mtutiger

Generally not great to cherry pick or discount specific results, but their pythag numbers have to be somewhat influenced by the early blowouts, particularly the 12-2 and 14-5 blowouts in the Tampa and Boston series respectively. Absent those, they would probably still be overperforming, but more modestly. Either way, they're a team relying on the close W more than the blowout... really outside of their 8-1 game against the Mets, they really haven't had one of those this year iirc. If they have can add a few laughers to their repertoire, that would help.

With respect to Manning, I'm not sure this last injury should be held against him given how fluky it was.... that could happen to anyone. My overall point is that we are mostly focused on the Tigers here, given that it's a Tigers board, but there's added perspective in understanding the difficulties that other teams in the division are facing. Never would have predicted it prior to the season, but the Tigers seem relatively settled / stable in comparison to most of their division mates.

The record outside of the AL East thing screams of being something that will normalize as more games are being played, although clearly it's the best division in baseball and the Tigers may just be an extreme example of how that it is the case. I do think just looking more broadly at the division, while the Tigers have some risk factors roster wise (SP has been mentioned, hitting got off to a slow start and may have a tendency toward being streaky), and I cannot believe I'm saying this, but they may actually have less question marks than every other team in the division except the Twins. The Guards have been ravaged by injuries to their starting rotation and a mediocre offense that has regressed into one of the worst offenses in baseball in 2023... the White Sox basically have no reliable pitching right now and a mediocre offense that has seen it's fair share of injuries.... the Royals have no pitching and, outside of Vinnie P, Bobby Witt and Sal Perez, not exactly the most reliable offense either. If the tick up in the Tigers offense is water reaching it's level, I definitely think second place is a good goal for this club, even with some of the risk factors it otherwise possesses. But they will need to keep improving offensively, and really that could potentially come down to Greene and Tork continuing to progress as hitters. And the starting pitching will have to hold as well.... hopefully getting Skubal back could be a plus in this regard.

Wentz did today, so that is a start. Also hasn't hurt that the schedule got easier earlier than expected.... the Mets/Cards/Guards are playing much worse baseball than people expected them to be when the schedule was published.

One imagines that any movement on JHM would probably precipitate some moves further down in the system, wrt Colt Keith of Wenceel Perez.

The 2003 club really hit their "stride" in June... 5-22 for the month. The two shouldn't be close once July hits.

Sounds right... not hard to think he'd be gone already without the Kreidler injury

Not the reason they lost by any means yesterday, but it was another lineup with Cabrera and Schoop batting back 2 back... painful stuff Setting aside Miggy, who is untouchable so long as he wants to play, how much more leash is Schoop gonna get? He's really hard to watch at the plate right now

Unrelated, but Dallas Braden has quite a beard...

That was more on the defense imo.

Tyler Holton took one for the team here... 48 pitches

Man, Goldy... just good at baseball

Was that play in the 6th? For some reason I thought it happened in an earlier inning

Today is a reminder that, even if they may be a little better than some thought, this team still has a ways to go to being good... With that in mind, they just need to use that inning as a learning moment and just build off of it to make sure it doesn't happen again

And Jake joins the error party...

This happens sometimes to every team in baseball fwiw. Except for maybe the Rays

Just brutal defense this inning... damn

Rogers slam is fun, but they got an assist from Oli Marmol there... just overmanaged the hell out of that inning

I think what is hard, particularly with catchers, is that you don't 100% know whether nagging injuries were a factor in performance. Just wonder if that was the case here.

To be fair, St Louis is rolling out a 6th/7th/8th type in Steven Matz today... or at least he's pitched that way so far lol

Even aside from McKinstry, and with the caveat that it is a small sample, Andy Ibanez is another guy with ML experience he had stashed at Toledo and has made some contributions at the ML level since being called up. Just doesn't seem like something that would have happened during the last administration... they probably would have rewarded loyalty to an org soldier

Interesting part about Pig Smuggler's screencap is that 41+29 = 70. Meaning there are 30% in the other category. Gonna hazard a guess that cohort tends to be younger and is made up of predominantly people who are outright hostile to the GOP in elections.

I grew up with a predominantly Polish background in one of the German blocs of the Thumb... The most noticeable thing comes down to religion... multiple Lutheran churches in town given that the German stock tended to come from reformist parts of the Germany, one relatively small Catholic parish that covered the rest of us. Drive 20-30 miles? Much different story... it reminds me of the ethnic neighborhoods of Chicago, just on a much larger geographical scale

Maybe we all buried Dingler too quickly?

Tremendous team win today... contributions from just about everyone on the field. Love it!