2025-2026 Tigers Off Season Thread

[Sports_Freak]

4 hours ago, SoCalTiger said:

Strange they left him unprotected but I would probably be talking about someone else we lost if they did. 

You never know, he may be returned from Colorado, pitching there can be a....challenge. But yeah, he was the 1st player taken. He throws 97...

[papalawrence]

1 hour ago, Sports_Freak said:

You never know, he may be returned from Colorado, pitching there can be a....challenge. But yeah, he was the 1st player taken. He throws 97...

BA did a podcast after the draft. One guy said Petit is better than half the relief pitchers on the Rockies and he expects him to stick there. 

[romad1]

Imagine some [blank] narratives are forming around the disparity of power for those who can spend anything and those who cannot.   

[chasfh]

mlb.tv is owned by Baseball and its owners. Just sayin’.

[chasfh]

23 hours ago, Tiger337 said:

You could do the same thing with almost any teams draft picks if you want to make them look bad.  As for Greene, I think you are vastly overestimating the value of draft picks.  The median value of a 5th pick in the draft is zero career WAR.   

So if the median value of a fifth overall pick is zero career WAR, then why was Avila tanking the franchise to get a pick that high in the first place?

[Tiger337]

3 minutes ago, chasfh said:

So if the median value of a fifth overall pick is zero career WAR, then why was Avila tanking the franchise to get a pick that high in the first place?

Good question.  Why do so many teams do that?  I think it's more owners wanting to save money on salaries during lean years than anything else.  I means it's good to get high draft picks because a moderate percentage do end up making good contributions, so if you collect enough of them, you'll get some hits.  However, I have never been a proponent of deliberate total re-builds.  

[chasfh]

I doubt we will have to worry about that with the new guy, but if Harris ever were to engage in tanking while with the Tigers, I will jump on the Dump Harris bandwagon along with some of the others. Also, I will jump back on the Sell the Team, Baby Doc bandwagon.

[Tiger337]

16 minutes ago, chasfh said:

I doubt we will have to worry about that with the new guy, but if Harris ever were to engage in tanking while with the Tigers, I will jump on the Dump Harris bandwagon along with some of the others. Also, I will jump back on the Sell the Team, Baby Doc bandwagon.

I've been told that tanking is a necessary part of baseball for small and mid market teams, but I've never believed it.  

[KL2]

7 minutes ago, Tiger337 said:

I've been told that tanking is a necessary part of baseball for small and mid market teams, but I've never believed it.  

Yes rebuilding is a necessary part. Nobody has been good for 100 years

[KL2]

2 hours ago, chasfh said:

So if the median value of a fifth overall pick is zero career WAR, then why was Avila tanking the franchise to get a pick that high in the first place?

Cause the general overall ideas is bared out by stats. The higher you pick, the more likely you are to find a player that puts up a better career. 

"First round draftees had greater average career WAR compared to Rounds 2 to 20.Collectively, the first five picks had greater WAR versus picks grouped 16 through 30."
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/358010336_Major_League_Draft_WARs_An_Analysis_of_Wins_Above_Replacement_in_Player_Selection

Of course there is wide variance and there is no fool proof strategey. Some top picks in baseball bust, there are late round gems, just like any other sport. But the best way to find, afford and control top tier baseball is through the draft and the best chance to get that kind of guy is still by picking as high as possible.

Edited yesterday at 05:40 PM by KL2

[Tiger337]

2 minutes ago, KL2 said:

Cause the general overall ideas is bared out by stats. The higher you pick, the more likely you are to find a player that puts up a better career. 

"First round draftees had greater average career WAR compared to Rounds 2 to 20.Collectively, the first five picks had greater WAR versus picks grouped 16 through 30."
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/358010336_Major_League_Draft_WARs_An_Analysis_of_Wins_Above_Replacement_in_Player_Selection

Average is deceptive, because there is a small number of top players that inflate it.  The median player is much closer to zero.  It is good to get high picks, but the value gets overstated.  I don't believe the risk/reward is worth going through multiple years of crap teams to try to get good again.  

[chasfh]

8 minutes ago, KL2 said:

Cause the general overall ideas is bared out by stats. The higher you pick, the more likely you are to find a player that puts up a better career. 

"First round draftees had greater average career WAR compared to Rounds 2 to 20.Collectively, the first five picks had greater WAR versus picks grouped 16 through 30."
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/358010336_Major_League_Draft_WARs_An_Analysis_of_Wins_Above_Replacement_in_Player_Selection

That sounds good in principle, and this makes sense if we are evaluating the efficacy of all first round picks versus all picks in later rounds. No argument with that conclusion here.

However, it was pointed out that the median WAR for fifth overall pick, specifically, is zero, meaning half of all fifth picks in the first round end up with that or less. With such a high failure rate, is it really worth it to crash a team into the rocks, flirting with or exceeding 100 losses, and driving fan and sponsor interest in your team and the revenues attended  to it way down, just to get that pick?

Edited yesterday at 05:45 PM by chasfh

[Tiger337]

9 minutes ago, KL2 said:

Yes rebuilding is a necessary part. Nobody has been good for 100 years

Not the kind of re-building where your team is crap for 3 or more years.  That's not necessary.

[Tiger337]

Chas and I are agreeing on something again.  Feels good.  😄

[chasfh]

11 minutes ago, KL2 said:

Yes rebuilding is a necessary part. Nobody has been good for 100 years

¬□(rebuilding = tanking)

[chasfh]

2 minutes ago, Tiger337 said:

Chas and I are agreeing on something again.  Feels good.  😄

If you weren't so ****ing obstinate you'd feel good a lot more! 😉😂

[KL2]

Just now, chasfh said:

That sounds good in principle, and this makes sense if we are evaluating the efficacy of all first round picks versus all picks in later rounds. No argument with that conclusion here.

However, it was pointed out that the median WAR for fifth overall pick , specifically, is zero, meaning half of all fifth picks in the first round end up with that or less. With such a high failure rate, is it really worth it to crash a team into the rocks, flirting with or exceeding 100 losses, and driving fan and sponsor interest in your team and the revenues attended down, just to get that pick?

Yes the stats say it is. Because while yes picking fift hmight mean half with less than a 0 war, but that means half are better. It also means at pick six, seven, eight, 14 that rate goes up even higher. So its 51 percent (just pulling out of my tail for discussion) at pick six that fail, in the aggregate form. 

The stats say pick as high as possible because that is your best chance to get that team controlled superstar. And the best chance is to pick as high as possible. If you get that superstar its improve your odd of winning in year 5 and 10 and not still be stuck in the mud. 

And other studies on attendance have show there is really only significant different between massive winning and massive losing. Losing 89 instead of say 96, does almost nothing to improve attendance. The only real attendance swings happen if a team goes from signficant winning to losing in a year or two or visa versa. So its not really losing revenue or interest to say lets lose 106 instead of 99, 91, or 85.

But again its just in theory no team or player is actively gonna go try to lose. For me its just an argument of in a lost year I'd rather have hte best odds to get better in the future than win an extra game or two and miss out on that superstar for just some instant gratification that isn't even that cause its still a bad team. 

[KL2]

5 minutes ago, Tiger337 said:

Not the kind of re-building where your team is crap for 3 or more years.  That's not necessary.

It almost always is unless you have oodles of money. 

[Tiger337]

1 minute ago, KL2 said:

 

But again its just in theory no team or player is actively gonna go try to lose. For me its just an argument of in a lost year I'd rather have hte best odds to get better in the future than win an extra game or two and miss out on that superstar for just some instant gratification that isn't even that cause its still a bad team. 

Yes, in one lost year, it is good to get a high pick, but if it requires gutting your organization to do so, that's going to lead to several lost years.  It worked for the Astros, but it doesn't usually work that well.  

[RatkoVarda]

3/45 for Saurez is painfully reasonable in both years and dollars

[4hzglory]

15 minutes ago, Tiger337 said:

Yes, in one lost year, it is good to get a high pick, but if it requires gutting your organization to do so, that's going to lead to several lost years.  It worked for the Astros, but it doesn't usually work that well.  

I don't agree with gutting your team for a high pick, but in the Tigers case of the middle of the Avila years, it didn't make sense to spend significant $ to be just mediocre instead of just bad.  For one, they weren't going to be able to spend enough to actually be good, and doing so would have meant not giving as many opportunities to other young players to evaluate and see if they would be part of the future.  The problem with the Avila years is too few of those young players ended up proving they belonged (Early on, some of that was due to the DD years). 

 

I guess what I'm saying is don't agree with intentionally tanking for a draft pick, but I also see no point in forcing teams to spend extra (for a limited time) just to move from bad to mediocre and potentially hinder the development/evaluation of the young players who could actually help them become good.

[4hzglory]

10 minutes ago, RatkoVarda said:

3/45 for Saurez is painfully reasonable in both years and dollars

Yes it does.  I would have liked us to be in on him for that - Maybe we were, but he chose Atlanta.

[Edman85]

The draft lottery has really changed the incentive structure around tanking. The value of draft picks is pretty high at the top of the draft, but the worst teams are not guaranteed to get those picks, and also get blocked out of the lottery if they win too often. The math has changed for the better.

[1984Echoes]

31 minutes ago, 4hzglory said:

... I guess what I'm saying is don't agree with intentionally tanking for a draft pick, but I also see no point in forcing teams to spend extra (for a limited time) just to move from bad to mediocre and potentially hinder the development/evaluation of the young players who could actually help them become good.

This is what I agree with.

I hate trying to go from bad to less-than-mediocre without draft and develop... Simply trying to buy one's way to mediocrity. I don't see the point. A core of any team should be one's own kids, and then use free agency to fill in gaps that get your team from above average to well-above-average (playoff contender) when the time is right. And not before then.

So it took quite a few drafts and quite a long time to re-develop our core. From the ground up. I expected nothing less.

Also, with respect to the Tigers after DD left... they got old fast. JV had a couple down years before he was traded, and then perked way up after getting traded. Miggy got old. Martinez, Kinsler, Fister, Anibal Sanchez... They got old fast. Zimmerman was a failed free agent signing... Castellanos couldn't catch squat at any position, but had a decent bat (and nothing else)...

This team became bad fast, and this was right after DD left us a pretty barren farm system. That takes years to fix, to draft and develop a new core.

That may upset quite a few people having to wait to completely rebuild the farm system and develop a brand new, winning core, but that's the way the cookie crumbles.

[Sports_Freak]

51 minutes ago, RatkoVarda said:

3/45 for Saurez is painfully reasonable in both years and dollars

I heard Alex Cobb is available for $15 million per year again this season.