chasfh
-
Posts
18,874 -
Joined
-
Last visited
-
Days Won
138
Content Type
Profiles
Forums
Events
Blogs
Store
Articles
Everything posted by chasfh
-
Wow super gutsy play by Schoop
-
It took a while to get that picture up
-
We were having dinner with our next door neighbor a couple of weeks ago and her folks were in town. We told them about our trip, including tonight’s game, and our friend’s dad says he loves the Trop. It’s one of his favorite stadiums because it’s nice and clean and air conditioned. He is 80.
-
If only Willi were playing short and Haase were in left, I could basically party like it’s 2021.
-
Well, with Austin Meadows going to the IL while we were en route, I’m not off to a very good start! 😁
-
The view from the hotel:
-
I’m going to be at the game tonight. This will be the 22nd different ballpark I have seen the Tigers play.
-
Fetter is here because of Hinch. They work together as a package deal.
- 3,276 replies
-
- 1
-
-
- 81+ wins
- tork and greene
- (and 2 more)
-
I'm not sure where else to put this, so here it goes.
-
Mize's injury woes were foreseen when he was first drafted, and when he first came to the majors. Neither this incidence nor its timing is much of a surprise. I guess the reasonable hope is that he'll be fixed up and 100% by the start of 2024. If there's any lemonade to squeeze out of this, bitter though even that might be, it's that Mize was neither pitching at an All-Star level while he was here, nor were we expected to rely mainly on him to get us into and through the playoffs.
-
Teams—or more exactly, organizations—are bad for decades on end usually because of ownership more than anything else, since owners are those who are hiring the front office personnel who reflect what owners see in themselves. This is why I am rooting for Hinch to have a crack at the GM job: he may have seemed like the kind of damaged goods you could get for cents on the dollar to mollify the fan base when we first got him, but I also think based on my admittedly limited insight that he is the right guy for that job, and we have him in our midst today. If Baby Doc blows this and hires a failed GM from some other second- or third-tier organization to replace Al, I'm thinking that's pretty much it for hoping for a baseball renaissance under this ownership.
- 3,276 replies
-
- 1
-
-
- 81+ wins
- tork and greene
- (and 2 more)
-
Turns out Chris Ilitch did not exactly kick Ken Holland to the curb. He offered instead to kick Ken Holland upstairs and become senior vice president with a contract extension, in a show of corporate loyalty. Ken chose to go to the Oilers so he could keep his hands dirty as a GM. That's what I got from one story in the Freep, anyway—maybe there's another story that disputes this account and contends that Baby Doc is a cold-blooded corporate killer after all. If the story is true, then kicking Al Avila upstairs, which I'd mentioned would not happen in the post that kicked off his sidebar, is what I think would be the most likely good case scenario, and they aren't going to do that just yet. But since there is precedent for it, perhaps it's in the cards after, maybe after 2023. And I would handicap the chances that Al turns that down and goes to another team as GM as being 0%, ± 0%. Al's definitely sticking around for the pension.
-
We did get Daz in exchange for future hall-of-famer Justin Verlander, and he is the son of a good major leaguer, so they're giving 25-year-old Daz Cameron every chance to prove Al did not blow that trade.
-
I don’t see how it’s unfair, although I must admit I don’t know enough about Ken Holland to hold forth on his situation.
-
It wouldn’t accomplish anything if he simply were replaced by the loyalists from the early DD era. I think it’s a highly bifurcated front office team now, split between the long timers and the new breed like Sartori, Menzin and Garko. I wouldn’t doubt if there’s a bit of push me-pull you jockeying going on in the office.
-
Very much this here. This is also somewhat related to the principle that players should ease up when they have big leads—you know, like if you’re up 11-0 in the eighth inning, you shouldn’t try hard to get on base or steal bases or score runs, because it’s unsportsmanlike and against the unwritten rules. But individual players are assessed at the end of the year on their individual stats, which informs their comp, and when it comes to that, it doesn’t matter whether their hits or homers or whatever happened during tight games or during blowouts. It’s all about the bottomline numbers at that point.
-
I didn’t tell you quite that. What I said was that he had showed improvement with the Mets and that maybe it was just luck and meant nothing, or or maybe Mets coaches found something in his swing and that Coolbaugh could build on that. I was hoping it was the latter, since he was ours now and so It cost nothing to be optimistic about it—well, until it tries to boomerang on you like this. 😏
-
FWIW, even though I have not called for the firing of Avila lately, I feel my position on the question is so well-known that I don’t have to constantly reiterate it. He is clearly out of his depth as a GM and has not improved enough with Hinch on board that I would want to see him kept in the job any longer. That said, two things: 1) Al Avila ain’t getting fired as long as the Ilitches own the team. Ilitches value great loyalty above great competence, and Al is nothing if not greatly loyal, so there’s no reason, including any on-field performance reason, that Baby Doc would boot him. Best case scenario is Al gets kicked upstairs, AJ takes over the GM duties, and George Lombard takes over the dugout. That’s not happening. 2) Even if shit-canning Avila were in play, it’s totally a careful-what-you-wish-for situation, since I assume he would merely be replaced by another Ilitch loyalist already somewhere in the organization, probably someone like David Chadd or Scott Bream.
-
Nope.
- 3,276 replies
-
- 1
-
-
- 81+ wins
- tork and greene
- (and 2 more)
-
Al Avila: “You’ve got to go full bore from Day 1"
chasfh replied to Useful Idiot's topic in Detroit Tigers
Also, don't forget Willy Adames, Eugenio Suarez, Robbie Ray, Corey Knebel, Jose Alvarez, Chad Green, and Luis Cessa. Well, we didn't get exactly nothing for Green and Cessa. We did get Justin Wilson in return, who unlocked Jeimer Candelario and Isaac Paredes, the latter of which also unlocked Austin Meadows. But it sure did take a long while to finally get a positive return for them. -
Anyone who can, try to pair Dan Dickerson from MLB audio with the Orioles video on MLB.tv. MASN has the cleanest picture of all RSNs, just a scorebox in the upper left corner, no RSN logo even. It looks great.
-
I do like the Baez signing. He is doing just what anyone who's paid attention to him would have expected him to do: streaky hitter with great moments and plus defender who has occasional mental lapses, but overall we'd love having him on the team and watching him play. I told you all of this in November. I didn't like Barnhart on the team from before the beginning mainly because of his stick, but he was always a done deal because of his defense. Who knew he was going to flip that around? 🤷♂️ But he is also WAR positive, so I wouldn't throw him overboard just yet. Rodriguez got off to a slow start and has picked it up lately. His FIP is outperforming his ERA mainly because of historically-low LOB rates. Not ready to write him off just yet. Baddoo was a freebie pick who just based on his performance last year has given us more than 95% of all other Rule 5 picks have ever given their teams. He was a 2-win player last year (and under Hinch). How soon they forget. Surprised you didn't highlight Grossman, who was reported to have been signed specifically at Hinch's behest. Although he was also a 2+ win player last year.
-
I think the drafting, international free agent, trading and development philosophy for years has been to draft the best athletes and then hone their baseball skills to major league quality. I think we might be finding that it’s hard to take someone with just average baseball skills, or guys with significant holes in their game, and teach them all the way up.
-
Sure helps to be given really good players!
