kdog

Scott Harris task this offseason is to find a proven right handed power bat(not a Canha type). It doesn’t have to be a huge free agent. You can make baseball trades. That puts the tigers in the mix next year if they have health luck. It might require taking on some contract risk. You aren’t going to have a perfect balance sheet and you cannot schedule contention because player development is not linear. Throw us a bone with a real hitter. I’m tired of waiting.

Golden sombrero alert. Lots of learning lessons for young hitters tonight.

he's so wild that 4 walks only leads to one run lol.

I know that Carpenter didn't necessarily get hurt playing in the outfield. But he has to be a dh most of the time going forward. His numbers justify it and you aren't missing much from a defensive perspective.

Don't forget, this game is one week away lol:

Carpenter missed a month last year and it looks he's going to miss June-September this year. Injury has to be a concern, especially if he has to play the field. Harris doubled down on his open DH spot for next year so that's probably happening again.

Meadows is a 'bat' if he can hit homers and make a little contact. Hopefully he can actually stick around through the end of the year and show something. But he did that last year and then couldn't sustain it to start 2024...same with Tork. I tend to believe that Harris is going to double down on these guys again if they show a pulse. IMO, they are getting deference as core players. They'll repeat 10th grade again. If it doesn't work, that will be their last shot.

I would love this too. But this rebuild is about avoiding risk(bad long term contracts) at any cost. So if the choice is between a bad few years on a contract or an unproven young player, they will choose to let the young guy sink or swim in the majors. And if they need a vet, it will be an Urshela or Canha type. Harris is telling you what his plan is, we have to listen to him. The majority of improvement will come with development. If that doesn't work, we have to wait for the next wave of young guys. It's actually ingenious, you can keep pushing back timelines because we can't block young players.

The last two months of this season are not going to build much optimism for 2025. Harris will stick to his plan or whatever but they don’t seem to understand that throwing away seasons damages your standing with fans.

Brenan Hanifee has a locker in Detroit. Baez has returned but he might not be activated today. Meadows will likely return over the weekend.

Unless they have a huge talent infusion, I'd say it's not repeatable.

34 year old Sal Perez had a crazy rebound season, Witt made his star turn. Those are the only two offensive players on their payroll with a contract beyond this season. The rest are UFA or under control. They signed Wacha to a Flaherty deal and Lugo to a Maeda deal. They haven't had debllitating injuries to their lineup and their best players have produced. I'm pretty sure the Tigers could have done that if Tork didn't implode and they didn't get decimated by injuries. https://www.spotrac.com/mlb/kansas-city-royals/yearly

Now we have to actually play games...the major league product which I think it still important to upper management.

Scott Boras had the batphone to Mike Ilitch; That won't be avaialble in our current situation.

Bradford Doolitle - ESPN

It's pretty clear that they aren't going to take risks with large free agent contracts. They will overpay on short team deals. But they don't want to even risk the potential of another Baez situation. If that is the case, he has to take risk elsewhere.

My annoyance with Harris' team building approach is clouding my objective judgement. He's a bit of a neophyte in the executive game. It's believable to me that he had outlandish value on Flaherty and then had to reduce his ask late in the day. And it's possible that he had the same approach with Skubal and didn't trade him. That might be a positive. I don't like unending wait for development approach. You're asking for a confluence of things to all work out at once.

Ok the return he got for Flaherty is process and results. We'll see how that goes. I don't like his approach overall of team building.

What kind of contigencies will we build in if young players don't progress? This is still about the major league roster at some point right? Well-laid development plans don't always work out to give you a ready made roster at the same time.

Mediocre gms lose deals on the margins over the long term. Harris strategy of over-asking and waiting till the end is an issue for me. And yes, I don't have all of the information. I'm passing judgement on what other people report and my own opinion. I still expect Harris to take a long term approach to this rebuild. They are going to make marginal improvements around the mlb roster and use internal development to increase their roster. I'm sure they are going to try and compete in the Skubal window but it will be without a lot of contract risk. He has not done anything risky to add talent to the major league team. They've done a lot of things to improve the minor league infrastructure. Those might bear fruit down the road. I don't have unending patience or hope. He seems to think that everything will work out eventually.

Bally put out a few clips

it's hit piece season:

The re-rebuild is going to be slow and incremental. Money will be spent on the margins within the risk parameters. All major improvement will mostly come from internal development. It's going to be awhile.