4/18/25 6:40PM Royals @ Tigers

[TigerNation]

2 minutes ago, Tiger337 said:

He did hit for power in the minors and FanGraphs rates his power as 70 grade.  70 grade seems to be aggressive but he apparently does have plus power in there some place.  I'm still waiting to see it.   

Yeah 70 grade is excessive, but he was looked at as a 25 HR guy.

[Tenacious D]

Just now, Tiger337 said:

He did hit for power in the minors and FanGraphs rates his power as 70 grade.  70 grade seems to be aggressive but he apparently does have plus power in there some place.  I'm still waiting to see it.   

He spoke out last season about how big Comerica was and the difficulty in hitting HRs there.  

[TigerNation]

9 minutes ago, Tenacious D said:

He spoke out last season about how big Comerica was and the difficulty in hitting HRs there.  

It ain't that big.

[gehringer_2]

15 minutes ago, TigerNation said:

Yeah 70 grade is excessive, but he was looked at as a 25 HR guy.

I didn't see him play in the minors, but the stroke he used last season wasn't going to put many balls out of the park.

[chasfh]

22 hours ago, TigerNation said:

Because not striving to have a great offense is really really stupid.

I get what Klondike means, but there is something to this as well. I think fans are conditioned to believe the team should focus on and be great in one aspect of the game, either hitting or pitching, and bludgeoned their way to a championship that way. Me, I had always been focused on the hitting part over the pitching. I always wanted more offense and figured we’d be more successful winning more 8-6 games than eking out more 3-2 games. But I think what this Tigers regime is starting to teach us is that an organizational philosophy that strives competency in key areas—e.g., control the strike zone, be aggressive, be versatile—can lead us to a successful well-balanced attack by identifying the underrated players that exemplify these competencies and execute these objectives on the way to winning.

What we don’t know is whether that can lead us to win across an entire 162-games game schedule. We do know it worked great for the final two months last year and it’s working great for the first month this year. It looks odd to be winning with guys who’ve been thought of as scrubinis and washouts being prominent components of the team, versus the veteran All-Star free agents and trade acquisitions from the early 2010s. But I will be eager to see whether this front office has identified a true underutilized resource as being a sustainable conduit to winning.

[Tiger337]

8 minutes ago, chasfh said:

I get what Klondike means, but there is something to this as well. I think fans are conditioned to believe the team should focus on and be great in one aspect of the game, either hitting or pitching, and bludgeoned their way to a championship that way. Me, I had always been focused on the hitting part over the pitching. I always wanted more offense and figured we’d be more successful winning more 8-6 games than eking out more 3-2 games. But I think what this Tigers regime is starting to teach us is that an organizational philosophy that strives competency in key areas—e.g., control the strike zone, be aggressive, be versatile—can lead us to a successful well-balanced attack by identifying the underrated players that exemplify these competencies and execute these objectives on the way to winning.

What we don’t know is whether that can lead us to win across an entire 162-games game schedule. We do know it worked great for the final two months last year and it’s working great for the first month this year. It looks odd to be winning with guys who’ve been thought of as scrubinis and washouts being prominent components of the team, versus the veteran All-Star free agents and trade acquisitions from the early 2010s. But I will be eager to see whether this front office has identified a true underutilized resource as being a sustainable conduit to winning.

Those things can help a team get the most out a roster which lacks offense, but I doubt it's a replacement. 

I disagree that it worked great the last two months of last year.  They didn't win because of offense,  They won because of pitching for which you can credit Hinch's remarkable bullpen management, another thing which I doubt can last for 162 games.  

But again, if your roster lacks offense, it's good to have ways to get the most out of the roster even if it's not a replacement for good hitting.  

[chasfh]

20 hours ago, Tiger337 said:

I think they would like to do that, but good fielders who can hit acceptably are getting more difficult to acquire.  You can't just have a bunch of Kreidlers.  I think Harris and company are actively seeking to develop more well rounded players in their system, but most of their recent prospects havenot been plus fielders.   

I don’t believe Kreidler is a guy Harris and company envisioned as being a key component to winning anyway. If the top three guys on the CF depth chart weren’t all hurt at the same time, Kreidler certainly wouldn’t be on the active roster, and maybe not even in the system anymore. So I’m not worried about Harris trying to build a winner with a bunch of Kreidlers, who’s a stopgap and nothing more.

As for the plus fielding, it’s true a lot of the young guys on the 40 are not plus fielders, like Tork, Colt, Carpenter, and Jung. But remember, these were guys drafted by Al Avila. Harris went through the detritus he inherited and tried to save as much of it as he could, and the four I named are guys he thought we could get enough out of despite their defensive flaws to be win-positive, so we could, if not get a full six or seven controlled years out of them, then at least serve as a bridge to the more well-rounded contingent players Harris has acquired, like the Maxes and McGonigle and Rainer and the like. This is also why we signed Gleyber Torres: he’s a terrible fielder who can hit some, but he’s not anything like a key component of the future. We didn’t sign him for that. We signed him because he’s a guy we needed for one year as a bridge to getting a more stable, perhaps permanent solution on the field next year. 

Turning this organizational into a sustainable winner was an enormous task Harris took on and the roster and depth charts were never going to be completely turned over and fixed by now. It’s all still a work in progress, and he’s sticking to his plan and is showing he’s not going to abandon it by, for example, liquidating the top of our system at a certain time to go for it NOW, THIS YEAR. That’s someone else’s style, not his. But until we get to the final version of whatever vision Harris has, probably in two or three years, we still have to field the best team and try to win today. And that’s why we have who we have on the field right now. And ya gotta admit, it’s been working pretty good.

[chasfh]

20 hours ago, casimir said:

Why is there an assumption that Keith is one of the best hitters on the team?  I feel he gets too much credit for something he hasn’t shown at the major league level outside of a month or two last season.  It’s not to say he won’t be good.  But he needs to prove he’s good before he’s anointed as good.

He’s not one of the best hitters right now, but I think Colt has shown he has enough going for a guy of his age and experience level in the best league in the world that he can eventually become something like what Tork is showing us right now. Maybe not that great on a sustainable basis—I mean, that’s MVP level across a whole year. But something in the neighborhood of that. Colt’s a work in progress yet.

I do admit it feels almost a little disappointing to see him while also seeing rookies like Jackson Chourio and Tyler Fitzgerald and Junior Caminero just waltz into the league and absolutely crush it as rookies from day one while we see our top rookies struggle out of the gate and for years. Ain’t gonna lie, totally jealous of that. Maybe we’ll get that out of Max or McGonigle. We’ll see.

[chasfh]

18 minutes ago, Tiger337 said:

Those things can help a team get the most out a roster which lacks offense, but I doubt it's a replacement. 

I disagree that it worked great the last two months of last year.  They didn't win because of offense,  They won because of pitching for which you can credit Hinch's remarkable bullpen management, another thing which I doubt can last for 162 games.  

But again, if your roster lacks offense, it's good to have ways to get the most out of the roster even if it's not a replacement for good hitting.  

I doubt Harris’s end goal is to obtain a bunch of lumbering sluggers a la 2012 and abandon the bold-faced approach. I don’t believe he sees it as a short-term strategy to get us to Dombrowskiland. I think he does see it as a permanent strategy, at last indefinitely. After all, it was the first thing he mentioned in his introductory press conference. But I’ll be very willing to admit I’m wrong if he proves the lumbering slugger strategy was his goal the whole time.

As for our offense the last two months of last year, I think you might be giving it short shrift. They were not the bottom five offense they had been for the first four months, and indeed for the entirety of Harris’s early tenure. We were 11th in FanGraphs’ offense measure from August 11 on, or, if you don’t believe in that metric at all, you can re-sort the table and see we were 13th in runs scored. Either way, we were above sea level, and not lacking for offense.

https://www.fangraphs.com/leaders/major-league?pos=all&stats=bat&lg=all&qual=y&type=8&month=1000&ind=0&startdate=2024-08-11&enddate=2024-09-30&season1=&season=&team=0%2Cts&sortcol=19&sortdir=default&pagenum=1

[Tiger337]

9 minutes ago, chasfh said:

I doubt Harris’s end goal is to obtain a bunch of lumbering sluggers a la 2012 and abandon the bold-faced approach. I don’t believe he sees it as a short-term strategy to get us to Dombrowskiland. I think he does see it as a permanent strategy, at last indefinitely. After all, it was the first thing he mentioned in his introductory press conference. But I’ll be very willing to admit I’m wrong if he proves the lumbering slugger strategy was his goal the whole time.

As for our offense the last two months of last year, I think you might be giving it short shrift. They were not the bottom five offense they had been for the first four months, and indeed for the entirety of Harris’s early tenure. We were 11th in FanGraphs’ offense measure from August 11 on, or, if you don’t believe in that metric at all, you can re-sort the table and see we were 13th in runs scored. Either way, we were above sea level, and not lacking for offense.

https://www.fangraphs.com/leaders/major-league?pos=all&stats=bat&lg=all&qual=y&type=8&month=1000&ind=0&startdate=2024-08-11&enddate=2024-09-30&season1=&season=&team=0%2Cts&sortcol=19&sortdir=default&pagenum=1

Who said anything abut lumbering sluggers? I think his strategy is to have players like Greene, Torkelson, Carpenter, McGonigle, Clark, etc actually being good hitters and not relying on McKinstry, Kreidler and Ibanez to be working the strike zone and being versatile for 400 at bats.  

I don't think what they did last year is a big part of the strategy at all.  That is unlikely to happen again.  Some of the elements they employed during that period might be used as fillers, but it's not a strategy for sustained success.  Talent is still whats going to win the most games.  

Edited April 20 by Tiger337

[chasfh]

4 minutes ago, Tiger337 said:

Who said anything abut lumbering sluggers? I think his strategy is to have players like Greene, Torkelson, Carpenter, McGonigle, Clark, etc actually being good hitters and not relying on McKinstry, Kreidler and Ibanez to be working the strike zone and being versatile for 400 at bats.  

I don't think what they did last year is a big part of the strategy at all.  That is unlikely to happen again.  Some of the elements they employed during that period might be used as fillers, but it's not a strategy for sustained success.  Talent is still what going to win the most games.  

Nobody said anything about lumbering sluggers—not you, for sure—until I brought it up as a counterexample to what Harris is doing. I brought it up because it was the Tigers’ offensive strategy during the period some fans think of as being a golden era in Tigers history. I think a lot of fans would like to see that be the Tigers offensive strategy once again, although probably not you, and certainly not me.

[Tiger337]

2 minutes ago, chasfh said:

Nobody said anything about lumbering sluggers—not you, for sure—until I brought it up as a counterexample to what Harris is doing. I brought it up because it was the Tigers’ offensive strategy during the period some fans think of as being a golden era in Tigers history. I think a lot of fans would like to see that be the Tigers offensive strategy once again, although probably not you, and certainly not me.

I'm hoping for the 1980s again - a bunch of well rounded players who were allstar level some years, but not superstars.  It would be nice to have a superstar too, but I wouldn't build a roster around one or two players.     

[casimir]

3 hours ago, chasfh said:

He’s not one of the best hitters right now, but I think Colt has shown he has enough going for a guy of his age and experience level in the best league in the world that he can eventually become something like what Tork is showing us right now. Maybe not that great on a sustainable basis—I mean, that’s MVP level across a whole year. But something in the neighborhood of that. Colt’s a work in progress yet.

I do admit it feels almost a little disappointing to see him while also seeing rookies like Jackson Chourio and Tyler Fitzgerald and Junior Caminero just waltz into the league and absolutely crush it as rookies from day one while we see our top rookies struggle out of the gate and for years. Ain’t gonna lie, totally jealous of that. Maybe we’ll get that out of Max or McGonigle. We’ll see.

By no means am I suggest he’s a bust or anything like that.  And certainly it’s a tough gig for a guy under 23 years old, especially when he was learning a new defensive position.  In spite of his hitting struggles, he’s had a fantastic eye at the plate so far this season.  So, there’s hope for sure.

[chasfh]

3 hours ago, Tiger337 said:

I'm hoping for the 1980s again - a bunch of well rounded players who were allstar level some years, but not superstars.  It would be nice to have a superstar too, but I wouldn't build a roster around one or two players.     

That might be where this team ends up in 2028!