gehringer_2

He probably wanted him to be able to get himself back together after plunking Taylor on the theory of avoiding having him taking it in to his next outing, but he guessed wrong that Lange could do it! Lange hit both batters with curve balls but it seems the more over arching problem for him recently is he can't throw his FB for a strike, and once guys start waiting for the curve they can hit it with some regularity. And it's not even inside/outside command on the FB, it mostly just that he can't bring it up a little - he keeps putting it at guys' ankles,

Tork with the powder blue shoes. I don't know if I've watched a local athlete wearing that color since Ron Johnson wore blue suede in UM's backfield.

No question he is as quick on his feet as anyone you'll meet. It's also generally unfortunate that our campaign culture rewards that so highly since it's not particularly high on the list of necessary executive skills.

IDK, there does seem to be evolution going on at levels we don't see and understand. Maybe the very existence of TJ surgery has changed the mindset of pitchers to where they are more willing to push themselves harder than they might have when they knew that to overstrain your forearm was to end your career. Back in the day, you hurt your arm, you were done, and that probably happened to a lot of guys before they ever got to majors or at least were well known enough that anyone remembered what happened to them. So the guys that were left either had the lucky genes or had found some compromise between performance and health that is different than today's.

So if we end up trading Lorenzen and Rodriguez, or even if not and Rodriguez just opts out, we could easily end up with the 'ALL TJ" starting rotation with Mize, Skubal, Turnbull, Faedo, and Wentz.

This is what should happen. It's just too bad they never went after Shrub's legal team that wrote the torture memos. If some them had been disbarred maybe the precedent would have had a few of these folks thinking twice.

Probably an easy money bet that Tiger pitchers are going to get traded, the only question is who. So I think odds are pretty good a Wentz, Faedo, Olson or all of the above might end up being needed. Would like to see Olson sustain what he has done in the last couple of games for a longer period though.

Maybe the simplest answer is they want him to keep working at 3B and there are already too many 3Bs at Toledo. Nevin and Malloy are also Harris' guys.

busy day!

Three box scores from FCL today for the Tigers. Are they reporting latin scores with the florida scores?

So, speaking of the FCL, the Tigers are currently running *3* teams there. We should have guessed the teams really didn't want to contract the number of players in the low minors, just the cost of having them spread out all over.

Justice Bigbie has 1.200 OPS 🔥. They won't even miss him.....

still not sure why he isn't at least at Toledo. Is the org saying they don't have an IF coach at Toledo they trust to work with him?

Works for me.

Aug 1.

Numerically? No.A few yr ago I ran a data set of the simple 1st order unweighted batting measures against team scoring: BB, K, Avg, Slug/ISO, OBP, OPS etc. But TBH it has been a few years now. If I could find the my old run I should run it again against more recent data just for grins to see if there are any shifts the relative correlations. OPS was clearly the best correlate but I don't remember the order after that Is there any disagreement today that OPS is the most predictive 'simple' stat for hitters? The more sophisticated linearly weighted measures may be even better, but the average fan usually doesn't have the data to generate those, not to mention it being difficult to understand the moving parts as easily as with OPS.

the Cabrera extension didn't bother me that much because I figured for Cabrera, the skill level was so high he probably would still have a chance to be decent hitter to his late 30s. Many of the HOF level hitters retained their hitting skill to near 40. But the injury risk is always there for all players and it ravaged Cabrera. And yet still - you look at the last few weeks, when he feels good, the swing and eye actually are still not bad even at 40. There is still a hitter trapped in that beat up body.

Sadly, Cisnero's FB has never come all the way back since the DL trip in the fist half last year. Maybe the injury, maybe just would have lost it at 34 anyway, but 4 BB/9 is more interesting with a 98-99 mph heater than with 96.

Someone put up the clip of Skubal's first inning yesterday - Sands behind the plate. Don't know if I've seen a guy any sloppier throwing the ball back to pitcher in one inning. Skubal was having to bounce up, down, in, out just getting the ball back. Hope that was just a SSS aberration, otherwise that would have to get irritating.

agree - though not as bad as the couple of previous years. But I saw it a little differently - to me the deficit was as much in the forward's lack of size, strength, tenacity in their own zone. I though blue line upgrades have been real and last year's D men played better down near the net and red line when the play was down there than previous versions, but they usually got less than zero usefull support from their fowards out near the blue line. You can put Lidstom and Konstantinov on D together and if you have 3 useless forwards out there with them your team still can't play much D 5 on 2.

Stability is another buzzword I suppose? But for sure he's also there to burn as many innings as they can squeeze out of him.

True - at least we hope! And that's why I qualified it with 'discernable'. The team philosophy, which is different from past regimes, has been to keep guys on long term IL like Turnbull, Mize, Skubal with the team. So with that as the model, it would have seemed logical for Austin to do likewise rather than be singled out. But the guys on physical rehab have a work plan for each day that all the other players see and maybe even partcipate in with them, and milestones that are getting checked off. Both for confidentiality reasons and logistical reasons that model may not apply so well long term for Austin and I would not be surprised if his docs decided that whatever initial advantage there might have been in him being with the team had run their course.

There is no free lunch though. You don't fully get back the lost year just by holding guys back because the ones that are starting to get older are going to be losing the ability to change and adapt they need to make the transition.

after Ras I think they are still about of 5 players short, at least 1 D and 3 or 4 forwards. If Edvinsson is the D guy, and Solderblom is one of the forwards, they still need to come up with 3 more at least average NHL forwards either by promotion or purchase.

I would have to think that even if it was only at home, showing up on game day, working out with the team, then not playing with no discernable plan or timetable would eventually become a source of increased stress even if it seemed like a nice idea for a while at first.