05/30/2026 2:10p EDT Detroit Tigers at Chicago White Sox

[Sports_Freak]

23 minutes ago, chasfh said:

Larry Walker has a higher WAR than Tony Gwynn. But why do think that makes WAR a flawed stat? Why do you think Tony Gwynn should be considered much better than Larry Walker? I’ve included some head to head stats to make it easy for you to make your case to us.

 

 

Now pit ballpark factors into consideration. Tony Gwynn was a generational player...Walkers success came in a band box at a mile above sea level. But...whatever..I really don't care. If Harris used stats to build the 2026 Tigers . .look at the results. Go ahead and defend him.

[chasfh]

6 minutes ago, Sports_Freak said:

Now pit ballpark factors into consideration. Tony Gwynn was a generational player...Walkers success came in a band box at a mile above sea level. But...whatever..I really don't care. If Harris used stats to build the 2026 Tigers . .look at the results. Go ahead and defend him.

It looks like you do care because of the way you brought it up, but that’s fine, we can drop it.

I do think Larry Walker’s career is at least the equal of Tony Gwynn’s.

[Sports_Freak]

Just now, chasfh said:

It looks like you do care because of the way you brought it up, but that’s fine, we can drop it.

I do think Larry Walker’s career is at least the equal of Tony Gwynn’s.

You think wrong. And don't blame me, argue with Google. It was a copy and paste job. And you sure like dropping things as you try to get a last word in. So yeah, drop it because I really, seriously, dont care about comparing meaningless stats between Walker and Gwynn. Who cares? Harris and Hinch both suck and should be fired. Makes fans with fot the Al Avila glory days...😅😅😅

[chasfh]

15 hours ago, Sports_Freak said:

You think wrong. And don't blame me, argue with Google. It was a copy and paste job. And you sure like dropping things as you try to get a last word in. So yeah, drop it because I really, seriously, dont care about comparing meaningless stats between Walker and Gwynn. Who cares? Harris and Hinch both suck and should be fired. Makes fans with fot the Al Avila glory days...😅😅😅

Please, relax. None of this is serious. This is supposed to be fun.

Edited 7 hours ago by chasfh

[Tiger337]

20 hours ago, gehringer_2 said:

Analytics is no panacea in the player development process, it's still only a tool that can tell you much more accurately what a guy is now, and help you show a guy what to do next; but projecting what guys will be in two or three years after they put in more or less work or get more or less strong or big or do or don't take care of their conditioning or end up more or less injured is still a very inexact science because you have a very non-analytic human being at the center of the process - and great analytics is also no guarantee you have the good coaching to pair with it. You're not going to improve many players by just throwing spreadsheets at them - you need people with people skills to instruct and motivate.

I would assume they are doing that too.  But that's something that fans can't see. We can't realistically critique a manager or gm for using a player who we think has a bad attitude or is "mentally weak" or doesn't work hard enough.  We don't know. 

 

[Tiger337]

On 5/30/2026 at 11:06 PM, buddha said:

This is why you go for it when you have the chance.  you never know what next year brings.  progress is not linear.

 

Which is what the Tigers did by signing Valdez.  Some wanted them to sign a hitter instead, but I don't know who was realistically available.  I doubt they had the budget to do everything people wanted.  

[Tiger337]

16 hours ago, Sports_Freak said:

Now pit ballpark factors into consideration. Tony Gwynn was a generational player...Walkers success came in a band box at a mile above sea level. But...whatever..I really don't care. If Harris used stats to build the 2026 Tigers . .look at the results. Go ahead and defend him.

WAR does take ballpark factors into consideration.  All the statistics are adjusted for the average performance in the ballparks where players played.  In other words, Walker gets penalized for playing in Colorado.  Gwynn awas a great player, but he he is only "generational" if you consider batting average to be a good summary of player performance.  

[Shelton]

1 minute ago, Tiger337 said:

Which is what the Tigers did by signing Valdez.  Some wanted them to sign a hitter instead, but I don't know who was realistically available.  I doubt they had the budget to do everything people wanted.  

I think that was more a comment regarding last season’s deadline. Personally, I’m not sure there is much else that can be said about the current season, so maybe dissecting last season again could be interesting. 
 

With the benefit of hindsight now, what could have been don’t differently a year ago at the deadline when we were on track for a bye? Can of worms opened. 

[Tigermojo]

8 minutes ago, Tiger337 said:

Which is what the Tigers did by signing Valdez.  Some wanted them to sign a hitter instead, but I don't know who was realistically available.  I doubt they had the budget to do everything people wanted.  

Murakami is the only one I can think of but he had question marks including would he even sign with Detroit. 

[Tiger337]

3 minutes ago, Shelton said:

I think that was more a comment regarding last season’s deadline. Personally, I’m not sure there is much else that can be said about the current season, so maybe dissecting last season again could be interesting. 
 

With the benefit of hindsight now, what could have been don’t differently a year ago at the deadline when we were on track for a bye? Can of worms opened. 

I don't think there were any Skubal type players available last year.  Mason Miller was probably the most impactful player traded.  He is not in the same class as Skubal in terms of going all-in for one year, but they would have been able to keep him for much longer.  I still wouldn't trade an elite hitting prospect for a reliever. 

[buddha]

31 minutes ago, Tiger337 said:

Which is what the Tigers did by signing Valdez.  Some wanted them to sign a hitter instead, but I don't know who was realistically available.  I doubt they had the budget to do everything people wanted.  

the process involved in signing valdez was sound.  it hasnt worked out yet because of the other injuries.

the process in bringing in morton and paddack last year was not sound, and it resulted in them losing the division.

perhaps if they had signed a bregman or a valdez-type at the beginning of last year, or traded for someone of that ilk, they would have been better?

we'll never know the answer, but my overall point was that when you have a generational talent who will likely only be with you for so long, you should try to maximize that window of contention, and they failed to do that the previous two seasons, imo.

i would say the same thing to the pirates with skeens.

[Tigermojo]

It was implied they would have had to trade Melton to acquire anyone good at last year's deadline. Melton was an important part of the playoffs. 

[Tiger337]

3 minutes ago, buddha said:

the process involved in signing valdez was sound.  it hasnt worked out yet because of the other injuries.

the process in bringing in morton and paddack last year was not sound, and it resulted in them losing the division.

perhaps if they had signed a bregman or a valdez-type at the beginning of last year, or traded for someone of that ilk, they would have been better?

we'll never know the answer, but my overall point was that when you have a generational talent who will likely only be with you for so long, you should try to maximize that window of contention, and they failed to do that the previous two seasons, imo.

i would say the same thing to the pirates with skeens.

I was definitely all in for a Bregman signing at the beginning of last year.  I think they tried.  Maybe they needed to be more creative? The Morton and Paddack trades were not significant moves and ended up hurting them.  

[Shelton]

21 minutes ago, buddha said:

the process involved in signing valdez was sound.  it hasnt worked out yet because of the other injuries.

the process in bringing in morton and paddack last year was not sound, and it resulted in them losing the division.

perhaps if they had signed a bregman or a valdez-type at the beginning of last year, or traded for someone of that ilk, they would have been better?

we'll never know the answer, but my overall point was that when you have a generational talent who will likely only be with you for so long, you should try to maximize that window of contention, and they failed to do that the previous two seasons, imo.

i would say the same thing to the pirates with skeens.

I agree with alL of this except for the phrasing of the Morton/paddack “process” not being sound. The results were of course very bad, but I rarely agree with “the results speak for the themselves”.

For the same reason, I’m not sure whether you can say the process for signing Framber was sound. If he pitches to a 5 era over the next few seasons and we are stuck paying him a big chunk of our budget, the results will surely be bad. Signing Framber put us right up against the tax threshold, and that’s probably going to be fine because it doesn’t look like we will need to add anyone this year. 
 

But anyway, I agree that teams should lean into more present day risk when you are within a championship window. It sucks that they seemed to do so for this year only to get absolutely screwed in the luck/injury department. 
 

It could very well be the case that we had a nice offer on the table last year involving melton that we didn’t take. I think it’s clear any deal involving Kevin was rightfully declined. Maybe there was a deal to be made for max clark that we didn’t make. Hard to say. 
 

I do think they probably screwed up not getting the Bregman deal over the line last year.

[kdog]

22 minutes ago, Shelton said:

I agree with alL of this except for the phrasing of the Morton/paddack “process” not being sound. The results were of course very bad, but I rarely agree with “the results speak for the themselves”.

For the same reason, I’m not sure whether you can say the process for signing Framber was sound. If he pitches to a 5 era over the next few seasons and we are stuck paying him a big chunk of our budget, the results will surely be bad. Signing Framber put us right up against the tax threshold, and that’s probably going to be fine because it doesn’t look like we will need to add anyone this year. 
 

But anyway, I agree that teams should lean into more present day risk when you are within a championship window. It sucks that they seemed to do so for this year only to get absolutely screwed in the luck/injury department. 
 

It could very well be the case that we had a nice offer on the table last year involving melton that we didn’t take. I think it’s clear any deal involving Kevin was rightfully declined. Maybe there was a deal to be made for max clark that we didn’t make. Hard to say. 
 

I do think they probably screwed up not getting the Bregman deal over the line last year.

The Paddack and Morton deals just follow the Harris inertia style of management..low-risk, nothing moves. The passage of time and eventually things will turn around...optionality, flexibility, sustainability. They don't have to pick a lane.

If this is a draft and development shop, you can't have so much dead weight on the payroll. If it's a go for it shop, you have to self scout and realize that some of the platoon/pinch hit guys have to be churned through.

[SoCalTiger]

1 hour ago, Tiger337 said:

I was definitely all in for a Bregman signing at the beginning of last year.  I think they tried.  Maybe they needed to be more creative? The Morton and Paddack trades were not significant moves and ended up hurting them.  

Bregman/Boras wanted 200 million. It was both too high an ask and also the time to just overpay. We offered 171ish..whats the difference ? If you wanted the player it required a premium for him to choose Detroit over Boston etc. and we got cute.

Haivng said that it's still possible he would have said no. 

[gehringer_2]

2 hours ago, Tiger337 said:

I would assume they are doing that too.  But that's something that fans can't see. We can't realistically critique a manager or gm for using a player who we think has a bad attitude or is "mentally weak" or doesn't work hard enough.  We don't know. 

 

the point only being that just because you are good at analytics, all the other stuff doesn't necessarily follow, so being a great analytics org is no guarantee of being a winning org. And one can go further to say the analytics expertise doesn't even have any particular correlation to capability in those other organizational requirements.

While it's certainly a requirement to compete with the orgs that have it, it is not sufficient by itself. Plus you can put all the right data in front of a decision maker and they can still make the wrong decision. The decision is still subject to human variables.

You're right, we can't see all a lot of this, and the Det sports press is useless at getting inside stories from players or coaches, all we see are the results.

This just another aspect of the ongoing discussion about evaluating FOs. It's not enough to do one thing  -say analytics driven drafting and development - well, there are still trades to make and contracts decisions to manage and competent personnel to put in place. You can't fail badly at any aspect and succeed overall no matter how good you may be in one niche.

Edited 4 hours ago by gehringer_2

[Tiger337]

7 minutes ago, gehringer_2 said:

the point only being that just because you are good at analytics, all the other stuff doesn't necessarily follow, so being a great analytics org is no guarantee of being a winning org. And one can go further to say the analytics expertise doesn't even have any particular correlation to capability in those other organizational requirements.

While it's certainly a requirement to compete with the orgs that have it, it is not sufficient by itself. Plus you can put all the right data in front of a decision maker and they can still make the wrong decision. The decision is still subject to human variables.

 

I agree with that.  Another element is the ability to work with agents and to negotiate trades.  

[Sports_Freak]

5 hours ago, Tiger337 said:

WAR does take ballpark factors into consideration.  All the statistics are adjusted for the average performance in the ballparks where players played.  In other words, Walker gets penalized for playing in Colorado.  Gwynn awas a great player, but he he is only "generational" if you consider batting average to be a good summary of player performance.  

And cherry picking a single stat to compare players is exactly what the Google AI was talking about. Put Walker in San Diego for his entire career against Gwynn and it would show Gwynn as a much, much better hitter. At least, that was what that AI was implying. IDK, I really have no opinion, I never got a chance to see either player very often.

[gehringer_2]

43 minutes ago, Sports_Freak said:

And cherry picking a single stat to compare players is exactly what the Google AI was talking about. Put Walker in San Diego for his entire career against Gwynn and it would show Gwynn as a much, much better hitter. At least, that was what that AI was implying. IDK, I really have no opinion, I never got a chance to see either player very often.

Give me the best bat on ball skill player of his generation and I can  appreciated if he stands alone with respect to that skill, yet still understand that that much skill aimed at batting average becomes art for art's sake, which is fine, but it isn't necessarily the best way to win baseball games.