monkeytargets39

Calling it now- Javy hits a nuke here

I remember when Leyland put Alexis Gomez in the lineup for a playoff game out of nowhere, and he went yard. Thats why Leyland is better than Hinch.

Like sit down so Jahmai or J-Hen could play.

He’s on third base after hitting a single

Absolutely have to get more than 1

LOL

Pulling their starter already. Maybe it’s their turn to manage like dumbasses

It’s accurate

Dominate the strike zone, right

Flaherty 3 up 3 down. Hinch will probably let him go 2 more hitters next inning before bringing in Kahnle.

Torkelson is gonna hit .300 next year with ABS preventing all of his BS called 3rd strikeouts

Welp, not only is Wenceel in the lineup, but he’s hitting 3rd.

The other potential long shot possibility is to trade him for a max return in the offseason, and then go all in on signing him after next season. Highly unlikely to happen, but if he’s going to test free agency regardless….that doesn’t necessarily have to mean that he wouldn’t still end up signing here if we give him the best offer.

We aren’t a playoff team without him though.

His first several years he showed a good ability to work counts and draw some walks. He was a highly valuable hitter overall. This year it’s like all he’s trying to do is hit home runs and nothing else—and his BB rate has plummeted, and because he is so aggressive in his approach now, he’s down in the count 0-2 A LOT. So that deteriorates the rest of his offensive statistics because he isn’t getting into hitters counts nearly as well as he used to.

Pulling Mize after 3 innings was not a smart move. We ended up burning Holton, and then Melton and Hurter. Keider is the only real long relief option if we get bad Flaherty tomorrow.

To me, it’s not that the contract makes good financial sense and isn’t risky, but rather that it’s what you have to do if you want to compete in today’s MLB. We will all piss and moan about the Dodgers/Yankees/Red Sox/Mets/etc. but then will sit here and waffle about if it’s worth it to sign a guy like Skubal to a big deal. It’s Tarik Skubal, it’s not like you’d be offering that to someone like Ranger Suarez, Dylan Cease or Zack Littell. You’d be paying big to have him for the next 3-4 years while the rest of your core hits their prime and the next wave of top prospects is breaking in. If the contract goes south in year 5-7, then you take that risk to chase the big reward. Otherwise, we have no one close to being ready to step in as an ace. Jobe is your best bet and he’s got a lot to still develop. It’s not like we have a lot of good pitching depth currently either where there’s help on the horizon. Theres going to come a point where a lot of the rest of the roster is going to start getting much more expensive to maintain and we will have to cut bait with some of them. So go for it while we have a core group that we know has the potential to compete for it.

I would be plenty fine with 20-25 HRs. Assuming his Ks drop, BBs shoot up, and he is probably then hitting 40+ doubles. I want a lineup full of guys who put together complete at bats consistently, can go to all fields, and drive up the opposing starters pitch counts. Riley having 68 extra base hits this year but barely clearing an .800 ops on the season means he is doing a lot of other things poorly.

Fair point, but the Verlander trade set us back a decade. We have much more young talent to build around this time—but letting Skubal leave without maximizing a return would be really hard to overcome. Keeping him all year in hopes of making a deep playoff run would be great….but this roster needs a lot of other retooling for that to be a viable goal at the start of next year. Now if we go out and sign some legit talent and make some impactful trades this offseason and level up this roster—I’d be more inclined to agree with you. We can’t run a lineup with 5 platoon hitters next year and a bargain bin bullpen next year and expect to get further than we have the last two years.

Right, but he is a lot more replaceable than Skubal.

We need to do everything in our power to retain Skubal. If he chooses to leave, then so be it….but him leaving shouldn’t be because we aren’t willing to give him what he wants to stay. 1.) He and Skenes are the top 2 pitchers in baseball. If any pitcher is going to get a huge contract- it should be them. Don’t worry about future injury risk unless that has been a frequent problem. Skubal had the one injury and surgery several years ago, and came back from it quickly and was almost immediately back to being impactful. Other than that, he has more than proven that he is sturdy and a workhorse. Not being willing to pay him a big contract and then instead bringing in 60 million a year in injury riddled pitchers you hope you can rehab makes no sense. 2.) This guy IS the organization. Just like Verlander before him. Allowing him to leave and go win elsewhere is a swift kick in the nuts to Detroit fans who have already seen so many of the players they’ve embraced leave and win. Stop kicking us in the balls. Be different this time, and if it doesn’t work—then it’s excusable next time. 3.) The pitching staff beyond him is not particularly stable. Flaherty will probably be back, and then you have a ton of guys who are still on rookie or arbitration deals. Mize/Olson/Jobe/Melton/Montero/SGL/etc. are all cheap, but most all of them have been fragile. So we need depth there, but we also need the consistent anchor. There really isn’t a true staff anchor ace available this offseason as of now either. If we didn’t have Skubal this year, we are a 4th place team in the division. 4. IF it becomes clear that he has no interest in re-signing with us for a mega deal, then you need to move him this offseason. Don’t wait until the deadline because we will be pressured to move him, everyone will know that, and we won’t get top value in return. In addition, half the teams in the league will be selling at that point, so our pool of best possible suitors drops substantially. Either sit him down this offseason and express our intentions to go all in for him and use that to gauge the likelihood of him staying, or trade him for a MASSIVE haul. Failure to do either of those two things should cost the entire front office their jobs, and if the problem is Illitch not being willing- then Tiger fans need to get real f’ing loud at him.

With Tork, the adjustments he made for this year probably saved his career—so I can understand not trying to push the envelope too hard to try to get him to do too many additional things beyond what he has already improved on. You don’t want him to go away from something that has helped him overall, struggle with that, and then not be able to revert back to what he was doing and go back into last years form. This offseason you can probably push him to take the next step now that he has improved his contact rate, found his power, and improved his walk rate. Guys like Greene and Carpenter are a lot more frustrating to not have explanations for on what Tiger management is trying to do with them. They both were lighting up the baseball savant page, and now both have had an enormous drop in plate discipline and are completely selling out for power all the time regardless of situation.

With how awful our pen is, starters shouldn’t be getting pulled unless they’re getting shelled or over 100 pitches. Mize should be annoyed.

Might as well leave three more men on base. Why not?

Maybe if we had scored on any of the 4.3 million opportunities we had with RISP today instead of swinging at diarrhea, this wouldnt be happening.