gkelly

I don't understand why sports have a challenge system. How about they just have an extra official watching the game and if a call looks suspicious they just buzz the ump/ref and have them pause the game while the ref in the box take a look at it. It should only take 20 seconds to decide if a call should be reversed. Is the league more concerned with just getting the calls right or to have a stupid system like the NFL does? There are obvious wrong calls but if you already used a challenge and lost, you are just screwed.

I don't think the umpires have any shame. This is no different than Jim Joyce basically saying, I am bigger than the game and I will do what I want because I have the power and there isn't anything you can do about it.

Just look at Barry Bonds. He doesn't get in the Hall of Fame yet David Ortiz does. Ortiz failed several PED tests yet the media loves him. 1991 MVP Terry Pendleton wins it and Bonds is 2nd. The claim was Pendleton came to Atlanta and led them to the playoffs, but Bonds was easily the player in the NL that season. 1994 MVP, Bonds finishes 4th that season. Now, Bagwell indeed was a worthy winner, but no way should anyone else have finished higher than Bonds. Not that big of a deal though. 1995 MVP, Bonds finishes 12th! He had the highest WAR among offensive players, had 40 more BBs than anyone else in the league, led the league in OBP and OPS yet according to sports writers there were 11 guys more valuable than him? If they gave the MVP to Maddux or Piazza, that would be acceptable but how in the bleep could they think 11 guys were more valuable than Bonds? 1996 MVP, he finishes 5th. Another season he should have won it. He was behind Chipper Jones (a media darling) who had no business being in the top 8. 2000 MVP. 2nd place. It's a joke that he finished behind Jeff Kent. Legit, he should have at a minimum of 2 more MVPs and possibly 4. He ended up winning 7 of them but I think the media just hated him and looked for anyone to give it to over him. And Bagwell, IRodriguez, Piazza, Thomas, Oritz, et al get into the hall of fame and he doesn't is just silly. I think all those guys should be in there so I don't have an issue with them getting in but how can you hold out Clemens and Bonds when you are throwing other roid users in there?

I never said it was a controversial pick. All I said is that picking a 1st baseman #1 overall seemed kind of silly to ME since it is probably the easiest position to find a quality hitter at.

I was a little upset they took a 1st baseman with the pick. There is a reason no other team ever drafts 1st basemen even in the top 10 in the draft. They grow on trees. Although I don't really follow the draft or college baseball, I would have been happier with a shortstop or outfielder. Anyway, none of that matters now because the Tigers are stuck with him hoping he can come around. I think a change in the coaching staff...like everyone but the pitching coaches would help the team.

Can you imagine if the Tigers had Manny Ramirez and Vlad Guerrero Sr on this team? They would probably be benched because they swing at the first pitch too often. Hinch wants all these guys to play the same way he did when he was in the majors. Well, you have succeeded, because none of the current Tigers can hit either. Or maybe this is part of his punishment for being a scumbag and running the cheating scandal.

You can eat before hand and you don't have to drink a beer. JS.

My experience was there were about 5 of us who would play baseball. We had weird rules to compensate for the small number of players. I lived on a lake so that was right field and if you hit the ball there you were out. On the left field side was the house so that was an out too. We used a tennis ball because we didn't want to smash the house with a baseball; the house was mainly brick so we couldn't really do much damage. You had to learn to hit the ball up the middle because of the lay of the land. We had a pitcher, 2 outfielders and 2 hitters. To make things more interesting the hitters had to alternate which side of the plate they hit from. Left one time, right the next, so we were all switch hitters. My cousin and I both ended up playing in college. I played one year and left the team and he played 4. But of course, you get jobs, married, kids and you only have so much time and the Tigers were really the worst team in the league when I was in high school in the early and mid 90s. They were terrible when I was in college and awful when after I graduated. When you only have so much free time, you have to pick what you want to do. Follow a pathetic team that was probably going to lose around 100 games a year or do something (anything else) with your time? It was an easy decision. I played catch with my son and we hit some growing up, but he never got into baseball and that didn't bother me one bit.

Baseball has done a horrible job of trying to gain younger children to be fans. I grew up in the 90s and played ball in high school but I had zero desire to watch MLB. It probably had a lot to do with Mike Ilitch trotting out the worst team in the league for 15 straight years. The last few years feel like the beginning of Mike Ilitch's reign as the owner (15 years of a garbage product) and it's going to end up having the same effect on the younger audience.

Back to the no-hit offense.

You JUST noticed that? Didn't his previous starts kind of give that away?

The only thing Hinch knows about hitting is that he couldn't do it at the Major League level. I can't wait to see Jung in a Tigers uniform, preferably under a different manager.

I think Hinch needs to pull the old garbage cans out of the closet to help spark the offense. That is the only thing I can think of that made him even an average manager.

I don't know. Initially, I thought it was a poor choice to spend the #1 pick on a guy who can only play 1B since they kind of grow on trees. And unless he is a top 5 offensive player there, it just seems like it was a bad pick. But I guess that doesn't really matter now. However, because he was the #1 pick, the Tigers have to give him extra time for him to develop. I thought he should have spent another year in AAA.

If Avila was the GM, he would be willing to trade anyone on the 40 man roster for a weak hitting middle infielder who will never play a game in the majors.