gehringer_2

Certainly the surprise it not what Paredes' value is - I don't think too many people doubted there was a decent hit tool there, the questions for Paredes had been whether he was going to outgrow the quickness he needed as an IF and whether his power would develop but there was always a decent probability for him. The crazy thing that has come out of the blue is Meadows. Unless Tampa was hiding something how could anybody have predicted what has happened to him when deciding to trade for him? It's just one of those weird outliers - basically our guy got run over by the beer truck. Where we are now doesn't really have much to do with the trade.

Speaking of 40 yr old pitchers, Anibal announced his retirement. He pitched 19 years with an arm that should have fallen off before he even got to the Tigers.

Kumar Rocker blew his UCL. About as predictable as the Sun rising in the East..... https://www.mlb.com/news/kumar-rocker-rangers-tommy-john-surgery

Just think, if ERod had pitched this way all last season Al Avila might still have his job.

We're not waiting for power from Tork, just a little adjustment in elevation - he already hits the ball plenty hard enough to put in the seats. But I don't want to be too impatient. Hitters develop. He's just come off a pretty disappointing season. Let him get his on-base tools working consistently. Once he's a more comfortable and experienced hitter that little additional lift will probably come naturally as his timing gets better. The one thing I don't want anyone to do is mess with his swing - it's a thing of beauty as it is.

well, he had 1178 in Japan before coming to the US. If he'd had half that many playing those years in the US he'd still be at ~3700 - so he could easily have been challenging for 4k.

Lorenzen looking like the steal of the offseason. 5 hits for Torkelson and Greene. 2:14 game time.

The only one I ever remember is Cesar Gutierrez had a 7 for 7 in 12 innings in 1970, which was just about a whole season's offense for him!

Riley has pushed his BA over his last 120 AB over 300. Getting close to being more than just a hot streak by a mediocre hitter. Has to be the best stretch of his career.

Ortiz has to realize who he has playing 1b also. Carlos Santana is not exactly Mark Teixeira over there. If you aren't sure of your throw, don't make it to Santana.

My neighbor has a tough lawn, uses an EGO on it. As long as he doesn’t let it go too long it seems to do fine. It’s what I would get if I were in the market, but I gave up cutting my own as my allergies to it have gotten worse. Sometimes a decision is nothing to sneeze at….😁

the way he is trying to outrun the weakness at his flanks you'd *almost* think he was trying to get himself and his people surrounded and cut off, so he can part ways with Russia altogether/switch sides or at least negotiate his own safe passage to Brunei or the like.

Ya think???

Elon has his wee fweelings hurt because Soros dumped all his Tesla stock. https://news.yahoo.com/billionaire-investor-george-soros-fund-095450069.html?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZ29vZ2xlLmNvbS8&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAAFBw84O3ZUlxsg0McCgt4t0Qws4QSJUoP6McgYeeTP0AOUhP1MpCaqNMRD3fip3TJlAY7xkjUpL03YmFlcaXxur-5vFMomQwoXTliRixAVxP0DM4R-8hzdmFtxdnNaRd1KQMprYEe6ZU51bUOIvHwmPjbZTEZk6krXbrCp30CyS5

Ha! You can almost see exactly how there could be an irony at work here. If you only look for guys who are already short to the ball, they are already at the level of pitch recognition and contact they can reach by being short. But if you look at guys who are succeeding to the same degree at the lower levels without being short - maybe those are the guys with the potential to hit much better pitching when if and when they learn how to get shorter. Or another way to put it, maybe a hitter succeeding with bad mechanics must actually have better vision and reflexes, so if you improve *his* mechanics, you maybe get a major leaguer. With hitting its the vision and reflex which are the irreducibles. You can't do much of anything to change or augment those, while mechanics can be fixed -at least in theory. So a system that only looks for guys that already have good mechanics is excluding a lot of guys that could have a lot more upside potential while bringing in guys who are already doing the one thing they would coach them to if they weren't already doing it.

LOL, you don’t even need to be old enough to have grey hair to remember when the Tigers brain trust used to spend their time trying to persuade young pitchers to stick to three pitches.

just got done watching this one off the DVR. Riley is some kind of hot this week. And Seattle had more IF hit luck than any team should have in a week! Also: Having Maton behind Torkelson is good practice for Spencer learning to take pitches late in the count, because they aren't going to throw him anything hittable....🙄

I think it comes down to two questions: First - how much time is enough time for them to decide if he is ever going to be an MLB 3b (or OF). If he shows no defensive progress and the decision is he only gets to the majors as a DH, then from that moment forward your decision to move him turns only on his bat. Conversely, assuming they do think he can become a serviceable 3B, then the question is how much any continued improvement in his 3b play hinges on being at AAA vs Det. Can he get in just as much extra work with just as good instruction here as there? If so, then maybe you are back to the first part - where you are really only waiting to be sure the bat is ready - or you do keep him in Toledo because you do believe he can progress defensively faster there? Personally I am at a loss to see any reason that should be true, unless they think that once he achieves a 25 man roster spot his motivation to keep improving will lag. Anyway - that's how I would lay out my options if I'm playing armchair GM.

funny enough you should mention it, but I can give you an example. I worked for a while for a F100 oil field services Co and we had thousands of people in company leased cars going to customer facilities. Mother Corp ended up going to great lengths to protect themselves from liability from their employees in their cars messing up. For instance we were all sent to a high class professional driving school (which was neat) and we had a 0.000 BAL policy where your ass was flat fired if you were ever stopped at any time and blew anything but a zero-zero in the company car or anyone else's. Plus random drug testing (though that was as much for being around hazardous equip as for driving..) At any rate, the point is out there in the 'real' world with real employers and real money floating around, liability gets a lot more real too. My Corp wasn't doing all that to be a good corporate citizen (they weren't one) they were doing it to try and reduce the number of liability claims they were experiencing and to build their due dilegence defense portfolio.

LOL. Of course not! But the difference is going to be the way the liability shifts. When it was illegal boosters operating outside the rules, the Universities themselves could always deny liability. In fact the major sanction levied by the NCAA was always about 'loss of institutional control' which only reinforced the fiction of the firewall between the University and legal liability for whatever went on with 'unsurpervised' athletes. But now with the Schools hip deep in organizing and coordinating NIL themselves, I think they are going to find deniability harder to preserve, and they are not going to like it.

I've never gotten the impression that Boros is one to play games and in fact I imagine once Turnbull hired him he made sure everyone had their cards face-up on the table. Boros plays a hard game and plays it better than almost anyone, but he is well respected everywhere in the league because 'dicking around' is something he doesn't do. Maybe he'll be good for Turnbull if Spencer does have a tendancy to be that way.

FIFY.

Greene and Torkelson with decent swings, Young pitcher did OK. Other than that nothing. I guess in 162 games there will always be days when a team just seems flat altogether as a team, but the Tigers seem to have more of them than they should. There's a skill in baseball in bearing down to be a tough out when you have to - you're not necessarily even tying to do damage, but your're just up there to make the pitcher suffer - do whatever to extend an AB even if you are giving yourself up in the end . You need guys that will do that in a game like this just for the benefit of rest of your lineup. Make the other guy work, change the rhythm, generate a little energy for your bench, make a statement that your team is still here, give your own pitcher a chance to recoup. Tigers don't have anybody that can/will.

yup - That's is another thing with Maybin, he knocked around the league long enough to have played with a ton of other good players.

I was disappointed to see Anderson Cooper's defense. It was a complete straw man exercise. Yes, Trump has to be covered exactly because he is real and is out there doing his damndest to win again. But that isn't close to being the question in play with the other night. That question is 'does a news org cover him like THAT'?, to which no journalist worth his keyboard should agree.