sabretooth

Whoops...hadn't heard that

I would love love love getting Correa or Seager, and Semien or Baez would be a very nice upgrade to be sure....but my hopes are on Story....his age, health, power, and defense are all good, and whoever signs him might get a bit of a discount due to the perception that he will fall off precipitously after leaving the Rockies (which I don't think will be the case).

Well, he does look more like Stewart than JD, but that's true about everybody who is released by a MLB team.

Yeah, Baez certainly is a very good player, but $250M for him? Wow. Seems more like a 5/125 guy to me.

His defensive numbers aren't much worse than Grossman's.....I'd rather have better defense too, but looking in the bargain bin for guys with both a bat and a glove and upside is a bit hopeful. Clint's about the best guy on the tiles that you're going to find.

Yeah, Clint was a top 5 pick in 2013 for the Indians who was productive in the minors from a very young age....never quite got over the hump. JD's edge is that he was always a high-average hitter in the minors, despite his high K rate, and eventually made adjustments to translate that to the Majors....whereas Clint has so far only managed a strong BA for a couple of short stints in the minors. Maybe Clint "finds it". He really seems similar to Ryan Raburn....a RH with pretty good pop, so-so on-base, and serviceable at best in the OF, though Ryan had a cannon for an arm. Clint needs to use more Launch Angle....he's hanging around a 10 most of the time, hitting 40% FBs, mediocre power results, and a so-so batting average. Seems to me that if he elevates the ball more, something closer to a 15 or 16, he will hit for more power, and maybe even improve his BA. Given how thin our OF is, I would be happy to add Clint and see what happens...maybe he becomes a good semi-regular.

I believe that...specially the do hickey

Boyle is hot garbage, clearly worsenthan Goff, but Goff is playing so badly this year...the fact that there is no serviceable option... Despite the fact that they were stuck with a very bad roster to begin with, they messed up several skill positions so badly....Kicker, WR, and we will see now about the backup QB. The only way to defend it is tanking.... But it's not like there's a Trevor Lawrence or Andrew Luck at the end of the rainbow. Oh well.

A little harder to put on a bumper sticker, but still spot on

That is a very good bumper sticker phrase...love it 👍

Yeah, the Fielder signing worked out really well from an on-field performance standpoint, inclusive of Kinsler, who was quite good. Everybody thought I'd hate that trade, but I was OK with it from the beginning and loved it given how well Kinsler performed when he was here. It came at a premium and some dead post-departure $$, that did not seem to negatively impact their strategy during the duration of that contract.

Agree 100%....the salivating about Wentz has been baffling

The indominable Joey Wentz? Nevah!

I agree. Stafford's success is more important to me at this time than a few pick slots for the Lions. When the Lions demonstrate that they are worth caring about, then I will care about this kind of thing.

There are some things to like about the Lions under Campbell and Co, but they run out the worst players at key skills positions like Goff, the receivers, and the Kicker.....these deficiencies have cost them at least a couple of wins....it seems like management is trying to set this team up to fail...maybe that will change starting next year, or the year after that, or whatever the tanking schedule is, but frankly there is no reason for any fans to waste any time on this team until they are clearly intending to win.

I don't really agree with the emotional versus practical distinction. You don't follow teams for practical reasons, you follow them for a whole host of reasons, including wanting to see a winner, you remember watching games with your dad, you like watching them with friends and family, et cetera et cetera...any reasonable analysis of what you want to see in sports or in your team has a necessary emotional component to it. I also don't really agree with the characterization of DD's tenure as if they traded away long term success for short term gain. They traded away a lot of prospects, but none of them excelled at the major league level with the exception of Eugenio Suarez, which was an epic bad trade, and Miller, which was an epic great trade. Bottom line is that if DD had never traded away any prospects they would have just had a less than stellar team. You could say that they sucked at development, and I would not argue with that; However I dont see a lot of evidence yet that they have markedly improved in developing talent since DDs departure, At least as it regards players who are not top flight draft picks to begin with. Maybe they are improving in this area, time will tell. The bottom line is that with DD we had two years of turning the corner (04 - 05), followed by 6 years of playoff competitiveness (06, 07, 11, 12, 13, 14) with an unexpected fallback in 08 and 09 and a retool in 10. From 04 to 14 it could reasonably be said that the Tigers were either trying for the playoffs or retrieve or retooling for the playoffs every year. I also would say that the examples of excessive spending that we saw under DD (Willis' contract, Miggys extension, JVs extension, the extent of Princes contract) may have been examples of the owner's approach in these cases than anything else. In any case, I dont see how these huge contracts were examples of the team trying to compete for the playoffs in the short term.

I guess I should say GDP rather than wealth, since there is no comparable measurement for wealth....Detroits MSA (which is just the core 3 county area) is 14th in GDP behind Seattle and ahead of Minneapolis, and Detroits CSA (which includes the 9 county region, and thus is closer to the Tigers market) is 12th in GDP, ahead of Seattle. We are solidly mid-market, far ahead of the small markets in every economic respect, and more than able to support a league average team financially.

I like this player, and I like this deal. Get another pitcher like JV and I am a happy man vis-a-vis the rotation. I admit that having the last connection to the 2006 team back again would be just freaking awesome....and I strongly suspect that JV will be a pretty effective pitcher this year too....and we need that along with Eduardo.

This is one area where I probably lean towards the conventional approach of sacrificing a little now for the extra year of control later. I don't like it, but in the context of the current CBA and many other factors, it makes the most sense.

The Detroit market is not a small-market. It is one of the top 10 metro areas population and wealth-wise in the country. If the goal is to build and sustain a winning team, there is no reason why we should not have a league-average payroll.

Other than Jeter, who they drafted #6 after going 71-91 in 1991 with the 6th highest payroll in baseball (which doesn't seem to correlate to tanking).....the rest of the Yankees dynasty team was definitely populated by guys drafted and acquired by means other than tanking. My point has always been against tanking. There are plenty of teams who had rough years (and may have tanked for a year or two) who then rebounded with the help of a top pick.....I don't agree with that kind of tanking as a deliberate strategy, but I understand that teams probably exploit losing seasons to "go for" top picks. I also understand that getting a generational top-1st-round pick can really change a team's fortunes....however, ponder the Angels with Trout -- he's a great great great player and I would LOVE LOVE LOVE to have him on my team, but he hasn't produced the KL2 only-championships-matter outcome, and for that matter, they haven't even been that good as a team with him. My entire point is that building a winner, especially a fairly sustainable winner (sustainable means different things to different people, I know), requires excellence in all phases of player acquisition, development, and the adept management of roster resources, payroll, front office talent, etc. That's pretty obvious....and frankly, there just aren't any examples of excellent organizations successfully using extended tanking over more than a year or two as a strategy for building a winning organization and roster. What I said above is not some unique insight....but it seems to be entirely overlooked in the hype about how wonderful Tork and Greene will be for us, and consequently how we as fans should embrace losing (I never will) AND reject signing FAs to not-short-term deals; FAs with 4+ year contracts are absolutely a necessary component of building and sustaining a winner....anyone who says they aren't is ignoring reality. Accordingly, I believe that if the Tigers become successful with Mize, Tork, and Greene, it will be because of these players AND all of the OTHER things the organization did to build and sustain a winner, including longer-term FA contracts.

Bingo

Look out, they might have a team payroll that approaches league average..... Rodriquez and JV and a good SS would be a VERY nice offseason, especially compared to the crapfest of Alex Cobb and other spare parts I was starting to expect.

Whoa....even I would be happy with that 🙂 Taint happening, I know If they got one of the good SS, two good pitchers, and one other serviceable FA (reliever or hitter), I'd be very happy. I would guess that's not happening, either. I would guess that the "sustainable winning" (re: more money for Chris I and more losing for us) crowd around here has it right: we will whiff on the big FAs, and settle for: (a) one so-so SP like Cobb, (b) a so-so SS via trade for DeJong, Taylor, or Wendle, and (c) some waiver-wire level RP or two, and hope to luck into a winning season while we wait for the youngsters to blossom in future years.

AA may yet get it right from a player development standpoint, time will tell. But so far they are not even close at this point at succeeding from their own development of talent. Skubal and Turnbull are the only guys that they have drafted and developed into decent major league starting players in the last 5 years who were not top-10 picks in the 1st round.