General Tiger Discussion

[gehringer_2]

2 minutes ago, 1984Echoes said:

Like G2 says...

Hill makes the team out of ST; also... you're actually missing Tork on your roster there, although you have him in the lineup; and... I don't think Willi Castro makes the team out of ST, it'll be someone else they want to check out like Paredes or Clemens or...?

It would take a minor miracle for W Castro to make the team out of ST. 

[Tiger337]

14 minutes ago, gehringer_2 said:

It would take a minor miracle for W Castro to make the team out of ST. 

Right, Hinch pretty much said at the end of the season that Castro has a lot of work to do.  That work will almost surely come in Toledo

[Timmitch55]

We are a starter and a bullpen guy away from 90. A power OF would be nice...

[gehringer_2]

38 minutes ago, Timmitch55 said:

We are a starter and a bullpen guy away from 90. A power OF would be nice...

Riley Greene finds your lack of faith disturbing.

 

Edited December 20, 2021 by gehringer_2

[Tenacious D]

If Victor Reyes makes the team over Hill or Cameron, I’ll move to Canada.

[SoCalTiger]

 

Catchers - Tucker Barnhart, Eric Haase, Dustin Garneu

Infielders - Javier Baez, Miguel Cabrera, Jeimer Candelario, Harold Castro, Jonathan Schoop, Torkelson

Outfielders - Akil Baddoo, Riley Greene, Robert Grossman, Victor Reyes. 

Grossman, rf

Greene, cf 

Torkelson, 1b

Baez, SS

Candelario, 3b

Schoop, 2b

Cabreara, dh

Barnhart, c

Badoo, LF

 

Haase will play more outfield, DH and first base than catch or AAA. I fear he will wash out and I really like him.

[SoCalTiger]

6 minutes ago, Tenacious D said:

If Victor Reyes makes the team over Hill or Cameron, I’ll move to Canada.

I think he will..Oy

[gehringer_2]

21 minutes ago, Tenacious D said:

If Victor Reyes makes the team over Hill or Cameron, I’ll move to Canada.

Victor was off to a hot start in Venezuelan ball:

https://www.freep.com/story/sports/mlb/tigers/2021/12/14/detroit-tigers-winter-leagues-victor-reyes-joe-jimenez/6499707001/

[Dan Gilmore]

I had hopes for Daz, but so far they haven’t turned out to be much. Hill’s D is so good that I can put up with marginal O, just not sure of his healthiness. So both are flawed. As is Reyes. 
 

Moving to Canada? Sounds okay. 
 

Based just on stats, Reyes is an okay option among three suboptimal choices.

[Dan Gilmore]

I wouldn’t expect Garneau to make the team out of (Spring?) Training unless one of the other two is dinged up.

[RatkoVarda]

Baddoo presumably needs a RH partner for the short side of the platoon. Hill IMO has a slight lead over Reyes with Daz third. Hopefully one of the three steps up. 2 or those guys are going to Toledo, if HCastro and/or Haase is the 5th OF.

If Garneau is on the team, that says more about Hinch's opinion of Haase than anything else.

If/when Tork and Greene are up, bench is Haase, Harold, Parades, Hill.

[casimir]

13 hours ago, gehringer_2 said:

I haven't looked at the schedule but they usually leave a lot of off days for the 1st couple of weeks, so Hill probably makes the team out of ST, then someone gets cut once they need to add a pitcher.

Only 3 off days in April and 2 in May.  Season starts out west with 4 in Seattle and 3 in Oakland.

[Tigeraholic1]

3 hours ago, casimir said:

Only 3 off days in April and 2 in May.  Season starts out west with 4 in Seattle and 3 in Oakland.

I hate west coast swings....

[chasfh]

13 hours ago, SoCalTiger said:

 

 

Catchers - Tucker Barnhart, Eric Haase, Dustin Garneu

Infielders - Javier Baez, Miguel Cabrera, Jeimer Candelario, Harold Castro, Jonathan Schoop, Torkelson

Outfielders - Akil Baddoo, Riley Greene, Robert Grossman, Victor Reyes. 

Grossman, rf

Greene, cf 

Torkelson, 1b

Baez, SS

Candelario, 3b

Schoop, 2b

Cabreara, dh

Barnhart, c

Badoo, LF

 

Haase will play more outfield, DH and first base than catch or AAA. I fear he will wash out and I really like him.

It took Haase four tries to make enough plate appearances to break out of his rookie status, so your fears may not be unfounded.

[chasfh]

3 hours ago, RatkoVarda said:

Baddoo presumably needs a RH partner for the short side of the platoon. Hill IMO has a slight lead over Reyes with Daz third. Hopefully one of the three steps up. 2 or those guys are going to Toledo, if HCastro and/or Haase is the 5th OF.

If Garneau is on the team, that says more about Hinch's opinion of Haase than anything else.

If/when Tork and Greene are up, bench is Haase, Harold, Parades, Hill.

I don’t think anyone seriously expected Haase to long-term it at catcher. Platoon DH/occasional LF seems like his role, and his stretch upside would be the consistent short side of the platoon with Baddoo. 

[chasfh]

13 minutes ago, Tigeraholic1 said:

I hate west coast swings....

I’m OK with it. Get the first swing out of the way. 

[bobrob2004]

3 hours ago, chasfh said:

I don’t think anyone seriously expected Haase to long-term it at catcher. Platoon DH/occasional LF seems like his role, and his stretch upside would be the consistent short side of the platoon with Baddoo. 

Reminds me of Robert Fick, only right-handed bat.  I can see him move out of catcher and play LF/1B for the rest of his career.  

[sabretooth]

On 12/18/2021 at 12:29 PM, Fox Wismic said:

My first thought on the Tigers is that they played five months of over .500 ball last season. Their starting premise should be .500 for the season.

They replaced injured players (Rogers, Turnbull, Boyd) with equal or better replacements (Barnhart, Ed Rod - likely with more to come after the lockout ends). They took their weakest position (SS) and make it their strongest position (Baez). Baez is about a 5 WAR player. Our previous SSs were -5. That give us perhaps 10 additional wins (not even considering improvement from other young players, Mize, Skubal, Manning, Soto, Fundy, Cisnero, Candy, Baddoo, Hill). 

All of a sudden we are in the 90+ W range and serious playoff contention.

The upgrade at SS is going to be large, but the 2021 SS guys were a -0.2 WAR according to Fangraphs...all of the guys who played SS totaled only -1.6 WAR at all positions in 2021 according to B-R.  I think Baez will be a 5 WAR player, and the SS position will be a 6 WAR upgrade.....10 is a BIG stretch.

In terms of starting pitching, E-Rod should replace the 24 starts from Turnbull/Boyd as you suggest, with similar outcomes. 

Let's assume that Mize and Skubal both improve, each shaving about 5-10 runs allowed, split the difference for a net gain (reduction) of 15-20 runs allowed.  Maybe a 50:50 shot.

Let's assume (hopefully) that Manning steps up and gives us 25 decent-or-better starts (his OPS+ was 115, we should hope for something more like 95-105, which would save about 15-20 runs.  I'd say less than 50:50. 

Let's assume that Alexander can repeat his 15 nice starts from 2021 and add another 5+ pretty decent starts to replace most of the starts in 2021 by Hutch, Fulmer, Teheran, Holland, and Funk. I'd say less than 50:50.

We still have to replace another 30+ starts from the Peralta/Manning/Urena/etc axis -- if we are content with the poor outcomes that Manning/Urena gave us last year, then we can plug a YTBN pitcher into those starts and get the same below average results.  This would be easy enough.

I think Grossman will regress some and Baddoo will improve some and probably offset each other.  Very likely.

I think Cabrera could be expected to continue his post-May-8th numbers and be a zero WAR rather than the -0.7 he was for all of last year.  But the 2.5 WAR from the Catcher position might be hard to repeat and might offset Miggy's small gain for a net zero.  I'd say very likely.

The wild cards are Greene and Tork -- if they play regularly and well, they could easily add 2-3 WAR apiece vs. the net zero they will replace (effectively H Castro and others at 2B, and Reyes and others in RF), totaling 4-6 WAR added.  I'd say less than 50:50.

Best case scenario from above:

- our SS would gain us 6-7 WAR

- Greene and Tork could add 4-6 WAR

- SP would improve with the above changes by 35 or so fewer runs allowed, good enough for 4 WAR. 

That's 14-17 wins added inclusive of all of the player improvements that we can reasonably expect, for a 91-94 win season, if everything pans out great.

Worst case scenario: If none of the good stuff pans out then we're still at 75-80 wins.

Split the difference and we're looking at 85 wins or so.  That is probably most likely.

To get closer to 90 wins, I'd rather they add a pretty decent SP for less than $10M (like Kikuchi, Smyly, Davies, or even Duffy or Grienke if we wanted to take a bit of a health flier) and hope for 150+ decent innings out of him.

I would also like another good reliever in the mix, but I think we can do well enough in 2022 with this RP group and add low-cost cast-offs that Fetters can work with as needed.

Edited December 20, 2021 by sabretooth

[Fox Wismic]

These WAR prognostications vary depending on if we apply them to our 77 wins, or the 84 win ratio we put up the last five months of the season.

Add Javy's 6 to 77 and we're an over .500 team. Add them to the 84 and we're challenging for the playoffs. Add another pitcher and the sky's the limit.

[casimir]

4 hours ago, Tigeraholic1 said:

I hate west coast swings....

Party pooper.

[Tenacious D]

Hill > Cameron > Reyes

and Haase is our modern day Wockenfuss.  Which means he’ll be dealt for the closer on our next WS champs.

[Tigeraholic1]

33 minutes ago, casimir said:

Party pooper.

It’s late and I fall asleep listening to the radio.

[casimir]

18 minutes ago, Tigeraholic1 said:

It’s late and I fall asleep listening to the radio.

Yes, I hate west coast swings, too. Seems an extra drag to start the season out there.

I remember the days of long, long ago, trips to the west coast meant 3 straight series at California, Oakland, and Seattle.  Some combination of Texas, Kansas City, Minnesota, and Chicago made up the other trips to the west division foes.  And twice a season, too.

And you’ve heard of the Ernie faux pas of Bill Freehan beating his meat late one night in California, right?

[sabretooth]

42 minutes ago, Fox Wismic said:

These WAR prognostications vary depending on if we apply them to our 77 wins, or the 84 win ratio we put up the last five months of the season.

Add Javy's 6 to 77 and we're an over .500 team. Add them to the 84 and we're challenging for the playoffs. Add another pitcher and the sky's the limit.

Adding Javy's 6 wins to 77 is probably the best overall way to look at it right now.

I don't think the May 8th-onward analysis works, except in individual cases like Miggy, where he went from being horrible to being a 0 WAR player, which is closer to his skill level at this point.

The results of the other individual players for the whole year, I believe, were closer to their expected/normal level than what they did from May 8th onward.

[sabretooth]

The nice thing is that every time I evaluate this team I become increasingly convinced that they will nail 85 wins to the wall absent unforeseen injury issues.  90 seems in the realm with this group, as long as Greene + Tork are in the mix as producers, though I would really like to see them get Kikuchi or Smyly.