gehringer_2

Alex Cora apparently being a ring leader it had to undercut Hinch as he didn't even have his staff presenting a unified stance. But of course then the question is why didn't he fire Cora? Maybe management wouldn't let him? Which maybe makes it ironic that Hinch has hired Joey Cora.

Another take away from Garko was him talking about 'in-zone swing and miss" as an increased focus when looking at pitching prospects. This is something that is generally missed in the media hype around prep/college pitchers which looks at outcomes without delving deeper. You could say it's exactly the kind of thing that would make the org today a little more skeptical of a Casey Mize in the draft. A good pitcher continues to get OOZ swing and miss even in the majors, but the amount available decreases at every level as a pitcher moves up, and the difference between in zone and out of zone swing and miss become more important at each step up. That was good stuff to hear.

Tigers aren't listless, they're just down in the count too often. I listened to Garko on the podcast. On the hitting side they have all kinds of facility for analyzing swings, balance, mechanics etc., very impressive. But I was still sort of put off by the way he seems to assume guys have perfect choice about whether they are swinging at strikes. Nothing he talked about related to pitch recognition other than just 'do it'. The other thing was watching the Jays and Guerrero Jr, and thinking about Sr, and watching Vierling homer on a pitch that was 6" inside, it made me wonder: There are players who are perfectly capable of hitting pitches outside the K zone - there is nothing magic about the K zone box in terms of whether a guy can reach and do damage on pitches outside it. Most guys can hit the ball best in a zone that parallels the bat path, so up and in in the zone is actually harder to hit than outside at the hips. Some guys can turn on pitches way inside like Vierling did in the 6th. Some guys can slap pitches well off the plate outside to the opposite field, some guys have great success dropping the bat head and golfing pitches at their ankles - especially in the center zone - often in to the stands (Mize has given up a lot of these). Should Vierling really not have swung at the pitch he homered on? I think maybe you want hitters to swing at what they can hit, and protect against what they can't, because that has to be more important than getting one more ball in the count, and their hot region is not necessarily going to line up with what the K zone is or particularly with what an ump is calling, so the uber focus on the zone still leaves me questioning. Again, it's clear that going forward they are not going to be interested in obtaining a player like Vlad Sr., who granted, was an outlier, so they are are going to force that it won't be an question in the org anymore, but there is always some cost in excluding potentially good players from consideration just because they do it differently. Of course the hope is what you gain in a system is greater than any costs it imposes.

One of the beat reporters said that Hinch in the post game said Perez bunted on his own. Hinch never bunts...

I don't think because fans question a manager's decisions in hindsight that means much - hell manager's question their own decisions in hindsight. The huge level of random drivers in baseball guarantee that close to half your close decisions will turn out wrong. You want a guy gone when he gets to where what he does is more than occasionally comes out wrong and moves into the region of impossible to explain (Ausmus) and/or he's obviously losing the team (Tram). AJ has strengths and weaknesses like any guy in any job. Just to hear him talk you can tell he loves managing pitching, the coaching of the pitchers and managing game time use. He shows very little of that excitement when he talks about hitting, so I hope he has other people on the staff that have the energy around hitting that AJ clearly does with pitching. But it is one of AJ's peculiarities that I guess he frowns on his coaches talking to the press (wants everything to go through him?) because we never hear much from any the Tigers coaches. This is a departure from a guy like Leyland -- where McClendon or Jeff Jones would often talk to reporters.

anyone can be wrong. How many people have had their lives saved because they didn't accept the diagnosis of their doc and got a 2nd opinion? 😱 (you may have guessed I just read the weekly missed diagnosis story in the paper....)

Lakeland wins 4-0 McGonigle 1/2, single + 2BB. Kreidler(as DH) 2/2 Clark - DNP

I suppose. Are there still enough 'believers' left in Russia 80yr later? The men who ran WWII for the CCCP were born before the revolution. Maybe they didn't like Stalin but they still thought they were building/defending something. How much is Russia today a world of grey men by comparison? If Putin can whip up WWII kinds of motivation to serve the Rodina, maybe he deserves more credit. Granted he certainly tries to in evoke the WWII mythos at every turn.

Purges may cut down on the graft -though if Putin just replaces the guys going out with more of his BFFs the new guys won't be any more honest, but graft aside, purges won't make them better, they will just freeze the org as everyone works harder to keep their head down and make sure they can't be blamed for anything. A low initiative org will asymtoptically approach a zero initiate one.

I had to break away from this game about midway, but if Marquez's K zone stayed the way it was in the early innings, that's a big piece of explaining this game. His K zone was a complete outlier on the tight side compared to what we've been seeing recently. It probably didn't affect mize all that much because he was missing badly with his offspeed stuff, but for the rest of the pitchers acclimated to getting an additional 6" on the wide side it must have been quite the shock.

only for one team?

Well, no real question is was time to go get Mize, what we get from Wentz remains in doubt.

Mize finally throws a slider for a strike - givesup a hit anyway.

Tigers can't get complacent though - if Marquez's strike zone stays like this Mize will give some up also.

shouldn't be true but with most umps you get more close calls when you miss badly less. Marquez not giving Kikuchi much outside either. Small zone - maybe a high scoring game before were done.

Casey ineffectively wild. EDIT: he's not going to last long today if he can't land a breaking ball....

I love Dirks.

My MIL developed it late and the progress was rapid. At then end the choice became upping dosages to where the body was able to maintain but the person was no longer there or have the person and know that the body was going to shut down sooner.

And don't forget Miller to the IL. Foley is a good a pitcher, but it's not the profile to bring into an existing high leverage situation - he should start innings clean. That's where you miss Lange - who was that guy when he could throw strikes. Vest and Faedo don't have the K rate, Wentz flashes a good K rate but is inconsistent overall and the fastball may or may not be there outing to outing. You don't want Chafin facing too many RHH. Holton is probably going it have it fall to him by default like today more often. The fireballing 10+K/9 artist is the unfilled resume in this season's bullpen. Doesn't seem to be a candidate in the org close either.

Something you don't see in a box score very often: Lakeland has 12 BB in their game today. Every player in the starting lineup has at least one.

Max Clark walked, was singled to 2nd and then stole 3rd against a RHP, came home on another single to score Lakeland's first run in the 1st inning.

In what I have heard, Monroe's analysis tends to be better on the radio, no doubt in part because Dickerson keep things more focused on the game than Benotti does but probably also because he probably feels freer to be honest. Radio clips don't end up viral on twitter very often.....

He can get a little silly and drive something into the ground that would be better let go, but the guy that I have the most trouble listening to is Petry. Great guy and fine in small doses but when he gets wound up it's like he won't even take time to come up for air - coming at you rapid fire and then with the stutters to boot - just too fatiguing to listen to sometimes.

totally off the wall suggestion would be to bat him lead-off to force him to think OBP, except the result would be painful if he didn't respond.

the whole psychology and habit around closing is just that, psychology and habit. Jim Leyland showed us in '06 that using your best reliever when the leverage was highest should be the way to go, but the habits formed in baseball culture, which includes the fans, the press, management and even the players, all pressure teams to have closers. It make very little actual sense statistically or tactically. Even the argument that the 9th is somehow harder to pitch is only true because players have come to believe it.