Tigers Hire Scott Harris as President of Baseball Operations

[Longgone]

43 minutes ago, gehringer_2 said:

IMHO there is more of a fundamental difference though in that Greene has better K zone coverage right now than Tork does, so the BaBIP difference is not all just luck. I see a situation where Tork has to be able to do damage on more different kinds of strikes, that he's giving the pitcher too much of the plate. 

I wonder if part of it is just developing more mental toughness. It's seems when he has bad BaBIP luck, and he has had plenty, he then loses some of his aggressiveness and that feeds the pop-up machine.

It's mostly luck

[gehringer_2]

6 minutes ago, Longgone said:

It's mostly luck

the difference in their heat maps is not.  Tork has been an easy out above mid K zone.

[Longgone]

58 minutes ago, bobrob2004 said:

I don't fully agree with this.  Even if Greene and Torkelson had similar offensive numbers, Greene will still have a better WAR because he's playing above average defense at a premium position.  It's similar to when Trout would have a higher WAR than Miggy.  

It was already mentioned, but Torkelson has a 40.6% fly ball rate compared to Greene's 24%.  This is a big enough difference to at least partially explain the difference in BABIP.  Greene has an expected batting average of .244 compared to Torkelson's .222.  And despite this difference, they still have similar home run totals.  

The barrel% isn't even that similar, Torkelson has a 7.9% compared to Green's 9.6%. 

You're picking nits, now.

[Longgone]

2 minutes ago, gehringer_2 said:

the difference in their heat maps is not.  Tork has been an easy out above mid K zone.

That's an obscure way to try to justify a 100 point differential in babip, it's still based on a small sample too heavily influenced by chance. Again, there is not enough data yet to be casting these types of conclusions. 

[gehringer_2]

11 minutes ago, Longgone said:

That's an obscure way to try to justify a 100 point differential in babip, it's still based on a small sample too heavily influenced by chance. Again, there is not enough data yet to be casting these types of conclusions. 

some things stablizie rapidly, some don't, somthings thing generate large sample sizes relatively quickly, some things don't. At 400 AB Tork has probably seen 1500 pitches. Trends on 1500 pitches are not meaningless. Now note that saying that is not the same as saying Tork is a finished product by any means or not capable of changing the player his is now/has been. Obviously I don't think any of us think that, but but he has played enough for some things to be meaningful observations about what he has been doing.

Edited October 3, 2022 by gehringer_2

[bobrob2004]

43 minutes ago, Longgone said:

You're picking nits, now.

Even if Tork's batting average were higher, we would all be wondering why he hasn't hit for more power.  That's the most concerning part of it.

With Greene, the stats shows why, low flyball rate, low launch angle, etc.  At his age, it's optimistic enough that he would gain power in the future.

It's also optimistic enough for Tork too. But at this point, even a deep dive in the stats has Tork at a more disappointing end than Greene. 

[Longgone]

14 minutes ago, bobrob2004 said:

Even if Tork's batting average were higher, we would all be wondering why he hasn't hit for more power.  That's the most concerning part of it.

With Greene, the stats shows why, low flyball rate, low launch angle, etc.  At his age, it's optimistic enough that he would gain power in the future.

It's also optimistic enough for Tork too. But at this point, even a deep dive in the stats has Tork at a more disappointing end than Greene. 

Not sure why you are presenting low fly ball rate and low launch angle as positive traits. Yes, Tork's low hr total is statistically fluky given his baseline stats, but i think that's all it is, a fluke, and it will normalize given time.

[bobrob2004]

2 minutes ago, Longgone said:

Not sure why you are presenting low fly ball rate and low launch angle as positive traits. Yes, Tork's low hr total is statistically fluky given his baseline stats, but i think that's all it is, a fluke, and it will normalize given time.

Not positive at all. It just is what it is. 

[sabretooth]

5 hours ago, Longgone said:

It's mostly luck, Greene will likely have a higher career babip than tork, but maybe 10 points higher, not 100. The overall point is that these samples are just too small to make any kind of valid judgements, and the casual observer just looks at batting average and is down on Tork and okay with Greene, when the actuality is they have been about equally effective by any measure not affected by chance.

I understand where you're coming from but I don't think the differences between the two in terms of hitting come down to batting average or luck.  Greene has been consistently decent.  Tork has been completely awful in every phase of hitting for all but a 3-week stretch this year.  Luck plays some part but Tork has completely sucked outside of that hot stretch.

[chasfh]

51 minutes ago, sabretooth said:

I understand where you're coming from but I don't think the differences between the two in terms of hitting come down to batting average or luck.  Greene has been consistently decent.  Tork has been completely awful in every phase of hitting for all but a 3-week stretch this year.  Luck plays some part but Tork has completely sucked outside of that hot stretch.

We should stipulate here that Riley Greene has been "decent" only in Tigers terms. He is .242/.333/.297 with zero homers in 105 PA, good for an 88 wRC+ in the last 30 days, during which time he has been a groundball machine (64%), with an average launch angle of -2.4 degrees. Yes, that's a minus two-point-four. And that production includes a well-above-average .344 BABIP.

All that said, he's still a 21-year-old kid with a long, long way to go. There's a good chance he becomes the face of the franchise within the next three or four years.

[gehringer_2]

38 minutes ago, chasfh said:

All that said, he's still a 21-year-old kid with a long, long way to go.

This. Riley has between the youngest or third youngest position player in the majors at various times this this season. For him to be even holding his own with decent walk rates and reasonable K rates bodes pretty well for his future. And TBF, Tork is still very young as well - but you'd like to see him generate a little more consistency even if the production rate still has a way to go.

Edited October 3, 2022 by gehringer_2

[sabretooth]

1 hour ago, chasfh said:

We should stipulate here that Riley Greene has been "decent" only in Tigers terms. He is .242/.333/.297 with zero homers in 105 PA, good for an 88 wRC+ in the last 30 days, during which time he has been a groundball machine (64%), with an average launch angle of -2.4 degrees. Yes, that's a minus two-point-four. And that production includes a well-above-average .344 BABIP.

The BABIP is high overall, but not lucky at all.  He hits a lot of groundballs and not many flyballs.

I also think the last 30 days is not very representative of his body of work so far.

Overall he's been decent, and consistently so.  I tracked his surges and slumps below.

- Very good for 53 PA (159 wRC+)

- Very bad for 60 PA (48 wRC+)

- Decent for 51 PAs (95 wRC+) through August 24th....

......for a decent 98 wRC+ over his first 164 PA (250/323/358), with a 5.8 LA and an 11.5% barrel (very good) and 45.2% hard-hit (also very good).

- Bad for 101 PA stretch (68 wRC+) Starting on August 26th.

- Very good for 139 PA (121 wRC+) through yesterday....

.....for a decent 99 wRC+ over his last 240 PA (281/367/388), with a 1.1 LA and a 10.7% barrel (again, very good) and a 42.9% hard-hit (again, also very good).

The slugging isn't there of course because his LA is so low....you have to have an LA of like 7 or 8 on average to hit for consistent power.  For now he's doing a very good job for a 21-year old on a bad team.

1 hour ago, chasfh said:

All that said, he's still a 21-year-old kid with a long, long way to go. There's a good chance he becomes the face of the franchise within the next three or four years.

Agreed.  And he still has plenty of time to learn to elevate the ball and hit for power, hopefully he starts trying to do that in 2023.

[chasfh]

35 minutes ago, sabretooth said:

The BABIP is high overall, but not lucky at all.  He hits a lot of groundballs and not many flyballs.

I also think the last 30 days is not very representative of his body of work so far.

Overall he's been decent, and consistently so.  I tracked his surges and slumps below.

- Very good for 53 PA (159 wRC+)

- Very bad for 60 PA (48 wRC+)

- Decent for 51 PAs (95 wRC+) through August 24th....

......for a decent 98 wRC+ over his first 164 PA (250/323/358), with a 5.8 LA and an 11.5% barrel (very good) and 45.2% hard-hit (also very good).

- Bad for 101 PA stretch (68 wRC+) Starting on August 26th.

- Very good for 139 PA (121 wRC+) through yesterday....

.....for a decent 99 wRC+ over his last 240 PA (281/367/388), with a 1.1 LA and a 10.7% barrel (again, very good) and a 42.9% hard-hit (again, also very good).

The slugging isn't there of course because his LA is so low....you have to have an LA of like 7 or 8 on average to hit for consistent power.  For now he's doing a very good job for a 21-year old on a bad team.

Agreed.  And he still has plenty of time to learn to elevate the ball and hit for power, hopefully he starts trying to do that in 2023.

High BABIP would be very lucky for any guy with a 64% GB rate. Indeed, on the 46 ground balls Riley has hit since September 1, he has a batting average of .326 against an xBA (which takes into account quality of contact) of .254. Also, his ground ball SLG was .348 against an xSLG of .275. Source.

Take out ground balls—look just at the other three hit types—and Riley's result is an unlucky .435 BA vs an xBA of .494. Source. But that's OK, because since he pounds grounders two out of every three times he puts the ball into play, when he's lucky on those, he's lucky overall.

I think Riley has to change his hit type profile to more line drives and fly balls, and I do believe the new coaches will be working with him on that.

I understand that you and I are talking about different stats across different periods of time, and I can't speak to yours from my own standpoint, but I did want to defend my statement that Riley has been lucky since September 1, because he has.

 

[sabretooth]

53 minutes ago, chasfh said:

High BABIP would be very lucky for any guy with a 64% GB rate. Indeed, on the 46 ground balls Riley has hit since September 1, he has a batting average of .326 against an xBA (which takes into account quality of contact) of .254. Also, his ground ball SLG was .348 against an xSLG of .275. Source.

Take out ground balls—look just at the other three hit types—and Riley's result is an unlucky .435 BA vs an xBA of .494. Source. But that's OK, because since he pounds grounders two out of every three times he puts the ball into play, when he's lucky on those, he's lucky overall.

I think Riley has to change his hit type profile to more line drives and fly balls, and I do believe the new coaches will be working with him on that.

I understand that you and I are talking about different stats across different periods of time, and I can't speak to yours from my own standpoint, but I did want to defend my statement that Riley has been lucky since September 1, because he has.

That's fine with me, I thought you were using the last 30 days as an example of him being lucky overall.  I got the sense that a previous poster was trying to make that point and I was just trying to add some broader context.

[gehringer_2]

One thing seems clear to me in retrospect, which is that they should have left Torkelson in Toledo to keep building on what he was doing there. Sept in Det has not advanced his development.

[sabretooth]

3 hours ago, gehringer_2 said:

One thing seems clear to me in retrospect, which is that they should have left Torkelson in Toledo to keep building on what he was doing there. Sept in Det has not advanced his development.

Yeah, he was burning rubber for a few weeks, seemed like he had arrived as a hitter, then just like that he was Coolbaugh'd again.

[gehringer_2]

8 hours ago, sabretooth said:

Yeah, he was burning rubber for a few weeks, seemed like he had arrived as a hitter, then just like that he was Coolbaugh'd again.

So of course he's hot tonight.

[sabretooth]

yeah, hot bat and stone-cold hands 🤔