mtutiger

2 minutes ago, gehringer_2 said:

Tigers have 7 fly balls over 100 mph. Any of them might be HRs somewhere else. Kirk's been talking about this park being bad for HRs with the roof closed.

Yeah, it's more boxscore than anything... as awful as they've been offensively production wise this year, they are better than that 2022 version.

1 minute ago, 1984Echoes said:

Anyone know why Greene got pulled for McKinstry?

He's coming off of injury and AJ isn't going to expose him in a noncompetitive game. That's my guess

Just now, chasfh said:

There are exactly two guys out of the 14 playing that game who are on tonight’s roster.

It's a much different team now, but it's more the reminder that even the bad offenses can experience a dead cat bounce from time to time. 

There's still some upside here though.... Tork and Keith turning things around would make a huge difference on this teams trajectory. 

Skubal's efficiency along with the run scoring may make this one of the easiest games AJ has ever managed.

The main thing that scares me about tonight is that there hasn't been a ton of home run power.... it reminds me a little bit of the Miggy 3000 game in that regard from a couple of years ago. (although they have at least had more extra base hits tonight)

https://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/DET/DET202204231.shtml

Bob Brenly now speculating that you'd think they got the playbook lol

Damn, that kid just got Torked lol

Wow....

I really think they've found something in Wenceel Perez....

9 hours ago, Shinzaki said:

Tork bopping dingers again is our in season addition 

As bad as the hitting has been to start the year, there was always a glass-half-full view where Tork (and Keith) weren't likely to continue to be as bad at the dish as they have been to date. 

I need to see more, trust but verify, but even before the homer on Sunday, both with the bat and the glove, it's been apparent that Tork has been playing better. Just need to see more consistency 

They badly need Tork to get going, and he chose a good moment to do something.

I will never understand why our fambase hates Matt Vierling so much...

Just now, casimir said:

Win the series today, and they're only 3 games out of the division lead.

They are two games above .500 and have a positive run differential. All despite multiple players not playing to their potential.

You'd think we were talking about the 2019 team with the way people talk about them.

Ump show baby

3 minutes ago, casimir said:

Is it possible Torkelson is just a slow starter?  There's not much resume to work with, the above are his splits for last season.  But this happens to some ballplayers, such as Maeda.

The relative lack of hard hit rate differentiates this year from last year, IMO. 

4 minutes ago, kdog said:

I'm pretty sure that Tork won't have a high ceiling. I just need him to be decent for a year or two until they figure out how to replace him. The worst case scenario is being an unplayable boat anchor.

I don't know what his ceiling is at this point.... but I do think he is capable of turning it around.

Regardless, I don't see how he recovers his standing with the fanbase even if he does turn it around. To borrow a phrase from contemporary politics, it's appears to have gone beyond "frustration" into "negative polarization" with a lot of folks, at least on Twitter IMO

2 hours ago, oblong said:

The thing with Tork is sure a puzzle but I'm not sure what can be done.  Anything a writer or person twitter or the internet can say or offer is obviously already known to the team and to him. Sometimes the body can't or won't do what it needs to do.  Hitting is hard. 

Frankly, I hope he's not listening to anybody on Twitter.... the amount of anger he generates, geez, even if he turns it around I'm not sure he'll ever be accepted here.

My expectations was that I would hate the entire kit, so the fact that I only really hate the hat and think the actual jersey is solid seems like a win  overall lol

19 minutes ago, Motor City Sonics said:

The cap needs to ALWAYS be the Olde English D.     But if not, then "313" on the hats. 

I could have lived with the "MC" abbreviation as well.... but just writing out an entire word on a baseball hat, I just cannot get around that

I just can't believe the hat.... it just gives me serious "Washington Football Team" vibes.

The jerseys are OK... I really do not like the hats though.

Mostly I'm with Rob though, I really don't care much one way or another. I'd rather they just wear what they have always worn (except with the correct "D" on the front)

10 minutes ago, gehringer_2 said:

IIRC - we didn't deal Candelario, we cut him to avoid the arb payout.

In all seriousness, I'm aware, and Maton didn't end up a viable replacement. 

But the commentary around that particular deal tends to lack context.... one reason being that Gregory Soto isn't that valuable of a commodity and has demonstrated that in a Phillies uniforim for the most part, the second being that despite Maton and Donnie Sands leaving the organization, the one remaining player from the deal has been a more valuable piece than Gregory Soto would have been to this team. Especially early on in this season.

I know it's not necessarily the point that SF was trying to make, but it really irks me that that deal sort of gets treated like a Scott Harris failure... in terms of results, it just clearly not. Even if Nick Maton didn't work out.

Just now, gehringer_2 said:

we didn't deal Candelario, we cut him.

I'm aware. We only debated it about 23085722 times last year.

12 hours ago, Sports_Freak said:

Prudent? Didn't Chris OK the Javy signing? Huge mistake. I think our payroll is under $100 million. One of the first decisions Harris had to make was Candelario. We got Nick Maton instead. Saved some money but made us a worse team. Luckily, Avila left Harris some good pitching.

Maybe I'm hallucinating, but didn't they get Matt Vierling as well in that deal?

People love to bitch about Nick Maton not working out, but FFS, there's a pretty good argument that despite 2 of the 3 players being gone, they clearly won that trade anyway.

13 minutes ago, Dtrain72 said:

Perhaps AJ's arguably not doing enough to maximize the lineup, but any givem game he's got at least 3-4 blackhole batters that he has to strategize for...only so much a chef can cook with when 1/3 of his ingedients are poop.

My only real complaint is that Vierling probably needs full time ABs at the moment. AJ likes his optionality and all, and maybe Vierling gets more exposed as a full time hitter, but I think he's been earning that.

Otherwise... you're right. The Top 5 hitters cannot do it all, and three of the remaining 4 (Tork, Keith and Meadows) are younger players whose success are necessary to moving the hitting to the next level. That's on them, it's not on AJ.