chasfh

I’ve been wondering lately how sleep factors into the equation of player performance, and whether/how steaks or slumps contribute to that. Had the Tigers been sleeping poorly because they’d been worried by the collapse, which also made them perform poorly? Had the Guardians been crushing it because they’d been sleeping soundly, which helped them play at peak performance? Did the Tigers sleep well last night and feel better and feel more up to playing today, and are the Guardians anxious now and had a fitful sleep last night which now makes them suboptimal physically? Will that factor into tonight’s games? These are the things I think about when I wake up in the middle of the night and lie in bed for a couple of hours before I drift back to sleep myself.

My god, this is exhausting, isn’t it?

Finally! Some positive movement! How long has it been?! Tigers beat the Guardians tonight, 4-2, and so the magic number drops to:

Swinging strikeout! Looking good so far …

Vest looks amped, ain’t gonna lie, a little nervous about that

Oh my god froze Arias on that!

Benetti sounds more tentative than he probably wanted to saying Will Vest will try to get the final three outs.

Why, yes. Yes, he will.

OK, here we go … bottom of the ninth … 😬

Also too woman.

Those days are OVER!

Man, we really, really needed Tork to field that cleanly and double the guy off second there.

What, Joey Cora didn’t wave Jahmai home on that single? Alert the media.

Clap, clap, clap-clap-clap

Riley got his Willie Horton homer!

Within the realm of possibility still: Tigers win three of last four, Cleveland loses three of last four, Tigers win division. Just sayin’. Anything can baseball, man.

I’ll keep half an eye on the game rather than two whole eyes on it.

A terrorist’s wet dream.

Yawn

So was not having Jobe or Olson for much of the year, or Colt Keith at the end.

During the first half of the year this team was one of the lost exciting, most entertaining teams of my lifetime. I dont know what’s happened either, but let’s not forget how awesome it was to watch them earlier this season.

I’ve been thinking along those lines myself the past day or two. This is really doing a bigger number on my baseball psyche than I imagined it would. It’s even making it harder for me to watch baseball games involving other teams, which I normally enjoy, because doing so just makes me think of The Collapse. (Yes, I am conferring that official name onto it. No need to add the team name or year to it. We will always know what it refers to, and when it happened.) The biggest problem for me as far as The Collapse is concerned is that I am going to be hearing about it constantly for the next year, and then hearing about it occasionally for the rest of my life. This has been so monumental a collapse that it’s almost as though 2024 never even happened.

Not exactly true. That team won five of their final six.

Can we please stop calling Cal Raleigh “Big Dumper”? Ugh.

See, there you go. I don't think I would have traded for Devers. Yes he can hit, but he is a terrible third baseman, which is why the Giants are moving him off third and to first, and we already have a first baseman. Plus he seems like a bit of a prima donna malcontent, and that's a bad fit for a team like ours. Again, I know he's a great hitter, even though he's tailed off in Frisco, but especially given his money—it did take Frisco to pick up his entire remaining $300-ish million to acquire him—I don't think I would have wanted to commit to him for the next eight years. Although one thing I don't understand is how it's possible on the one hand to speculate that Devers did not want to come here and/or the Red Sox did not want to trade him here, yet criticize Harris for not going after him even though we don't know he didn't. That doesn't seem exactly fair, but again, fan prerogative. I believe the front office did think we had depth in the system at SP. We had K Montero, W Hernandez, Melton, SGL, Enns, and a few others backing up our starting five. I think that looked reasonable at the time. In retrospect we had a lot more injuries and there was more ineffectiveness than we hoped to see. That just happens sometimes in today's game. I'm not sure how many more guys we needed to have down there, but I'd guess that one could say no matter what the number is, it would never have been enough, because you can never have enough. Not enough starting pitching in a team's organization is a tale old as baseball itself. In hindsight, it's true the Sweeney was terrible, although there was no reason to believe he would be this bad when the season started. If I'm going to fault the front office, it's that we did not have shortstops at higher levels, and really, they should have seen that Kreidler was never going to be the answer. I think the hope was that Sweeney would be enough bridge us to McGonigle and then eventually Bryce Rainer (remember that guy?) when it was time for them to arrive, but that blew up on us. Not sure that could have been foreseen. The A's got a king's ransom in prospects from the Padres for Mason Miller, including the guy who's #3 MLB overall just behind McGonigle and ahead of Max Clark. I don't know whether you're suggesting we should have traded either of those guys for Mason Miller, but I think we're going to be glad we didn't. Andrew McCutchen, just ... nahh. Thanks.