Edman85 Posted January 12 Author Share Posted January 12 18 minutes ago, Tiger337 said: My experience is that younger people tend to learn things faster, but lack of experience often causes them to get frustrated with the many redos required in research. Experience helps from the "you don't know what you don't know" stand point, but man, in a production support job where speed and efficiency is of the essence, coding skills and the willingness to use computer tools as opposed to taking 20X the time doing by hand because that's what they did thirty years ago... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tiger337 Posted January 12 Share Posted January 12 (edited) 1 hour ago, Edman85 said: Experience helps from the "you don't know what you don't know" stand point, but man, in a production support job where speed and efficiency is of the essence, coding skills and the willingness to use computer tools as opposed to taking 20X the time doing by hand because that's what they did thirty years ago... I can see that. In my line of work, speed and efficiency, while good to have at the micro level, are probably less important than willingness to completely redo an analysis which you spent weeks putting together or the experience to know how to look at a problem from a bunch of different angles because there is no best way to do anything in research. Edited January 12 by Tiger337 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chasfh Posted January 12 Share Posted January 12 14 hours ago, Edman85 said: One job the Tigers posted this year, "principal analyst," required a PhD. Most of their analytics hires do tend to be recent grads, converted interns. I will say in my job, we have had more success molding younger folks than taking on people with experience. At the end of my working life, I noticed an increasing bifurcation in comp between directors and associates. It went from making maybe double what your direct reports did to 4x or 5x. Basically, to paraphrase Rush, the principals want one person to talk to and the rest to sweep the floors, because it's cheaper. I can't imagine the gap has closed any since. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Edman85 Posted January 12 Author Share Posted January 12 Welp, part one is ready. (I still am waiting on the 2007 guide and will add some names when it arrives) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
1984Echoes Posted January 12 Share Posted January 12 I'm going to make the assumption that the two Juan Hernandez signed in 1983 is actually one player in which two different birthdates were discovered...? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
1984Echoes Posted January 12 Share Posted January 12 That list is the saddest testament ever to over 60 years of International signings with DAMN NEAR nothing to show for it. Damn near nothing. The two best players they signed: Eugenio Suarez at 20 career WAR and Willy Adames at 18+ career WAR... they dumped before they did anything with Detroit. Damn close to a big fat 0 with ALL of our international signings. So sad. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stanley70 Posted January 12 Share Posted January 12 When you look how many great players teams like the Braves and Blue Jays have signed it's unbelievable that the Tigers have produced so few. You'd think they would have lucked into a few. They would have been far better off to just identify the best player and try to outbid everyone else for him. It should have been pretty clear to the FO that they were unable to develope those guys. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Edman85 Posted January 12 Author Share Posted January 12 5 hours ago, 1984Echoes said: I'm going to make the assumption that the two Juan Hernandez signed in 1983 is actually one player in which two different birthdates were discovered...? https://www.baseball-reference.com/register/player.fcgi?id=hernan006jua https://www.baseball-reference.com/register/player.fcgi?id=hernan003jua Different guys. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Edman85 Posted January 12 Author Share Posted January 12 (edited) 5 hours ago, 1984Echoes said: That list is the saddest testament ever to over 60 years of International signings with DAMN NEAR nothing to show for it. Damn near nothing. The two best players they signed: Eugenio Suarez at 20 career WAR and Willy Adames at 18+ career WAR... they dumped before they did anything with Detroit. Damn close to a big fat 0 with ALL of our international signings. So sad. If they would have included Castellanos in the Price package instead of Adames, would that salvage their international results? 4 hours ago, Stanley70 said: When you look how many great players teams like the Braves and Blue Jays have signed it's unbelievable that the Tigers have produced so few. You'd think they would have lucked into a few. They would have been far better off to just identify the best player and try to outbid everyone else for him. It should have been pretty clear to the FO that they were unable to develope those guys. I'm not saying throw an asterisk on Acuna et. al., but, my hunch is the stuff that got the hammer dropped on Coppolella was only the tip of the iceberg, and it is entirely likely some of their success in that era was done outside the rules. Edited January 13 by Edman85 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tiger337 Posted January 13 Share Posted January 13 59 minutes ago, Edman85 said: https://www.baseball-reference.com/register/player.fcgi?id=hernan006jua https://www.baseball-reference.com/register/player.fcgi?id=hernan003jua Different guys. Juan + Juan = 2 1 1 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Edman85 Posted January 13 Author Share Posted January 13 (edited) Similar to analytics, the Tigers have been playing catchup on this front forever. Also similar, there is significant investment happening right now. It will take a while to pay off. I am curious why they have struggled or took so long. Racism? Domestic scouting was going so well in the 70s and 80s that they just put eggs in that bucket? Miserly owners? Schembechler's reign of terror cutting the legs out? Pena's abrupt dismissal? Investing in Venezuela only for it to become an untenable firestorm and having to pull out? Antiquated scouting and development methods? Bad timing with the bonus rules? Playing within the rules while other teams paint outside the lines? All likely factors in some way. Edited January 13 by Edman85 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gehringer_2 Posted January 13 Share Posted January 13 1 hour ago, Edman85 said: Similar to analytics, the Tigers have been playing catchup on this front forever. Also similar, there is significant investment happening right now. It will take a while to pay off. I am curious why they have struggled or took so long. Racism? Domestic scouting was going so well in the 70s and 80s that they just put eggs in that bucket? Miserly owners? Schembechler's reign of terror cutting the legs out? Pena's abrupt dismissal? Investing in Venezuela only for it to become an untenable firestorm and having to pull out? Antiquated scouting and development methods? Bad timing with the bonus rules? Playing within the rules while other teams paint outside the lines? All likely factors in some way. I wonder if maybe with Avila there was some 'familiarity breeds contempt" going on? It used to be his bailiwick so no-one could tell him anything about doing it better. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Edman85 Posted January 14 Author Share Posted January 14 15 hours ago, gehringer_2 said: I wonder if maybe with Avila there was some 'familiarity breeds contempt" going on? It used to be his bailiwick so no-one could tell him anything about doing it better. Probably some of that. The antiquated player dev that cost them so much under Littlefield likely had parallels at the Dominican Academy. The disruption from the Venezuelan shutdown didn't help matters. It should be noted, when Littlefield got scuttled for Garko, there was also a change in the Latin American Player Development Director at the same time. The 2017-18 and 2018-19 classes look like complete busts so far, and you can't blame the bonus restrictions from the 2013-14 through 2015-16 classes on that. There may be some issues with who they are prioritizing and how they are developing them. Having said that... Don't forget that a lot of these deals are agreed to 2+ years in advance, so even this class the Harris/Metzler regime is unlikely to have been able to put their fingerprint on. Purchasing land for a new facility is no small deal, and needs to be remembered when people inevitably complain about the small payroll. They are putting the money to good use. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
1984Echoes Posted January 14 Share Posted January 14 (edited) On 1/12/2024 at 6:58 PM, Edman85 said: If they would have included Castellanos in the Price package instead of Adames, would that salvage their international results? ... I wouldn't call that "salvage". It would still be only 1 guy. And I get it... they discovered two guys that were above average ML'ers in Suarez and Adames. And it's not the scouts fault that we didn't benefit from that. But more than anything... I'd like to turn the page and forget about all that history and hope, beyond hope - since I don't see anything being done in the past 6-ish years that looks any different than the previous 54-ish years - that the Org could actually sign and develop a couple top line International guys. Can we ever sign a top-5 international guy? Or we're just not allowed, or not interested in top 5 guys? Or we don't have scouts that can get those kinds of relationships that yield top 5 guys? Maybe rankings are garbage since they're all 16-17 year olds anyways... But where are our monster signings? Other teams seem to get them... but not us? I know Avila spent a bit more money on their top signee each year than anyone the Org signed previously, $1-2MM plus guys instead of their usual low-budget signees... including Roberto Campos, Cristian Santana, Jose De La Cruz, Adinso Reyes, Javier Osorio... But the highest I think was one of them ranked 10th and the rest much lower. And none that have taken the minor leagues by storm yet... to even indicate that we might have a top guy coming up through the ranks... Edited January 14 by 1984Echoes Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BoomGaspar Posted February 8 Share Posted February 8 I have a collection of Tigers media guides from 1970-2019. It seems that starting with the 2020 season, the media guides went fully digital and the team no longer prints a physical copy. For a while at least, the Tigers were the only one of 30 MLB teams not to print a physical copy of their media guide. Bust out that fact the next time someone claims we don't use modern analytical technology... 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chasfh Posted February 14 Share Posted February 14 On 2/8/2024 at 8:48 AM, BoomGaspar said: I have a collection of Tigers media guides from 1970-2019. It seems that starting with the 2020 season, the media guides went fully digital and the team no longer prints a physical copy. For a while at least, the Tigers were the only one of 30 MLB teams not to print a physical copy of their media guide. Bust out that fact the next time someone claims we don't shave pennies off every minor expense possible… Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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