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.

...and a 1st baseman, shortstop, 2 outfielders, a catcher....

Are you serious? Scherzer missed the first few months of this season and ...he's been on the injured list four times since 2019. just left the game about 15 minutes ago with an injury. https://www.northjersey.com/story/sports/mlb/mets/2022/09/04/max-scherzer-injury-mets-nationals/65471098007/ but I thought anybody with basic intelligence and the ability to access the internet could look up his injury history...guess I overestimated some people.

Most of these guys wouldn't be on the major league roster of any other team. While most of these guys are gritty and easy ones to pull for, that doesn't necessarily translate into quality major leaguers. Give me the primadonna stud ballplayer over the guys that grind and grind just to make it to the majors. If you are relying on those guys as your nucleus, you are probably in the situation the Tigers are in right now. If your top prospects turn out like Mize and Torkelson has so far, you might as well chalk up 90 to 100 losses right now.

It's amazing. You really have to step up and salute the guy; quitters are amazing. He should have a statue erected in front of every regular person's house. Can you imagine telling your boss that you are taking the rest of the year off because you don't feel like working? Because if the majority of us tried pulling that, we would be fired the next day. Sorry, but everyone else has personal issues they need to deal with and still go to work (if you work), because if many people didn't, they wouldn't be able to feed their family. Sorry if I don't shed a tear over an entitled athlete's tribulations. Who doesn't love entitled people complaining about their entitled lives. The guy isn't a hero for quitting.

I agree. I think 200 will be the new great benchmark for pitchers to hit.

It's interesting to see if Verlander can get to 300 wins. He sits at 242 and is pitching as well as he ever has. He will be 40 at the beginning of next season. I know one of his goals is to get to 300 wins, but 58 wins at his age will be difficult. It would seem he would need to pitch another 4 seasons at the bare minimum to reach 300. If he does make it, I am 99.9% sure he will be the last pitcher to ever get to that mark. Greinke has 223 and is washed up. Scherzer has 199 but is 38 and often injured. Kershaw has 192 and is still an effective pitcher, but he has battled countless injuries the last few years. He's only 34 and is exactly 50 wins behind Verlander. He would need to average 13.5 wins if he pitched until he was 42. After Kershaw, Gerrit Cole has 127 wins but will be 32 in a few weeks. Even if he averaged 20 wins per season until he was 40, he still wouldn't get to 300. With the way pitchers are being used and the injuries that seem to be happening to everyone, Verlander and Kershaw would seem to be the last 2 guys to have a shot at 300.

So they only needed 10 players to be exactly opposite of what they were and they would have been successful? That is a lot of misses.

It seems like the Tigers face Cy Young candidates every game.

Might already be the team's best offensive player.

It is his legacy, and he could have put a stop to it at any time. I get it that it wouldn't have been a popular thing to do with his players but he was in charge and the blame ultimately falls on him. And when he gets fired in the near future after failing to do much with the Tigers, he might be viewed as just that guy who only won because his team cheated. Fair or not. I am curious how people view Sparky Anderson around here. I know there is some sentiment that anyone could have won with the Big Red Machine, even though winning the WS is really, really tough. In Detroit, do people think he is an underachiever who could only take his stacked team to the playoffs 2x? I was pretty young in the 80s, so I don't have much of an opinion.