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Riley made a good effort on the throw home, but it was just impossible because he was just too deep.

OK, well, maybe not this inning …

Bottom of the ninth now—time to walk it off!

Now this is the kind of high leverage situation I’ve long thought Tyler Holton was cut out for.

Maybe it’s not Zacharias … ?

What Zach giveth, Javy taketh away.

It is true they give Trump thanks when good things happen, and when bad things happen, it’s simply Trump’s will.

This makes sense. I’ll co-sign onto this. Maybe the Christian right is simply confused that he’s offering up Easter greeting to the enemy anyway. They’re not real big on sarcasm or nuance or intelligence, after all.

Or—and I’m just spitballing here—Zach might have unlocked something? I notice his BABIP is .326, which is not that out there and unsustainable. He’s not going to hit .300, but if he can keep his walk rate well into the double digit percents, he’s going to continue to see pitchers have to come in to get strikes and give him something to hit.

Well, that Riley 3-2-3 DP sucked. But we do have the lead. Gotta hold it now!

All-Star Zach again with the steak!

And the game is tied, thanks to 2025 All-Star Zach McKinstry!

Skubal’s was close to a quality start. We have time to cover the deficit here. And the Sweeney base hit to start the fifth might be the good start we need. EDIT: oops that was Colt Keith with the leadoff single, wasn’t it? But Sweeney followed up with his own base hit and now runners on first and third with no out in the fifth.

Kerry Carpenter caught that foul fly near the stands for the second out. I wonder whether it would’ve been OK for him to just toss the ball into the stands to a kid? After all, nobody was on base to keep close, and they were going to use a new ball on the next hitter anyway.

Wouldn’t it be the most baseball thing to go into the fourth game of a series gunning for a sweep with your Cy Young winner on the mound and then he gets run off the mound in the second or third inning after giving up something like seven runs? #jinx

Speaking of which, an accurate throw is what McKinstry made to get the runner at third on that second base hit, except Javy flubbed it.

Individual contributors may not rule, but they do rock.

Dan said Carpenter would stop at second but he ran right on to third and dared the RF to throw him out there, which he couldn’t. Being super aggressive on the bases doesn’t work every time, but it’s working enough to make it a good strategy in general.

Yeah, so the lineup is basically what I’d said in the original reply to Bert.

That might be where this team ends up in 2028!

Good point. So that might mean Nido today, Dingler Monday and Tuesday, Nido for the finale.

Nobody said anything about lumbering sluggers—not you, for sure—until I brought it up as a counterexample to what Harris is doing. I brought it up because it was the Tigers’ offensive strategy during the period some fans think of as being a golden era in Tigers history. I think a lot of fans would like to see that be the Tigers offensive strategy once again, although probably not you, and certainly not me.

I think it’s true that some guys are so messed up that they need to be reconstructed practically from scratch, and other times hitting coaching screws up a guy who might be struggling a little but who needs something more surgical than reconstructive. But I would also bet a lot of hitting coaching at the major league level is helping guys with the little flaws that inevitably develop in an entire swing profile that is keeping them from achieving their maximum potential. You know, like, your leg kick is getting a little early, your shoulder is starting to drop, you’re starting to get too long on the swing—stuff like that. Today’s hitting coaches also have to be good at distilling and interpreting video for hitters as well.

I doubt Harris’s end goal is to obtain a bunch of lumbering sluggers a la 2012 and abandon the bold-faced approach. I don’t believe he sees it as a short-term strategy to get us to Dombrowskiland. I think he does see it as a permanent strategy, at last indefinitely. After all, it was the first thing he mentioned in his introductory press conference. But I’ll be very willing to admit I’m wrong if he proves the lumbering slugger strategy was his goal the whole time. As for our offense the last two months of last year, I think you might be giving it short shrift. They were not the bottom five offense they had been for the first four months, and indeed for the entirety of Harris’s early tenure. We were 11th in FanGraphs’ offense measure from August 11 on, or, if you don’t believe in that metric at all, you can re-sort the table and see we were 13th in runs scored. Either way, we were above sea level, and not lacking for offense. https://www.fangraphs.com/leaders/major-league?pos=all&stats=bat&lg=all&qual=y&type=8&month=1000&ind=0&startdate=2024-08-11&enddate=2024-09-30&season1=&season=&team=0%2Cts&sortcol=19&sortdir=default&pagenum=1

He’s not one of the best hitters right now, but I think Colt has shown he has enough going for a guy of his age and experience level in the best league in the world that he can eventually become something like what Tork is showing us right now. Maybe not that great on a sustainable basis—I mean, that’s MVP level across a whole year. But something in the neighborhood of that. Colt’s a work in progress yet. I do admit it feels almost a little disappointing to see him while also seeing rookies like Jackson Chourio and Tyler Fitzgerald and Junior Caminero just waltz into the league and absolutely crush it as rookies from day one while we see our top rookies struggle out of the gate and for years. Ain’t gonna lie, totally jealous of that. Maybe we’ll get that out of Max or McGonigle. We’ll see.