2025 Detroit Tigers General Discussion Thread

[papalawrence]

4 hours ago, IdahoBert said:

This is a really good post. To be brutally honest about most modern athletes, we can project all sorts of positive qualities on to them we want and get all Ken Burnsie about them, but at the end of the day they’re just jocks, full stop.

They’re not 300 Spartans defending Greece or honoring Zeus on some hyper-real pasture in the Olympics 2700 years ago. They are good at some highly specialized physical activity that is only meaningful in a limited number of venues. Otherwise, they are just guys.

But here they are feted gods, and they don’t like being told what to do. They are used to being treated like really, really, big deals. They may well have been treated this way since they were children because they had some unusual athletic gift. AJ manages them like a tactician. They want to be big shots, not cogs in a machine. But they do like to win, and we like watching them win.

I remember sitting on an airplane next to some boring guy many years ago and just before we landed I noticed he had a ring on his finger the size of an old style flash cube on an Instamatic camera and it was a World Series ring and he had been on the 1978 Yankees as a role player of some sort. I could’ve been talking to him the whole time and I wasn’t because in fact, now, he was just another real estate agent. In Mesa AZ. Not a god. Staking a whole lot on what these guys think might not be the best thing to do. 

Just like money, winning changes everything, and the Tigers are winning, and Hinch is a really big part of it. 

Well said. And re: feted gods - with aau teams, this special treatment can start around age 12. Certainly see this with basketball, and I assume baseball as well. AJ seems to be managing egos well - team first, all in. 

[Shinzaki]

There's a kid from my daughter's HS that spent some time in the majors after going to college...he was a three sport star in HS, but baseball was his best sport.  Scouts knew who he was when he was 11 or 12

[Shinzaki]

Brebbia  DFA...Tyler Owens called up.  Fetter can't fix everyone

Edited yesterday at 01:35 PM by Shinzaki

[Tigermojo]

What's up with the positions? Someone is drunk.

[chasfh]

22 hours ago, papalawrence said:

Well said. And re: feted gods - with aau teams, this special treatment can start around age 12. Certainly see this with basketball, and I assume baseball as well. AJ seems to be managing egos well - team first, all in. 

I think that’s a lot easier when you have a team of really young guys playing on minimum or small contracts and still in the process of establishing themselves as major league regulars. The one guy on the team getting really good and paid for years, Javy Baez, I think has been humbled by his last three seasons so his ego has been checked so far. I’ll actually be interested to see whether his attitude will change with his renewed success—some guys seem humble when they’re scuffling, but then when things start going well again they start really feeling themselves again. The two other vets getting big paychecks, Jack and Gleyber, are on prove-it deals so it seems unlikely they would let their egos run wild in that situation, even around a bunch of impressionable kids.

Edited yesterday at 01:49 PM by chasfh

[chasfh]

12 minutes ago, Shinzaki said:

Brebbia  DFA...Tyler Owens called up.  Fetter can't fix everyone

I’m guessing Brebbia will slip through and head down I-75 to try to fix whatever’s ailing him.

[IdahoBert]

So we have Mize and Skubal going in the first two games against the Pirates, but we have TBD against Skenes. It sure would be nice to wrap up the series win in those first two games.

The Pirates are decent in run prevention, but not in scoring so the Tigers need to figure out how to score runs against those first two starters who, on the face of it at least, have sub 3.40 ERA’s. 

[Tigermojo]

Righty Will Vest departed yesterday’s game due to some discomfort in the pinky finger of his throwing hand, per Cody Stavenhagen of The Athletic.

[Tigermojo]

Nice to see several Tigers received a lot of all-star votes.

[monkeytargets39]

8 minutes ago, Tigermojo said:

Nice to see several Tigers received a lot of all-star votes.

There’s actually a legitimate chance McKinstry could be the reserve 3B behind Jose Ramirez

 

Javy being 5th in OFs is wild too