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Tiger Cubs (notes on the minors)


gehringer_2

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41 minutes ago, casimir said:

Cody Stavenhagen mentioned on his weekly podcast that he didn't think demoting Maton would really be beneficial to his development.  He didn't really think that there would be anything to gain in Toledo trying to hit offspeed pitches and its simply something he will either pick up (or not) against MLB pitching.

 

To be brutally mercenary about it, that maybe be good for Maton, but the team doesn't exist for Maton - the equation is supposed to go the other way. For the current Tigers, 3B is the position of need, but as you note, he sure doesn't play 3rd well enough for much investment in him to be worth it on that basis, and at 2nd there are other options that appear at least  equally useful so what justifies the level of commitment to Maton's 'develpment' over other objectives -- like winning a game here or there? One the other side of the ledger he did flash some power, hitting 4hr in April, but he's only hit 2 since.

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19 hours ago, Toddwert said:

You guys must love crappy baseball because youll defend it til the end of time.

Seriously? We complain about everything!  We are hopefiully that new management is better than old management of giving us a better team.     

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2 hours ago, Tiger337 said:

Seriously? We complain about everything!  We are hopefiully that new management is better than old management of giving us a better team.     

Exactly, he acts like there are only two sides, hater or sycophant.

Is Harris a good GM? We don't know yet.

Are the Tigers playing good baseball? Sometimes, but not consistently.

Do they have enough talent to compete in the playoffs? No.

Do they have a pipeline of good, young talent? Some, but not enough.

Is there hope for the future? Of course, there's always hope.

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1 hour ago, Tenacious D said:

These 5 words have never been strung together before.

They have. He's a good writer who actually does have journalistic principles. He can sometimes go down some rabbit holes that may not be correct, and those may be more frequent now than before, but on the whole there is a reason he has stuck around covering the Tigers for a long time. He's good at his job, or was before he retired to part time work. I have some quibbles with him, but there are a lot worse people reporting on the Tigers.

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27 minutes ago, Edman85 said:

They have. He's a good writer who actually does have journalistic principles. He can sometimes go down some rabbit holes that may not be correct, and those may be more frequent now than before, but on the whole there is a reason he has stuck around covering the Tigers for a long time. He's good at his job, or was before he retired to part time work. I have some quibbles with him, but there are a lot worse people reporting on the Tigers.

Henning's only problem is that he is a just a little over reactionary against the Hemmingway/Stein school of writing where adjectve is basically a dirty word. Lynn never met an adjective he didn't love and he bends his prose to the breaking point with metaphor, allusion and description that could make a romance novella hack blush. Cute, but it gets silly at times - make that most times. And maybe part of it is since he is 'semi'- retired and writes less volume, he's gotten even more style extreme in what he does.

Edited by gehringer_2
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Henning's Comerica Park bit is what annoys me the most now. Like the other day somebody on the Tigers hit a 410ft double and he was of course complaining about the dimensions, but when you look at the statcast projected HR number it only would've been HR in like a third or less of the parks due to the location it was hit so if you are going to complain about the dimensions complain then complain about it about all MLB parks in general. 

He also still cites how it was specifically built with those to lure in FA pitchers, that may or may not be true but even if it was it has since been moved in twice now so the park is completely different than it was when it was built. 

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9 minutes ago, RandyMarsh said:

Henning's Comerica Park bit is what annoys me the most now. Like the other day somebody on the Tigers hit a 410ft double and he was of course complaining about the dimensions, but when you look at the statcast projected HR number it only would've been HR in like a third or less of the parks due to the location it was hit so if you are going to complain about the dimensions complain then complain about it about all MLB parks in general. 

He also still cites how it was specifically built with those to lure in FA pitchers, that may or may not be true but even if it was it has since been moved in twice now so the park is completely different than it was when it was built. 

Correct. The park was a strong outlier as originally built when the current BPs were part of left field, but the numbers are what they are. Since the BP renovation, the park has played pretty much middle of the pack. The 430 to the corners of the CF wall was certainly at the limit - so now they've undone that, but OTOH, the RF power alley and RF and LF corners are ordinary. So the park did favor pull hitters a bit. Which has always left me at a loss as to why they have spent so much time in recent years talking up gap hitting. All that gets you a COPA is a lot of loud outs. Hitters that gained you half a dozen triples at the expense of probably several dozen HR never made sense to me.

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1 hour ago, gehringer_2 said:

Hitters that gained you half a dozen triples at the expense of probably several dozen HR never made sense to me.

Smith and McHale were eminently qualified...after all, their dads were famous baseball executives.  They decided to design a park for the "National League style of play", for a franchise that had been defined by power hitting for generations.  They were clowns.

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Dimensions are only part of the equation. Batter's eye and weather (wind, humidity, density, temperature all affect drag) are others, and those are ignored by the very rudimentary (X ball was hit this far at Comerica and would have been a home run at Park Y)

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13 minutes ago, Edman85 said:

Dimensions are only part of the equation. Batter's eye and weather (wind, humidity, density, temperature all affect drag) are others, and those are ignored by the very rudimentary (X ball was hit this far at Comerica and would have been a home run at Park Y)

I'm not real familiar with the stuff they use in the MLB but as an avid golfer who routinely works with Trackman and other launch monitors I know you can adjust them to the weather by putting in current weather information so when they spit out the numbers they already factor that in and it is usually accurate down to a yard or two. 

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9 minutes ago, RandyMarsh said:

I'm not real familiar with the stuff they use in the MLB but as an avid golfer who routinely works with Trackman and other launch monitors I know you can adjust them to the weather by putting in current weather information so when they spit out the numbers they already factor that in and it is usually accurate down to a yard or two. 

MLB Teams have that information (hence why exit velocity is a thing, but EV doesn't factor in batter's eye). I'm not sure people who gripe about Comerica at Henning's level are factoring that in. Hell, Harris pointed out over the offseason that they are just now factoring weather into the internal metrics.

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6 minutes ago, Edman85 said:

MLB Teams have that information (hence why exit velocity is a thing, but EV doesn't factor in batter's eye). I'm not sure people who gripe about Comerica at Henning's level are factoring that in. Hell, Harris pointed out over the offseason that they are just now factoring weather into the internal metrics.

I figured the teams had that info but I just wasn't sure that the statcast numbers that we see on TV or Savant shows(like where it would be hit at certain parks) factors that in. And yeah the batters eye definitely makes a difference and something that you can't quantify. 

 

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2 hours ago, Jim Cowan said:

Smith and McHale were eminently qualified...after all, their dads were famous baseball executives.  They decided to design a park for the "National League style of play", for a franchise that had been defined by power hitting for generations.  They were clowns.

Yes, I wonder if Mike I. really knew what he was signing off on with the original design/dimensions.

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27 minutes ago, Tenacious D said:

Yes, I wonder if Mike I. really knew what he was signing off on with the original design/dimensions.

The plan to cut it down was probably on the table from the beginning but they probably wanted to give it a shot. The wind does blow out to LF a lot, it could have played smaller than it did. Look at what happened to the Yankees - they thought they did everything they could to make it play exactly same and it still ended up playing way smaller. But you can't do much to make a park bigger once the stands are in - so if you get it wrong, get it wrong big.

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6 hours ago, Edman85 said:

Dimensions are only part of the equation. Batter's eye and weather (wind, humidity, density, temperature all affect drag) are others, and those are ignored by the very rudimentary (X ball was hit this far at Comerica and would have been a home run at Park Y)

Something has happened in recent years, but I'm not sure what.  It used to play like an average park with respect to home runs despite complaints to the contrary.  In the last five years or so, it has become more extreme.  

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1 hour ago, Tiger337 said:

Something has happened in recent years, but I'm not sure what.  It used to play like an average park with respect to home runs despite complaints to the contrary.  In the last five years or so, it has become more extreme.  

I know it isn't supposed to happen because you normalize for the visiting team, and I admit I haven't run the numbers, but it has always seemed to me that when you look at park factors, teams that can't score end up dragging down the park factors for their park. I've wondered if there is a second level correlation - when teams have inept offences, if the teams playing against them also score fewer runs on average than they might and I wouldn't even be surprised if any such effect could be greater for the winning team on the road. It might be also be weather but otherwise it does seem odd Copa's park factor drops when the Tigers offense is horrible.

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