gehringer_2

LOL Braves broadcasters making fun of Dickerson noshing in the booth.

Fine outing for Jack. He and Skubal are ready.

I suppose if it goes back to the pre-expansion days, winning the pennant was the league championship.

On the other side of the same elocution - the one that was like fingernails on a chalkboard to me was Vin Scully's use of 'regular year'. Are there teams out there somewhere playing in an 'irregular' year and we're missing it?

TOOTBLAN #2 OK, I admit Malloy is probably going to be a better hitter than I thought, he still hasn't persuaded me he's a winning player.

Tiger offense moving smartly from sleepy to comatose.

Flaherty gives up a lead off double (that Riley might have caught) then gets out of it clean.

and then TOOTBLAN

Braves announcers believers in the minimalist school. Lots of silence. I'm down with it.

Tigers barrelling up pitches left and right and Lopez escaping with At'em balls.

Del La Cruz and Santana still hanging around?

It's a lot easier to talk about freedom not being free when it's a matter of sending someone else's kids to war, instead of biting the bullet to resize your institution and get off the federal trough.....

Giving Malloy another chance to drop one in left too.

I don't think he has pitched well enough for anyone to be interested. I guess he had to decide if he'd rather sign a minor league deal or hang 'em up.

If Cobb is expected back around May 1, Mize and Jobe will probably spend the month worrying about who gets sent back. That (worrying about it) probably won't benefit either of them but such is life.

In Tony Paul's podcast with Avila he asked him about Jobe and Al mentioned JV's starts in 2005 when he had all this off the chart stuff but still got hammered by MLB hitters. Just for comparison, between college and the minors JV had thrown 450 innings prior to 2006. Jackson is at 252 IP since he left HS - that's pretty green even for a guy with great stuff. OTOH, that's about where Skenes was before last season - but Skenes is a freak even among the freaks that make up the MLB pitching population.

Another one down - Beck reports that Maeda is out of the rotation sweepstakes - will start the season in the pen. So Skubal, Flaherty, Olson, I'm going to say Mize is in, which leaves the last decision as Montero vs Jobe. Montero's results today were fine as far as they went, but NY didn't bring much of the team.

that's a joke Chas!

9 runs now in the other game. AJ clearly didn't divide his troops correctly.

all things being equal, Montero probably should go north over Jobe, but all things are never equal.

Dan&Dan talking about Torres leading off for the Tigers. I sort of doubt it. In NY he had Judge, Stanton and Soto behind him, with the Tigers he might be the #1 power threat rather than #4.

hard hit ball by Javy get's BaBIP'd

Dan&Dan talking about Jobe getting hit hard in his last outing - a simulated game.

Malloy has hit better this Spring than I expected - enough the make sending him back to Toledo less of a slam-dunk than I expected. If they had any certainty about Baez - particularly playing 3d, then I could see Ibanez being on thin ice, and if Baez hits and plays 3b, Ibanez will still probably be the eventual casualty - but not for now I don't think. I could see them just carrying the extra hitter early in the schedule and waiting to see who gets hurt or plays themselves out of a job.

assume Torres is gone next season, then 1st base is going to shake out based on the relative value of Keith vs Torkelson as hitters - IOW it's up in the air. If Torkelson hits another 30+ and Keith continues as a high average low ISO hitter, we are going to see Torkelson back at 1st. If Torks crashes (again) and/or Keith finds starts finding the seats more often, Torkelson has either become a decent RF or is playing in a different jersey. I don't mind that uncertainty - as long as the team maintains the flexibility to go with whichever happens. And I wouldn't completely exclude the possibility Torres plays some 3rd this season. If the team lets it be his decision done on his terms, they might get a different response than the Yankees got by just trying to drop it on him. In recent years around the league 3B has gotten to be a higher premium position than 2b. If Gleyber is trying to build his FA bona fides, that fact may eventually penetrate his perspective to the Tigers' benefit.