gehringer_2

Will a hot but old goalie bring back a decent 3rd pairing Dman?

FWIW, you are not alone there. The problem with a 100yr old uniform is that it looks like a 100 yr old uniform.

I loved the way Matthews ended up a spectator on the play.

I Whittingham is the straight arrow he's being billed as, we'll find out how long a clean program that loses is viable.

Some of this sorts out in ST. Baez, McKinstrey, McGonigle, Meadows and Wenceel Perez will probably all see their April assignments hinge on their ST evaluations.

Maple leafs make it 2-1 on some weak play in their own zone by Chairot and ASP.

No doubt right wing 'Christianity' has done a good job of accelerating things by poisoning the well for everyone else as well, but the longer term trend has been decades in the making.

It's not like JB doesn't sub defense/offense at the end of close games, that he missed the last one in this one could well have been a miscalculation or just a screw-up. But the situation with,. Thompson - since it was almost the whole half, could have been something more - a reason he was sitting that went beyond the momentary game situation. Since neither Ausar nor JB is going to tell us what it was it's hard to guess if it was a good reason or not. I suppose if you decide you need to make a point to your team that might cost you a game, you do it against a bad team in the other conference.

OK - I just recollect that he was older when he came out for some reason - maybe he was just a year older when he went to school.

I'm with SF on this one. You seem to be focusing on "they get no respect because they are Detroit" but that's not the issue. Every athlete is more pumped to play better competition, the uniform and the city don't figure at all, 24-7 is all that figures. That's always the team you want to show you are better than.

Not at all, just talking players in general. The basic issue to me is that everything (for a position player) comes down to hitting, and to this day, projecting how guys are going to hit as they face progressively tougher pitching is the hardest thing to do, so it's natural that everything else which is easier to see tends to get a little more attention. There's no perfect MiLB metric for 'can you lay off Tarik Skubal's change down 0-2' until the guy gets himself into a position to have a chance to try to do it.

4 goals scored against Larkins line. Yikes.

yeah - one critique I saw (on BA I think) was about his throwing footwork. That should be low hanging fruit for Dr. Trammell. Still, I want to see him prove he can hit MLB pitching.

And you don't need to excel in every aspect of the game to be a great player. Would you draft Andrelton Simmons over Derek Jeter? I've never seen anyone play SS like Simmons when he 1st came up, but if I wanted to win ball games I'll take Jeter. Or long story short version: Great hitting trumps almost everything else.

and Jose Altuve has hit 30 hr twice at 5'6". There probably is no pro sport were physical tools are less connected to actual performance than baseball. I'm not saying they aren't connected, but that in baseball, other skills like ball path perception (i.e. fly ball judgement), anticipation, soft hands, and of course your perceptual hard wiring as a hitter, are all as important as, and unrelated to, raw athleticism.

well, there are plenty of guys in the HOF at less than 6' so his height should be the least of his problems.

If one of my kids had wanted to spend 75K on a wedding I've have told them they haven't learned enough to be married yet.

that he's 'only' 5' 11"?

Curtis had stayed in school for 3yrs, which would be unusual for today's top prospects, who often come out in a year or two.

yeah - the only guy I can think of who could ever fairly have been called the 'next Mantle' would have been Mike Trout and even with the reasonable skill and athletic match, MT can't switch hit.

that's a fair number of words to say "I was sitting him for something I'm not going to tell you about"

and Maybin was a pretty good ballplayer - he just couldn't stay on the field, but when he was healthy - which was rare, he was productive.

Indeed. Maybe JB screwed up his rotations. Or maybe FT shooting could be one of the messages sent by having Ausar sitting and also forcing other guys to be responsible for defense. The team is doing so well that maybe we lose track of the degree to which a coach still needs to push some of their buttons once in a while.

Just that he is naturally pretty chunky and may be feeling more than average pressure to up his HR totals. Training tech is of course a lot better in recent years, but it is still another reason I'd like to see them commit to him at third so his motivation to maintain quickness and flexibility stays right in front of him.

I'd like a little more certainty we get production from the OF, but to me the IF is the least of this team's problems. The Tigers 1st priority needs to be to have a more reliable rotation and bullpen than last season. They're not going anywhere if it's Skubal, and the 11 Dwarfs again. So far I'm unimpressed on that score.