Longgone

In Chapmans case, with his swing and miss, I can see why teams passed on him.

Chapman is a pretty good ball player, but he has some real holes in his offense to where he doesn’t fit the profile of the hitter Harris covets. He is going to wait and get the player he wants, not the one you think is an upgrade.

If you had a veteran, championship caliber club, and this was the last piece of the puzzle, maybe you’d make that trade, but for the tigers at this point, it would be an exercise in futility.

What is their surplus to trade? Trading from one area of value that you will need to fill some other area of need is not progress.

I think the best question to ask, regarding any sports regime, is are they moving in the right direction? In this case, I believe the answer is yes. Good trades are generally made when you trade your surplus for a weakness, anything else is just rearranging furniture.

Griffin would be the best case scenario.

Why would he restrict himself like that?

No one with any sense would use whip to evaluate the potential of pitching prospects. It may give you an inkling regarding readiness to compete, but it says nothing about potential or ceiling.

He has very good, if somewhat inconsistent stuff. He has spotty command. There’s enough to dream on and he’s been progressing.

I just don’t understand why the fanbase of every team rags on their manager as if they just know baseball better.

The point is the Lions are not going to spend high draft picks or major free agent dollars on a de who can rush the passer but can’t really man up in the run game, so they might as well stop projecting them to the lions.

It’s interesting that people are always trying to mock smaller speed rushers like Chop Robinson to the lions as a complement to Hutch. That just isn’t their style, they want a big, strong presence at de to set the edge and control a gap first, and rush the qb second. They do incorporate a pure speed rusher, but it’s a part time position on passing downs, and they are not going to commit premium resources for that.

Purportedly, Boyd wants to go where he’ll have a large role in the offense, that ain’t Detroit.

Chong, definitely Chong

Obviously, the lions had him graded much higher than that, or they wouldn’t have made the deal. The reason for his low rankings in the media was lack of knowledge, not lack of promise.

He’ll finally be more than a year beyond the significant surgery, so like Latu, he may really come on now that he can properly train. Or he may not, we’ll see.

Sorsdal was a developmental pick; small school guy, switching positions, training at several spots, I think he probably exceeded expectations for his rookie year.

Actually saved on cap space

Appears to be negligible.

Hard to say. What are the guarantees? How much is the bonus? What are the cap hits?

What makes you think it was the stats, because that's all you see as a fan? Maybe it was his stuff, command, poise, etc. Maybe his ability fit the role they wanted to fill better than the competition. Stats may reflect that, sure, but they also may not.

If the organization deems that Brieske has the greater ability and the better capability of getting major league hitters out, he gets the job, even if his era is 28 and his competition era is zero. They will weigh all factors of his spring and past performance, not simply his spring training stats.

What if a couple of big leaguers had run into a couple of Zumayas fastballs with men on instead of missing them? It’s baseball, could easily happen. That drastically changes his stats. Does that change his capabilities or projection? Does it alter the team’s perception of him? Not at all.

Ability matters, performance matters. Stats may or may not reflect those two, so by themselves, stats don’t really matter in the spring environment and with such small samples.

Their strong spring had everything to do with the level of ability they had attained, and nothing to do with their spring stats.