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Well, what can I say? This is what you get when you put all your rebuilding eggs in the pitching basket. A lot of us on the old board were saying for years that they're doing it completely backwards, and now we see why, firsthand. Especially considering two of those precious eggs are broken with no timetable for return. Let's face it: by the time they got around to selecting TORK! and Riley, this die was cast. This is the kid of situation in which managers earn their keep.

The Tigers will take the series from the Dodgers in LA because baseball.

I did notice that Miggy has barrel and hard hit rates that are higher than league average, but his average launch angle is something like 5.8%. So I guess that means he’s shooting singles between fielders sometimes and making faster groundouts other times.

Sounds like a negotiated settlement.

In other news, Joe Biden is showing symptoms of dementia.

Launch angle says who? We’ve had wins in our four lowest average launch angle games and losses in our seven highest launch angle games.

Craig Monroe is just way too much of a cheerleader and a fan. I don’t like that from my baseball analysts.

Scott Coolbaugh, your flight is boarding …

Yeah, I know, I’m a curmudgeon, but I don’t think Bally Sports Detroit graphics should be celebrating opponent’s homers.

Wow, took three straight strikes. I get hat Ryan painted the first two but man, ain’t ya gotta protect on the third pitch? Candelario is as lost at the plate as anyone ca be right now.

Speaking of James Woods … errrr …

yes because of course he would 🙄

I know. I was funnin'.

They were very predictive of Soto last night!

I like the Statcast stats a lot. They are designed to take into account quality of contact and placement of batted balls, with their attendant likelihood of falling in safely, to help us understand how well a player is doing in the thing they are supposed to be: driving the ball hard if they're hitting, and inducing soft contact if they're pitching. There's really nothing else hitters and pitchers can actually try to do. Outside of bunting for hits, or doing swinging bunts, batters really can't "try" to get base hits other than hitting the ball hard and hoping you did it right so it will fall in. Granted, these are forward-looking metrics. Soto's stats said he was doing great: 1-0, 3 saves in five appearances, 1.59 ERA. But his Statcast card indicated that this was a mirage, and in this particular case, we happened to see the result Statcast forecasted versus his traditional stats. Statcast's intention is not to tell us how a batter did in terms of slash lines or outcomes, but rather what we can likely expect the batter to do in future at bats, under the reasonable assumption that if they've been hitting the ball hard and bad-lucking into outs, they can probably expect more hits to fall in if they keep hitting the ball hard like that. Yes, that's an assumption, and sure, "ass you me" can always apply. But it's a better assumption that the batter continue to hit the ball hard as his track record has indicated than it is to assume that a batter's quality of contact is a completely random circumstance, or worse, that a batter is going to suddenly change how hard he's hitting the ball because he's due. Ironically, FIP is very much also a process-oriented stat like the Statcast stats are, in its attempts to weed out the luck of outcomes from balls in play and boil it down to what a pitcher''s ERA "should be" based on the things he can better control: strikeouts, walks, HBPs, homers. In this way, FIP is quite related to Statcast stats. wOBA on the other hand is very outcome-oriented and has nothing to do with quality of contact.

lol woba and fip are "older stats"!

lol fluffing fulmer

Next time Hinch needs a save, I would bet a dollar to a dime that he will throw Soto out there. I have little doubt of that. In terms of who's throwing better during the season, there's really little debate to be had. It's Fulmer, and whether it's for next the save opportunity, or for one a month from now after Soto will have had two or three more high-profile meltdowns—just to make extra special certain it's persistent—Fulmer's gonna get his chance.

I misunderstood the original question—the first Tiger younger than I was Nelson Simmons in 1984.

I would say that compared with Soto’s Savant card above, this is a pretty good reason to give Fulmer a chance to lock down ninths.

As much as we’re piling on Haase this morning, can we finally start to conclude that Soto is not really a closer? I mean, he’ll do as a placeholder during a rebuild, but when is it going to be our turn to get a shut-down guy?

Haase deserved a shot to extend his fifteen minutes. I think we know now.

Whoa C-Mo is wearing U-of-M(innesota) colors. That’s a definite choice!