mtutiger

They don't leak information easy, so it's plausible for sure. IDK what will happen, but there are other teams in the market who haven't made moves yet. We will see.

Deals have been resurrected from the dead before too, hence why it can be a useful negotiating ploy. Especially for a team like the Dodgers, who are pretty desperate for pitching Not saying that happens here, obviously...

If they could get him extended, I could live with it... but it really sucks if he opts out after not having the chance to move him. I do think he genuinely likes the Tigers tho

Desperation in the air...

And if Jack Morris were still here..... (ducks)

Just let it go, man

That should take care of the logjam

My position on the discussion with Candelario has been pretty consistent dating back to when they made the decision. For everyone else's sake, I'm gonna get off Candy's Wild Ride now and wait to see which dominoes fall among players actually on this team right now.

I think you and I both know that previous years performance tends to weigh heavily at the negotiating table. The term "contract year" exists for a reason, after all.

I think Torkelson should be open for the right asking price, yes. Riley Greene is probably the only untouchable player on the roster IMO.

I wasn't aware that Spencer Torkelson was up for arbitration last year.

It's a fake

WOW

In the context of making a non-tender decision (and knowing there were likely conversations between the Tigers and Candy's agent at the time, undoubtedly), I doubt the decision to tender or non-tender exclusively comes down to a what the projection system says. Put another way, both sides are going to use the leverage they have in a negotiation.... and Candy's most recent season being an unmitigated disaster would undoubtedly have been a point of leverage for the Tigers.

Sure. But in terms of a valuation on Candy's worth, there isn't a GM in baseball who wouldn't have factored his horrendous 2022 season into the decision to tender or nontender.

I had no clue that the Tigers front office had Candy's 2023 numbers when evaluating a decision to tender or nontender in 2022. I should ask Scott Harris to pick out some lotto numbers for me to play as well.

That's kinda where the game is going in general.... even the good teams have a lot more versatility than they did in the 1990s.

Except in 2022, when he delivered on none of the three.

I take anything Heyman says with mountains of salt, but they've always made the most sense as a trading partner for Eddie.

This may be the point you are making, but Torkelson isn't getting many days off in the field... particularly with Miguel on the roster. So having 1B on your resume doesn't mean as much as 2B or even SS would.

I still think that people underestimate how much Candy's lack of versatility around the diamond impacts the thinking here. People are free to disagree with it or how it may have led to the decision, but I really do think that if they are going to countenance having a placeholder 3B, Harris and AJ both seem to prefer one who can move around the diamond and play multiple positions. Even beyond Maton, you can see that in who they have brought in since (ie. McKinstry, Ibanez, etc.)

Yeah, this is the nuance that I think largely elides the conversation. And it makes one wonder if they did end up with a better option than what they have had (be it Maton performing better than he has to-date for the balance of the season or, assuming they had made other attempts to land a 3B, found someone else who came in and performed well) whether people would still view it as a mistake. That tends to be why I push back on this topic in particular - it's not as if they had the option to tender Candelario after seeing the free agent market or trade market develop a bit.... they had to do it before the entire thing got off the ground. Risk was inherent, but it was understandable. And I just suspect that some of the folks who deem it a mistake now, frankly, wouldn't feel that way if things had played out differently for everything that followed in the 2022/23 offseason.

JV might be the reason the Tigers haven't traded yet, for sure.

It's entirely possible that Harris didn't think he was "done done" but, when looking at his profile as a player, decided he wasn't a fit for what he wants to do here. We've talked about his defensive versatility before; the guy doesn't move around the diamond. Harris (and AJ) seem to value guys that can. So combining that with an overall poor performance in 2022, they made a calculated risk to move on and see if they could get production from someone else at that position. We know how it played out in the end, but while people can disagree, the decision when it was made had logic to it.

Somehow it's memory-holed, but the discourse going into the election and how the election played out was such a misfire by the people who do the stuff for a living. Like, outright dismissive to the point of being mocking of the idea that Roe v. Wade repeal would matter much or that election denialism would matter at all. And yeah, all these same folks are back for 2024 to provide the framing for this upcoming election. Just worth keeping in mind IMO