gehringer_2

If this is substatiated, and it appears to be, he gone.

Meadows has played a LOT of professional baseball, I would have no problem calling him up. The question is would he help? You're not going to give him Riley's or Carpenter's ABs. Maybe if Baddoo can't find it, but you have to give Akil some PA before you cut bait there. It's on the IF they need the help. But Keith has 33 PA at AAA. If he can get to at least 100 without crashing then maybe I'll be on board for taking a look.

Right. Like the outcome any individual baseball game, the outcome of any single pick is strongly random, only weakly predictable Harris said it best when he said that a lot of the very best bats never get to college - our own Riley being an example. Of course everyone matures physically at a different rate and sure even some all stars will not have shown (or just didn't have the chance to show) their batting ability at 18, but OTOH, in the history of baseball the fact stands out when you look at HOF hitters is how many of them were already showing their ability younger than other players and were able to get to the majors at young ages. If you take a bias against HS hitters you're playing with one hand tied behind your back. And again, it all goes back the the eyeballs and evaluation skills you are putting on these players. If you need that year or two of film and counting stats to be confident in your scouting, then absolutely stick with college players. Better that than misses. But if you assemble the skill in your org and are making the huge time and money investment needed to scout prep players deeply, there is enough reward there to make it profitable despite the increased risks. The same being true on the international side where you have to look at even younger players. And we don't even know yet if Harris has that kind of team in place or is just whistling in the dark!

So they would have taken Crews or maybe Skenes but not Langford.

I actually like it if they aren't falling into the trap of looking at every SS prospect in the reflection of Alex Rodriguez. Teams keep spending their time looking for the next ARod and instead just keep getting guys they have to move off SS, sometimes even before they ever make the majors. It's OK if your SS doesn't hit 30 bombs/yr - really.

Yes. Vierling, Torkelson, Baez, and Rogers and maybe Malloy are your RH core and Greene is going to play every day so short term (as in the next year or two) and that is only 5/6 of 9 posittions in the order so at least one RH upgrade in both the IF and OF should be on the offseason shopping list for sure.

as you listed, they don't lack for candidates eligible to step up on the offensive side. The door is open if some of these guys can skate through it.

there is a certain logic to taking HS bats and college pitchers - but only if you can put eyes on those prep hitters who have some serious skill at analyzing what they are seeing. If Harris has those people in place now then the strategy will pay off with more upside on the results. If he doesn't - it's gonna be more long summers. But we might as well be optimistic now and enjoy that the sky is still the limit as long as the new FO honeymoon lasts. One a related note, I saw some comments from Gabe Alvarez (Erie manager) about Bigbie. The interesting thing is that Gabe said that Bigbie is only challenging to be a more serious prospect now because he's a completely different hitter than he was when he was drafted, that the org has worked him through a total revamp. So maybe it's just coach speak, but OTOH, how many years has this very issue i.e. whether the Tiger org had any clue about how to make hitters better or just sent them out there to play everyday and sink or swim on their own, been a hot topic wrt both the Dombrowski and Avila regimes?

Pitchers? Pitchers?? We don't need no steeinking Pitchers!

I like this. The counter point might be that since Perron and Larkin are probably their best O-Zone puck possession guysyou might want to split them up so the two top lines both have some of that. I'd guess is will turn on whether Perron-Larkin-Bebrincat leave the second line too inept..

Out of those 4, Hronek was the only Czech that could check. Last time I checked, 1 out of 4 is not enough checking to get from your Czechs.

Colt Keith, Jace Jung, Max Clark, Luke Gold, Josh Crouch. Tigers must have decided in recent years that they were carrying too many deadwood syllables in their development system.

Keel went 14th - just about where he was ranked before all the late buzz. Probably just as well off to ignore all the prognostication that happens after college World Series is over and no-one is doing anything on the field.

Yzerman /= panic

There is some potential to be better. Fabbri could be another add that sort of been ignored for next season if he is finally anything like healthy.

let's say his advisory team knows that the next team in line that showed serious interest in him picked 6th, then he still does better if he agrees with the Tigers to be taken 3rd with 4th slot money because he's +2 slots from the alternative. His team knows the Tigers would probably not cry too much and take Lanford instead if he didn't agree. We don't see any of the conversations that have been going on pretty much non-stop for probably over a month between all the teams and agents.

Greene got the majors in only one more MilB season than Torkelson and a lot of folks say they should have waited longer with Tork.

Harris comes out of the gate playing the long game.

PREP

well, it's not gonna be Crews

there is an excellent piece by David French in the NYT about why the MAGA's are so attached to Trump (and also why DeSantis will fail.) He zeroes on the community/belonging aspect. What their critics miss is that the MAGA's always have a great time when they are together (what DeSantis doesn't provide) - a Trump rally is one part politics but two parts block party.

Who do you project to have the better career right now: The college record breaker (Torkelson) or the prep pick (Greene)? I don't have a problem picking a prep player that conventional wisdom ranks below the top college players because conventional wisdom is always going to rank college players higher because they have played more, are more familiar, have more counting stats to look at and compare. But if you really trust your scouting....

Guarantees that Baddoo is going to tank the rest of the way.

yup -but that said, it's time to reverse rolls for Lange and Foley.

no reason not to have sent Baez on the 1st pitch to Cabrera. Hinch getting passive.