gehringer_2

Tigers have 7 fly balls over 100 mph. Any of them might be HRs somewhere else. Kirk's been talking about this park being bad for HRs with the roof closed.

they will always be looking for excuses to get Riley off his feet.

2nd long sit down. But Skubal still in the game....

they aren't facing a lot of velo, and they haven't been smart enough to even pitch Javy outside, so there's that.

Keith now 8 for his last 21.

must be the green batting gloves.

One in 125 if they are all 200 hitters. One in 27 if they all hit 330!

could tell if Kerry was calling it - if he was he wasn't being real demonstrative.

Gibson and Benetti lobbying for the Tigers to swing the bat more.

Tork goes opposite field on a FB high and away. Hope springs eternal

Jinxed it. Jansen with a single EDIT: LOL - and then a 2 run dinger to Schnneider.

until he faces a RHP? Seriously though, the difference was that almost to the end Miguel could still hit whenever the knee settled down so there was always that tease/hope that if somebody found something that helped him drive off the left leg again, he'd be able to be more productive. So he would have those stretches where you saw him pick up the front foot again and you knew he was going to hit - for a while - and it got to where it might only be game or two and you'd see him go back to trying to hit flat footed. The overall result may have looked the same in BR as a bad player that had an occasional hot streak, but the feel of it was a lot different for me seeing that the talent was still there but for a piece of bum orthopedia. It's does happen to a lot of players and I always think itis a sad thing.

although she did have the sophistication to frame it as a hypothetical. The real bad guy here is Comer - who is no better than a carny barker with the whole preceding and wouldn't know decorum or want or know how to enforce if it slapped him upside the head.

The only thing with Miguel is that he could still flash a little brilliance now and then. Just to remind you. But it got to be so seldom. Even as late as '22 he could tease a month hitting 320 and being productive, but he couldn't sustain it and soon enough he'd be back to futile.

The other big single event that hurt Ford a LOT was the 'Poland is a free country' slip (not be the exact syntax but is was along that line). That was a pretty serious error at the point were the cold war was still pretty frigid and it wasn't just a misspoken word - there was a thought there but it so muddled and poorly executed it had to make you wonder.

We all do it, but maybe we give Watergate too much credit for the outcome in '76. It was going to be a tough climb for Ford anyway. Carter was the more appealing personality and much better in front of the cameras - stagflation was already setting in. If Ford hadn't carried MI as a favorite son, which another Repub probably would not have, Carter gets 318 EV.

I think they believe Colt is close enough to being a better hitter against RHP than Ibanez that it's worth it to give him the rope. For now I'm OK with that. Ask me again in another week.

according to Tork, the team has a set of things they preach. How can you hold the line if you tell Javy to go ahead and do it his way? Of course to me, having any single approach to hitting for a whole team is a mistake out of the box. Every hitter has different abilities to do different things in the box and likewise different things they will fail at if you ask them to do. If a guy has good pitch recognition but holes in his swing -sure don't swing at what you can't drive - you can afford to get down in the count if you are not so likely to get fooled. If your pitch recognition is not so good but you have some plate coverage, way better to swing at a FB on the outer third for a single at 0-0 or 0-1 and put in in play than take it, let yourself get in a hole and K or roll over on a breaking ball that fools you. You need your hitters in the box doing what they do best and forget everything else. You'd never ask the average hitter to do what Cabrera did, regularly taking FBs to right and breaking balls to the pull side because most guys simply don't have the pitch recognition or strength to do it. We all understand that - but conceptually the same is true for all hitters - they will all reach their optimum with an approach tailored individually to what they can to. The logic argues there are some hitters you shouldn't ask to take pitches, or tell not to swing out of the zone, or whatever it is, because for some hitter that is what they need to do. So to have a team wide approach in some particular direction sets up some hitters to fail. Now in 5 years, when they have only drafted or traded for hitters that already fit the mold of hitters that hit like they like, then they will look brilliant, but they will have to pass on a lot of productive players to get there.

I'd stick with Colt another 10 games or so. He's been getting better results in his last 10 and I'd let it ride to see if it continues. If he holds a 600 OPS, which is where he is in May, that's as much as you could expect from any of the current candidates at Toledo. If he slides back down, pull the trigger.

Time flies when you get old!

That's true, but on the other hand it *should* piss him off if that happens because it says "you and Hinch screwed up a player I paid good money to get for the team and it took another org to fix him." If the org believes the current crew are the geniuses that they are given credit to be (and have demonstrated they are with the pitching!) then there should be no fear Javy will suddenly rebound somewhere else, right?

Melania is no Maureen Dean. (BTW - John and Mo have been married for 52 yrs - props!)

I think he's trying to do what they want him to in his ABs - evidenced that the K's are down - he may even believe in trying to do what they are telling him, he just can't make it work.

At this point I'd release Javy just so he has some shot at saving something of his career somewhere else because there is no hope he turns it around here. It's practically reached the point of cruelty.

It makes perfect sense really. Javy was a guy with great power who made accidental contact. In encouraging him to K less and shorten up, you now have a hitter whose pitch recognition is no better than it ever was but who now no longer can do any damage by accident. The wild approach was actually part of what made Javy functional as a hitter. Take it away and he's left with nothing. It takes a lot of hubris to tell major league hitters to change what got them to the majors, and in as many cases as not, it fails anyway. These guys have spent their whole lives finding a way to hit that worked for them. The odds there is something they've haven't already tried is there, but not that large. The number of times you change a guy for the better is real enough, but shouldn't deceive anyone into thinking it can happen more than very occasionally. And to be frank, the one guy who did find something that helped turn him around (Carpenter) found it outside the Tiger system.