2022 DETROIT TIGERS REGULAR SEASON THREAD

[sabretooth]

2 minutes ago, buddha said:

steve stone was on the sox game talking about how so many pitchers are relying so heavily on sliders and that's why there have been so many injuries to pitchers.

Yep.  Maybe teams dont care yet, but I would hope that at some point we will see a return to curveballs and sinkers out of a sense of survival for/by pitchers.

[sabretooth]

1 hour ago, gehringer_2 said:

If the FO had been right about Schoop, Candelario, Castro, Barnhart, Grossman, Meadows, and Mize/Skubal/Faedo/Rodriguez don't go down, this might have been a successful year and it would have covered whatever issues there are in the org for more time. By the same token right now, as bad as things may be, they look even worse because this season has been such a perfect storm of disaster. But what has happened this season is a combination of misjudgment of talent or mismanagement of same. Either way the buck stopped with Al for those things. The only question left for me is whether mismanagement was significant and how much lies at Hinch's door. In the end I doubt it matters as I don't see Ilitch eating Hinch's contract at least through the next year.

I am fine giving AJ another shot, but if it keeps up like this they will obviously need to move on.

[gkelly]

3 hours ago, gehringer_2 said:

If the FO had been right about Schoop, Candelario, Castro, Barnhart, Grossman, Meadows, and Mize/Skubal/Faedo/Rodriguez don't go down, this might have been a successful year

So they only needed 10 players to be exactly opposite of what they were and they would have been successful?  That is a lot of misses.

[gehringer_2]

43 minutes ago, gkelly said:

So they only needed 10 players to be exactly opposite of what they were and they would have been successful?  That is a lot of misses.

exactly. At what point do have to believe it is more than bad luck?

[gehringer_2]

2 hours ago, buddha said:

steve stone was on the sox game talking about how so many pitchers are relying so heavily on sliders and that's why there have been so many injuries to pitchers.

I tend to think a good many people in the game believe this, but since they have no idea what to do about it, it doesn't much merit talking about. If pitchers find they are suddenly more successful  - esp at pushing up their K rate - after they start throwing a hard slider, how would you go about stopping them anyway? Again, maybe this is something that is just another long term result of the rabbit ball and the absolute need to prevent balls in play - or maybe the slider is just easier to command than a change-up or curve so it's harder to get guys to learn the latter, especially on their way up when they might have the time needed to refine the more difficult pitch. Plus now you have the reduced minor leagues and shorter draft increasing pressure on pitchers to reach a high level fast.

[casimir]

8 hours ago, gehringer_2 said:

exactly. At what point do have to believe it is more than bad luck?

Could it be that bridging from the 2021 season to expectations for 2022 ignored that there might have been a bunch of good luck buried in the 2021 results?

[Tigeraholic1]

 

[SoCalTiger]

Seems like a good reply from Hinch and like he’s holding back not to trash Al in his absence. Maybe it’s the main reason Al is gone and “Uncoolbaugh” isn’t ??

But still Hinch has been here two years and we don’t know how hard if any he pushed for change. 

[RandyMarsh]

OPS wise this is the worst offense the MLB has seen in atleast 50 years, for the Tigers this is the worst offense in well over a 100 years. Just absolutely historically bad. 

[bobrob2004]

23 minutes ago, RandyMarsh said:

OPS wise this is the worst offense the MLB has seen in atleast 50 years, for the Tigers this is the worst offense in well over a 100 years. Just absolutely historically bad. 

I remember how bad the offense was in 02-03.  I can't believe it's even worse this year. 

Edited August 21, 2022 by bobrob2004

[Edman85]

3 hours ago, bobrob2004 said:

I remember how bad the offense was in 02-03.  I can't believe it's even worse this year. 

It may not be once you factor in run scoring environment.

(looks it up).

It is worse even when you factor in environment.

[SeattleMike]

5 hours ago, RandyMarsh said:

OPS wise this is the worst offense the MLB has seen in atleast 50 years, for the Tigers this is the worst offense in well over a 100 years. Just absolutely historically bad. 

No sugarcoating how wretchedly bad this year's offense is. But the 2019 offense rivals this year for ineptitude. The 2022 offense is 1.13 runs worse than league average. The 2019 offense was 1.22 runs worse. If you look at the numbers by percentage this year's offense is 26% worse than league average and 2019 was 25% worse so one could argue this year is actually worse. Any way you slice it the Tigers have featured two historically bad offenses in two of the last four years.  

[Motor City Sonics]

Robbie Grossman spends a week in Atlanta and they fixed him. 

Or - they undid what the Tigers staff did to him.

Now I am starting to understand why all these guys on our team are having the worst years of their careers at the same time. 

I think they are filling the Tigers hitters heads with too much information and those guys are up there thinking too much instead of just doing what they have been doing since they were kids.  

If AJ failed to recognize this might have been a problem, why the hell is he in on picking the new GM? 

I just so bad in so many ways.  

I have no hope for the next 3 years.  

[RatkoVarda]

when they DFA Candy, safe to assume he will return to his normal decent level of production with his new team.

what an absolute cluster the whole organization is.

Soon after the trade, however, analysts from Braves baseball operations presented video to hitting coach Kevin Seitzer that showed what Grossman was doing differently from past seasons when he’d thrived against righties. The outlook started to change.

If Grossman saw the same things they were seeing and was willing to work right away on adjustments, Seitzer and the Braves analytics experts thought he might be more than a right-handed hitting platoon player to share left-field duties with Eddie Rosario, as originally planned.

To say that it’s worked as hoped would be an understatement.

[bobrob2004]

The new market inefficiency: grab players that the Tigers have ruined and revert them back to the hitter they used to be. 

Edited August 22, 2022 by bobrob2004

[casimir]

57 minutes ago, RatkoVarda said:

when they DFA Candy, safe to assume he will return to his normal decent level of production with his new team.

what an absolute cluster the whole organization is.

Soon after the trade, however, analysts from Braves baseball operations presented video to hitting coach Kevin Seitzer that showed what Grossman was doing differently from past seasons when he’d thrived against righties. The outlook started to change.

If Grossman saw the same things they were seeing and was willing to work right away on adjustments, Seitzer and the Braves analytics experts thought he might be more than a right-handed hitting platoon player to share left-field duties with Eddie Rosario, as originally planned.

To say that it’s worked as hoped would be an understatement.

Wasn't Coolbaugh the "hitting" coach last season when Grossman had a career season?

[gehringer_2]

so anyone wondering why one would be cooling on AJ Hinch, the Grossman situation is exactly the kind of thing which has to make you wonder. Here are the possible scenarios. 

1) Grossman scuffles all season and AJ never says to Coolbaugh: "Scot, have you looked at Robbie's video? What's going on with him?"  - failure on AJ's part bigtime.

2)Hinch does say it to Coolbaugh, Scott says "Can't see a thing chief"  _ failure on Coobaugh's part - why is he still here? And thus by indirection fail on Hinch's part.

3) Coolbaugh says "all that stuff is at Lakeland, we can't get at it"  - this is a little grayer - certainly an organizational fail and Avila has taken the fall for that, but you mean to tell me AJ couldn't have gone to Al and say "This is what I need, now."  Fail on multiple levels.

And the point is it doesn't even matter if Robbie is fixed long term or just short term. The point is there was something there to see and the Tigers didn't see it, didn't look for it. If making sure that kind of thing doesn't happen isn't part of what you pay a manager for, what is?

What scenario is there where you can absolve the manager when something like this breaks?

Edited August 22, 2022 by gehringer_2

[mtutiger]

1 hour ago, RatkoVarda said:

when they DFA Candy, safe to assume he will return to his normal decent level of production with his new team.

what an absolute cluster the whole organization is.

Soon after the trade, however, analysts from Braves baseball operations presented video to hitting coach Kevin Seitzer that showed what Grossman was doing differently from past seasons when he’d thrived against righties. The outlook started to change.

If Grossman saw the same things they were seeing and was willing to work right away on adjustments, Seitzer and the Braves analytics experts thought he might be more than a right-handed hitting platoon player to share left-field duties with Eddie Rosario, as originally planned.

To say that it’s worked as hoped would be an understatement.

Alternatively, maybe the Tigers tender Candy, then hire a new GM who then hires new people to help players like Candy revert to decent prodcution.

Maybe Dana Brown, for instance, can bring some Braves folks into the Tigers org.

[RatkoVarda]

22 minutes ago, casimir said:

Wasn't Coolbaugh the "hitting" coach last season when Grossman had a career season?

yes, and the league adjusted and then they could find no counter move.

[oblong]

30 minutes ago, gehringer_2 said:

so anyone wondering why one would be cooling on AJ Hinch, the Grossman situation is exactly the kind of thing which has to make you wonder. Here are the possible scenarios. 

1) Grossman scuffles all season and AJ never says to Coolbaugh: "Scot, have you looked at Robbie's video? What's going on with him?"  - failure on AJ's part bigtime.

2)Hinch does say it to Coolbaugh, Scott says "Can't see a thing chief"  _ failure on Coobaugh's part - why is he still here? And thus by indirection fail on Hinch's part.

3) Coolbaugh says "all that stuff is at Lakeland, we can't get at it"  - this is a little grayer - certainly an organizational fail and Avila has taken the fall for that, but you mean to tell me AJ couldn't have gone to Al and say "This is what I need, now."  Fail on multiple levels.

And the point is it doesn't even matter if Robbie is fixed long term or just short term. The point is there was something there to see and the Tigers didn't see it, didn't look for it. If making sure that kind of thing doesn't happen isn't part of what you pay a manager for, what is?

What scenario is there where you can absolve the manager when something like this breaks?

Option 4)  Hinch and Coolbaugh do look at the video but the systems and tools are not as useful as what the Braves had

Option 5) Hinch and Coolbaugh do look at the video, Grossman makes adjustments, they don't work and the adjustments made by Grossman in the Braves are short term.  Maybe he tried them here and the pitchers were too good or he was unlucky.

Looking at video seems such an obvious thing to do that I have a hard time concluding nobody thought to do it.

 

[bobrob2004]

4 minutes ago, oblong said:

Option 4)  Hinch and Coolbaugh do look at the video but the systems and tools are not as useful as what the Braves had

Option 5) Hinch and Coolbaugh do look at the video, Grossman makes adjustments, they don't work and the adjustments made by Grossman in the Braves are short term.  Maybe he tried them here and the pitchers were too good or he was unlucky.

Looking at video seems such an obvious thing to do that I have a hard time concluding nobody thought to do it.

 

Hinch made the statement that they need to get better in this area, implying that they didn't have the means to fix Grossman.

[RatkoVarda]

what the tigers could not fix in 4 months, the Braves fixed in 4 days. that's pure failure.

[RandyMarsh]

I'm not ready to say Grossman has been fixed just yet. Believe me I want another reason to bash Coolbaugh and company as much as the next person but its still a very small sample size.

I thought Candy may have been fixed a few weeks ago when he was on a near month long tear only for him to revert back to his April and May form the last couple weeks.

[sabretooth]

The thing with Grossman aren't the numbers per se, it's the fact that Grossman said that he was fixed by the Braves' staff and wished that he could have had that kind of help in Detroit.  It's a PR problem for Hinch, who up to this point has had no answers for the Tigers incredibly bad hitting this year.

Grossman has always been a specialist against LHP, and at his age that's what will keep him around if he does last.  As with all LHP hitting specialists, he has to be able to hit against RHP half-way decently to warrant a roster spot.  He always did that before 2022.  He couldn't hit RHP at all in 2022 before ATL, and now he is hitting them a little bit.  It's probably a combination of his state of mind with a change of scenery and a new ballclub, a helpful tip from the ATL staff, and some luck. 

As RandyMarsh suggested, let's check back in a couple of weeks and see what it all looks like.  Probably will look more like Paredes did after he came back to Earth.

[sabretooth]

59 minutes ago, oblong said:

Option 4)  Hinch and Coolbaugh do look at the video but the systems and tools are not as useful as what the Braves had

Option 5) Hinch and Coolbaugh do look at the video, Grossman makes adjustments, they don't work and the adjustments made by Grossman in the Braves are short term.  Maybe he tried them here and the pitchers were too good or he was unlucky.

Looking at video seems such an obvious thing to do that I have a hard time concluding nobody thought to do it.

The Grossman thing is a useful stand-in to highlight the overall failures of the offense this year.  It may be indicative of what's going on, or it might be just blind luck/happenstance.

My **guess** is that Hinch and his staff go through a process and execute their philosophy/approach, but it's fallen apart this year because of a number of factors:

- the change in the baseball hurt this team more than others because our hitters were already worse/older/more marginally talented and thus were more impacted by a change in the baseballs;

- the NL-to-AL switch kneecapped Baez for the first two months, he has since recovered his swing, but his overall stats still suck, his basic hitting approach looks bad, he makes too many throwing errors, and the rest of the team is so bad, that people don't feel like appreciating his recovery to normal since the middle of June.

- Meadows having every medical issue under the Sun

The first factor (baseballs) I don't think adequately explains Schoop, Candy, or Tork all imploding.  They are not marginal talents nor does age (youth in Tork's case and age in Schoop's case) explain why they would be that bad, nor does Candy's up-and-down history explain why he would be this bad at the same time as the others.

If Schoop, Candy, and Tork were OPS+ around 95-100 and just mediocre, that would be one thing.  But being mired in the 50-70 range?  All of them?  AND Baez?  AND the historically below-average Barnhart becomes a complete black hole?

Certainly, these kinds of things happen to every team to some extent.  Successful teams have good players who suddenly can't hit.  Sometimes being a successful team gives you more options to deal with player failure, sometimes being a bad team gives you more options.  

And sometimes like the Tigers this year, the GM is unable for a host of reasons to do anything mid-season to correct things.  If the GM/Front Office had remained frozen in indecision it would be so much worse -- at least firing AA creates a possible positive inflection point.