2023 Detroit Tigers Spring Training Thread

[casimir]

27 minutes ago, mtutiger said:

I don't see Hernandez, Ibanez or Knapp as guarantees to make the 2023 roster out of camp.

Injuries aside, are there many position player guarantees to the make the roster out of camp?  There are lots of options, but guarantees?

Haase, Baez, Cabrera, Greene, Meadows are probably 5 for sure.

I'm not sure what options Maton and Vierling have.  But considering they offer LHH IF and RHH OF capabilities, something that Harris specifically called as needs prior to their acquisition, they've probably got a foot in the door.

I don't think Schoop is a lock.  If he doesn't hit, they may just release him.  Again, lots of in house IF options are available, and most are more defensively versatile than Schoop.

Torkelson, sure, we'd all love it if he took the 1B job.  I think he will.  But last season just sticks in the back of the mind that, maybe, just maybe, there's more minor league to do.

Baddoo and Carpenter, both have options left?  How many nonfielding LHH OF can they have on the roster?

Who will be the backup catcher?  I don't think it is Rogers by default.  Is it too tough to ask a catcher to miss a season and than assume one spring training gets him back to where he needs to be?  Plus, it ain't like he mastered the major league level already.

So, yeah, now we're into the names of guys that may or may not be a Tiger in Tampa on Opening Day.  Doesn't seem like a whole lot of roster guarantees to me.  And that's perfectly fine.  Lots of options and lots of competition isn't a bad thing.

[Tiger337]

30 minutes ago, RatkoVarda said:

They are probably going to go North with 31-year old Schoop and 33-year old Hernandez starting in the infield, and 40-year old Miggy clogging the bench - 3 guys who have no place on the 2024 team - and hoping the 30-year old Baez can turn it around and the 30-year old Haase does not turn into a pumpkin. Maybe 30-year old Andy Ibanez or 31-year old Andrew Knapp can provide some leadership and make the team as well! Thank goodness we don't have expensive free agents blocking prospects.

Harris inherited a flaming train wreck, then pulled out a lawn chair, sat down, shook his head and said "this is really bad and it will get fixed in a few years"

No doubt 2023 looks like a lost year.  I would have liked them to make more short-term improvements to their offense, but I understand Harris' caution.  He hasn't been watching the train wreck for the last five years and is likely a lot more patient than us.  

[Tiger337]

6 minutes ago, 1984Echoes said:

Budget has absolutely NOTHING to do with it.

It's the specific issue that chas was pointing out... Budget doesn't matter this year. Instead, it is free agent perceptions of the team. They look at this team and think "they suck" and they look for a better opportunity to win games. Nothing more to it than that.

They have sucked for years, but Avila was still able to sign players.  I think the "players don't want to sign here" angle gets over played.  

[gehringer_2]

6 minutes ago, 1984Echoes said:

Budget doesn't matter this year. Instead, it is free agent perceptions of the team.

the only way around that short term would have been for Ilitch to persuade someone like Theo Epstein to come here. A person with so much track record that he could sell a future FAs would believe in. Harris just doesn't have that kind of track record. He is going to have to show progress before anyone trusts that he's going to get to where he is selling.

[1984Echoes]

1 minute ago, gehringer_2 said:

the only way around that short term would have been for Ilitch to persuade someone like Theo Epstein to come here. A person with so much track record that he could sell a future FAs would believe in. Harris just doesn't have that kind of track record. He is going to have to show progress before anyone trusts that he's going to get to where he is selling.

Which doesn't bother me at all.

Fix all our Broken Players (pitchers and bats).

Fix all the weaknesses in our draft and development system.

Show progress again, on the field, at a high rate... 

And then I'll worry about who we are able to bring on to the team from outside to put us over the top...

[RatkoVarda]

Texas gets people to take big money because they offer big money - after finishing 4, 5, 3, 5, 5, 4 the last 6 years.

[gehringer_2]

4 minutes ago, RatkoVarda said:

Texas gets people to take big money because they offer big money - after finishing 4, 5, 3, 5, 5, 4 the last 6 years.

Money has a logic all of its own 💰!. When you throw around the kinds of $$ the Rangers have I think players automatically believe winning is inevitable.

Edited February 14, 2023 by gehringer_2

[mtutiger]

16 minutes ago, Tiger337 said:

No doubt 2023 looks like a lost year.  I would have liked them to make more short-term improvements to their offense, but I understand Harris' caution.  He hasn't been watching the train wreck for the last five years and is likely a lot more patient than us.  

Isn't part of the problem that there's a finite number of options who are realistic short-term improvements as well? Chas has beat this drum a lot and he's spot on about it, it's easier said than done to land guys on one year deals.

Brandon Drury and Jean Segura are both people who would have been short-term improvement options but ultimately got multi-year deals. Michael Conforto and Mitch Haniger, who are even a step beyond those guys, got multiple years. You even have a guy like Jurickson Profar still out on the market because he wants multiple years as well. Old friend Tucker Barnhart, somehow, got a multi-year deal.

I understand the lack of patience that fans have, but it's not just that he has more patience, it's also that trying to gain 25 more wins in one offseason is really ****ing hard, and I don't think it's a realistic proposition on free agency alone. It requires advancement from the rest of the roster. There aren't really any shortcuts around that.

Edited February 14, 2023 by mtutiger

[mtutiger]

8 minutes ago, RatkoVarda said:

Texas gets people to take big money because they offer big money - after finishing 4, 5, 3, 5, 5, 4 the last 6 years.

And as mentioned earlier, $500 million dollars last offseason won them eight more games. Eight.

Even with the acquisitions this offseason, their modal outcome is still probably fourth place.

Edited February 14, 2023 by mtutiger

[Tenacious D]

This offseason was different than the last few years.  Any time it's a players market, which this offseason was, the teams that are in preferred geographies and have winning records will generally win out in free agency.  The Tigers couldn't offer either.  Which is why I think Avila misplayed the market, prior to signing Baez and Erod.  Many free agents that we probably could have been in on, but we played the tank card instead.  Bad timing.

Again, there were only a few free agents I would have liked this year--Mitch Haniger was one of them.  All of the guys who received 8-10 year deals are not for us--hopefully we learned that lesson with Miggy.

If it's a players market after this season, which it likely will be, I suspect Erod and Baez will opt out if they have good seasons.  Much more risky for Javy as teams aren't stupid or unaware of his deficiencies.  I don't care if he hits .300/30/100 this year--I'll dance a jig if we get out of the balance of his contract.

 

[RedRamage]

1 hour ago, Tiger337 said:

They have sucked for years, but Avila was still able to sign players.  I think the "players don't want to sign here" angle gets over played.  

We just need to find the equivalent of Fernando Vina.

[SoCalTiger]

Pay them and they will come. It’s $$$ nothing more. Always $$. Always will be. For most things good and bad. 

[RedRamage]

23 minutes ago, SoCalTiger said:

Pay them and they will come. It’s $$$ nothing more. Always $$. Always will be. For most things good and bad. 

I think that's a little too short sighted.  There's no question that money is a motivating factor... and a very big motivating factor.  But I think we've seen plenty of times that it isn't the only factor for FA.  Furthermore, I'd say a front office shouldn't want that to be the only factor either.

[Tiger337]

56 minutes ago, SoCalTiger said:

Pay them and they will come. It’s $$$ nothing more. Always $$. Always will be. For most things good and bad. 

I don't think it's 100% money, but that is the biggest factor in every negotiation.  

[Jim Cowan]

10 minutes ago, Tiger337 said:

I don't think it's 100% money, but that is the biggest factor in every negotiation.  

Absolutely.  There are other factors of course, like playing time, proximity to home, etc.  But money is the most important.  "Playing for a winner" is probably the least likely to be influential.

[casimir]

9 minutes ago, Jim Cowan said:

Absolutely.  There are other factors of course, like playing time, proximity to home, etc.  But money is the most important.  "Playing for a winner" is probably the least likely to be influential.

Playing close to the family farm?

[Tiger337]

19 minutes ago, Jim Cowan said:

Absolutely.  There are other factors of course, like playing time, proximity to home, etc.  But money is the most important.  "Playing for a winner" is probably the least likely to be influential.

I think "playing for a winner" is often something players will say to make them sound good when they really want the money (which winning teams are more likely to offer).  

[Jim Cowan]

38 minutes ago, Tiger337 said:

I think "playing for a winner" is often something players will say to make them sound good when they really want the money (which winning teams are more likely to offer).  

I think that the first free agent I ever heard say that was Reggie Jackson and I remember thinking "if you are as good as you think you are, isn't every team you pay for a winner just because you are there?"

[RatkoVarda]

3 hours ago, Tenacious D said:

I'll dance a jig if we get out of the balance of his contract.

subtracting Baez and Rodriguez means they are going in full reverse for 2024

[chasfh]

5 hours ago, Tiger337 said:

They have sucked for years, but Avila was still able to sign players.  I think the "players don't want to sign here" angle gets over played.  

Once again, I'm talking about this year. Not last year, not 2016, not 2013 or 2012 or 2011. This year is not anything like any of those years. If you like, you can believe that playing for a winner doesn't matter to players and that it's all about the money. I find that surprising, frankly, but there are a lot of people who would agree with you on that. I just don't happen to believe it's all about the money. I may never be able to convince you or anyone else here of that, but I will express the opinion that playing for a winner does matter to players, when the topic comes up and I believe it's appropriate to express it. I won't back down from that.

[Jim Cowan]

3 hours ago, Tiger337 said:

I don't think it's 100% money...

Lol, you were quoted subsequently as believing that "it's all about the money".

[1984Echoes]

6 hours ago, Tiger337 said:

They have sucked for years, but Avila was still able to sign players.  I think the "players don't want to sign here" angle gets over played.  

So Avila signed all sorts of superstars each year he was GM?

Or was it that he signed a bunch of bottom of the barrel guys who had maybe 1 or 2 choices to sign with a team? Either Detroit or some other bottom of the barrel team?

Remind me who we signed the past 6 years, on an annual basis?

[chasfh]

6 hours ago, gehringer_2 said:

Money has a logic all of its own 💰!. When you throw around the kinds of $$ the Rangers have I think players automatically believe winning is inevitable.

That's a really big part of it, I think—it's about whether players believe the team they're signing with can win. For all the money they spent on Semien and Seager and Gray last winter, they won only 68 games, so what happened this winter? They then signed deGrom (and Eovaldi and Perez on a QO for high AAV) this winter. With so many good guys on the team, how can they not win, right? Who wouldn't want to play for a team like that?

I remember the team preview programs on MLB Network in the early 2010s, and they would have guys like Harold Reynolds and Mark DeRosa and Carlos Pena predicting, every year, that the Tigers would win the the World Series. They were right on the pennant one year, but no rings. Didn't matter: basically every year from 2011 to 2014, and maybe even 2015, it was going to be the Tigers hoisting the trophy at the end. And the reason they always gave for that was because the Tigers had all the superstars, and players believe in the power of superstars to make winning happen. I think that provided a pretty good window into how players view things.

I think that's a big reason why the Rangers are able to get good players to go there even without a recent track record. Another reason, mentioned here, is that Texas is a preferred geography for a lot of players: it's in the South, which American southerners like, and they have an embedded Hispanic culture there, which appeals to Latinos. Detroit has neither of those things. And, of course, the Tigers weren't going to throw 5/185 or 10/325 or 7/175 at anyone, anyway, so there's that, too.

[Tiger337]

2 hours ago, Jim Cowan said:

I think that the first free agent I ever heard say that was Reggie Jackson and I remember thinking "if you are as good as you think you are, isn't every team you pay for a winner just because you are there?"

I have always thought that wanting to play for a winner makes you a loser.   If your new team was a winner without you, then what are you adding?  

[Jim Cowan]

40 minutes ago, Tiger337 said:

I have always thought that wanting to play for a winner makes you a loser.   If your new team was a winner without you, then what are you adding?  

That's what I was trying to say.  And also, thanks for throwing your previous teammates under the bus, it was their fault that you lost.