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If this same circumstances were happening 20 or more years ago, everybody would be hammering Girardi unanimously as being at fault, since he was handed all this firepower on the roster and he’d’ve considered to be blowing it, and hardly anyone would even know who the Phillies GM is. Baseball used to be seen the manager’s game—heck, in the early professional game it was, since there were no general managers at all. Now we recognize baseball is the general manager’s game. tl;dr: I agree.

The Pizza Wars are over, and Detroit-style pizza has won.

Going after Democrats for anything is the telltale sign that the Republicans are going to do the exact same thing.

How much you wanna bet that picture is from 2018?

I think the Texas AG will be genuinely surprised at what he finds, and will then immediately bury it.

You got me going with this one ... I downloaded all the Statcast rankings for every pitchers between 2015 and 2022, and ran a correlation analysis on those pitchers who registered rankings of at least 1 in two consecutive seasons, to see what the correlation from year to year of these metrics are. I got those downloads from this page: https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/leaderboard/percentile-rankings?type=pitcher&year=2022&team=, changing only the year in the URL. This took me maybe a little over an hour to do. Here are the results: I've put the columns for the last three seasons in italics because they all involved a less-than-162-game full season, and the average correlation I calculated to the right reflects only those full columns that contemplate full seasons. As we could have already guessed, the outcome-based metrics like barrel percentage, hard hit percentage and exit velocity have among the lowest correlations. I would assume they are better-correlated to hitters. In that respect, I think of these in the same vein I think of BABIP. Other pitcher-stat outcomes, like the x-stats (for expected pitcher stats based on hitters' quality of contact), are generally correlated more highly, but still no more than moderately so for pitchers, because there's always some luck involved that could muck it up. The top three correlated metrics are obviously the best-correlated since they contemplate only the flight of the ball, before it gets to the bat. The big three metrics here with outcomes pitchers can more or less control—strikeouts, walks, swing and miss—are really well-correlated from year to year. Alex Lange has deep red numbers for both strikeout rate and chase rate, which I believe is pretty well-correlated to whiff rate (they don't have the exact same metrics on the cards versus the league tables, for who knows what reason). He has a sky-blue number for walk percentage, which is why I say: if he could change the color of that number to white, or even better, into the pink, he could be the same kind of process stud that the best closers in the game are. It can be done: Jose Berrios went from a 4 BB_percent percentile in 2016 to averaging 64 across the following six seasons. Tyler Glasnow was a 2 in 2017 and a 12 in 2018; he then went to 78, 43, and 56. Lance Lynn had a 22 in 2017 and 15 in 2018 before he clocked rates of 73, 66, and 70 the following three seasons. Those are rare instances, for sure, but it does demonstrate that the better pitchers can make that move from being a bases-on-balls sieve to tightening down that part of their game and going on to terrific success. It's true: we cannot predict with any certainty how Alex Lange will end up. But if he's pitching like this for the next two months and we trade him, then speaking only for myself, I will be 100% convinced that we would never be able to trust this front office to assemble a roster that consistently wins year after year, at least without trashing our farm system to do it.

No one is saying Lange is a sure thing. I have already said on this very page, twice, that he could fall apart this year. I'll say it once again: he could fall apart this year. That said, I will go on record with this: I think that if he is still performing at the same level on August 2 that he is now, he should be considered untouchable, and if I were forced to make a choice between trading one of either Alex Lange or Will Vest, then in that scenario, bye bye Will Vest. That said, I would be shocked if even this incompetent front office traded either Lange or Vest for even younger prospects that, as buddha said, might become as good in several years as those two are now. Or, more probably, not.

Then why do we have all the Pirates rejects hanging around our front office? 😏

I'm providing an example of another pitcher, a very successful one, with the same three issues you highlighted as being negatives about Lange. I guess what I'm saying is that having these three attributes is not proof that what Lange is doing is a mirage. If Lange had the exact same outcomes but with the Statcast card and peripherals of Gregory Soto, with his low ERA, low strikeout rate, super high FIP and whatnot, I'd be concerned more along your lines than I am with Lange. As I said, it could all fall apart for Lange and you could be totally right and I could be totally wrong. That's happened here before. A lot. 😁 My pushback is on the idea that we should strike while the iron is hot, or something, and flip him right away for a prospect, before he inevitably turns into a pumpkin. We don't know he's a mirage yet, though, and my overarching point is that his process stats suggest there's a pretty good chance he's for real, better chance than any other reliever in our system right now. I just don't want to cut bait on Alex Lange just yet.

one more data point for alex lange lol

Is it your takeaway that I'm predicting Alex Lange is the next Josh Hader?

Thanks. I understand that relievers are inconsistent when it comes to outcomes, mainly because of the increased variability that result from small sample sizes. That said, his Statcast percentiles rank among the highest in the game, and certain of them which are more process-based, like velocity, whiff rate, chase rate, K rate, and probably quality of contact, are probably portable from year to year.

Also, have we really reached the point in this debate where "he has allowed 0 homers" is being offered up as a negative in support of a position?

Josh Hader also has a higher-than-average walk rate, a super low BABIP, and has also allowed 0 homers. Gimme that guy all year long.

And that's because the Cubs are terrible traders, practically the anti-Rays. Remember, we also got Candelario and Paredes for Alex Avila and Justin Wilson.

I think there are some things about Lange that might make his case a little different from the typical Tigers reliever who is good in some small samples only to be terrible in others. For one thing, his B-Ref peripherals are stronger this year. Yes, he was soft in Toledo last year and there was some mirage to his decent stats last year, but his FIP is way down and his strikeout rate his ticked up. On Fangraphs we see his SIERA is lower and swinging strike rate is up, which tracks with his lower FIP. Yesterday he hurt his outcome stats a bit with two walks, but on the other hand, it was his longest outing of the year by far: 1-2/3 innings, nine batters faced, 31 pitches. He cruised through the first inning with three outs on 12 pitches, but then there were the two walks at the end, and if it was anyone batting but terrible-no good-doesn’t-know-what-he’s-doing-lately Joey Gallo, it might have been three walks, who knows. Point is, we may be learning that Lange is not a 30-pitch guy, which may actually strengthen the argument to try him as closer at some point. His Statcast process peripherals, though, are much better than even his improved peripherals: Ground ball rate, line drive rate, weak contact, solid hits, barrels—almost doesn’t matter what you look at, Lange is way better this year than last year. Guys can make improvements in the offseason that can lead to these kinds of improvements. But the thing I like best about Lange is his eye-popping Statcast card: Like, wow. That is just a sea of red. The main thing he has to fix is that walk rate, but if he can bring that in even to 50%, this is the card of an elite late-inning reliever. And it’s not as though the Tigers are swimming in relievers with Statcast cards that look like that: Basically Fulmer, who’s going to bolt this offseason and get good and paid, and Lange, who we have for cheap through 2027 if we want him. Sure, in a world where anything is possible, it’s possible that Lange’s card is a mirage and he’ll be all blue by the end of the year and into next. I’d be willing to bet against that happening, especially under the Fetter regime. I’d hate to see one of the few decent young relievers we’ve had passing through this system just go away, the same way Chad Green and Luis Cessa and Jose Alvarez and Corey Knebel did. And so far this year, Lange looks better than all of them. People can conclude that all relievers are basically random widgets, and root for an Alex Lange trade for some similarly-talented prospect if they want to. But me, I’m gonna root against that. I like what I see from this guy, and unless he has an abject collapse starting right around now, I’m gonna wanna see a lot more. EDIT: Jose Alvarez, not Jose Alvarado

Didn’t we get Lange himself as a prospect in exchange for a veteran dump? That was just three years ago. So if we’re going to turn around and dump Lange for yet another prospect, when he himself is just one year removed from prospect status, then exactly what the hell are we doing here??

I really dislike TV or radio broadcasters who act like fans, refer to players by their cutesy-poo clubhouse nicknames, and actively root for the team while play is in progress. It’s unprofessional and belongs in a different venue than a game broadcast.

I know everyone here hates Bill Maher, and he certainly has been galloping around on his pet hobby horses for some time now, but this might help explain why.

As if the guns laws of red states don't apply to their cities. Highlarious.

Trevor Story got off to a slow start, but he is slashing .255/.353/.592 with nine bombs, a .395 wOBA and a wRC+ of 161 over his last 26 games. I don't think he can be dismissed as a bust just yet.

Believe it or not, Willi has now been in the system five years, including three pre-Hinch, during which he suffered at the hands of development personnel who weren’t knowledgable enough to even develop a complex about how inadequate at development they were. Willi might possibly be too far gone to fix well enough to be a major league regular, but he’s also probably a year too young to completely give up on the idea. Best option I can think of is, once the other outfielders come back, give Willi the rest of the year at Toledo (or Erie!) for an extensive development regimen that includes outfield reps—one last gasp to turn him around. If he doesn’t show significant enough improvement a year from today, DFA him.

All the single-minded kvetching about playing one guy in one position, when the solution is to platoon him out there anyway with a kid who's 0-for-12 lifetime so far, just because the kid can take a slightly better route to the ball, just make me giggle. But man, you just nailed the issue with a single eloquent paragraph. Kudos.

A lot of the players who are injured stink, too, but that's just another onion layer to cry over. The whole "win now" thing wasn't going to work unless everyone hit on all cylinders and nothing went wrong, which is no way to plan for a win now team in any event.

It would have been a no-hitter had Kiner-Falefa caught that Miggy line drive.