LOCKOUT '22: When will we see baseball again?

[chasfh]

8 minutes ago, Tiger337 said:

If they can't compete with the Rays, that is their own fault.  The Rays are a great example of a team getting better without being wealthy and without tanking.  

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.

[Tiger337]

1 hour ago, Longgone said:

I maintain that tanking is a perceived problem and not an actual one. The idea that all teams can be competitive every year is illogical. Teams, at times, need to rebuild, and to rebuild you need to exchange present assets for future ones. You can't get rid of assets and simultaneously remain competitive, it just doesn't make sense.

If you sign a successful free agent, the logical thing to do is flip him for future assets to fulfil the rebuild, thereby reducing competitiveness. You can call that "tanking" but it is a reasonable strategy at times, and nothing that requires any punitive measures.

Teams can't all be good at the same time.  There will be bad years here and there, but they should try to remain competitive.   Teams can remain competitive by having systems which consistently produce talent.  They can also keep some of their veterans who are still pretty good, but aren't so marketable.  Trading a player like JD Martinez for crap prospects is only done to save money.  When teams desperately trade EVERYBODY, I consider that tanking. Maybe a budget floor would help. 

[Tiger337]

5 minutes ago, chasfh said:

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 Cardinals do well with an average payroll.  These are all exceptional examples, but we are now up to three teams that have had success without huge payrolls and without going through the typical cycle of not even trying for five years in hopes of getting good again.  There are other ways of doing things.  

[chasfh]

4 minutes ago, Tiger337 said:

The Cardinals do well with an average payroll.  These are all exceptional examples, but we are now up to three teams that have had success without huge payrolls and without going through the typical cycle of not even trying for five years in hopes of getting good again.  There are other ways of doing things.  

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. 😉

[1984Echoes]

28 minutes ago, chasfh said:

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.

and yet...

The Tigers have done a complete 180 turnaround in draft & develop strategy, analytics, scouting, talent-in-the-minor-leagues-pipeline, etc., etc. etc...

By this exact same person.

[SoCalTiger]

Eliminate tanking by :

1. Having a team spending minimum. Say 1/3 of the maximum. Say 75 million and base it over two years ( team could spend 50 them 100 mil yr 2). All underages are taxed at 2 times the shortfall and go the the players union.

2. Limitation of low picks in the draft. A team can not pick top 5 two years in a row and top 10 more than 3 times in a five year period.

3. Turn the international signing into the international draft. About 10 rounds and draft order ( per Jason Stark of the Atlantic) top pick goes to the team that was closest to making the playoffs and then down the line and all playoff teams by reverse order of wins as usual. 

[gehringer_2]

13 minutes ago, 1984Echoes said:

and yet...

The Tigers have done a complete 180 turnaround in draft & develop strategy, analytics, scouting, talent-in-the-minor-leagues-pipeline, etc., etc. etc...

By this exact same person.

yup. While you could argue it in the beginning, each year the idea gets less teneble that Avila and Chris Ilitch are the extensions of Dave Dombrowski and Mike Ilitch instead of two guys who were both looking to get out from under the way their predecessors did things.

Edited February 4, 2022 by gehringer_2

[Tiger337]

I am very encouraged by their progress as an organization.  Hopefully, it works out long term and they can keep getting better without top picks every year.   Until they start having consistent success on the field though, we can't start comparing them to other teams who have had success already.   

[chasfh]

25 minutes ago, 1984Echoes said:

and yet...

The Tigers have done a complete 180 turnaround in draft & develop strategy, analytics, scouting, talent-in-the-minor-leagues-pipeline, etc., etc. etc...

By this exact same person.

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?

[1984Echoes]

No, that was not in the last year. The on-field performance at the MLB level was last year, we can all attribute that to Hinch. But not the organizational changes nor the drafting strategy...

Hinch just accelerated the process.

You can even say vastly if you want to.

But it didn't all happen last year. That's just being disingenuous. 

[Longgone]

1 hour ago, Tiger337 said:

Teams can't all be good at the same time.  There will be bad years here and there, but they should try to remain competitive.   Teams can remain competitive by having systems which consistently produce talent.  They can also keep some of their veterans who are still pretty good, but aren't so marketable.  Trading a player like JD Martinez for crap prospects is only done to save money.  When teams desperately trade EVERYBODY, I consider that tanking. Maybe a budget floor would help. 

TBF, Martinez was a free agent at the end of the year, so getting something for him was better than nothing. I don't have have any problem with the strategy or timing of the Detroit rebuild, however in my world the prospects would have all panned out and the short term free agents would all have been successful and flipped for viable prospects.

[Longgone]

1 hour ago, SoCalTiger said:

Eliminate tanking by :

1. Having a team spending minimum. Say 1/3 of the maximum. Say 75 million and base it over two years ( team could spend 50 them 100 mil yr 2). All underages are taxed at 2 times the shortfall and go the the players union.

2. Limitation of low picks in the draft. A team can not pick top 5 two years in a row and top 10 more than 3 times in a five year period.

3. Turn the international signing into the international draft. About 10 rounds and draft order ( per Jason Stark of the Atlantic) top pick goes to the team that was closest to making the playoffs and then down the line and all playoff teams by reverse order of wins as usual. 

1. Rebuilding teams would add payroll by taking on bloated contracts for prospects or flip anyone successful and continue to "tank". 

2. Punishes weaker teams for bad luck or poor management, making it even less likely for them to improve. Do you really think some contrived carrot and stick approach is going to make any difference in an already highly competitive environment?

3. Defeats the whole purpose of a draft; to allow weaker teams the opportunity to gain ground.

Face it, tanking is rebuilding, rebuilding may be painful, but it's not bad.

[Tiger337]

46 minutes ago, Longgone said:

TBF, Martinez was a free agent at the end of the year, so getting something for him was better than nothing. I don't have have any problem with the strategy or timing of the Detroit rebuild, however in my world the prospects would have all panned out and the short term free agents would all have been successful and flipped for viable prospects.

I think that teams that trade proven players for prospects lose the deal more often than not.  Teams know when you are desperate to dump salary and they usually are aren't going to give you good prospects.     

 

[Tiger337]

4 minutes ago, Longgone said:

Face it, tanking is rebuilding, rebuilding may be painful, but it's not bad.

It's good if it's done right.  Ideally, a team is rebuilding all the time, so they have some kind of nucleus when it comes time to seriously re-build.   

[chasfh]

59 minutes ago, 1984Echoes said:

No, that was not in the last year. The on-field performance at the MLB level was last year, we can all attribute that to Hinch. But not the organizational changes nor the drafting strategy...

Hinch just accelerated the process.

You can even say vastly if you want to.

But it didn't all happen last year. That's just being disingenuous. 

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.

[Longgone]

20 minutes ago, Tiger337 said:

I think that teams that trade proven players for prospects lose the deal more often than not.  Teams know when you are desperate to dump salary and they usually are aren't going to give you good prospects.     

 

So don't take a chance and get nothing? I don't think the Tigers were dumping salary, as much as they knew they weren't resigning him, so they took what they could get. Unfortunately, it sucked.

[Tiger337]

1 minute ago, chasfh said:

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.

 

Jobe might end up being a case of outsmarting themselves.  But, for now, we'll just need to be patient with Jobe.  

[Longgone]

3 minutes ago, chasfh said:

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.

Hinch was a superb hire, but if you think he is highly responsible for scouting, drafting and player development, then you have no idea how clubs operate. 

[Tiger337]

2 minutes ago, Longgone said:

So don't take a chance and get nothing? I don't think the Tigers were dumping salary, as much as they knew they weren't resigning him, so they took what they could get. Unfortunately, it sucked.

They should have either tried to extend him or trade him earlier if that didn't work out.  Martinez was an awesome and under appreciated hitter.  He was probably the second best Tigers hitter in the last 40+ years.  They never should have reached the point where they traded him for garbage.  I know we are now discussing something totally different than the original argument.  

[Longgone]

1 minute ago, Tiger337 said:

They should have either tried to extend him or trade him earlier if that didn't work out.  Martinez was an awesome and under appreciated hitter.  He was probably the second best Tigers hitter in the last 40+ years.  They never should have reached the point where they traded him for garbage.  I know we are now discussing something totally different than the original argument.  

I agree, they put themselves in a box, although who would have thought the demand would be so poor? 

[chasfh]

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:

1. 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.
2. 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.

[chasfh]

20 minutes ago, Tiger337 said:

Jobe might end up being a case of outsmarting themselves.  But, for now, we'll just need to be patient with Jobe.  

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.

[Longgone]

9 minutes ago, chasfh said:

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:

1. 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.
2. 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.

A lottery will have no impact on "tanking", because teams aren't doing it for financial reasons, that is a faulty assumption. They are simply taking a longer term strategy to success, that is all, some competently, some not so much. Thinking it's laziness or greed that cause teams to lose on purpose, and some contrived carrot or stick will change behaviour in an already extremely competitive industry is just mind boggling. They are REBUILDING, exchanging present assets for future ones. There's nothing wrong with that! Idealy you maintain an adequate core to be consistently competitive, but the fates are fickle, it doesn't always work that way.

[chasfh]

19 minutes ago, Longgone said:

Hinch was a superb hire, but if you think he is highly responsible for scouting, drafting and player development, then you have no idea how clubs operate. 

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."

[Longgone]

6 minutes ago, chasfh said:

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."

The Tigers have short and long term plans, they have an organizational chart where people have specific responsibilities, goals and objectives for hiring, scouting, drafting, player development, etc, and I assure you none of those are on Hinch's plate. Sure he'll give input on potential staff and players, all managers do, and sure he has input on developmental processes, all staff do, but he ain't driving the bus cause it ain't his responsibility, he's a manager with a very specific set of responsibilities, he's not going to go around usurping other peoples duties.