gehringer_2

So of course he's hot tonight.

Torkelson so excited about his night at the plate he forgot to catch the ball.

Victor triples his HR total in three games! Not many players can do that in October!

LOL - timing is everything!

yeah - it was dumb, but he has also scored 15 runs in his last 16 games. There are no perfect players - esp on bad teams.

buy it, lay off half the staff to cut costs and put it back up for sale. I really don't get the impression he has any actual interest in owning it.

flipping off your son while telling him it's not his business probably not be the ideal strategy Matt

not arguing the other points, which are all fair additions to the mix, but I'd argue 28 is not old enough for a pitcher to be much of a decision factor.

Since we expect starters that go to the pen to pick up an MPH or two, don't we expect a reliever that moves to the rotation to back down a similar amount? 110 ERA+ in 4 starts - all against playoff teams. We might be selling low - if he can stay on field going forward. But no doubt somebody is going to go that they'd rather not lose. They have too many mid-level arms to keep them all.

One thing seems clear to me in retrospect, which is that they should have left Torkelson in Toledo to keep building on what he was doing there. Sept in Det has not advanced his development.

Also - the Gophers built a new stadium that seats 50K. That tells us something about the level of their institutional ambition and the local market for college football.

what a silly time for a time to have its best stretch of the year......

Looks like it to me.

Matt Boyd's arm seems recovered - 93 on the FB. And K's the side against his old mates.

The Riley Greene Virus has infected the Tiger outfield, and it's a good kind of sickness.

how's the old line go? All happy families look alike, every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.....

Satire?

This. Riley has between the youngest or third youngest position player in the majors at various times this this season. For him to be even holding his own with decent walk rates and reasonable K rates bodes pretty well for his future. And TBF, Tork is still very young as well - but you'd like to see him generate a little more consistency even if the production rate still has a way to go.

some things stablizie rapidly, some don't, somthings thing generate large sample sizes relatively quickly, some things don't. At 400 AB Tork has probably seen 1500 pitches. Trends on 1500 pitches are not meaningless. Now note that saying that is not the same as saying Tork is a finished product by any means or not capable of changing the player his is now/has been. Obviously I don't think any of us think that, but but he has played enough for some things to be meaningful observations about what he has been doing.

the difference in their heat maps is not. Tork has been an easy out above mid K zone.

IMHO there is more of a fundamental difference though in that Greene has better K zone coverage right now than Tork does, so the BaBIP difference is not all just luck. I see a situation where Tork has to be able to do damage on more different kinds of strikes, that he's giving the pitcher too much of the plate. I wonder if part of it is just developing more mental toughness. It's seems when he has bad BaBIP luck, and he has had plenty, he then loses some of his aggressiveness and that feeds the pop-up machine.

just about 13mo.

The question would be how much better a recruiting area the population concentrations at Chicago/Milwaukee may be for Wisconson than Minneapolis is for Minn. I would guess if there is a structural difference that is it. Also, Madison is more of a college 'destination' than Minneapolis. It's sort of like WayneState is just part of Detroit whereas UofM is AnnArbor. Madison is the state capital but it is stlll much more a college town than Minneapolis is because of UMinn.

expanding on what Saber has already covered - Riley has a 323 OBP and plays a premium defensive position well. Torks is a great 1B but generally no-one gets excited about 1B D. Greene lacks ISO but has been pretty consisten, has not fallen off as teams scouted him and he is also 21 yrs old and should easily develop more power so you see the straight path to being an above average player. Torkelson is having major funks where he can't get on base (281 OBP for the season). One difference (as Saber also noted about their general FB rate) between them is their IFFB rate - Tork on the high side at 15% compared to Greene on the low side at 2%. It's deceptive, watching Tork, the number of LD outs he make might make you think he doesn't hit the ball in the air enough (which I thought at one point earlier in the season), but the numbers say he does (40% FB) and the high IFFB rate would mean he tends toward being on the bottom of the ball too often if anything. Couple that with a -5.1 FBrunsaboveave and I would guess what you have a is a guy that is not compensating for (swinging under/late) the more live fastballs he is getting in the majors. His heat map also shows most of his success at the bottom half of the k-zone. This is where maybe I don't read it like Saber does, I think he may be too much on the bottom of the ball on strikes in the upper part of the zone. But that's what the team is supposed to be able to analyze!

In news from over the pond, Truss collapses. (tee hee) https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/03/world/europe/uk-tax-rate-cut.html