gehringer_2

that's gonna leave a mark.

exactly - which is why Hughes is probably the 1st person Guerin talks to before deciding whether he's in or out. He gets a deal on the table with Hughes contingent on landing Larkin before he calls Yzerman back.

this. Larkin is the perfect get for the Wild and *if* they can swing it so they lock up Hughes as part of the overall package - which is a real possibility, it's almost better than perfect for them. But the return fit for Det is poor. So my only quibble with the formulation is that Yzerman needs to be looking for that 3rd party fit as hard as he wants Guerin to.

Making the team better the day after the trade than the day before is going to be a very tough lift unless he is willing to take older players, in which case that just guarantees falling off the cliff later. Maybe if you package Cossa you can get enough to actually improve the team, but then what are you going to do when Gibson runs out of gas in the 2nd half again? Bank on Augustine I guess?

Does anyone know if Keith made the off season change in his setup on his own, or with a consultant, or with team guidance? He's now the poster child for the risk of trying to make changes in the way you hit in the off-season. Even with Traject machines and whole nine yards of tech there is apparently still no way to be sure if what you worked on/committed to, is going to work against MLB pitching. FWIW, without finding video to compare, it looks to me like he has already moved back to a somewhat higher bat position than he started out the season, but without much result so far.

working with a different staff. That's seems to be the recurring question about his tenure here, has he assembled as good a staff as he had in Tampa?

They will have to pay someone a lot to take Machado's contract. Tatis? I don't know enough about his medicals but at least theoretically there may still be a great player there if he got fully healthy. A dice roll though.

interestingly enough Rdrs loves McGonigle at both SS and 3b, though sample size is too small for that stat to tell you much yet - just that he certainly can't be outright bad and still be plus 7 even if the sample is small. On statcast, he's minus one overall (good not great) and it jumps right out that he is positive against RHB, negative against LHB at both SS and 3rd, which supports the theory that his first step or two are plenty quick but he does suffer range wise when he is left with more ground to cover and has to go farther. Also agree his throwing velo is meh, but I think he mostly makes up for that with a very quick release, so I don't see that as so much of an issue. Range limit would hurt at 2b when men are on. I'll say 3b next to a SS with + range should be the optimum for him.

Sounds like a situation where a three way deal could be the best answer. Does Yzerman have the skill to engineer one?

absolutely

notable how this discussion has written Keith right out of the picture..... Not that I am surprised, but just a reminder how tenuous the hold of even the best prospects is on a successful MLB career.

Guys hitting well is always optimal!

I don't think he'd hold out. He'll come to camp, put his head down and play and the situation for Mclelland will be intolerable until Yzerman moves him.

The Wings are in a horrible place overall - blame weird lottery luck, blame Holland - whatever - bottom line is that Yzerman's rebuild has failed and they are stuck being a marginal play-off team at best in any near future. Yzerman constantly bemoans how hard it is to obtain stars - he wasn't able to when the team was bad and they were screwed by the lottery. That's water under the bridge now though, nothing to do about it. If they are going to move forward moving Larkin gives him the chance to have a sit down with Ilitch and say "If you support me I will start this over and we are going to be bad again but we are going to move enough players to get back into the draft and find the players to produce a winner in Raymond's and Seider's windows. Or they can keep stumbling along until Yzerman eventually gives up or Ilitch decides he's had enough. Or maybe some kind of unforeseen lighting strikes and some star falls in their lap. However you look at it the light at the end of the tunnel for this team right now is the train coming at them.

If Yzerman ends up with Larkin sitting and no return, he signs his own ticket out of town because that's going to be more years of stagnation in the Wilderness with no prospect for improvement. Plus I think Ilitch is going to hate that kind of drama - could be wrong on the latter but his vibe has always been about having happy teams.

Hitter's that make it deep into their 30s before they drop off exist, but they are relatively rare and unpredictable.

a lot of these are looking at comparable players or $, but the only right way for the Wings to make this deal is to get high picks pick or young players. They don't need someone comparable to Larkin, they need to get at least one future high pick, lottery tickets to try to find players that will make them better than they were with Larkin before Raymond and Seider are on the wrong side of 30. If Yzerman's main concern is to get back a player to replace Larkin in the short term, he will have wasted the chance.

maybe - but getting drawn into intra-party squabbles before you are even elected is not my idea of good political strategy. Not a battle he has to fight - He's not running in PA.

good thing there were two outs or Wenceel probably gets his usual poor jump. 😂 Speaking of Wenceel - was looking at his numbers - odd case. His Ks are not up, his walks are not down, his fly ball rate is similar, but his LD rate is down 50% to an abyssmal 12% leading to a 169 BaBip and the highest GB/FB rate of his career. Seems like we have another guy that made an off season adjustment that didn't work. I wonder if he went to the same place as Keith......

miracles never cease!

nice that Seattle ran themselves out of the inning. Unfortunately the steals earlier in the game ended up on the board.

so now in a high leverage 8th inning will we have Zach Short batting against a RHP?

heart of the order cannot bring a man home from 3rd with no-outs SELL!

The longer I think about it the more I agree with the sentiment up thread that he is doing them the biggest favor he can. The rebuild is dead in the water. The team is way short of good enough and there are nothing but NHL average players on the horizon in GR, if that. He's given the best 10 yrs of his career to a team that went nowhere, he's got every right to go try something else, and the team gets a chance (whether they like it or not!) to do a reset they otherwise wouldn't. You can absolve Yzerman and blame it all on Holland, but that's still not Larkin's cross to bear.

IDK - Sports are great, but even when I was rabid undergraduate football fan, I never got enough thrill out of going to a sporting event to have paid more than a decent restaurant dinner for 2 to see one in person (even if I had had it 🤑), which is probably about I paid for rose bowl tickets back in the day.