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I know, right? We’re moving in the right direction, but really, Harris had to start from scratch. We saved a bunch of pitching, thanks to the magic of Chris fetter, but honestly, it was lucky we got even him. Imagine how awful it would be if Rick Anderson had managed to hang around.

Plus, unlike nearly every other big league stadium, they don’t let you bring in any food or water. All they want you to bring is your phone with your credit card on it.

The closet you’re gonna get to these kinds of numbers is Shea Langeliers, and I wouldn’t mind having that guy for my catcher. How about a close-to-Detroit rotation piece and Jake Rogers for him?

Speaking of wonky … double post.

Exactly. Maybe the coaches are qualified enough to work with good talent and maybe not, but one thing we know for sure is that this is a young team, third youngest in the majors, and young teams are notoriously wonky. That we are able to string together good stretches at all is a plus. But there is still a lot of detritus on this team. We’re going to have to completely turn over catcher, shortstop, third base, and probably center field in the next couple of years, and who knows whether we have to add first base or even right field to that. That’s up to six positions in question, and when you have that many holes, you’re essentially in a rebuild, which means this thing of ours isn’t getting totally fixed this year.

Over half of those three years was under previous front office management with terrible ability to find major league hitting talent. We're still digging out of that hole. Honestly, we're probably going to have to throw out some more of the babies this front office inherited before it gets better. As for the hitting coaches, I can't personally vouch for them as actually knowing what they're doing, although I do have more certainty around the idea that we still have a lot of just bad hitters on the team and high up in the system. Maybe we do end up ****-canning one or more of them, although I'd be a little surprised if they did so tonight, or tomorrow, or next week or month, or even before the end of the season. Changing coaching philosophies midstream is really hard on players so it's pretty rare. It would have to be a five-alarm fire to do so, I think. (Cue replies of FIRE! FIRE!)

Yes, that. Or, we could continue to build on the plan that’s surely in place and give it a chance to work. BTW if we end up trading Skubal for prospects before he’s a free agent, that means we have definitely failed.

You mean, like, now? In the middle of the season? Bring in all new coaches and break down the players and get them to forget everything they know and rebuild them to learn entirely new systems all while trying to get them to score runs in live games? I don’t know, sounds like a tall order to me.

Well look, if you’re gonna flip the future linchpins of your offense for even younger, even greener minor leaguers who are even farther away from making a contribution, then you might as well liquidate all your future linchpin pitching, too. Especially since Skubal isn’t going to want to stick around an organization explicitly committed to giving up and going nowhere.

Maybe the hitters hate A.J. as much as we do! 🤣

That’s right! Skubal … GONE! Riley … GONE! Wenceel … GONE! Colt Keith … GONE! All of them, GONE! Except four guys. We can do it!! 😉

I think we’ll get there. Rome wasn’t built in a day.

Fire them all, release all the players, sell the team and move it to Nashville before the White Sox get there!

Greenberg hates the Tigers

Hitters win games, coaching loses them.

I wasn't accused on the old site of being an hysteric, but I was accused of engaging in Alarmist Non-sense.

I assumed your post was about the Tigers, even without your explicitly saying so, because this is a thread about the Tigers, and Javy Baez was a very hot topic here when you posted it. Nevertheless, everyone loves the idea of Tigers walking away from the presumed sunk cost that is Javy Beaz, but this isn't what economists might refer to as a typical consumer sunk cost. If you buy a lemon of a product and you know you're never going to be happy with it, you might as well throw it away and accept that the money is gone. That makes good economic sense in that case. But in the case of Javy, there's another factor to consider: unlike you getting rid of the thing you hate, where you don't even have to get a replacement for it if you don't want, the Tigers definitely do have to get a replacement for Javy, and the replacement might actually be worse than Javy. People will joke, or half-joke, or even seriously state, that no one could possibly be any worse than Javy, but I'm being serious here. If we were to dump Javy this afternoon and replace him with a freely available option from the minors, such as Eddys Leonard or Andrew Navigato, or we sign a currently-available free agent, like Adalberto Mondesi, and they end up doing even worse than Javy—which, again, ha ha, I know, how could anyone do worse, you or I could do better out there for much less money, yuk yuk, but again, let's be serious here—then the front office would get a non-stop ear full of **** from fans for letting Javy go without getting a better replacement. And if you believe that fans will be reasonable and give the Tigers credit just for letting Javy go even if his replacement does worse, then I invite you to refresh your understanding of the nature of emotional fandom by reading some of the posts on this very site. And what would be even worse is that, if Javy were to be cut, and he were to sign with someone else—and really, there are lots of teams who would take a chance on Javy as long as it costs them only the minimum—and he ends up doing better, or even well, someplace else, then the calls for Harris's head will reach a crescendo. And while you're at it, Scotty-poo, take that egghead in the dugout with you, and don't let the door hit either of you on the ass on your way out. Because there is still the reasonable hope, however much it is dimming, that Javy can still be saved and provide acceptable production for the rest of this contract, and we don't want to be holding the bag for someone else who's getting that benefit while we foot the bill.

OK, so what are you saying here? Are you saying the Tigers are not putting a better product on the field because they can't afford to? Are you saying they're not putting a better product on the field because they don't care about winning as much as they care about money? Or maybe you're saying they're not putting a better product on the field because they're incompetent, or because they're ignorant because they don't know what you know? Because I know you're not saying they're putting the best product on the field they can given our stage of development and the alternatives available to us.

Hmmm ... and the box scores from all seven games from April 8 to May 8 call bull**** on your box score.

YES! NO AUDIENCE! I've been pushing for THAT for YEARS! I am shocked that Trump would agree to that—assuming he did so before CNN put out this press release. Because a gaggle of braying morons cheering him on is his rocket fuel. Without that kind of raucous audience approval, Trump is going to sound merely unhinged and horrifying. I hope this actually comes off because I can't wait to see something like this!

Maybe they don't want to put a better product on the field. Maybe they want to lose instead. 😒

nm

Don't look now, but our best reliever is Joey Wentz, which serves me right for agitating for his release for a couple of years now. 😁 In 14-2/3 innings, he's striking out 28.4% of hitters, getting more ground balls while limiting fly balls, getting swings outside the zone and misses on most of them, hammering hitters with strike one, and limiting barrels. This has resulted in a sterling 1.23 ERA, good for a 32 ERA- that's not entirely luck, since his FIP- is 60, which is in the 88th percentile for qualifying relievers. tl;dr: Wentz good.

Not sure how questioning advertiser-sponsored quasireligious adulation ceremonies at sporting events turned into spitting on veterans.