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Fair enough on the pitching analysis equipment such as Rapsodo, even if we were late adopters by the time we got it in 2019. Better late than never. The kinesiology part I hadn't heard and I can't find anything on it, but I'll take your word for that. True as that may be, I still maintain that because the Tigers lagged behind so much in the analytics arms race, that as far as Avila is concerned, he either got religion too late to do anything but try to play catch up to all the other clubs, or he got religion early and would like to have implemented it sooner but couldn't figure out how to get buy-in from the other key stakeholders in the organization. I would bet it took AJ Hinch to come in during the interview process and sell his vision, probably to Chris Ilitch, to finally accelerate the process of dramatic change in scouting, development, and performance science that we are seeing today.

Aren't these basically the same people who lyingly complained that there were no Republicans on the Jan 6 committee?

Can I just tell you how much it warms my heart to see you post this?

The Tigers still have a fairly shallow system, with very little below the top few guys. I’m hoping that the hires they have made can deepen the system substantially and give us both contributing regulars to our roster and good depth to deal from so we can fill immediate holes. I would bet Hinch has a lot more informal responsibility for the organization’s success than the chart stipulates. I wouldn’t doubt her set that as a condition for accepting the job.

I definitely think Hinch has tremendous input on all those and more! He dove into scouting reports almost as soon as he was hired, before he ever stepped foot in Lakeland. He had daily calls throughout the season with all the minor league managers—what other Tiger manager ever did that? Hinch has probably had more input on scouting and developing than any previous Tigers manager ever. And with that kind of involvement in those areas, I can't believe AJ had zero input on the drafting strategy and individual prospects. I'm also pretty sure Hinch fed back on all the free agent hires—everyone accepts that it was Hinch that got Robbie Grossman signed to the team, so I would bet he was similarly involved. I believe he made having that kind of input a condition of his taking the job. The Tigers rebuild was stuck in neutral for four years until AJ Hinch came on board, and I'm in the camp that believes that there's a not-half-bad chance that eventually, Al gets kicked upstairs into a mostly ceremonial president's role and AJ moves off the field and into the active general manager role. As far as I can tell, as things stand, the future of this organization rests on AJ HInch's shoulders. I also think there's a very good chance we will all look back on the day AJ Hinch was hired and say, "that was the day that everything changed."

Ha, you may be right. He was the consensus top HS iptcher in the draft, but I think he was something like 6th or 8th on the overall pre-draft lists when we took him third.

As for the draft, to the degree that a draft lottery can make any difference in reducing the incidence of having a dozen teams all tank at the same time, I'm all for it. That said, two things: The MLB draft isn't like the NFL or NBA drafts in one key respect: immediacy of impact. The top overall pick in the NFL and MBA is expected to step onto the floor or field immediately and put wins on the board; in baseball, the top overall pick is not going to make any impact on their drafting team for perhaps several years. I think the most recent guy to step onto a major league field directly from the amateur draft was second-rounder Xavier Nady in 2000, and that experiment lasted exactly one game. It really is an iffy proposition to rely primarily on the draft to build your dynasty, and offhand I can't think of any organization who has successfully done that. The tanking is really happening because there is no financial penalty for doing so. Winning teams may make marginally more profit than losing teams, but even terrible teams make so much money outside of gameday (revenue sharing, licensing and merchandising, national broadcast, investments and real estate and other business interest, area/neighborhood development projects) that they can pocket $100 or $150 million instead of investing it in players, take a bunch of Ls during the season, and still come out smelling like cash. I have no earthly idea how to fix that one.

I'm not sure you're clear on what the word "disingenuous" means, because I'm certainly not pretending to not know something I for a fact know. I think the Tigers made very little progress organizationally pre-Hinch. Sure, they got Mize and Torkelson and Greene in successive drafts, but any tanking team drafting that high would have done the exact same. It doesn't take deep savvy analysis to draft the consensus best player. All that takes is not outsmarting yourself with a "bold" pick once you're on the clock. Beyond Torkelson and Greene, the cupboard is pretty bare. Even Dingler, the next guy on the list, had problems developmentally as he crashed to earth in the second half of this past season, and despite his obvious physical talents, I don't think we can count Jobe as a top-tier prospect before he throws even a single professional pitch. To the degree we can credit Avila for wanting to move the organization into Baseball's top tier on analytics and maybe even performance science, I have to ding him as being an incompetent agent of that desire. Yes, he hired Jay Sartori and he announced the birth of "Caesar", but even several years afterward, Avila couldn't make the Luddite manager he himself hired accept any of the inputs that came out of that corner. Avila may have wanted the Tigers become one of Baseball's analytics shooters, and I agree he was on record for a few year giving it lip service at least, but he had no real idea how to make it happen on the ground until AJ Hinch. The way I see it, hiring Hinch the one great thing Avila did that not every other GM would obviously have done, since he was a guy who was seen as somewhat damaged goods coming out of Houston. But I will credit Avila as probably understanding that Hinch was the one hire he could make to supercharge that whole process, since he was steeped in the actual implementation of advanced analytics on the ground. Hinch is only decision-maker in that organization who has had any success doing it, and as far as I know, before AJ, the Tigers didn't make any of these scouting and organizational moves that everybody is universally praising, unless I'm forgetting some developmental or scouting genius Avila himself hired before HInch? We can agree to disagree, because neither of us know more than the other guy about what's going on in that front office. You can believe Hinch was the icing on the already finished cake, and I can maintain that Hinch was the catalyst who blended the raw ingredients into the delicious cake batter we needed to go from there. But I definitely do agree with you that at long last, the Tigers are going in the right direction, and as a Tiger fan first, I couldn't be more thrilled.

You're absolutely right, they have done a 180 ... in the last year. What's happened in the last year that might have precipitated that change?

To me, the Cardinals are almost the perfect franchise: the clearly most popular team in a smallish market, one that drafts, develops and trades right on, as you say, a reasonable budget (generally clustering around 10th in Baseball), and which almost always makes the playoffs (15 of the last 22 seasons), goes to the Series here and there (four times since then), and wins the occasional ring (twice). I wish I didn't hate them as much as I do. 😉

As it turns out, in the years 1996 through 2000, 59.0% of all hitters Yankee pitchers faced were RHB, versus 56.2% for the AL in total. So early Jeter's Yankees faced a higher percentage of RH hitters than normal. (h/t BR) Yankees AL RHB LHB % RHB RHB LHB % RHB 1996 3817 2472 60.7% 50197 39537 55.9% 1997 4083 2196 65.0% 51248 36869 58.2% 1998 3502 2598 57.4% 49019 39099 55.6% 1999 3401 2832 54.6% 49145 39383 55.5% 2000 3567 2689 57.0% 49679 39270 55.9% TOT 18370 12787 59.0% 249288 194158 56.2%

The Rays are an exceptional example. In a small market where they draw flies no matter how the team performs and that they're probably going to leave anyway, they have nothing to lose by trying out things. Oakland, too, for much of the past decade. Maybe there's something there.

The difference with the Tigers is that there was no talentless prior administration anyone was taking over from. It was the same talentless administration that was in place for the early 2000s tanking period as well. Front office, scouting, minor leagues, international--all the same. The only practical difference was the guy at the top of the org chart. When he left, the next guy down Peter Principled his way into the top job, bringing the exact same way of doing things that we'd had over a decade before.

The extortionate pricing may be in part why, during my days as a media client, many of the vendors who invited us to suite games laid out only boiled hot dogs, one-ounce bags of Lays, and Miller Lite. I remember Diamandis (Car and Driver, Road & Track) use to spring for really nice spreads with dogs, brats, sliders, chicken tenders, several brands of beer, even liquor. But no matter what, every suite experience culminates in the dessert cart. Mmmmm …

We may find out how old Pujols really is when it’s time for him to claim his MLBPA pension.

It can be easy to forget now how much greater acceptance there is of the more advanced fielding stats now, but at the time Jeter started, those were just a twinkle in Bill James’s eye, so baseball people were leaning almost exclusively on traditional fielding stats. In his early years, Jeter was frequently among the league leaders in fielding percentage, putouts, and of course, games played. So back then a lot of baseball people looked at those stats, as well as his acrobatic highlights (which he had to generate to make up for his poor positioning and lack of jump, which almost no one recognized about him back then), and concluded yeah, Jeter’s a great shortstop. Tellingly, though, he was almost never in the top ten in assists or double plays turned.

Fox News viewers' minds.

I’ve seen the lottery described two different ways. In one version Baseball wants to limit it to three teams in the first round while Players want eight teams. In another version every non-playoff team makes the lottery (which makes sense to me), but Players want the lottery picks to go eight rounds while Baseball wants to limit it to three rounds. I seen both enough where I’m not clear which one is right.

They also overrated Pete Rose (#34) by at least twenty spots.

And obviously the only Christian person in the CCCP, which is why Jesus chose him to lead.

You know who else had five rings for the Yankees? Joe Collins. Apparently you can deny five World Series rings.

This tells you everything you need to know about ESPN, in placing Jeter some sixty slots above his true level: "Overrated or not, you can't deny the five World Series rings." You don't say.

ESPN leaks.

Have the russophile right wing media like Fox and their fellow travelers alarmed their viewers with visions of nuclear retaliation if we don't give Putin what he wants?

If Jeter is not listed yet, then he’s either too high or too low. He ranks 94th in lifetime WAR and tied for 79th in JAWS, so he qualifies for the Top 50 in neither career nor peak. The higher they list him, the more credibility ESPN leaks.