sabretooth

I agree at this point....they have to plug-and-pray in 2023, and mostly the plugging will be with guys they already have in 2022. Schoop, Candy and Baddoo are all going to have shots at delivering 1.5+ WAR, and they are perfectly capable of doing it, or they will be cut loose by one of the worst teams in baseball and likely following Renato Nunez to Korea or whereever he is. Even if those "Lost Boys" find themselves again, as you pointed out, other more fundamental problems will remain in 2023, 2024 and beyond -- the guys that they spent high 1st round draft picks on (Greene, Tork, Manning, Mize, Jobe, whoever is coming up after this 95+ loss season) will need to become good, healthy players, and Javy is going to have to be at least a decent player, or this team is going to be in full rebuild mode again. The problem in my opinion is NOT that they have sunk into guys that aren't producing, other than Miggy. Even with Baez, if he can just hit OK 95-105 OPS+ and field 2B reasonably he would be a solid 2+ WAR guy, which wouldn't be "worth the money" but the marginal difference between the value of 2+WAR and $25M/year isn't enough to determine the Tigers' fate. The CORE problem is that they have to start generating two decent-to-better starting players out of the non-1st Round-picks every year (either by developing or tradind drafted talent), something they haven't done for a long time. At this moment, we're talking about K. Carpenter, Dingler, Kriedler, Lipcius, W Perez, and the 18-20 year olds further down the line.

He'd fit right in with Schoop and Candy with that sporty 72 OPS+

Yeah, I normally don't care about $$, but given how lousy he's been this year, and given how tight Chris is, I don't want to see them pay Jeimer more than the minimum for 2023.

Don't blame you at all Bert. I had hope finally coming into this season that they would be decent, and they have been victimized by horrible horrible bad luck, but they also have three "showcase" players who were still in their prime years who turned into nightmares this year (Baez, Schoop, and Candy), a marquee 1st Rounder who bombed (Tork), another 1st Rounder who failed health-wise (Mize), along with another prime-time star (Meadows), and all we can do is hope that they all rebound at some point. This organization has been a bleep-show for a long time, and Chris I has never demonstrated the ability or will to be a successful owner, starting with having Avila sell off Verlander for beans and then pulling a Sgt. Shultz ("I knew nothingk!!") on the trade recently. My "bright line" is Miggy, I admire the way they handled his great milestones this year, and I think the organization is to be commended for that. But I can't take another season of trying to remember when Miggy was healthy and something above Replacement level (2016 and before), while watching light bloopers to right and groundouts where the fielders practice soft-tossing to first and Miggy can't even get in the camera shot down the 1st base line. I realize 2023 is going to be a Hail Mary, but I cannot continue to watch a team that thinks that's what I want to see. I hope that Chris realizes that he has been the author of this garbage and spends a little $$ to help get the roster into some kind of decent shape. I'm not talking about spending like his dad, I'm just saying get up to the league average of payroll (which isn't chump change) and saints forbid maybe even go a little beyond that. Shouldn't the fans EXPECT and DEMAND a decent and maybe even winning product? What the heck.

Probably not, but from the "selling" team's perspective (as Detroit would be here) it wouldn't be morally different from the Yankees paying David Justice X millions to play for the A's. Don't get me wrong, I don't see this happening. Chris I probably will figure from a financial standpoint that Miggy sells X tickets/jerseys/etc and he'll lose that revenue if Miggy is gone. Conversely, whatever marginal gain would come from replacing Miggy wouldn't counteract much if any of the revenue loss from Miggy's marketability, so from a business standpoint I don't see Chris making this move. I wish I could look forward to Miggy not starting most days or the hope that he could be halfway decent, but I can't say these things. I hope whatever happens with the rest of the team will make 2023 worthwhile watching.

RandyMarsh, I agree...I know you are saying that the chances are vanishingly small, but I wouldnt worry at all about him going to another team 😎

Nice job by JJ. Soto, WTF

I am saying they need to pay a bonus which would be whatever he is owed plus more to make him retire. I know ownership wont pay him what is required to make him retire but they should.

Yeah, glad to finally see this...on a good team these would be the second half of the lineup with at least 4 guys better than them.

They have got to pay him a bonus to retire and be an Ambassador or whatever.

It would take some bravery to confront the Miggy thing, but yeah, having Miggy chew up an spot on the 26 man roster is just insane at this point.

I like the fact that he can "dial it up"....that seems reasonable that to elevate more consistently he needs to get underneath breaking pitches a little more reliably. He certainly inspires confidence with his attitude, skill set, and resiliency. We'll see how adaptable he is. Tork, on the other hand, yikes, the way he's playing in Toledo right now....2022 cannot end fast enough for him.

Joe Carter (c 1990, 1996, and 1997) says "hi" 🙂 It's amazing the kind of counting stats you can accumulate if they just put you behind some awesome hitters for 157+ games. Francouer played on some pretty good teams for some pretty good Managers, too, and actually managed a 6.8 WAR over his career. Not great, but better than a lot of guys. It reminds me -- something about the 1996-97 Washington Bullets came across my feed yesterday and I looked them up. They had Webber, Howard, Rod Strickland, Tracy Murray, G. Muresean, Harvey Grant, and even a young Ben Wallace, as well as Calbert Cheaney, who is still the all-time Big 10 scoring leader (!!) and a college legend. Cheaney played a lot and amassed a lot of counting stats, but he was actually a bad NBA player, even when he was healthy and playing on pretty decent teams. In 13 years he had only one season with a VORP over 0.1 (it was 0.6), and his career total VORP was -2.9. Yet when healthy he played a lot of minutes, and on some pretty good teams too. My guess is that these guys were "coaches" players and played because the fit the coaches' style/scheme/attitude, and the fact that they could put up some counting stats covered for how below average they really were.

Man, Riley Greene is smoking right now. Strange fact: if you put his recent 10-20 uber-hot-streak together with the immediately preceding super-cold 4-39 stretch, you would get a slash of 237/274/406 over 62 PA (including 3 BB)..... .....which is similar to his season average to-date of 239/298/350, except he's had an extra HR recently to boost the SLG a bit. His EV is strong (90), his Barrels are good (9%), his hard-hit pct is high (46.4 from statcast)....his LA is ridiculously low (2.9 degrees), which translates to over 50% GB and only 23% FB, with only a decent LD of 21% and a very low BA, which means that the low LA is not helping him overall. My guess is that he's a guy who would benefit from a LA increase to something more normal, especially for a guy with his power, something like 12-15 degrees. Not sure what the best way is for him to make this happen at his age, whether he should experiment with it all the time in game situations now or work on it during the off-season or what.

Francoeur was a strange bird, a guy who was below average in every skill set except the rocket arm, and yet he stuck around for a while and for 6 years racked up 650 PAs every season, and a ton of counting stats, as well as a couple of really good above-average years OPS+ wise. He wasn't a "good" player, but anyone like Willi who is fighting for his life in the MLB would love to look back on such a career if he could manage it. And sadly, he'd be one of our better players if he were here in his prime.

Willi has mixed in some really dazzling defensive plays in the last 6 weeks or so. His D numbers are still not good, but he seems to no longer be a defensive liability like he was last year.

Miguel the out-maker. Mommy please make it stop.

Very interesting points about repeatability.....seems like the advantage of being in the 'pen is pitch focus/mastery, and that never materialized with Norris, so maybe his best fit is being a starter.

man alive

How much of that is luck? He's getting better results as a reliever this year, but that seems to be driven by a lucky/low HR/FB% as a reliever. If you normalize his HR/FB ratio as a reliever this year, his SP/RP peripheral/splits look pretty similar to previous years, which didn't show a lot of separation either way. Also, last year, he had a very nice run as an SP. Doesn't seem as cut/dry to me.

Yeah! Nice job by Harold

Reyes with the rare walk

Candy and Riley getting it done, nice.

Yeah, WAR measures something different than say OPS+. Both are valuable, WAR tells you more about what a player did, but OPS+ is better as a predictive stat.

I wasn't a big fan of the Baez, I felt better about Story, but I guess I felt like the deal on Baez was less risky than the $300m+ deal with Correa, but I never anticipated Baez turning into pixie dust in year 1. Obviously if I/we felt that we could get Correa on the ultimate Twins deal I would have preferred him over everybody for the same term/$.