2025-2026 Tigers Off Season Thread

[papalawrence]

20 minutes ago, Tigermojo said:

425 and going up.....

[SoCalTiger]

11 hours ago, Sports_Freak said:

The Tigers need to offer Bregman a contract so Boras can shop it around to other clubs and get him a max contract. A totally unethical agent...

Which is why we aren't offering Skubal and the dumb media should say that instead of saying we're cheap and don't want him. Well we might be cheap...yet to be determined.

[casimir]

5 hours ago, Edman85 said:

There is a fascinating thing people here do, and that is projecting their opinion on Scott Harris. e.g. "I think Harris would like (player I like)."

It is kinda funny once you see it once, like the beat guys loving on former Tigers.

I’m sure I’m guilty of it.  I try to be honest about free agents that I think he would go after, but I’m sure some of my personal bias gets in the way a bit.

[casimir]

5 hours ago, RatkoVarda said:

Lange DFA'ed

Fine by me.  He had control issues before the layoff, no reason to think he’ll suddenly figure it out now.

[casimir]

2 hours ago, chasfh said:

Or he’s just plain unfixable.

You might be on to something.

[IdahoBert]

Two Cy Youngs in a row. Snore… This was yesterday‘s news before it became today’s news. This was inevitable. Not a lot of speculation about who would trip up his chance this year either. Last year it was Clase. Ha! 

[Tiger337]

35 minutes ago, casimir said:

I’m sure I’m guilty of it.  I try to be honest about free agents that I think he would go after, but I’m sure some of my personal bias gets in the way a bit.

Maybe they do it elsewhere, but I don't really see anybody here doing what Edman said.  It is mostly posters talking about who they hope he signs or others talking sardonically about how he'll only sign injured pitchers and waiver wire guys.  

[Tiger337]

13 hours ago, chasfh said:

Oh, that’s right, now I remember—we were talking about this and I didn’t help close the loop on it.

Of course I get that WAR is, at its core, a business metric: if we lose our current major leaguer to injury or gambling or whatever, how many wins would we lose on a season-adjusted basis if we have to replace him with a freely-available replacement player? That is what the acronym stands for, after all: Wins Above Replacement. (Remember when Prospectus call their similar statistic “WARP”? I wonder what the P stood for … ?)

I thought I saw this in this here thread, although maybe not, but I do remember seeing somewhere that inherently, the first base position is worth something like -12 runs (or -1.2 wins) defensively, and shortstop is worth +9 defensive runs (or +0.9 wins), versus the average player regardless of position. The numbers I’m using are probably not right, but that’s the principle, anyway. So, to fill the position to some minimally acceptable standard such that an organization can field at least a replacement-level team, they would be willing to accept up to, but not exceeding, two wins less at the plate (i.e., 1.2 plus -0.9 = 2.1) from a shortstop than a first baseman to even them out. OK, makes sense.

However, we fans also have evolved (or devolved, take your pick) to using WAR as a rule-of-thumb overall benchmark stat to estimate the value of a player on the field, and not as much economically. As such, we see WAR as roughly summing up a player’s oWAR and dWAR, so if he has 5.0 oWAR and -2.0 dWAR, his overall WAR is about 3.0. OK.

And I can accept the idea that on average, the league’s first basemen combine to lose, on average, -1.2 games in defense for their respective teams, whereas the leagues shortstops combine to win, on average, +0.9 on defense for their teams, all when compared to a league’s average player regardless of position. I can wrap my head around this.

The disconnect for me is how the league’s DHs could be considered to lose, on average, -1.7 games on defense for their teams, since that’s what their dWAR suggests. Again, I get that WAR is an economic metric for front offices to evaluate the acquisition or deployment of a player to DH versus the average positionless player. But if first basemen and shortstops can be reduced to an average defensive value for economic purposes based on how many games the average one of them wins or loses for their average teams on the field, how can DHs be evaluated defensively in such a way when their contribution to a team’s actual defense on the field is N/A?

Maybe the answer is that we need a different bottomline metric to evaluate a player’s on-field performance, as opposed his economic value, such that DHs’ defensive value is properly regarded as zero, so DHs spend zero time on defense. Maybe that’s what it comes down to?

So, do you think the DH should get no points subtracted for his fielding, but it's OK for the first baseman to lose 1.2 points just for being a first baseman?  How is that fair?  Or is it just the presentation that bothers you?  The points that a first baseman loses does not represent defensive runs lost by the first baseman.  The first baseman gets positional points subtracted for the same reason a DH gets points subtracted.  It's just a way to separate the contribution of a shortstop from a player who plays a less challenging positon.  I don't really care about the business side of the game.  I use WAR as a back of the napkin way to compare players total contribution to his team.  I don't know if they did the positional adjustments exactly right, but if I am comparing two players and one is a shortstop and one is a DH, I need to to give the shortstop credit for playing a position which the DH can't play.  The presentation could be better, but I don't think there is a logic error.  

[gehringer_2]

5 hours ago, chasfh said:

Or he’s just plain unfixable.

I think a lot of guys who wash out early in a career  probably do it because of unhealed/unfixable physical deficits that don't get talked about a lot because it's just accepted that's the way it is. It's not like they forget how to do the things that got them to the big leagues, but wear and tear (or worse) happen to where they just can't get back to where they were.

[gehringer_2]

53 minutes ago, Tiger337 said:

The presentation could be better, but I don't think there is a logic error.  

I think what seems weak to me, is that it is easy enough to define an average, or alternately a replacement level (the difference is just a matter of picking a baseline) hitter because fundamentally every player is the is in the same situation when he steps in the batter's and every PA by every player has the same potential to influence the game in the same ways. But this isn't true on the defensive side, so I guess I might argue that there really isn't such thing a replacement level defensive  player *in general* as there is for hitters, there is only replacement level defense at a given position. When your 1st baseman goes out on the field, he does not have the potential to influence the game the same way SS does no matter what he does. So there is fundamental difference to conceptualizing a replacement hitter vs a replacement defender. That's what produces the strangeness for me.

And maybe the other aspect is as you note, the positional adjustment are correct (assumedly -) for looking a players total contribution value. But adding WAR totals is also a way to look at teams, and again, I think there is an oddness there which comes back to my point that you can't play nine SSs in the field. The win contribution to the team makes more sense to me in terms of the total differential value from replacement taken position by position. Now maybe that all comes out in wash as a matter of non-linearly independent sets/redundant differentials, but if so the way it works still seems intuitively awkward for defense.

Edited Thursday at 05:34 AM by gehringer_2

[gehringer_2]

3 hours ago, IdahoBert said:

Two Cy Youngs in a row. Snore… This was yesterday‘s news before it became today’s news. This was inevitable. Not a lot of speculation about who would trip up his chance this year either. Last year it was Clase. Ha! 

Stat of the day: 8 of the last 15 AL CY's have been won by either current or former Tiger pitchers. 

Edited Thursday at 05:43 AM by gehringer_2

[IdahoBert]

5 hours ago, gehringer_2 said:

Stat of the day: 8 of the last 15 AL CY's have been won by either current or former Tiger pitchers. 

Wow. If we still lived in an era where players were property on the plantation or at least clubs had more continuity, it’s interesting to conjecture what the team‘s overall record would’ve been. 

[chasfh]

10 hours ago, Tiger337 said:

Maybe they do it elsewhere, but I don't really see anybody here doing what Edman said.  It is mostly posters talking about who they hope he signs or others talking sardonically about how he'll only sign injured pitchers and waiver wire guys.  

I think what we see far more often is people projecting their frustrations onto Scott Harris when they say he will never, ever spend on free agents, or that he is too craven or stupid or cheap or incompetent or negligent in how he has developed the roster so far because he has failed to sign the biggest free agents, and failed to trade for the best controllable players in the game. I do believe some of that angst is borne of fans being scarred by the gross incompetence of the Avila Reign of Error.

[chasfh]

8 hours ago, Tiger337 said:

So, do you think the DH should get no points subtracted for his fielding, but it's OK for the first baseman to lose 1.2 points just for being a first baseman?  How is that fair?  Or is it just the presentation that bothers you?  The points that a first baseman loses does not represent defensive runs lost by the first baseman.  The first baseman gets positional points subtracted for the same reason a DH gets points subtracted.  It's just a way to separate the contribution of a shortstop from a player who plays a less challenging positon.  I don't really care about the business side of the game.  I use WAR as a back of the napkin way to compare players total contribution to his team.  I don't know if they did the positional adjustments exactly right, but if I am comparing two players and one is a shortstop and one is a DH, I need to to give the shortstop credit for playing a position which the DH can't play.  The presentation could be better, but I don't think there is a logic error.  

I’m not trying to be unfair, and I am not trying to be illogical about it. I’m trying to make sense of the mathematical part of the equation and what it represents.

Honest question—why do you think the first base position has defensive runs subtracted as a baseline in the first place?

[Tiger337]

26 minutes ago, chasfh said:

I’m not trying to be unfair, and I am not trying to be illogical about it. I’m trying to make sense of the mathematical part of the equation and what it represents.

Honest question—why do you think the first base position has defensive runs subtracted as a baseline in the first place?

Because playing shortstop contributes more value to winning games than playing first base.  Similarly playing first base contributes a little more value to winning games than being a dh.  What if they all started out at zero (as Echoes suggested) and you added 25 points for being a shortstop and 5 points for being a frst baseman .  The designated hitter stays at zero.  The next step is to add or subtract points for being a good or bad fielder at your position.  Again the designated hitter can not gain or lose any points here.   Does this make more sense?  You would end up with the same result.  

[Tiger337]

16 hours ago, 4hzglory said:

Everyone is missing the main part of this transaction, we claimed Dugan Darnell  

https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/d/darnedu01.shtml?utm_medium=linker&utm_source=www.mlbtraderumors.com&utm_campaign=2025-11-12_br

Harris is making bold moves already! It's going to be a wild off-season.  

[Tiger337]

I was wondering why the Tigers needed to drop Lange to make room for Darnell since I thought their 40-man roster was at 39.  Then I saw they had signed Jack Little.  Harris is wheeling and dealing!

Jack Little sounds like a name you come up with a little too fast when you need a fake identity,  

Edited Thursday at 02:54 PM by Tiger337

[Tigermojo]

2 minutes ago, IdahoBert said:

Dugan Darnell… It’s a small sample but in 11 2/3 innings he tallied seven walks and five strikeouts. Maybe dropping Lange for him is a case of embracing the bad you don’t know over the bad you do know. They must’ve seen something in him that the stats can’t record.

His minor league stats are better but I'm sure they will try to pass both him and Little through waivers at some point. More roster churn.

[Toddwert]

31 minutes ago, Tiger337 said:

I was wondering why the Tigers needed to drop Lange to make room for Darnell since I thought their 40-man roster was at 39.  Then I saw they had signed Jack Little.  Harris is wheeling and dealing!

Jack Little sounds like a name you come up with a little too fast when you need a fake identity,  

George Glasses cousin 

[4hzglory]

1 hour ago, Tiger337 said:

Because playing shortstop contributes more value to winning games than playing first base.  Similarly playing first base contributes a little more value to winning games than being a dh.  What if they all started out at zero (as Echoes suggested) and you added 25 points for being a shortstop and 5 points for being a frst baseman .  The designated hitter stays at zero.  The next step is to add or subtract points for being a good or bad fielder at your position.  Again the designated hitter can not gain or lose any points here.   Does this make more sense?  You would end up with the same result.  

I know the result would be the same, but yes, I do think that way makes more sense to me.  Instead of penalizing a position for offering less value, you are rewarding a position for providing more value.  

[chasfh]

2 hours ago, Tiger337 said:

Because playing shortstop contributes more value to winning games than playing first base.  Similarly playing first base contributes a little more value to winning games than being a dh.  What if they all started out at zero (as Echoes suggested) and you added 25 points for being a shortstop and 5 points for being a frst baseman .  The designated hitter stays at zero.  The next step is to add or subtract points for being a good or bad fielder at your position.  Again the designated hitter can not gain or lose any points here.   Does this make more sense?  You would end up with the same result.  

I'm already familiar with the idea of the defensive spectrum.

I'm asking why you think the subtraction from first base position is rendered in defensive runs.

[chasfh]

I would not be opposed to picking up Nolan Arenado for the next two years. 

Edited Thursday at 04:06 PM by chasfh

[Tenacious D]

54 minutes ago, chasfh said:

I would not be opposed to picking up Nolan Arenado for the next two years. 

I’m not sure he’s an upgrade at this point in his career over what we have in the mix at 3B.  A lot hinges on whether or not Torres comes back.

Edited Thursday at 05:01 PM by Tenacious D

[Tiger337]

1 hour ago, chasfh said:

I'm already familiar with the idea of the defensive spectrum.

I'm asking why you think the subtraction from first base position is rendered in defensive runs.

Is that's what you were asking the whole time? 

On B-ref, the positional adjustment is included in both OWAR and DWAR, so as you noticed they don't add to WAR.  I think it's done so you can compare players at different positions separately for both offense and defense.  OWAR kind of makes sense.  It's like the old BP WARP before they had defensive measures.  Putting the adjustment into  DWAR is not very useful since the adjustment was already made in OWAR. 

This is the second time we have had this discussion and I finally think I understand what you were asking!  I agree with you, assuming that's what you were asking!  I think Gehringer asked something different which threw me off.  

Edited Thursday at 05:30 PM by Tiger337

[KL2]

1 hour ago, chasfh said:

I would not be opposed to picking up Nolan Arenado for the next two years. 

I know baseball players can be dumb but nobody is asking you to live in the bad part. Detroit like every other major city in the nation has suburbs. Many of them are safe, have good schools are interchangable. Highland Park, Grosse Pointe, Coral Gables. Are they really that different?