mtutiger

It's been discussed a lot in the past, but there's probably some value in waiting until later rounds to draft pitchers given the injury risk associated with them. Especially if, as an org, you believe in your believe in your ability to draft and develop them.

Honestly, given how basically none of the experts nailed the first four picks in this years draft, it probably oughtta caution people about giving too much credence to rumors in general surrounding the draft In other words, when some Angels "insider" tweeted something about the Tigers considering Jacob Gonzalez from Ole Miss at 4, maybe it should have been taken with a few grains of salt. Or even the Kyle Teel talk.... often times, the stuff that gets circulated is out there for a reason, and it may be more cloak and dagger stuff than reality.

Speaking to the criticism that Clark could take longer to make it to the bigs over someone like Langford, this may be one of the biggest arguments in favor of taking him if, in fact, the Tigers had him ranked higher. The MLB Draft is fun to follow and is important, and you can't completely forget about how players fit into the longer term picture, but I'm not sure it's wise to pencil any of them into lineups 2-3 years down the road.... so if you have a player ranked higher that happens to be a high schooler, the fact that he's ranked higher should probably win out over any sort of shorter term considerations. Somewhat related, but listening to the first half of Cody and Friends podcast this AM, he did bring up the fact that Clark could be entering the bigs as Riley enters into arbitration / knocking on the door of free agency.... theoretically possible, but one suspects that if Riley plays like we think he's gonna play, a long term contract is a definite possibility. Probably the same with Tork, Skubal and others as well. So I get the concern, but it's not like their aren't avenues to ameliorate those concerns either.

I dont know that he's saying that having opinions are bad or we aren't allowed to have them, but rather that people often offer them without the qualification that they don't have all the information. That's less of a problem on this board, but across the rest of social media, just see a lot of opinions offered that appear to be more based on the conventional wisdom offered pre-draft interspersed with bollocks like "Scott Avila" (despite whatever misgivings people may have about the first three picks, it's not at all reminiscent of Avila as far as I can tell). Just lowest common denominator stuff

Maybe. But I suspect the fact that there's a lot more film on Langford (and appearances on ESPN) than Clark has something to do with it as well. Again, I probably would have went Langford, but the people treating Clark like the Jackson Jobe pick just aren't right imo. Clark's ceiling is really high and this pick wasn't at all a reach.

I guess the same people who will not stop bringing up Marcelo Meyer on social media are now complaining that the Tigers went with a high schooler with their 1st Round pick. Just no consistency whatsoever

Seems like a good kid, happy to be a Tiger Godspeed!

I wouldn't have picked him, probably would have preferred someone more polished, but I get it... At least its not Kyle Teel lol

Outside of Crews/Langford going in the first two picks, seems pretty unlikely to me.

On the flip side, Greg Gania is fantastic. I wish they could just give him the TV gig.

And you know that the moment Manning gets injured, he'll be complaining about how Hinch misused him. It's not about being right with most sports radio guys, it's about being loud and provocative. It just doesn't add much to anything

Positional versatility has been there right alongside control the strikezone in terms of cliches since Spring Training

Nobody has ever said that. But if Candelario was brought back, and then proceeded to go out and suck this year, I highly doubt anyone would be be suggesting that not bringing him back would have been a mistake. And yes, after the season he had in 2022, one where he was a big part of the problem, that was within the realm of possibility of outcomes.

They did, but because of his status as a non-tender candidate, they had to make a decision before the free agent market ever got off the ground. And they made it.... Who knows, maybe they actually did try to obtain other candidates during free agency and it didn't pan out. We don't really know that. Obviously Harris and/or Hinch will take flak for that, that goes with the territory. But one of my points, that I've been making for months now, is that I'm not going to take the position that it was fine to do what they did and then, retroactively, update it after they weren't able to backfill in the best possible way or when Candelario ended up having a better than expected year. That's called intellectual inconsistency. And with Candy being a free agent at the end of this year, it's just not the end of the world.... it feels like Paredes was a far worse outcome for this franchise and yet that topic has even received less time than flogging this horse has taken lol At the end of the day as well, I said this at some point recently, a lot of this comes down to the tendency of this current regime to tightly control information. They probably have more legit reasons for doing what they did here, whether one agrees with them or not, but that's also not publicly available information.... I'm sure in terms of the trade, there are benefits from that, but in terms of media and PR, it leaves a vacuum to be filled that the Tigers beat writers and fanbase are more than willing to fill. Often rooted in speculation rather than anything concrete.

Death, taxes, Tigers fans and writers ruminating about "old friends"

What happened in 2022? Seems like that should be accounted for in this discussion.

The role players are controllable for far longer... Candy has one good year and walks.

Incidentally, I believe the bolded could be a reason they didn't bring Candy back..... Harris/Hinch value versatility, and Candelario isn't versatile. Maybe despite whatever bounce back upside he may have had, they didn't see him as part of the long term picture and moved on.... which is fine.

Maybe they would have.... but that's sort of the point, the butterfly effect comes into play when we come up with hypotheticals about "well, they could have signed Candelario AND brought Maton/Vierling in".... we don't know what the mindset of the front office was with respect to Candelario or his presence on the roster, and it is possible that his presence causes them to deprioritize certain areas where they did acquire in the offseason. As I said above, others will have different point of views, but the hypotheticals don't fly with me.... the way the offseason laid out, and with them having to make the decision on Candy before doing literally anything else leaves way too much uncertainty to reach those conclusions.

From what had been reported about the trade, the two sides hadn't even been talking about any of these players around the time of the nontender deadline. Given that, I don't know that is clear at all that the trade would have happened.

Getting some Kerry C vibes from Justice Bigbie...

It doesn't preclude, per se, but it doesn't guarantee the chips fell as they otherwise did during this past offseason either.

Trust me, I get it from a production standpoint. But balancing the short term fortunes of the team and the long term fortunes of the team are two different things.... as you suggest, injuries have been a factor as well and they will get a couple of players back. Hopefully that will happen. And I would add, regarding your last point, I don't know if it is smart for a front office to manage a team entirely off of pressure from it's fanbase.

It's true. I do think the defensive piece is a huge factor for both Keith and JHM.... it's easy to point at the statline and say "call em up".... but they need to have a position to play at which they are competent. JHM isn't there yet, and I don't know that Keith (setting aside PPI and other considerations) is either from what I understand.

Back to the Candelario discussion lol.... Food for thought: if they resign Candelario, is Zach McKinstry a Tiger today? Do they actually make the Phillies trade which, as bad as Nick Maton was, also did bring back Matt Vierling? Maybe that's a fine outcome, even preferable, YMMV... but they had a small window to make a decision after the 2022 season ended, before any free agency happened, and they made it. And we have to acknowledge that, because of butterfly effect, it could have had impacts on acquisitions that would have happened afterward and that might have not been entirely great either. I'm happy for Candy, but idk, I don't think it's a huge loss....