monkeytargets39

Remember when he challenged Biden to a homerun derby?

I’ve seen reports that he was hitting over .300 on fastballs in Toledo. I’ll have to find the source of that again, but there apparently has been improvement.

I feel pretty confident in saying that if Tork was both not producing results AND not putting in perceived effort to try and get better that he would’ve been demoted earlier in the season and they would’ve made an effort to deal him for something at the deadline. The reality is much more likely to be that we promoted him through the system quickly, he doesn’t have experience making a lot of adjustments as a result, struggled with timing and then pitch recognition trying to compensate, and lost confidence. He has since been trying to retool his approach in Toledo and there are obvious positives and some collateral negatives that still need to be ironed out. i wouldn’t give up on Tork at this point, but it would be responsible for the organization to both exercise some patience with him for the rest of this year and also come up with a contingency plan for 1B if he can’t recover to be what we need him to be.

Yeah he’s hall of very good at this point. Aside from his power he never was really one of the best players in the league for any stretch of time. Hes closer to Adam Dunn than HOF to me

Only thing that stands out is that he’s drawing a lot of walks. Apparently he’s hitting the fastball at a good clip now, so that’s promising. Still too many Ks.

One more mediocre year out of him gets him 400 HRs, 1000 RBIs and 1000 walks and a shot at 1.000 career ops. I think that gets him in considering a good amount of his prime was lost to injuries. 11 all stars, 3 mvps, led the league at least once in runs, rbis, sbs, bbs, average, obp, ops, ops+, war…. There are plenty of folks that got in easily that didn’t have that resume.

I’m fine with him staying there until September. I’m not convinced he’s close to being done making his adjustments.

He’s still first ballot. He was one of the best players in the league for several years. If anything it might depend on who else is eligible at the time.

I’d take him back in a heartbeat if he would obp .400 and ops .820 even if the batting average was low .200s.

Gunther time

Looks like Hanifee can go back to wherever we got him from

You know what these Tiger broadcasts need more than anything? Belle Tire girl commercials

My only take on the rest of this season is this: Can we please just bring up Jung and then just let the kids play all/most games. If I’m gonna watch this team whimper down the stretch, I at least want to watch players that I have interest in for the future. I don’t need to see Urshela, McKinstry and Madris play every day. I get that the pitching is what it is, but positionally let’s just go all in on them.

Trout done for the year with a meniscus tear. Probably safe to say he’s not gonna get to the elite career hitting milestones at this point

This generations Eric Eckenstahler

For all the talk of how DD left the farm system barren, I think the real discussion is how he left the Avila regime plenty of assets to be used to restock the farm only for Avila to absolutely piss it all away. McCann/Miggy/Kinsler/Iglesias/Castellanos/JD/V-Mart/Verlander/Sanchez/K-Rod/Alex Wilson/etc. Got turned into a whole lot of nothing. If we didn’t waffle around those first few years of the Avila regime and actually committed to a strategy, maybe we could’ve restocked the farm system appropriately. On top of squandering the assets we had by either settling for less in trades or just letting guys walk, the draft strategy sucked too. From 2016-2019 we drafted a grand total of 5 players that we got to the big leagues. DD drafts were regularly getting us 2-4 per year. Harris already has appeared to draft a lot better than Avila did, and has actually taken measures to improve our minor league facilities and international scouting.

I predict Madris gets sent down in no more than a week when they recall Meadows from his rehab assignment.

I don’t disagree at all- but I’m fully prepared for 2025 to start with Torkelson playing 1st (maybe platooned with Jung) and Malloy/Vierling being our RH OF “with power” and maybe a FA signing like JD Davis to be a short term 3B. Any actual money will be spent on pitching because they pretty much have to bring in some arms based on the current roster and farm system. Then we will be sold that this is the start of the young core era and to hope for everyone’s upside will show up.

Off-season priorities as I see them: 1.) Everyone being healthy. 2.) Add pitching: 2 Starters, 2 relievers. RPs should ideally be high leverage type. Ideally get one high level starter and one short contract bounce back guy a la Flaherty. 3.) Reps for either Keith or Jung at 1B as a contingency plan for Torkelson during offseason and spring. Maybe platoon Tork if he hasn’t progressed offensively. 4.) Move on from the following players: Wentz, McKinstry, one of Brieske/Faedo. A healthy 26 man roster of: C- Rogers/Dingler 1B- Tork/Keith 2B- Keith/Jung SS- Baez/Sweeney 3B- Vierling/Jung LF- Greene/Vierling CF- Meadows/Perez RF- Carpenter/Perez DH- Malloy/Greene/Carpenter That’s an acceptable offense (minus Baez) if it’s healthy. Don’t really see a reason to need to add to it. If you’re going to platoon this lineup, do it properly. SP- Skubal/Olson/FA/FA/Mize RP- Holton/Maeda/Vest/Foley/Brieske or Faedo/one of Miller-Vanasco-Lange, FA/FA Would be nice if we could pencil in Manning somewhere in there but we will see. Montero/Sammons/SGL/Lockhart/Jobe/Madden at Toledo is acceptable depth in the rotation. Hopefully SGL and Jobe can force their way up but give it time. Not spending a ton of money, and Maeda would be off the books after this season also. Since we sold this year, play the young guys the rest of this year and next year—don’t pepper in more Canhas and Gios.

3 spots on the 40 man roster open by my count unless I’m missing something. Any reason not to add Jung and call him up and let him run at 3B so we can use Vierling more in LF/CF to help spell Riley?

My sources have just told me that we’ve traded Cameron Maybin again

I was one of them. I wanted us to build around Cat and Kapler, to go along with Encarnacion, Fick and Higgy

I’m fairly surprised we haven’t moved Canha or Urshela . Just clear those guys out of the roster and give that playing time elsewhere

There were message boards back then, and the general consensus on the Juan Gonzalez trade was anger that we gave up Frank Catalonotto

I’d only consider it a failure if we then can’t re-sign him and end up with only a comp pick. Locking him up for a few years given the Mize/Manning disappointments wouldn’t be an awful thing and could in turn make a Skubal trade next year easy if we have Olson/Flaherty and potentially Jobe to fall back on at that point.