2022 DETROIT TIGERS REGULAR SEASON THREAD

[Tiger337]

19 hours ago, 1984Echoes said:

I hated giving up on Ray so fricking quick. Greene was a nice pitcher, but... I just hated dumping Ray that damn fast...

 

That was an odd trade.  They traded Fister for Ray and then pumped up Ray like he was next big thing.  Then they moved him fairly quickly for Greene who seemed to be less highly regarded.  

[gehringer_2]

29 minutes ago, sabretooth said:

Yes, I felt the most important takeaway from the Grossman thing wasn't his hitting it was what he said (which was essentially that he had not had direct assistance from analysts before) and what Hinch said (essentially that the Tigers should look into doing that).

exactly. Granted you might be predisposed to take what the player says with a grain of salt as the player who has been scuffling has an interest in projecting that there was a reason for his poor performance that has now been addressed so he can in turn project more success from himself going forward. In such case one expected counter from the Tiger org might have been, "Well we worked with Robbie on x/y/z but we are sorry we just didn't seem to find the key for him but we wish him well...."

What as NOT expected was for the Tiger manager to say "Yeah, well, that *is* a problem."

Sure we can spin that a Hinch just setting the bar at the "We can all always do better"  level, but if so still not the most articulate way to do it.

Edited August 30, 2022 by gehringer_2

[gehringer_2]

6 minutes ago, Tiger337 said:

That was an odd trade.  They traded Fister for Ray and then pumped up Ray like he was next big thing.  Then they moved him fairly quickly for Greene who seemed to be less highly regarded.  

I took that as a pure "win now" play. I don't think Ray's talent has hard to see, but he needed more time to turn into the pitcher he would become than the Tigers were willing to give him.

[RandyMarsh]

I remember saying this at the time of the Ray/Greene trade and that's Greene was somebody I coveted after watching us play him in Yankee Stadium the year before.  I remember he completely dominated us with 97mph FBs that moved like sliders, I remember thinking "Jesus, where did the Yankees find this guy at, I wish he was on the Tigers?" so when news came that the Tigers traded for him some 3 months after that I was pumped, even if it meant getting rid of Ray I thought it was going to be worth it.

Greene proved me right that first month when he posted like a 1 something ERA(peripherals were questionable though) but he struggled after as a starter. It wasn't until he turned into a reliever and became "Shane Greene Ladies and Gentleman" where he started to have some value for us. Not as much as Ray would've had of course but he did have his moments in the bullpen. 

[mtutiger]

16 minutes ago, gehringer_2 said:

exactly. Granted you might be predisposed to take what the player says with a grain of salt as the player who has been scuffling has an interest in projecting that there was a reason for his poor performance that has now been addressed so he can in turn project more success from himself going forward. In such case one expected counter from the Tiger org might have been, "Well we worked with Robbie on x/y/z but we are sorry we just didn't seem to find the key for him but we wish him well...."

The job that Cody and the other beat writers do is important and insightful, but whenever someone talks to a member of the media, particularly anonymously, it's important to remember that there can be an agenda associated with it. 

This probably applies even more to the conversation about Zach Neto (and the supposed 80/20 split within the draft room)... somebody who lost out on that argument internally has plenty of incentive to leak (and perhaps embellish)... particularly with Al Avila having been canned.

Edited August 30, 2022 by mtutiger

[Jim Cowan]

I didn't care much for Grossman's comments.  Presumably the same people who didn’t help him this year also didn’t help him last year when he played well.  Now he's awful but it's not his fault.  As for Hinch, who knows what to make of his public statements but I would have asked him "do you have a hitting coach?"

[RandyMarsh]

Didn't we hear similar type comments from Verlander when he went to the Astros and started dominating? Like how the Astros saw something in their video and it fixed his struggles? The only difference is that Verlander was actually pretty dominant the month or 6 weeks leading up to him going to the Astros so it's not like they just magically cured him, he was cured towards of the end of his tenure here. 

[Tenacious D]

19 minutes ago, Jim Cowan said:

I didn't care much for Grossman's comments.  Presumably the same people who didn’t help him this year also didn’t help him last year when he played well.  Now he's awful but it's not his fault.  As for Hinch, who knows what to make of his public statements but I would have asked him "do you have a hitting coach?"

dude has 3,254 career AB's in the majors and can't figure things out on his own?  He's also hitting .226 with the Braves.  That "improvement" says more about Robbie than any perceived coaching help.

[oblong]

49 minutes ago, RandyMarsh said:

Didn't we hear similar type comments from Verlander when he went to the Astros and started dominating? Like how the Astros saw something in their video and it fixed his struggles? The only difference is that Verlander was actually pretty dominant the month or 6 weeks leading up to him going to the Astros so it's not like they just magically cured him, he was cured towards of the end of his tenure here. 

Verlander should have won the Cy Young in 2016 but some voters were hung up on 22 wins for Porcello.

I don't remember him complaining about mechanics but I do remember him...  questioning maybe the medical staff for his injuy a few years prior.

[casimir]

47 minutes ago, Jim Cowan said:

I didn't care much for Grossman's comments.  Presumably the same people who didn’t help him this year also didn’t help him last year when he played well.  Now he's awful but it's not his fault.  As for Hinch, who knows what to make of his public statements but I would have asked him "do you have a hitting coach?"

Grossman, Candelario, Baddoo, Schoop,... they've all bottomed out this season after last season, just completely and absurdly fell off of the cliff.

CastoW, CastroH, Reyes, Haase,.... they've all maintained or improved, but they're all within shouting distance of 100 OPS+, so is there much of a gain here?

Now you throw in guys like Torkelson, Baez, Greene,..... 3 newcomers to Detroit, 2 of which have fallen short of expectations and one which is middle of the road.

It's easy to say Coolbaugh (and maybe Hessman) should be removed and new hitting coaches brought in this offseason.  And that's where my opinion is.  But I guess I am open to the idea that these are the same coaches that had success with the first quartet last season and "improved" the second grouping of players, so maybe the blame doesn't solely fall on the shoulders of the coaching.  A lot of issues have gone wrong with this lineup.  Slumps that haven't ended, injuries, new acquisitions that haven't panned out.

Who knows, maybe last year was just about as lucky as could be expected and this season was the exact opposite, and the bridge between those two extremes is just something short of average?

[sabretooth]

3 hours ago, gehringer_2 said:

exactly. Granted you might be predisposed to take what the player says with a grain of salt as the player who has been scuffling has an interest in projecting that there was a reason for his poor performance that has now been addressed so he can in turn project more success from himself going forward. In such case one expected counter from the Tiger org might have been, "Well we worked with Robbie on x/y/z but we are sorry we just didn't seem to find the key for him but we wish him well...."

What as NOT expected was for the Tiger manager to say "Yeah, well, that *is* a problem."

Sure we can spin that a Hinch just setting the bar at the "We can all always do better"  level, but if so still not the most articulate way to do it.

Yes - put another way, after the wipe-out catastrophe that has occured with most of the Tigers hitters this year, what fan WOULDN'T want to see Grossman killing it in ATL because of better analysis/techniques or whatever they have down there, and who wouldn't breathe a sigh of relief knowing that the guys in DET might learn from it? 

If ATL is doing sometihng helpful for Grossman, it could something that could help explain what we are missing here in DET and maybe provide our coaches with the potential means to employ a fix.

That kind of discovery would be a GOOD thing.

Instead, as Grossman cools off, we get some people around here clucking about we were all wrong wrong wrong to think that ATL might have a better way.

Well, I'm glad that we have that all straightened out. 

There are no answers, there is no way, nobody knows anything, we're doomed.  That's bloody nice to know, I'll just go watch Detroit's Jai Alai team now.

Or maybe, just maybe, failure is a great teacher.  I sure hope so, because DET has banked a LOT of it.

[Tigermojo]

I blame it all on the ping pong table. Burn that sucker.

[oblong]

1 hour ago, sabretooth said:

Yes - put another way, after the wipe-out catastrophe that has occured with most of the Tigers hitters this year, what fan WOULDN'T want to see Grossman killing it in ATL because of better analysis/techniques or whatever they have down there, and who wouldn't breathe a sigh of relief knowing that the guys in DET might learn from it? 

If ATL is doing sometihng helpful for Grossman, it could something that could help explain what we are missing here in DET and maybe provide our coaches with the potential means to employ a fix.

That kind of discovery would be a GOOD thing.

Instead, as Grossman cools off, we get some people around here clucking about we were all wrong wrong wrong to think that ATL might have a better way.

Well, I'm glad that we have that all straightened out. 

There are no answers, there is no way, nobody knows anything, we're doomed.  That's bloody nice to know, I'll just go watch Detroit's Jai Alai team now.

Or maybe, just maybe, failure is a great teacher.  I sure hope so, because DET has banked a LOT of it.

What bothered me about it was the lazy suggestion that Hinch and staff didn’t think to use video analysis on a hitter.  That all it took was a few stick figure diagrams and look how stupid the Tigers are.    

sometimes the player just sucks. 

[sabretooth]

1 hour ago, oblong said:

What bothered me about it was the lazy suggestion that Hinch and staff didn’t think to use video analysis on a hitter.  That all it took was a few stick figure diagrams and look how stupid the Tigers are.    

sometimes the player just sucks. 

I agree with all of that, and I can't imagine that the Tigers staff is THAT blinkered, but I still was happy to see Hinch jarred a little bit out of the manager-speak at least for a day.  I like him but I think his PR approach has been to dry for the level of suck experienced this year. 

I don't want to see Billy Martin resurrected, but I did like the way Smokes talked about failure; there seemed to be a clearer connection between what was happening today and what was expected to get things back up to snuff tomorrow or at least at some point in the foreseeable future.

[sabretooth]

2 hours ago, Tigermojo said:

I blame it all on the ping pong table. Burn that sucker.

Oddly, my doctor said that other day that ping-pong is the second best activity to promote overall mental agility and the health of the brain next to chess.

So they are feelin' good, but hittin' bad.

[oblong]

1 hour ago, sabretooth said:

Oddly, my doctor said that other day that ping-pong is the second best activity to promote overall mental agility and the health of the brain next to chess.

So they are feelin' good, but hittin' bad.

I read about a study that said the best thing to do after a trauma is to play a game like Tetris.  The focus of the mind helps block the trauma from settling in.  I think things like ping pong and even redundant video games help like you say.  In college I had a sega genesis and would play NHL 94, Madden, and Sonic between study breaks. Well… between the time I should have been studying. Gives you time to reset and think.   

[TigerNation]

7 hours ago, RandyMarsh said:

Didn't we hear similar type comments from Verlander when he went to the Astros and started dominating? Like how the Astros saw something in their video and it fixed his struggles? The only difference is that Verlander was actually pretty dominant the month or 6 weeks leading up to him going to the Astros so it's not like they just magically cured him, he was cured towards of the end of his tenure here. 

I remember the exact opposite where in a ST interview the following year a reporter asked him about getting traded and turning things around, and Verlander replied that he had already turned things around before the trade.

[RandyMarsh]

6 minutes ago, TigerNation said:

I remember the exact opposite where in a ST interview the following year a reporter asked him about getting traded and turning things around, and Verlander replied that he had already turned things around before the trade.

I must be remembering it wrong then and it wasn't Verlander that said it but instead was the media or Astros themselves but I do know for sure that the narrative going around at the time was how the Astros scouting and/or coaching staff "fixed" Verlander during his dominant run to end that season. 

[1984Echoes]

14 minutes ago, RandyMarsh said:

I must be remembering it wrong then and it wasn't Verlander that said it but instead was the media or Astros themselves but I do know for sure that the narrative going around at the time was how the Astros scouting and/or coaching staff "fixed" Verlander during his dominant run to end that season. 

You're not remembering it wrong.

The only year in Detroit Verlander pitched as well as he has in Houston was his Cy year in 2011, with a 0.92 WHIP, 2.40 ERA and 24 wins. 

He HAD improved his pitching in Detroit in 2017 prior to being traded at the end of August... but wasn't pitching well enough at the trade deadline to get traded. In 6 August games though, 4-1, 2.36 ERA, 0.79 WHIP... Electric! He did do better in Houston though, in 5 games at 1.06 ERA and 0.65 WHIP, phenomenal!

The scuttle was that Houston had improved the spin on one or two of his pitches... I don't remember, but it was something like that. But... the small sample sizes in both August & September are just too - small - to really draw any conclusions.

However, in his 98 games with Houston, ages 34-39, 2.30 ERA, 0.84 WHIP, 2.96 FIP.

With Detroit, from ages 22-34, in 380 games, 3.49 ERA, 1.19 WHIP, 3.48 FIP.

Again, the only year JV had with Detroit that was as good as his pitching in Houston, was his Cy year in 2011.

Now... he's pitched a whole lot less in Houston, annual innings-wise... but I'm thinking Houston helped him tweak a pitch or two and he's been a bit more effective there... in his lesser innings that is...

[gehringer_2]

29 minutes ago, 1984Echoes said:

The scuttle was that Houston had improved the spin on one or two of his pitches

I remember that the conventional wisdom was that he was throwing an 'improved' slider in Houston. But the reality with JV has always been that how effective his breaking pitches are follows from how good his fastball is, and his fastball was steadily improving from a point somewhere around mid-summer when he made some delivery adjustments. I can't recapitulate it at this point but there was a clear change in his release point and from that point on the FB starting getting better and thus the breaking balls got harder to adjust to. As 84 notes, this indeed was all in process in the month before he was traded. I have no problem giving credit to the Houston staff for offering JV some new analysis, but I do question it actually made much difference in the trajectory of his improvement, which was already well set.

The other point oft forgotten but not to be minimized when looking at JV's 2017 is that he moved from a terrible (-115 RDS) to a good (+21 RDS) defensive team as well - especially in the OF, where the fact that JV is a fly ball pitcher had been negatively impacted by the pretty terrible OF play of  Martinez, Matook, etc,(and of course Nick's terrible 3b play). 136 runs is more than 3/4 of a run per game difference off a pitcher's ERA all by itself.

Edited August 31, 2022 by gehringer_2

[oblong]

24 minutes ago, 1984Echoes said:

You're not remembering it wrong.

The only year in Detroit Verlander pitched as well as he has in Houston was his Cy year in 2011, with a 0.92 WHIP, 2.40 ERA and 24 wins. 

He HAD improved his pitching in Detroit in 2017 prior to being traded at the end of August... but wasn't pitching well enough at the trade deadline to get traded. In 6 August games though, 4-1, 2.36 ERA, 0.79 WHIP... Electric! He did do better in Houston though, in 5 games at 1.06 ERA and 0.65 WHIP, phenomenal!

The scuttle was that Houston had improved the spin on one or two of his pitches... I don't remember, but it was something like that. But... the small sample sizes in both August & September are just too - small - to really draw any conclusions.

However, in his 98 games with Houston, ages 34-39, 2.30 ERA, 0.84 WHIP, 2.96 FIP.

With Detroit, from ages 22-34, in 380 games, 3.49 ERA, 1.19 WHIP, 3.48 FIP.

Again, the only year JV had with Detroit that was as good as his pitching in Houston, was his Cy year in 2011.

Now... he's pitched a whole lot less in Houston, annual innings-wise... but I'm thinking Houston helped him tweak a pitch or two and he's been a bit more effective there... in his lesser innings that is...

I remember that now.  But I also remember seeing some video evidence that he made the change in Detroit. 
 

again… he should have won the CY in 2016.  

[oblong]

What is your take on this?  I don’t know the rule and don’t feel like looking it up but I’m pretty sure it’s not a judgement call b/c I have seen guys called out for walking back after they simply turned to the left, after stopping, instead of right, to go back to the bag.  His right foot ends up closer to that side of the field as he’s stopping.  Sorry but that’s what you have to do in order to be able to run past the bag. 

[gehringer_2]

12 minutes ago, oblong said:

What is your take on this?  I don’t know the rule and don’t feel like looking it up but I’m pretty sure it’s not a judgement call b/c I have seen guys called out for walking back after they simply turned to the left, after stopping, instead of right, to go back to the bag.  His right foot ends up closer to that side of the field as he’s stopping.  Sorry but that’s what you have to do in order to be able to run past the bag. 

It's another one of those things like not staying outside the line as you go to 1st, somewhere along the line you have to learn that you stay on outside of the 1st base line and turn toward the stands after you run through. Sure they could make it a judgment call for the ref and a play like this might go the other way, but why when all guys have to do is learn to do it right and eliminate the need for the Umpire to have guess about it? I don't have much sympathy for guys who can't learn simple easy rules and then bitch about it.

Edited August 31, 2022 by gehringer_2

[Jim Cowan]

Learn to do it correctly when you are 10.

[TigerNation]

1 hour ago, RandyMarsh said:

I must be remembering it wrong then and it wasn't Verlander that said it but instead was the media or Astros themselves but I do know for sure that the narrative going around at the time was how the Astros scouting and/or coaching staff "fixed" Verlander during his dominant run to end that season. 

There was definitely discussion about how analytically advanced Houston was, and how Verlander was absorbing all that info. I recall Hinch making a comment about Verlander being the player who was most interested in all of the data they had.

 

And the media absolutely portrayed it that way, but Verlander refuted that as he had already figured things out and was pitching great beforehand.

Edited August 31, 2022 by TigerNation