement on this, but I believe Hinch's obsession with this is basically deflection. It's something to do, a way to give the appearance of management control when in reality there is nothing to control and no real point to all the position churning and theoretical match-up flexibility in terms of actual impact on winning, which is probably net negative in the end for the very reason we say today with 4 fielders all looking at each other while a ball fell because of their unfamiliarity with each other's play and preferences. And I'm not even sure it's anything to hold against him, what else is he gonna do until his team turns into something more than a collections of left overs.

yup - at least until Sept 30.

Who's gonna tell the owners they've agreed to issue stock in their teams and dilute their ownership?

Well, Carpenter was a known risk in the OF. You assume he's not going to be out there that often unless Miguel stays miraculously healthy. If that happens, that probably means he's hitting well so we won't be able to complain. I only hope the tigers success with shifting in the last couple of years hasn't resulted in them being a little too lenient in judging what they expect in the true unshifted range of their IFs. The balls past Schoop yesterday, at least one past Maton today, granted they were plays an IF would have to be really good to have made, but it's the big leagues, to win you do have to be really good! Making those hard plays gets pitchers on good teams out of a lot innings before the bad things that happened to your pitcher would have happened to theirs.

and maybe he's a dancing bear that turns around and mauls you with some other piece of 'dumb shit" when he's off the chain. It's about the dollars and the risk, not about 'giving the kid's a second chance', which is what you were preaching a couple of posts earlier. That's why if no team takes him at 6 some team will take him at 20 or 35 - because the dollar end of the risk is going down at that point, not because of any change in any other "character' part of the equation or desire not to 'mark him for life'.

12H and 5 BB in 18 IP. TB pitchers with a WHIP <1.0 so far.

Speaking here of course to the general case - making the judgment that until such a person actually reaches the point in his life where he has learned not to "do stupid shit and panic" he's not a person I want to pay a lot of money to to be on my football team is hardly "marking him for life". One might as easily call it 'enabling' Everyone has the right to 'grow up'. They don't have the a priori right to do it on anyone else in particular's nickel. A team may be willing to take a chance on an character challanged player because there could be a big payoff if the team wins, but don't try to dress that up as some kind of attempt at using sport as a morally restorative exercise - it's a purely $ driven risk/reward calculation, and any transformation in the player is purely serendipity. The average fan's interest in such a player's 'welfare' is no less selfish either.

Two games in the Tigers have 3 players with an OPS over........500.