Tiger337

There is always some big issue at stake, they make compomises and both sides always come out just fine! I am not convinced this time is any different. Multi-millionaires fighting with billionaires. Yawn.

Why are people talking about a lockout next year like it's a foregone conclusion? Every time the labor contract ends, there is lots of negativity and acrimony, but there hasn't been a season destroying work stoppage in 32 years.

I thought home runs were what mattered.

I don't even know if it did work, but I get why it might work for Gibson. I agree with you about it probably not working for this team.

He is better than Jung though.

It works in football and Gibson was a football player, so maybe it carried over. I don't think it works so well in baseball for most players. Baseball is game of skill and precision and it is played 6 time per week. It seems like fire and brimstone would be unsustainable. One example of a player it doesn't work for is Valdez.

I was mostly being sarcastic. I think it's one of these lines that management teams like to repeat over and over. I mean it's a line that sounds really good, but it's also pretty vague and probably not possible to have every player in the organization follow.

Their plan is to "control the strike zone"

So, what's it going to be - Dictatorship or Chinese colony?

They are going to borrow a pitcher from the Tampa Bay Devil Rays

They had the pitching. The defense is lacking, healthy or not. I do think their long-term plan is to get more complete ball players that can make contact and get on base and also play defense rather than one dimensional players.

OBP - defense - pitching. I do think that is the long term Tigers plan, but they are obviously not there yet.

His statcast chart this year is very similar to 2023-2024, so I think he'll slug similarly to those years. If he can keep some of his batting average improvement, that will be a great year.

I don't envision him batting .335 all year, so I hope the power increases and I believe it will. Everybody is going to hit more home runs in the summer. Home runs always go up when the weather gets hot.

The only thing that will make people mad is an economic crisis. A third of the country doesn't even care. They don't even vote.

Greene's slugging average is the same as last year and is OBP is 120 points higher. I will take that trade off! I do think he'll end up somewhere in the middle with lower batting average and more power than he has right now.

Greene and Torkelson will hit 20 home runs. Carpeneter will make it if he is healthy. Dingler will make it if he doesn't wear down.

I am kind of tuning out at this point - just listening on the radio as I do other stuff.

OPS of players who could be in line-up if not injured: .750 .716 .678 .641

They didn't ignore the hitting problem. They added McGonigle. Their offense was not great, but it was fine in April. Then the injuries started. You still haven't said who else you think they should have added. You could make a case that they should have added some hitting instead of Verlander and Anderson, but what great hitter would they get for that money?

I understand that but other teams are able to score runs without a high home run total. Milwaukee, Tampa Bay and Miami have fewer homers than the Tigers, but they rank in the top half of MLB in runs scored. The difference is the get on base more often than the Tigers.

So, they just should have assumed that there would be no pitching injuries? Olson was not healthy at any point in the off-season and Melton was somewhat of an unknown. You need at least 7 starters on your roster going into the season.

I don't understand the obsession with home runs. I think he is a game changer...but he can't do it by himself. Trout never could either and he hits plenty of home runs.

They needed hitting, but they also needed pitching and they had a limited budget. Maybe they did pursue a hitter and they couldn't find one that wanted to sign for what they were able to offer. Or maybe they tried to get one in a trade, but teams did not have a reasonable asking price. Or maybe they decided that Valdez and Jansen would improve their run prevention more than the best available hitter would improve their offense. I was pretty happy with the team going into the season. I was still happy after April, but then the injuries piled up. You should know that I am not a Harris slappy, and I was pretty unhappy with the off-season before they got Valdez. I thought he would make a big difference and he still might. I still don't know what hitter you think they could have gotten that would have changed everyting.

I didn't say everything was fine and wonderful. What I am saying is that they would be a worse organization without analytics. If other teams are using it better than them (I don't know if they are), that would be a problem though.