2023 Trade Deadline

[chasfh]

On 7/18/2023 at 7:55 PM, Toddwert said:

I dont know how pissing off a veteran player helps you win?

Not just piss off that veteran player, but also all the players around him. Because if it can happen to one, especially a leading veteran, it can happen to all, and practically nobody would choose to be in an environment like that.

[Tiger337]

15 minutes ago, chasfh said:

Sure he can. Al Avila is hurting us right now, and he'll be hurting us next year, too.

And helping too.  

[chasfh]

On 7/19/2023 at 3:01 AM, SoCalTiger said:

We just have to hope that Baez plays better and hits at least league average perhaps finding his lost power because he isn’t going anywhere but Comerica Park for the next four years. I still think he will improve he just cannot be this bad and he hustles and plays hard all the time apart from a rare let down so I believe he will get better. 

The ironic thing about keeping Javy for four years is that people think we'll end up moving him to second base or third base, but shortstop is exactly the position where a weak bat plays best, and he is still arguably the leading defensive shortstop in the league.

[chasfh]

1 minute ago, Tiger337 said:

And helping too.  

By ... ?

[Tiger337]

3 minutes ago, chasfh said:

By ... ?

For the next couple of years, most of their good young players will likely be Avila acquisitions.  If not, then we are in trouble.  

[chasfh]

On 7/19/2023 at 12:17 PM, Sports_Freak said:

If there were a better option at SS? I would replace him. And my point about benching him has more to do with performance than is does salary. It's not a good look for any sport when contracts over quality of play determines whether a player is benched.

It's always a complicated calculus to figure out when to bench a guy, but other things being equal, a rookie hitting .224/.261/.333 is going to get benched a lot quicker than a 30 year-old Gold-Glove All-Star Top-2-MVP veteran hitting the same, if for no other reason than the 30 year-old Gold-Glove All-Star Top-2-MVP veteran is always a bet to turn it around, even after a whole half-year of soft hitting, versus the unknown quantity that is the rookie.

[chasfh]

5 minutes ago, Tiger337 said:

For the next couple of years, most of their good young players will likely be Avila acquisitions.  If not, then we are in trouble.  

Who are you thinking of here?

[chasfh]

On 7/19/2023 at 7:41 PM, Sports_Freak said:

I heard someone mention the Cardinals may desperately need controlled pitchers. If the Tigers bought out the Rodriguez opt-out, extended Lorenzen and then trade Skubal and Lange for Arenado, we would be a playoff team.

Even if the Cardinals were to magically—by which I mean, while on magic mushrooms—accept a gimpy Skubal plus a wild and inconsistent Lange in exchange for their ten-time Gold Glove-winning and this-year starting All-Star third baseman, I would definitely never want to extend Eduardo for another six or more years, nor give more than 2/20 to the other guy, which I doubt he would accept.

[Sports_Freak]

23 minutes ago, chasfh said:

He's really been bad since 2017, not just 2021, but if he still gave you joy throughout the contract all the way up to today, then at least we got something positive out of the deal.

That's fine. Who is he blocking? And do any Tiger fans really believe the Tigers would spend his salary on other, better players? No, it would be going right into Chris' bank account. Not only that, it would also suck seeing Miggy hitting all these milestones with some other team. Like...the White Sox? 🤣🤣

[chasfh]

14 hours ago, RatkoVarda said:

https://www.mlbtraderumors.com/2023/07/astros-rays-showing-interest-in-michael-lorenzen.html

Michael Lorenzen is one of the top rental starting pitchers who could move between now and the August 1 trade deadline. The Rays and Astros are among the contending clubs that have shown interest in the Tigers’ righty, reports Jon Morosi of MLB.com (Twitter link).

Yes, please, Angels!

And block the Rays' number. 😉

[Sports_Freak]

1 minute ago, chasfh said:

Even if the Cardinals were to magically—by which I mean, while on magic mushrooms—accept a gimpy Skubal plus a wild and inconsistent Lange in exchange for their ten-time Gold Glove-winning and this-year starting All-Star third baseman, I would definitely never want to extend Eduardo for another six or more years, nor give more than 2/20 to the other guy, which I doubt he would accept.

Arenado probably makes too much money anyway.

[chasfh]

14 hours ago, Shinzaki said:

I'm mostly angry with Javy because he does things like swinging at pitches that are so far out of the zone that he couldn't hit with a telephone pole when he's the potential tying run.  It's galling to see a Major League baseball behave so...stupidly

He has recently said that he has had trouble with pitch recognition, so I wonder whether he has either an eyesight issue (i.e., maybe only 20-20 or 20-25) and can't read spin, which could be helped; or whether he has naturally slow reflexes, which probably can't be helped. If these are true, that would make Javy the platonic ideal of a mistake hitter.

[Tiger337]

23 minutes ago, chasfh said:

Who are you thinking of here?

Greene, Torkelson, Manning, Mize, Skubal, Carpenter, Rogers, Keith 

[1984Echoes]

2 minutes ago, Tiger337 said:

Greene, Torkelson, Manning, Mize, Skubal, Carpenter, Rogers, Keith 

With an outside shot of Parker Meadows, Dillon Dingler, Ty Madden, Jobe, Jung. 

[chasfh]

4 hours ago, casimir said:

I think another way to look at it is what is the division winner win total and what would it take for the Tigers to surpass it?  Fangraphs has Minnesota at 83.5 wins.  Detroit is 44-52.  84 wins would require finishing out at 40-26, a .606 winning percentage.  Is it possible for the Tigers to upgrade themselves enough to that kind of team?  Kind of seems doubtful to me.

I think it really comes down to, what kinds of teams buy, what do they want to accomplish by buying, and in where are they on the contention spectrum?

Teams buy if they are certain playoff teams and need that one player who closes the obvious hole, such as SP depth, or back of the bullpen, or that one big hitter who fixes an obvious hole, in order to go deeper once they get to October. We are not a certain playoff team, so this doesn't apply to us.

Teams also buy if they re on the cusp of a playoff spot and they are one impact position player or impact pitcher short of making it happen. We are way more than one position player short of making the playoffs, and if we count Eduardo and Lorenzen as reliable starters, at least two starters short of a playoff-level rotation. We do have a halfway-decent bullpen we could go into the playoffs with, but it's not a shutdown 'pen, and even if it were, that's not enough to overcome our other deficiencies.

And teams buy when their contention window is wide open and they're ripe to make a run, if they can get the one piece that would solidify that. Our contention window is, at best, cracked open possibly enough for a fly to get through it, as long as it's not a big fat fly coming directly from dining on your garbage. That is simply not enough to throw away the plan and sell prospects in an effort to try to secure a division that's not high-majority-percent winnable—that is, we wouldn't want to bet the house on green here.

I'm as certain as an outsider can be that Harris sees all this, too, and even if we were to go 10-0 for the rest of the month, we are not only not buying, we are definitely not not selling.

[mtutiger]

2 hours ago, casimir said:

I wonder what the baseball insider perception of Tiger pitching is, specifically related to development and deployment at the higher levels.  It ranks pretty well on here, but we're biased.

Lorenzen is really the only piece of evidence that I have (not an insider at all), but I don't think he was BSing when he said that the Tigers appealed to him as a place to be better as a player. 

Leads me to believe that they are at least respected in the pitching department.

[chasfh]

57 minutes ago, Tenacious D said:

That was an unusual trade.  Basically we traded a young CF to get a younger one. Of course other players were involved, too.

Also unusual because he was part of an eight-man three-team deal, versus a straight-up we give up a back-of-the-rotation starter for a mature minor-leaguer who can start right now.

[mtutiger]

Taking a step back again.... Granted a lot of it is the division that they play in, but the fact that it's late July and there's actually a not-totally-unserious debate about whether to sell or buy among the fanbase seems like a win for what we expected going into this season.

[RatkoVarda]

not sure they want to add another poor defender who hits LH, but Aranda of TB is 25 and killing it at AAA again with 1.000+ OPS and cannot get regular MLB at bats. acquire him, replacing Maton and the offense approves. Ibanez or Short as platoon and defensive partner.

Edited July 21, 2023 by RatkoVarda

[chasfh]

9 minutes ago, mtutiger said:

Lorenzen is really the only piece of evidence that I have (not an insider at all), but I don't think he was BSing when he said that the Tigers appealed to him as a place to be better as a player. 

Leads me to believe that they are at least respected in the pitching department.

I also think we are much-better respected in the pitching department, which may have helped here, and also, we may have been the only team that would commit to guaranteeing Lorenzen a shot at the rotation.

[Edman85]

5 minutes ago, mtutiger said:

Taking a step back again.... Granted a lot of it is the division that they play in, but the fact that it's late July and there's actually a not-totally-unserious debate about whether to sell or buy among the fanbase seems like a win for what we expected going into this season.

IMO, it is pretty unserious.

[chasfh]

41 minutes ago, Tiger337 said:

Greene, Torkelson, Manning, Mize, Skubal, Carpenter, Rogers, Keith 

These are all players with a shot at our future who came on board with Avila at the helm.

Mize, TORK!, Greene and Manning were all no-brainers. The main thing Avila had to do was not get too cute by reaching down the list to surprise us, such as Jobe instead of Mayer.

Skubal, Keith, and Carpenter were solid pickups that we've been able to do things with. Rogers was a decent second guy to get in a trade for a slam-dunk Hall-of-Famer—who had years and years of Cy Young-level performance left in the tank—along with $40 million.

Even adding in the long shots that 1984Echoes mentioned, there's still an inordinate amount of garbage in the system that Avila left behind, which I think is indicative of his terrible hit rate on player acquisition overall. Were he even average at player acquisition, we wouldn't be nearly in this bad shape—although, flip side, he'd still be here.

So, yes, these are guys Avila picked up who might help us, as long as the new administration develops them in a way the Avila administration probably could not have. In this sense, I can see why you say that by having acquired these eight players, Avila is still helping the team.

Edited July 21, 2023 by chasfh

[Tiger337]

10 minutes ago, chasfh said:

These are all players with a shot at our future who came on board with Avila at the helm.

Mize, TORK!, Greene and Manning were all no-brainers. The main thing Avila had to do was not get too cute by reaching down the list to surprise us, such as Jobe instead of Mayer.

Skubal, Keith, and Carpenter were solid pickups that we've been able to do things with. Rogers was a decent second guy to get in a trade for a slam-dunk Hall-of-Famer—who had years and years of Cy Young-level performance left in the tank—along with $40 million.

Even adding in the long shots that 1984Echoes mentioned, there's still an inordinate amount of garbage in the system that Avila left behind, which I think is indicative of his terrible hit rate on player acquisition overall. Were he even average at player acquisition, we wouldn't be nearly in this bad shape—although, flip side, he'd still be here.

So, yes, these are guys Avila picked up who might help us, as long as the new administration develops them in a way the Avila administration probably could not have. In this sense, I can see why you say that by having acquired these eight players, Avila is still helping the team.

Not all the no brainer draft picks in baseball work out...

I am not saying he was a great GM.  I am just saying that there will likely be a good number of Avila players on the team when they start winning more.   

[gehringer_2]

44 minutes ago, chasfh said:

Also unusual because he was part of an eight-man three-team deal, versus a straight-up we give up a back-of-the-rotation starter for a mature minor-leaguer who can start right now.

No args about the nature of the trade possibly being hard to duplicate. The reference to Austin was less about the nature of the trade than that his was the profile of the player the Tigers are/should be targeting - i.e. no established MLB value but high up side and damn close to can't miss.

[chasfh]

33 minutes ago, Tiger337 said:

Not all the no brainer draft picks in baseball work out...

I am not saying he was a great GM.  I am just saying that there will likely be a good number of Avila players on the team when they start winning more.   

I agree not all no-brainers pan out, although I would say that Avila gets the smallest credit possible for doing the thing practically everybody else would do and not screwing it up, which to date he absolutely did with Jobe over Mayer.

If the argument in your post was that Al Avila is still helping this team, then even if only Riley Greene becomes a Tigers lifer, it could be argued that Al Avila will be helping this team well into the 2030s.

It's hard to argue against the idea that a good number of Avila players will still be on the team when they start winning in a couple or three years, since that's a wait-and-see proposition. I would say it's possible that will come true, and equally possible that it doesn't.

Edited July 21, 2023 by chasfh