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Ray Boone over Inge for sure.

Under

Mazel tov! My birthday is July 11 which means that in a lot of years there are no games—although next year there will definitely be a game, just not one that means anything.

We ended up dropping the final three games of the season, and still, this was in one of my newsletters this morning.

And my point is, given the history of how park factors can change all on their own based just on environmental factors, if they just wait a year or two, it may just fix itself.

According to MLB.com: Ballpark factor, at its most basic, takes the runs scored by Team X (and its competitors) in Team X's home ballpark and divides the figure by the runs scored by Team X and its competitors in Team X's road contests. Often times, that number will be ever-so-slightly adjusted if a team doesn't play the same opponents at home as on the road. For example: In 2018, 849 runs were scored at Coors Field, and 676 runs were scored in Rockies games away from Coors Field. Coors Field had a park factor of 1.271, when looking at runs scored. The same exercise can be done with other stats, such as home runs, triples, doubles, etc. I don't know whether the calculation is exactly this simple, but even if not it's really close. We had a sidebar about park factors in one of the game threads a few weeks ago, during which I had found this web page with historical park factors for Comerica basically showing how wide-ranging park factors for home runs have been even absent any changes in configuration. One of the things the page shows is how historically significant environmental factors (e.g., weather) have likely suppressed homers in just the past couple of seasons.

I don't think it's really a matter of love affair. I think it's more a matter of if you don't start Alexander, then who else ya got? I think A.J. has gotten way too much criticism for trying to make the best of the garbage he'd been given to work with, as if he were bypassing available all stars to start AAAA players like Alexander in their place. And not just on the mound, but just about everywhere else. Yeah, Willi started a lot in the outfield, but who else ya got? Schoop started at 2B every day even though he was the worst hitter in the league all year, but who else ya got? Harold Castro sucks anywhere you put him and twice as much at first base, but who else ya got? How many times did posters in this forum lobby for this player or that to come up from Toledo so they could displace the suck at whatever position we were all whining about at the time, only to see them do as bad or worse? It's not A.J.'s fault that his options were so limited. The only thing along these lines I can really blame A.J. for is not moving Soto out of the closer spot when Lange was a better choice early, and when Joe Jimenez was a far better choice than both later. I mentioned yesterday that it may not have mattered once it became clear that we were gonna lose almost 100 games anyway, so why break things and ruffle feathers for no reason, but installing Joe as closer at any point after the All Star break would have been as close to an inarguable no-brainer move as any he could have made.

For me it kind of depends on how many of those fly balls falling marginally short were caught, versus were triples. If all of them were caught I’d be more OK turning them into homers, than if we’re trading frantic plays at third base for leisurely home run trots. I already get enough of those leisurely trots on MLB Quick Pitch.

Gets her talked about and hopefully (for her) paves the way to a career in punditry on a network such as the Overthrow America Network.

Because his behavior is consistent with GOP values.

They’ll probably move the walls in, and I won’t be terribly opposed to it if it’s not too drastic, but it is worth noting again that Comerica played like an average park for home runs with this same fence configuration just a decade ago.

Scott Harris is the obvious catalyst for all of it. Avila’s in the chair, and hardly any of these guys would be going anywhere. But it is funny that when I was dreaming up the list at first, it was a complete overhaul in my mind. When I put it down on paper, it looked like hardly any moves at all, particularly since it resulted in guys like Willi, Brieske, and Short having even a prayer of making the team next year. But I looked carefully at each of the guys I thought might return and I saw something in all of them—decent enough performance this year, good recent seasons, solid peripherals, youth—that would warrant giving them at least one more look. Turns out I think as many as 34 guys on the list might be worth keeping for that one morer look, a number which sure doesn’t sound like a complete overhaul after all, does it? Which maybe goes to one of Jack’s (and others’) points: given how well we seemed to do after May 8 with essentially this same squad of players two seasons ago, maybe we’re closer to turning things around enough to be interesting than it seemed to us all this season. As for Alexander, I just don’t see how he stays. Everything about him works against it: he’s one of the softest tossers in the game; he can’t strike guys out; he gets hit really hard; he’s turning 29 next year; and he’s due for his first arb payday. The only positive thing I can say about him is that he doesn’t walk many guys, but that’s because he’s right around the zone all the time, hitters know this, and they can routinely crush him. I get that we have to field a pitching staff for 1,400+ innings next year, but if we decide that Tyler Alexander is good enough to do that for us, then I don’t think we’re going to be as far along as we hope to be.

I would like to try to predict which of the current guys on the 40-man roster, plus those on the 60-day IL, will be returning to the team, and which will be leaving the team. Pitchers Returning: Alex Lange Andrew Chafin Angel De Jesus Casey Mize Ed. Rodriguez Jason Foley Joe Jiménez Joey Wentz Matt Manning Rony García Spencer Turnbull Tarik Skubal Will Vest Minor League Contracts: Beau Brieske Luis Castillo Kyle Funkhouser Leaving: Alex Faedo Bryan Garcia Daniel Norris Drew Hutchison Elvin Rodriguez Garrett Hill Gregory Soto José Cisnero Miguel Diaz Tyler Alexander Pitchers Comments: Chafin has a player option but he's close to home so I think he stays; De Jesus I think could go either way; Vest is gonna be 28 so he might be on the bubble; Brieske might have enough to be an organizational soldier with the occasional September callup; Soto might surprise and stay, although he might have punched his ticket out of town last night and today. Position Players Returning: Ali Sánchez Javier Báez Brendon Davis Luis García Eric Haase Ryan Kreidler Jake Rogers Jonathan Schoop Sp. Torkelson Akil Baddoo Riley Greene Austin Meadows Miguel Cabrera Kerry Carpenter Willi Castro Minor League Contracts: Josh Lester Zack Short Leaving: Tucker Barnhart Jeimer Candelario Harold Castro Kody Clemens Daz Cameron Victor Reyes Position Player comments: Sanchez sticks around pending Rogers' return, and he's developed on-base skills; Davis was a three-level hitting star in 2021 so it's worth seeing whether he can recapture that; if Schoop can replicate even the worst of his hitting years from 2019 to 2021, this is a no-brainer; say what you want about Willi, he's a WAR positive utility guy who can still be valuable to us for a couple mil; Lester and Short can both be soldiers like Beau; Harold has too many deficiencies to carry anymore; Victor is inexorably eroding and he's out of time. Jeimer is the hardest one for me. All the buzz around him, including during game broadcasts, suggests he's going, and that's hard to ignore. But he was also a four-win player just last year, and two wins in about a third of the time in 2020. Do we really believe one year later that that is basically of another era, that there's no way he can recapture it at all? Did it really take only one year? I'm not so sure about that, and unless there is some underlying damning data we're not privy to that suggests he truly is done done, I think there's a halfway decent chance the Tigers bring him back if it's not much more than $7MM.

The more I think about it, the more I'm thinking that the reason Shep popped off on the post-game was because he was given permission to by Jack Morris's comments the other night when he criticized the organization for overvaluing their players, which is a fatal developmental flaw.

I'd be surprised and disappointed if we ever had to worry about Gregory Soto blowing a ninth-inning save for the Tigers ever again.

There is nothing short of a miraculous transformation in style and approach that would make me want to listen to Shep call a game. But at least he showed me that he's not always a complete stiff.

Makes sense on paper, although I wonder how that relates to a team that knows it's circling the drain pretty early? Practically no one on the team could have reasonably expected at any point past early May that this team was ever going to win enough to contend. I'm sure a lot of those guys are hard-wired to be super-competitive at all times, and I'm just as sure that many of them were simply marking time waiting out the inevitable disastrous final result. How does any leader inculcate a unified pennant-winning mindset within a clubhouse so divided in its outlook in such a circumstance?

Got any relatives in Mexico?

Man, Shep getting hot on the postgame! Where has that guy been for the past three years?

I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that there is some people-based reason he didn’t make the move. Besides the fact that it wouldn’t have mattered either way, because the stakes have been so low all year, it might be harder to justify a move like this on a personal level to the players involved as well as his teammates. I would bet with better players in house, and with more on the line, A.J. would be more likely to make the ruthless move. Am I making sense?

In Taiwan.

Well, that sucked for the most part, although it did get a little better toward the end there. There’s gonna be a lot going on this winter, so might as well start talking about it now.

I was smirking, but I wasn’t kidding …

AJ pitching all guys who are gonna get released. 😏

This game has been Sotoed.