2024 - 2025 Detroit Tigers Offseason

[Tenacious D]

34 minutes ago, gehringer_2 said:

yeah - Jake's bat is what it is at this point. When Dingler turned around his numbers at AAA so well we all hoped there was something there but it sure didn't carry over. I'm sure they'll give him more opportunity. I haven't watched his career at all so have no idea if there is some basic flaw in his approach or not. But if not Dingler, I guess the org is basically in a holding pattern for a bat at C hoping for Lirzano....

Dingler, who has 84 career MLB AB’s?

[papalawrence]

AJ and others spoke often to the fact that finding one's way as a catcher at the major league level involves much more initial focus on catching than it does on hitting. I think Dingler will likely be fine, give him time. They already have Rogers, who seems to be a solid part of what Harris et all are building.

[IdahoBert]

I really dislike the lag time between the end of the regular season and the end of the World Series before anything substantial happens; because, to be honest, we aren’t included in the World Series all that often. I look forward to the awards and the deals and I don’t like waiting for them.

[gehringer_2]

55 minutes ago, papalawrence said:

AJ and others spoke often to the fact that finding one's way as a catcher at the major league level involves much more initial focus on catching than it does on hitting. I think Dingler will likely be fine, give him time. They already have Rogers, who seems to be a solid part of what Harris et all are building.

<rant_on>I don't know how much I buy this great dichotomy. It strikes me as much about justification for not finding catchers that can hit. The big part of being a good catcher is managing the game/staff and that is almost all soft skill. Hitting is a hard skill. The time spent on one doesn't really impact the ability to spend the time needed on the other. There are plenty of catchers who can hit and who did it out of the gate. And there are a ton of good defensive catchers who played for years until they had catching down cold but never became better hitters. It's OK not to value hitting that highly in a catcher but just be up front about it <\rant_off>

Edited October 15, 2024 by gehringer_2

[Tenacious D]

Catchers don’t hit any more, in general. The few that hit well, but provide average to below defense get moved off the position.  Liranzo might fall into this.

[gehringer_2]

2 minutes ago, Tenacious D said:

Catchers don’t hit any more, in general.

and I think it's fine that managers want to take hitting pressure off their catchers so that they don't let their ABs impact their concentration on their catching job, but that's a bit different than saying it's because they are catching that they aren't able to be more successful hitters. They are the hitters they are.

[papalawrence]

I just did a quick check on catchers and their initial big league experience. I checked Bench, Piazza, IRod, Rogers, Freehan, Parish and Avila. Only one hit out of the gate, that was Alex Avila. Bench's first year he was 14 for 86, ops+ of 26. Freehan had an ops of .718 and did well. His sample is 300 ab though, not sure how he started. Jake Rogers? Ouch!! 14 for 112. Not that Jake is an average hitter now. Even IRod's ops+ his first season was 75 in 280 at bats. I do think most catchers struggle at the plate to start. Not saying Dingler will ever hit. But 84 at bats while catching 5-7 pitchers a game in a race for the playoffs is a tough entrance into becoming a MLB batter imho 

[gehringer_2]

18 minutes ago, papalawrence said:

Not saying Dingler will ever hit. But 84 at bats while catching 5-7 pitchers a game in a race for the playoffs is a tough entrance into becoming a MLB batter imho

I don't think anyone is ready to give up on Dingler after 84 AB. Any hitter needs 500+ AB to know what you have. I was only questioning whether it is all *that* much different for catchers. Heck - Mike Trout had an 89 OPS+ in his 1st 135 AB.

I probably shouldn't have used the expression 'out of the gate' when I really just meant as compared to the normal progression for hitters.

Edited October 15, 2024 by gehringer_2

[Tiger337]

Another thing about catchers is that they get beat up a lot and I think that means they tend to have a lot of variation in performance over time.  I have no problem with teams carrying a strong defensive catcher who doesn't hit much.    

[chasfh]

17 minutes ago, Tiger337 said:

Another thing about catchers is that they get beat up a lot and I think that means they tend to have a lot of variation in performance over time.  I have no problem with teams carrying a strong defensive catcher who doesn't hit much.    

Isn’t this exactly what WAR is intended to address? How many wins does your bat adds, your defense adds, your baserunning control adds, your framing adds, your handling of pitchers add? I’m pretty sure they don’t have the measurement for all of these locked down, but in theory, you should be able to add all these up for every catcher and come to how many net wins each catcher is worth, no?

If a glove-first catcher adds 6 wins on the defensive side of the ball but loses 4 with his bat, that should net out to 2 wins. Compare this to a bat-first catcher who wins you 6 games with his bat and loses 4 on defense, that should net out to 2 wins as well, which would mean they are a wash. In terms of wins to the team, they’re even.

At that point you’d have to consider other aspects, such as, pitchers almost certainly don’t want to throw to catchers who lose bunches of games while he’s behind the plate no matter how well he hits, so a team might take the glove-first catcher, or even a glove-first catcher who nets out to one less win than the bat-first guy, just to keep the pitchers happy, and besides, the team can work on the catcher’s hitting, because we see a hitch in his swing we think we can fix with an adjustment and then some cage and soft toss work. I would think those are the kinds of criteria organizations probably make decisions on all the time.

[Tiger337]

1 hour ago, chasfh said:

Isn’t this exactly what WAR is intended to address? How many wins does your bat adds, your defense adds, your baserunning control adds, your framing adds, your handling of pitchers add? I’m pretty sure they don’t have the measurement for all of these locked down, but in theory, you should be able to add all these up for every catcher and come to how many net wins each catcher is worth, no?

If a glove-first catcher adds 6 wins on the defensive side of the ball but loses 4 with his bat, that should net out to 2 wins. Compare this to a bat-first catcher who wins you 6 games with his bat and loses 4 on defense, that should net out to 2 wins as well, which would mean they are a wash. In terms of wins to the team, they’re even.

At that point you’d have to consider other aspects, such as, pitchers almost certainly don’t want to throw to catchers who lose bunches of games while he’s behind the plate no matter how well he hits, so a team might take the glove-first catcher, or even a glove-first catcher who nets out to one less win than the bat-first guy, just to keep the pitchers happy, and besides, the team can work on the catcher’s hitting, because we see a hitch in his swing we think we can fix with an adjustment and then some cage and soft toss work. I would think those are the kinds of criteria organizations probably make decisions on all the time.

yeah, WAR tries to measure player value as you describe, but I think catcher is still the most difficult position to measure.  I am not sure you can measure how well a catcher works with his pitchers which may or may not be an important factor being missed.  I believe this is what you are talking about in your last paragraph.         

Edited October 15, 2024 by Tiger337

[chasfh]

17 minutes ago, Tiger337 said:

yeah, WAR tries to measure player value as you describe, but I think catcher is still the most difficult position to measure.  I am not sure you can measure how well a catcher works with his pitchers which may or may not be an important factor being missed.  I believe this is what you are talking about in your last paragraph.         

Yeah, I wasn't trying to suggest I knew anything about measuring that, just that it is a thing like everything else that has the potential to be measured. I would think a catcher's ability to work with pitchers would affect the performance of the pitchers, in that a catcher who is great at it gets more, maybe even a lot more, out of his pitchers than other catchers can. And who knows, maybe some of these Ivy League astrophysicists or quantum algorithms researchers, or whatever they are, that organizations hire for their data science departments may have gotten to that somehow. I would think it's one of those seemingly ethereal things that, if someone has cracked that code, they would hold it for ransom.

In any event, if/once they have cracked it, then it could be reduced to a component in the WAR formula along with the other four components I mentioned, and I'm sure there are a couple or three other components to evaluating catchers I'm not even thinking of, or perhaps have not even heard of.

[Edman85]

Rates and Barrells threw out Yandy Diaz as a Tigers trade candidate...

[SoCalTiger]

19 minutes ago, Edman85 said:

Rates and Barrells threw out Yandy Diaz as a Tigers trade candidate...

"Plays" third and first so that part fits. Righthanded. Good hitter.  Trading with Tampa....buyer beware.

[kdog]

He would be a salary dump...33 years old and owed $10 million. It wouldn't be like Meadows who had multiple arb years:

https://www.spotrac.com/mlb/player/_/id/21687/yandy-diaz

[Edman85]

51 minutes ago, kdog said:

He would be a salary dump...33 years old and owed $10 million. It wouldn't be like Meadows who had multiple arb years:

https://www.spotrac.com/mlb/player/_/id/21687/yandy-diaz

11M, $1M assignment bonus to be paid by the acquiring team.

[Hinchman11]

1 hour ago, SoCalTiger said:

"Plays" third and first so that part fits. Righthanded. Good hitter.  Trading with Tampa....buyer beware.

Crushes left handed pitching as the Tigers ranked at the bottom of the league against left handed pitchers

[monkeytargets39]

Not Tigers specific, but I wonder what the plan will be for where the Rays play.  Supposedly it’s gonna take a huge amount of money to repair Tropicana fields roof from the hurricane and they may not allocate the funds for that if they’re also planning to build a new park in the near future.

 

Maybe they’ll play their games at Joker Marchant Stadium next season…… that parks attendance capacity isn’t waay smaller than a typical Rays game attendance…..😅

[Tiger337]

32 minutes ago, monkeytargets39 said:

Not Tigers specific, but I wonder what the plan will be for where the Rays play.  Supposedly it’s gonna take a huge amount of money to repair Tropicana fields roof from the hurricane and they may not allocate the funds for that if they’re also planning to build a new park in the near future.

 

Maybe they’ll play their games at Joker Marchant Stadium next season…… that parks attendance capacity isn’t waay smaller than a typical Rays game attendance…..😅

The correct answer is Montreal!

[RatkoVarda]

3 hours ago, SoCalTiger said:

"Plays" third and first so that part fits. Righthanded. Good hitter.  Trading with Tampa....buyer beware.

Diaz's approach is just what they want; high walk and low K; clobbers LHP; but under powered 1b man; has not played 3rd in 2 years; so no positional flexibility; but they do need to get some insurance if Tork flops; or maybe he's a bridge to Liranzo/Briceno if they pick up 2026 option as well after Tork is traded; led AL with 330 BA in 2023; interesting option

[monkeytargets39]

56 minutes ago, Tiger337 said:

The correct answer is Montreal!

I would love to see that.  I miss the Expos

[gehringer_2]

16 minutes ago, RatkoVarda said:

Diaz's approach is just what they want; high walk and low K; clobbers LHP; but under powered 1b man; has not played 3rd in 2 years; so no positional flexibility; but they do need to get some insurance if Tork flops; or maybe he's a bridge to Liranzo/Briceno if they pick up 2026 option as well after Tork is traded; led AL with 330 BA in 2023; interesting option

The problem for the Tigers is that other than 3rd base - assuming Jung ends up back at Toledo for more development, you don't really have an obvious wide open spot to give a good RHH you bring in 500+ AB. Harris notes correctly that they are too left handed but three of their LH bats are everyday players, maybe even a 4th if Sweeney continues to develop and even if he doesn't javy complicates the situation at SS until they know whether he can contribute.. So to me unless you are bringing in a 3b like Bregman, the likelihood is going to be they pursue more platoonish guys like Canha again.

Edited October 16, 2024 by gehringer_2

[monkeytargets39]

If we hypothetically acquired Diaz in a trade and shipped Torkelson to Tampa, Spencer would hit .340 with 50 HRs and a 1.250 OPS while playing gold glove defense.

Edited October 16, 2024 by monkeytargets39

[Tenacious D]

Bring in Paul Goldschmidt for a season at DH/1B. Lineup could use a RH bat, insurance at 1B and someone who can buy beer for the younger players.

[lordstanley]

2 hours ago, Tiger337 said:

The correct answer is Montreal!

Ha, would love it.   My daughter is a freshman at McGill University. I believe Olympic Stadium is derelict, but perhaps the 27,000 seat football stadium on campus could be tinkered with enough for baseball in the short term.