IdahoBert

I am glad we are not facing the torture of a KC-Detroit FanDuel combo pregame show like we did with St. Louis.

I’ve got this memory of players jumping from AA to the big clubs with more frequency than now. AAA now seems pretty much only for real prospects, and that a career minor leaguer like Mike Hessman simply couldn’t happen now. Did there used to be guys in their late 20s hanging out in AAA in the hopes that somebody could get injured on the big club and they’d be called up for a month or two and get a real payday? What changed? I asked AI this question and got an answer, but I’d like to know what real people I respect think about this.

Dylan Smith is now officially on the Tigers 26 man roster

I guess this is the best we could help for.

Well, thank you very much Sally Sullen… 😉

It’s supposed to be 77° and sunny for this game tonight. That should be nice.

In case you’re one of those “well back in the day“ sort of persons there’s Nolan Ryan, who no one could ever accuse of not throwing hard. I don’t know if he threw every single pitch hard as he could, but anyway… “Nolan Ryan's pitch count in a game varied, but he was known for throwing a high number of pitches, especially in longer games. He famously threw 235 pitches in a 13-inning game against the Boston Red Sox on June 14, 1974, which is a record number of pitches in a single game. In 1989, at age 42, he averaged 127 pitches per game with a high of 164.”

All along, we were worried this would happen to Jobe. Oh well.

Also in 2006 for the last third of the season or so, the Tigers lost 2/3 of their games and only got into the playoffs through the wildcard. Then they went on a tear until the Cardinals dispatched them unceremoniously. It’s a long season with ups and downs and you don’t want to be headed downwards in the World Series.

In an amazing coincidence, the two teams anointed most by God are on Apple TV tonight as the Yankees play the Dodgers in Los Angeles. Three hours earlier, two lesser sub-.500 teams, one based in Massachusetts and the other in Georgia, play each other, wasting their’s and everybody else’s time.

If it has, it hasn’t been updated on the Tigers MLB site at 4:48 PM

The 2006 Tigers were clearly a better team than the 2006 St. Louis Cardinals but not for five games. I take no solace in this assertion.

Doing another family related pet-sitting, this time with our 14-year-old family terrier Dino. Dino was found roaming the streets of Oakland, California 14 years ago and ended up being shipped to the Humane Society in Boise, Idaho, where our family adopted him. We think he’s half blind and he’s 98 years old in dog years bordering on senescence, but he actually takes the time to stop and smell the flowers every day. He just sticks his face in there and sniffs. It’s really quite fetching.

I love how our team wins with both brute force, and finesse. The Tigers are the karate kid of baseball. Brute force alone means you’re one of the bad guys.

It’s laughable that people who don’t think the Tigers are real just don’t like a team that actually plays like a team using all its movable parts. Playing smart isn’t satisfying. It needs to be splashier. It needs to be of a collection of big star egotists they can worship from the cheap seats like peasants in awe of King Arthur. Big stars, big personalities, big news. That’s the ruling narrative. The way the Tigers go against the grain of American sports culture makes them even more satisfying in my eyes. And we’ve got enough stars as it is right now and we have more on the way.

Is Jobe still alive? That’s all I’m interested in right now.

Josue Briceño Is 6’ 4” and 200 lbs - those of you who are metric and recalculate this in your head - and he’s only 20 years old. I don’t know how much more “growing into his frame and filling out” this guy has to go. Should we trade him for a short term reliever to get us over the bump in August and into the playoffs, even though he might be the next Aaron Judge? I sure hope not.

I hadn’t seen this. This sucks that sounds painful

I hadn’t heard about that. Apparently it’s common knowledge, but anything to do with the Rockies kind of disinterests me. I guess pitchers still don’t get the full effect of breaking balls there no matter what. When I hear about doing things to baseballs, I remember how the White Sox used to freeze baseballs for the Tigers when they came to the ballpark in the 60s.

The Coors Field effect is seemingly so extreme I’ve never been able to take either the Rockies or the players that excelled in that environment seriously. And granted I’ve never compared how well Larry Walker and Todd Helton did on the road, but those stats are so extreme they bore me. 59 doubles in a season and unbelievably high batting averages sound like beer league stuff. In a sport that reveres statistics so much, these statistics just don’t seem to count, and neither does the team that records them. If the apostasy of an expansion team in Salt Lake City happens at nearly the same altitude and this occurs again it’ll give me one more reason to feel like an old man shouting at a cloud. Although a lot of things that I looked up sort of dismiss how extreme it is quote from a ball player seemed more authentic: 'S---, the whole time there was a horror story, man," said Marvin Freeman, who started 41 games for the Rockies over the first two years of the ballpark. "We called it arena baseball. It was like a pinball machine up in there sometimes. Balls were flying out of there. And you just had to make sure when you did leave Colorado you maintained some sanity because it could be hard on your mentality."

I think the Rockies got one because it didn’t significantly encroach on anybody else’s territory and let’s face it, it’s a kind of unlikely place to have a team.

As a personal insight into the Colorado Rockies top brass, a few years ago when I attended a Boise Hawks NWL short season league game the entire front office was in attendance and I sat right next to them. They were, honestly, a very impressive, almost infectiously interesting group of young men bristling with energy and optimism along with a couple other elder statesman who were owners and they reminded me of that kind of élan I witnessed in other corporate settings where there’s this obligatory “can do“ attitude that everyone adopts, which is often little more than attitude and confidence. I can see how these guys with lots of money and lots of attitude could make the mistakes that led to the Colorado Rockies being so awful this year. Drive, attitude, and confidence may build a real estate empire, but a baseball team is a different animal.

For what it’s worth this is what the robots think: AI Overview The Colorado Rockies are experiencing a historically bad season due to a combination of factors, including poor offensive performance, a struggling pitching staff, a lack of impact prospects, and a perceived lack of commitment to a full rebuild. The team's struggles are also compounded by injuries to key players and a perceived lack of progress in applying analytics compared to other MLB organizations. Here's a more detailed breakdown: Poor Offense: The Rockies are struggling to score runs, particularly when playing away from Coors Field, which is known to be hitter-friendly. They are last in MLB in on-base plus slugging and have struck out an MLB-high number of times. Weak Pitching: The pitching staff has struggled to contain opposing batters, with a high ERA and poor walk-plus-hit-per-inning statistics. Lack of Impact Prospects: While some young players are emerging, the Rockies lack a significant pipeline of top prospects to fill roster needs, hindering their ability to compete. Perceived Lack of Rebuild Commitment: Some observers suggest the Rockies are not fully committed to a rebuild, even with their poor performance, potentially limiting their ability to attract quality talent or make necessary trades. Injuries: Injuries to key players like Ezequiel Tovar and Kris Bryant have also impacted the team's performance. Organizational Issues: Some believe the Rockies are behind other teams in terms of analytics and player development, leading to perceived mistakes in trades and free agency signings.

This is a good post. It took a lot of work to assemble. Thank you. Although I feel no remorse in the Tigers sweeping the Rockies, I do feel bad for the players and the fan base that has to endure this. Although I’m kind of a snob about my team being 125 years old and with an extensive tradition to both enjoy and lament, I know there are genuine fans with a heartfelt love for teams with less extensive traditions such as the Rockies. They too are field of dreams dreamers, and this has to be very hard on those fans. It’s natural to want to blame someone when things go wrong. It’s not like the players themselves spontaneously formed a team. I’m sure blame lies with the front office that assembled the team. But they would’ve had to almost do a bad job on purpose to achieve results this dismal and I find it hard to believe they did.