gehringer_2

Tigers have two catchers that throw well and a bunch of pitchers that go to sleep on runners. That's just a matter of discipline, which appears to be lacking.

Singer ended up about as projected, a 2/3 kind of starter. He was projected as a possible #1 pick the year before but his last college year he was not as good. Mize impressed everyone with the K rate on the split, the problem is it didn't fool MLB batters and they didn't swing and since it's not a strike, Mize struggled. The conventional wisdom often seems to go overboard for guys that are basically trick pitch guys in college but don't have great swing and miss on their fastball. Ironically, post back and TJ, surgery, now Casey actually has much better fastball and if he makes it I think that will be why.

I don't question whether this FO is as good as it gets with its analytics capabilities, but that is not the same thing as having the vision pick up when the game may be moving fast enough to invalidate their assumptions. It was also interesting at one point last night that Benetti and Petry talked about teams trying to play against their tendencies as being the next gambit to counter teams doing deep tendency analysis. Had to happen of course. Since Monroe may be gone, I'll quote the one bit of wisdom he once offered that I think was spot on about prepping batters. He said he didn't like it as a player because if you couldn't tell him with 100% certainly what a pitcher would do, it was useless because without certainty you still have to be ready for anything at each at bat and that's easiest to do with an unbiased mind. Now that said, Craig was no HOF hitter either.

Yup - the original sin with Torkelson was not leaving him at AAA until he learned to be a better all around hitter. Now he has to unlearn what he probably still believes got him to the majors. Same risk is still in play with Meadows, but I think he's actually further along the curve at this point.

I wouldn't get too exercised about Tork's K rate in the minors, Ks were not his problem against MLB pitching, I don't they are his problem against MiLB pitching. I hope what you are seeing is that they are trying to get him to improve his plate coverage and he is swinging at more pitches across the board. If that's true I'm OK with it, but he's still taking too many hittable 1st pitch strikes. That's seems to be so ingrained he can't leave it. Unfortunately he's not Joe Mauer.

Trouba in Wallman out is 1 for 1, but if Johansson makes the team and assuming Edvinsson is in at this point that puts them a little long on Dmen I think......

Deciding not to run really has no implication wrt resigning his current office. He just does an LBJ and refuses to accept the nomination. Nothing changes in the Federal gov until inauguration day.

This game showed you that you may think you know what is obsolete in the game and what isn’t, the game has a way of showing you you are wrong. As long a the extra runner rule stays and home teams are going to get to the bottom of an extra inning needing to move one runner around, bunting is not a wasted skill. And of course with BAs down across the game, existing run probability tables are also inaccurate.

a team that can execute simple tasks like a bunt, a fly ball, vs one that can't. And the Angels aren't ever good, which just tells you how far away this Tiger team is.

didn't score the extra runner, so this one isn't getting to the 11th.

did someone recently say the Tigers were a team where hitters come to die?

Can't execute anything

Vest says no need to check.

they need a couple more runs to win thsi, but that is vanishingly unlikely.

he's past three batters and he can't throw strikes - is Hinch taking a nap?

a quick check in with the Hens finds Parker 0/2 with 2 BB and Spencer 1/4 with a HR. They dropped him to 4 in the order. Still had one AB where he took a good FB for strike one and then swung at a worse one for strike 2. 🤷‍♀️

That last AB pretty much guaranteed Olson the handshake. Which is fine - another good start.

yeah - forced at this point. Just give it up.

The hard part in this is that he's not going to see consistent enough breaking balls at AAA that he has to swing at many so it could take a long time for him to see enough to do him much good. In the last week or so I've been watching the pitch-by-pitch on his ABs and he has hit a few curves and changes well, no sliders that I remember though......

He wasn't being very challenged by AAA pitching - he's gonna just have to fight through the level jump if he can.

well just to fantasy speculate - if they added Roy and Trouba I think Lalonde has to reformulate the whole scheme because you are going to end up with a team where many/most of your most skilled players are defensemen. That's going to argue for a more interchangeable approach where Seider, Roy, Edvinsson, Ghost, Trouba have more freedom in the O zone with the forwards tasked to also play more hybrid and accept more responsibility to get back first as needed. That might be hard to coach successfully but could also be a hard/confusing kind of team to have to play against.

and that relates to the value of still trying to pick up Roy. Even if all your Dmen are big and strong, you still need to win puck battles mid ice and in the O zone. There is a limit what Dmen can do to protect under powered Wingers so I don't want them to over commit in the Dzone either. I think at this point, Trouba (assuming a done deal), Seider, Edvinsson and Chiarot is plenty of size on the blue line - unless something falls in SY's lap, I would spend what resources are left up front.

What compensated for lack of great wheels besides the good energy level was that Tyler did have some anticipation sense. For instance, you can have decent wheels and still be pretty useless on the fore-check if you are just constantly running to where the play is already over(Zadina?). But he really lost me over his COVID nonsense. Larkin said all the right things at the time but I'd would not be surprised if he wasn't just as happy to see him go.

That's what happens when a guy comes right back to the big show without those games in rehab....

Yup - the thing with Tork is that you do get the impression that enough of his problem is approach that if the right voice could get in his ear, he might finally wise up. But for me this is also hitting on a more fundamental issue with the Tigers. This regime came in pushing the idea of cutting down on OOZ swing - and that's fine as far as it goes. But Hinch gave away the dirty secret the other day in the post game - the Tigers real hitting problem is getting beat *in the strike zone*. Overcoming that problem is a completely different animal than just preaching plate discipline - it's finding a way to help guys cover/defend more of the K zone. The question is what do they have in their bag of tricks for their hitters in that regard?