gehringer_2

they keep hoping that with distance from the injury that they are going to start seeing Kelly circa 2019, but it doesn't seem to be happening. If they accept that it won't, Rogers' PT should go to more like 2/3. Or else Hinch will just be stubborn.

or maybe it was this guy -

all those years with Leyland, Ausmus and Gardenhire, the sky had to falling to see both catchers in the game. Hinch says - hold my beer, dummies. I remember Ausmus especially always drove me crazy - putting his team at a disadvantage to cover some incredibly small probability situation - apparently just to be able to prove he was smart enough to game out some scenario that was never going to happen anyway.

hard to figure whether it's worse if it's true or false....

Because he's given you 8 bases in the last 3 games. No-one in the system other than Riley can do what Torkelson can do at any time the switch flips for him, so you give him more rope than anyone else in the system short of Riley. Even with his head screwed on wrong right he is still hitting doubles. In Keith's case, his AB are pretty good, he's having absolutely terrible BaBIP luck. His expected BA is 240, which ain't great but passable for a 2B you need to let develop. Meadows needs mechanical work on his swing, he was swinging under everything. That's a good task to do in the minors, plus Perez is playing well so far.

On base twice was nice but to me it was still depressing to see Tork still so totally committed to pulling the ball so excessively. In fact, he is catching it so far in front it's going to be hard to ever get it in the air enough to get it out of the ball park - assuming that is what is trying in the worst way to do. For tomorrow, BP look OK. Holton is spent, Faedo: probably don't want to use but could (17P; 2-U&D); Lange maybe (20P), Chafin (11P and the rest are good to go.

Cle had 8 LH hitters in the line-up. If there was ever a night when an Opener would have been in order. Give Holton the 1st pass through the line-up - or the 1st two innings - whichever comes 1st, then go to Kenta. Might have been a different outcome for Maeda....or not. 🤷‍♂️

not losing ground feels like win.

Chafin, Foley and Miller have all had their issues recently, so Lange doesn't feel any worse. The 3 batter rule is the hard part for a guy prone to wildness - you can't yank him after the 1st walk and he's shown you he's clearly gonna be wild.

Well, I wanted to give you an opportunity for a plug...... Actually, you can get to his transaction page and so far it they haven't updated it, but I get the impression that is not unusual....

LOL - Can't check roster status for the Hens - the 'Roster Link' on their website has been broken for at least a few days.

I suppose the judge would be within his rights to convene the court and send Marshalls out to bring him in.

another point about Parker's swing vs his K's. He is so under the ball right now that if can make the adjustment to get closer to center, he is also going to end up cutting down on his absolute swing and miss, so while I wouldn't say I'm optimistic he eventually comes back as a MLB hitter, I can at least see a path for him to make the changes to get there.

exactly - it really doesn't matter if Daniels what says today is objectively true, all that matters to the case is whether she is accurately depicting what she would have said in 2016. As a practical matter any witness lying doesn't help the case of the side that presents them, but here the prosecution can still get a net positive spin if they can make the arg as given above work.

You are right - Parker is above average walk rate for the TIgers (they were 8.3% as a team last season) - he's keep around 12% even so far this season - but it is his BaBIP that's killing him - 132 for the season so far! Last season his FB rate was 42%, it's a whopping 75% so far this year and it's coming at the expense of his LD%, which is terrible (2.5%). To me this is exactly the kind of situation where you hope a guy can step back and reconstruct himself a little at AAA, whereas in contrast I think Tork's problems are all between his ears. Maybe facing easier pitchers would help him, but I don't think it improves the odds of him straightening out the way it could with Parker who may need more room to fail with a swing adjustment.

10 walks is optimistic for a guy with a 40% k rate, but sure, it just about doable, but sadly Parker’s other problem is a very high pop-up rate, which depresses his BaBIP! I’d picked Parker as the most likely demotion just because he needs a mechanical adjustment to get the ball down and that’s a good MiLB project.

It's a three step tie in. A is the need to show that what Daniel's says damages Trump as a candidate, B) establishing A provides the motivation that the payoff is a campaign necessity. C) In denying the payoff was a campaign expense in legally required financial disclosures a felony was committed. A->B->C = felony. Judge has to let prosecution follow A at least up to where the point Is made.

I think too many baseball observers, and maybe even people on the inside who should know better, can get hung up on individual pitch type outcomes. The outcome is always the result of the sum of everything the batter sees. There is a always a limit to how much you can isolate the value of the properties of any given pitch from its fit in the the pitcher's repertoire and sequencing. Change-ups are maybe the most obvious case. If any pitcher just stood on the mound and threw his change 100% of the time his OPS against would soon be about 1200. All changeups are easy to hit pitches if taken in isolation. But depending on how it plays against the spreed and break of the fastball or breaking balls before it, the exact same pitch can become unhittable (e.g. Skubal). The pitch didn't change, only the context.

There will probably still end up being some good players there.

Agree 100% 84, I have always believed good hitters 'earn' the good pitches they get to hit by still being a tough out on the pitches they don't like so much. If this team needs any more obvious example they just need to look at their best hitter. Riley will put a ball in play that was pitched pretty much anywhere.

Wentz tends to be as good as his FB, which has ticked up more than 2 mph across the last two seasons.

well, I think it's a little more than that. I'll give you the example my fellow Ann Arborites. Ask any mother in Ann Arbor if she has taken her kids to the zoo, and she will say - "of course!." Ask which zoo, it will invariably be Toledo, not Detroit, even though the former is about 25% further away and the two zoos are generally rated closely.

But harder to get to even 200 if you can't get the ball in play in 40% of your AB!

So I think I've made this post before, sometime during the Dombrowski era, but the Tigers have been a pitching first team ever since DD and even if Harris has a mind to change that, he hasn't done much to do it yet - and here is the problem: If your minor leagues are full of young almost ready hitters, you can bring them up, move them in and out of the lineup, play them part time while retaining a veteran, and build their trade appeal - which you can then use to go get the pitching prospects you may lack. But if you are building a huge stable of starting pitchers, which is certainly a great thing to do, you still have the problem that all but 5 of them are stuck in the minors. You really can't bring guys up to validate their big league potential without creating rotation havoc, so they don't build the kind of trade value you need to get the top hitting prospects you lack. I think once way back in the day I heard DD say he liked drafting pitchers because the metrics were more reliable-projectable, and I think that is certainly true. Spin, velo and strike rates are what they are on any diamond at any level. Of course that is only putting aside the greater injury risk for pitchers which probably negates most/all of that advantage, but one can still see the logic. But the problem remains that it's still not easy to leverage excess MiLB pitching into MLB hitting, so if you can't draft hitters, you are still up the creek - like the Tigers.

We do have a lot of guys hanging around the margins of make it/break it. The Covid year was obviously a factor, but lack of break through picks like Riley is also too much of the problem.