Arlington

I'm getting spoiled really fast. If they don't sweep I am going to be disappointed.

Listening to the Yankees radio announcers this game and yesterday's and they talked up the Tigers a lot. Really enjoyable listening to them.

They should run 308 game schedule with each team fielding a home and an away team. They have the stadiums. Use them full-time. 52-man person rosters by each team will have to designate 26 persons for each game 40-man rosters would be expanded to 80. Same rules with respect to options and moving players on and off an active roster, but very liberal rules for moving between active rosters. Only real limitation is limiting the total number of games a player can be on an active roster to 154. You can strategize on the use of starters such as using them against a division rival versus a team from another division. For 7-game series, play the first 4 games with the split squads and the final three with one united roster. Would get very interesting in my estimate.

Game 1 of a future Tiger legend Happy to see Malloy up. I predict that he will be such an offensive force they'll play him in center if need be. I'm just giddy today. Let's Go Tigers

Slowly clearing the roster out of those expensive free agents.

Commercials are syncing perfectly btw. MLB.com has too many employees in marketing and not enough technicians.

At this rate Carpenter won't get a hit all year but he'll have 162 RBIs Team RISP 0 - 15. That might challenge the worse RISP "0 for" of 2024. How often do you get so many opportunities in a game. That averages 1 2/3 ABs an inning with a runner in scoring position. Then to not once plate one is statistically unfathomable. If we hit just .133 in those ABs we probably would have won. If we hit .250 it would have been around 9 - 5. This is the exact opposite of what got us to the ALDS last year.

They should just bring him up now. He has the glove to manage the position and the personality to manage the attention. With the expectation that he's not ready at the plate he goes back down in six weeks knowing what he has to do.

When I was about 7 Mickey Stanley took a huge group of neighborhood kids down to the local field at Mulick Park in Grand Rapids. He told me good catch. I still haven't washed the spot on my back that he patted. I had a very good friend who was a manager at a restaurant in the 1970s and she said that Fydrich was a jerk. Only negative thing I've ever heard about him.

To ramble a little. Tork making the team seems to be a given at this point. And yea, I have wondered about using Wenceel in the infield. It would increase his value a lot. Pretty sure they are going to ride Malloy's bat for awhile, especially considering the left-handers we are going to face in LA and NY the first two weeks. Seeing a platoon at first seems likely, with Tork starting at first against LH and Malloy at DH. And then Keith coming in when the pitching changes and Tork moves to DH. The platoon will really be more Keith / Malloy when it comes to batting with Tork toggling between 1st and DH. There has to be a team desperate enough to grab Maeda.

Most important thing about Mickey Stanley playing short is that he never bumped Northrup out of the game, his counterpart in center. Northrup had a heck of a series. I remember having a Tom Tresh card that showed his positions as SS-OF. Being a Yankee I could care less and never looked into that.

The top hand on the bat is a little odd looking.

One of the most interesting things for me about this season is going to be Hinch's handling of the pitching staff. Bullpen chaos was based on the idea of not letting batters get comfortable. This involved matching strengths against weaknesses, limiting the pitches a batter saw against a single pitcher, and varying the pitching styles batters faced. Hinch may have the luxury this season, knock on wood, of 6 to 7 stretched out effective starters very few of which are seasoned enough to go full out all season. For example, Open with Holton, go to Cobb for three or four and finish with Jobe. Really looking forward to seeing that kind of manipulation.

FAngraphs just posted their prospect list. They list 39 prospects which is among the deepest so far. (35+ ratings or higher) Take that back. Almost all the clubs reviewed so far have more 35+ ratings.

Might be a good bonding day for the players. Seems like there are always golf or fishing stories coming from the day off.