Scottwood

Torres is a decent bet to have a bounce back year. I like the signing overall and kind of a creative way of addressing the RH bat problem. Ideally, we'd spend another $40 million to $50 million this offseason to get us more into the mid market size of payroll. We are also right in the sweet spot where adding a few extra wins in FA can be really beneficial. Skubal is only here for 2 more years so that is another reason to spend in FA the next two seasons. I'm hoping they sign either Bregman or Kim, another SP to a 1 year deal (assuming Sasaki turns them down) and at least 1 reliever on 1 year deal. That should be doable even within their budget constraints.

I think Hurter will be the bulk guy in game 3 and Olson will be the bulk guy in game 4. It will be a short leash either way. What was interesting is they elected to go to Brieske in the 9th instead of Foley. Foley hasn't pitched since game 1 against Houston.

This whole team is young and there is not a single UFA on the current 28 man roster. Only Maeda is up in 2026. Otherwise, the whole team is under team control for the next 2 seasons. With making the playoffs this year, and probably much better ballpark attendance next season, Illitch should hopefully open the wallet up a bit these next 2 years and spend more like a mid market team to fill holes in the lineup. Regardless, they have a nice 3 year contending window counting this year's playoffs.

I think the expanded playoffs are mostly for revenue purposes, but also so that smaller market teams can have a chance to win a championship w/o a salary cap being in place (since the playoffs are so random). At least, in theory anyway. The Tigers as a franchise have a much better chance of winning the WS one day than finishing with the best regular season record in MLB and being legitimately the "best" team in MLB.

For the Orioles, probably something like Basallo and Mayo and Enrique Bradfield Jr. Holliday would be off limits and they wouldn't trade all 3 of Basallo, Mayo and Kjerstad. Kjerstad and Cowser are also useful for their MLB team right now, and both Basallo and Mayo may get moved down the defensive spectrum, so I'd guess they'd lean toward dangling those two. For the Dodgers, something like Dalton Rushing, Andy Pages and Justin Wrobleski. Seattle would also be interesting. I'm guessing Harris loves Emerson. So, Harry Ford, Colt Emerson and Cole Young. Or, at least 2 of those guys.

That's actually an incredible hire. Shep to Benetti is going to be a sharp contrast.

Sounds like Rodriguez agreed to the deal and then backed away right when it was about to be completed.

Yeah, anything over $150 k counts against the bonus pool money. Based off their picks today, it seems like the Tigers were tapped out. Lots of prep players. I'd have to double check, but they will probably end up with more signed than any other organization. They definitely have a type they went for among hitters.

Looking back at the first ten rounds, and I wonder if the Tigers have enough bonus pool money left to take one more big swing on one of the top best players still available. There are several top 100 prospects out there and that would really boost the draft class. The saved money on Clark probably mostly went to McGonigle. But then they probably saved a few hundred thousand with the Anderson pick and those savings went towards Wilson and Rucker. I'm guessing Lee, DIaz, Minton and Sears were all under slot. Thus, there could be extra money saved for a $500 k+ bonus offer on top of the $150 K that players get from rounds 11-20. The big unknown is Rucker, though. On the surface, it doesn't seem like they would have had to go way over slot to draft him. He was ranked around where they drafted him or even a little lower. But, he was kind of a pre-draft guy where he's raw now but could have hit in college and gone 1st round a few years from now. So, it's possible the savings from Lee, Sears, etc. went towards him.

I don't really understand all of the discussion happening among the Tiger fanbase about the timeline. You don't draft for need in baseball and, also, Greene is arguably the only legit building block on the team and he's 22. If Clark develops like the Tigers hope he will, then he'll be in Detroit when Greene is only in his mid 20's. I don't really see the issue.

The Tigers took more HS players than any other organization in the first 10 rounds. I liked the overall approach in this draft and there really weren't any wild selections either. Everything made sense.

Anderson was around 50th in Keith Law's rankings and he was 52nd in an analytical-model based big board by someone on MLB draft twitter that was just hired away by the Cubs, Mason McRae (his big board is no longer public). Anderson doesn't strike out and had really strong EV metrics. I actually found that to be kind of an encouraging pick depending how the rest of the class shakes out. Thus far, there has been a change in draft philosophy. I probably wouldn't have picked Clark, but that wasn't out of left field- he was an easy top 5 prospect in this draft and would have gone #1 in a number of drafts. He's a great prospect with high upside and there is an argument for him over Langford because Clark is sticking in CF long term and those guys are rare to find. He could be a genuine two-way star whereas that wasn't very likely with Langford. Langford was a safer pick. At the end of the day, though, the player development aspect is the most important thing. https://masonmcrae.medium.com/notes-on-college-draft-prospects-7e31392f676e "Outside of a fringy batter’s eye, Anderson’s offensive profile is really good. He has juice and a 106 90th percentile EV on top of a 110+ batted ball. He’s running a 94 mph average EV, he’s never had issues with strikeouts and he seldomly whiffs at pitches in the zone. He hasn’t had a great season in college up until this spring, but the pitch-level numbers have suggested he’s always been good. You’d like to see him swing less, chase less, and therefore walk more, but it could be an area of improvement for a pro ball dev staff. He’s hit two-thirds of his batted balls over 95 mph, it’s real power and he’s not giving away contact to get to it. He’s running a 4% walk rate though. Above-average defender at third. He was one of the better hitters this summer on the Cape and he walked much more. Looking like a late day one profile that model-driven orgs will have an eye on."

I really despise the players-only broadcasts.

It sounds like Pittsburgh is shopping an under slot deal to the other 4 big names and prefers a bat. The guys at MLB.com seem to think Washington will take Skenes over Crews.

He's definitely in the Strasburg-tier of pitching prospects in the draft the last decade +. He was throwing 100+ on pitch 124 in the game I saw and his stuff is amazing. But, pitchers are so dangerous that it would be hard to get that excited about him if the Tigers took him.