gehringer_2

so many bad hitters.....

Carpenter's mistake was less on the pitch he struck out on, which was a tough pitch, as the two balls he swung at to get in the hole. And of course Candelario can't pick him up....

Kids' first chance to have an impact.

Riley get's 'em going.

the other comment that seems more telling in retrospect is Hinch's "I wasn't in the room when those deals were made" regarding the deadline trades. Could be knives were out for Al from more than one direction. And as has made us all wonder, maybe it's now safer to say Hinch and Avila were indeed not on the same page regarding call-ups.

supposedly poor, though this week there was a clip of him making a nice play for an assist on a ball off the wall, so at least he can find 2b on this throws.

HaHa.

Sure sounded like it. I guess I need to revise my previous take. I think you throw out all the options other than C.I. was PO'd.

well, they org can commit to not letting anyone go, but that doesn't mean some of them may not take any opportunity offered to bail instead of waiting to see if they get the ziggy anyway...

anyone see any significance to them parting ways with Avila the day Carpenter is finally called up? Suppose there may have been some difference of opinion around that move or a decision on a broader change in philosophy that led to that move that may have crystallized C.I.'s decision to change directions?

LOL- That's what I thought before the Oilers hired Holland. The old boy network in strong in sports. There is probably someone out there that thinks Al is the cat's meow....

I am surprised that it's a clean break. Maybe at 64 Avila would rather retire, or maybe he thinks 64 is still young enough to pursue another active GM job, or maybe C.I. was PO'd at him enough to want him out completely. Or C.I. watched Kenny Holland bail after Ilitch made the effort to make a soft landing for him and decided not to bother this time. I suppose any of those and other possibilities too.

Workman has definitely fallen more than a bit short of the hype they put out around him early.

Parker is not exactly doing the Kerry Carpenter thing, but relative to how he had been languishing this has been a good season for him. From here he probably needs to make about as much more improvement as he made this year to make MLB, but at least he's making progress.

and the truth is, if a guy can put in his first couple hundred AB not not tail off badly as MLB pitchers take his measure is a hopeful sign. Riley has been able to hang around at about a 240 BA for ~150 PA -- so far so good. (Now watch the kid tank the rest of the way....)

and ironically, the guy that set him on his road to Detroit (Robson) didn't even get the courtesy of a farewell notice.

To me, the thing that makes it look like something has changed is the K rate. His MiLB K rates weren't bad last year, and even if he was K'ing too much in Det I would have expected that to fall back to his previous AAA rate when he was sent down, but it hasn't, and K rate is something you normally don't need that big a sample size to start getting a good indication.

The FUD being generated over the Saki raid is epic. The Russians claim 'accident', the Ukrainians 'officially' plead ignorance. On background the Ukrainians put out "special forces raid", the twitter sphere is trying to figure out what Ukraine's SRBM inventory could possibly be.

that pretty much puts an end to this one.

Futility, thy name is Tiger

My guess would be that conviction under the records act probably can't disbar the right to run for Pres since those criteria are constitutional, but I'd still be happy to see someone force Trump to litigate it. OTOH, you'd think after all we have heard from the J/6 committee that we are getting close enough to this applying: courtesy of the 14th amendment.

so either Meadows has flipped, or alternately any continued contact would just be additional evidence of a continuing criminal enterprise......

Maybe too many hard breaking balls? Of course no-one in baseball management anywhere really wants to know. The Tigers generally don't want guys throwing more than 50% fastballs. But just a couple of high profile anecdotal cases, Max, a guy supposedly headed for arm trouble from the time he broke in, pretty much never throws more than 20% sliders. Justin Verlander never threw more than 22% sliders until 2019. The most sliders he threw was over 35% starting out 2021 and we know where that ended.

solid take

Silly column about Soto by McCosky yesterday. Talk about missing the forest for the trees. There is only one issue with Soto - can he find his slider? If he can't, he's not going to be successful and of course will fall out of the closer role. If he does, none of the statistical fall off litany McCosky catalogs means anything, because it is all because he can't throw his slider consistently this season. But I suppose if you get paid by the word, then: "Soto is toast if he can't find his breaking pitch consistently" isn't going to pay the bills even if it's all that need be said.