General Tiger Discussion

[1776]

51 minutes ago, Tiger337 said:

Fans have been convinced largely by TV that winning the World Series is all that matters.  

KL2

[Archie]

58 minutes ago, Tiger337 said:

Fans have been convinced largely by TV that winning the World Series is all that matters.  Market the gold, silver and bronze division medals conept and they will buy into that too.  

Winning the WS would be huge but for me its not the end all.  The last two times they were in the WS has been pretty disappointing.  I think they won one game in 2006 and were swept in 2012.  I look forward to a competitive season where they are in contention for the post season.  The last few years have been painful when the team they put on the field wouldn't of had a chance to win the Little League WS.

[Dan Gilmore]

20 minutes ago, AlaskanTigersFan said:

I like Schoop. Don't get me wrong. But he's not a top 15 second basemen in the league..... And he's our 2nd best hitter on our team now. And we are ready for the playoffs? Oof. I want to be optimistic. But let this marinate for a second and honestly tell me you disagree....... 

 

Our pitching is lightyears ahead of our hitters any day. Our only prayer is Torkelson and Greene come up and don't act like Jared Kelenic which very well could happen. Then we'll have 3 decent hitters (Tork, Greene, Baez) and 2 Meh hitters in our lineup (giving Grossman some love just cause of his OBP). Tough to be in the playoffs with 5 hitters and 4 black holes.....  

Candelario is not remotely a black hole. I disagree with your three categories (decent/meh/black holes). Baddoo might not do much in 2022, but his 2021 OPS was .766, OPS+ was 113. 
 

i see a team with seven regulars that vary from good offense to average, with a few supporting position players that are likely to be a bit below average, but not black holes. You see it differently.

[sabretooth]

8 minutes ago, AlaskanTigersFan said:

I like Schoop. Don't get me wrong. But he's not a top 15 second basemen in the league..... And he's our 2nd best hitter on our team now. And we are ready for the playoffs? Oof. I want to be optimistic. But let this marinate for a second and honestly tell me you disagree....... 

Yeah, he's a top 15 second baseman.  He finished the year with a 105 wRC+, right where he's been from 2019 - 2021, and that places him at 13th among 2bman according to Fangraphs, ahead of Frazier, Merrifield, and Segura hitting-wise...or if you prefer wOBA, he's 15th, basically tied with the same three other guys.  That's a nice place to be, and a solid 2 WAR player at that position.  The only reason his WAR was less in 2021 was because he played a lot of 1B.

We might be a **little** short of the playoffs as currently constructed, but only if you assume that 85 wins is a little short.  I think we have a very good shot at the postseason, especially if they acquire one more decent SP like Kikuchi, Duffy, Archer, or Smyly. 

8 minutes ago, AlaskanTigersFan said:

Our pitching is lightyears ahead of our hitters any day. Our only prayer is Torkelson and Greene come up and don't act like Jared Kelenic which very well could happen. Then we'll have 3 decent hitters (Tork, Greene, Baez) and 2 Meh hitters in our lineup (giving Grossman some love just cause of his OBP). Tough to be in the playoffs with 5 hitters and 4 black holes.....  

Well, yeah, if Tork and Greene pull a Kelenic than you can forget about the playoffs.  Tork and Greene need to provide them with fairly good production for at least most of the season (400+ PA, 2+ WAR each).  If one or both of them fail to launch, then we will struggle to have a winning record, much less make the playoffs.  Manning also has to get it together and put up decent numbers....it's time for him to put up or shut up, he was a 2016 top-10 1st round draft pick, and he's turning 25.  He needs to give us 150+ IP with a league-average ERA or better or he's drifting into bust territory.

[Tigermojo]

Still a lot of question marks on this team but huge upside with all the young players as well. We'll probably see some busts but others could step up. I think the lineup will be ok. They will not crush the ball all over the place but they'll play solid defense with good baserunning. The problem will be injuries. They still don't have much depth past the top 26.

I'd really like another starter and a couple guys for the bullpen. I'd prefer they do it now than trade away talent in July.

[SoCalTiger]

2 hours ago, AlaskanTigersFan said:

I like Schoop. Don't get me wrong. But he's not a top 15 second basemen in the league..... And he's our 2nd best hitter on our team now. And we are ready for the playoffs? Oof. I want to be optimistic. But let this marinate for a second and honestly tell me you disagree....... 

 

Our pitching is lightyears ahead of our hitters any day. Our only prayer is Torkelson and Greene come up and don't act like Jared Kelenic which very well could happen. Then we'll have 3 decent hitters (Tork, Greene, Baez) and 2 Meh hitters in our lineup (giving Grossman some love just cause of his OBP). Tough to be in the playoffs with 5 hitters and 4 black holes.....  

Grosman Baez and Candy are all better hitters than Schoop right now. And by the end of 2022 Green Tork and Badoo will also. Scoop will be our seventh best hitter going into 2023 assuming Grosman is retained or replaced in equal. 
That’s a good lineup

[RandyMarsh]

6 minutes ago, SoCalTiger said:

Grosman Baez and Candy are all better hitters than Schoop right now. And by the end of 2022 Green Tork and Badoo will also. Scoop will be our seventh best hitter going into 2023 assuming Grosman is retained or replaced in equal. 
That’s a good lineup

I still think Miggy has potential to be better than him too. He was really turning it on towards the end of the season, of course if memory serves me correctly he did the same in 2020 as well only to struggle in the 1st half of last year so we shall see. 

[IdahoBert]

The World Series ended November 2 and could’ve gone longer. Adding more teams would make the season go even deeper into November. And there’s no way they’re going to shorten the season to accommodate expanded playoffs.

And teams that are wild cards now would justifiably have to be bumped up to at least a three- or five-game series? A bunch of crappy one-game playoffs seems like a stupid “reward“ punishing better teams and rewarding worse ones. And you end up going until the middle of November?

Every opportunity to generate more revenue isn’t always good. Amalgamated Puppy Grinders is not a good idea even though it may create jobs, and neither is playing halfway through November.

 

[gehringer_2]

17 minutes ago, RandyMarsh said:

I still think Miggy has potential to be better than him too. He was really turning it on towards the end of the season, of course if memory serves me correctly he did the same in 2020 as well only to struggle in the 1st half of last year so we shall see. 

I would say that as of last year Cabrera did have long stretches where he saw the ball pretty well, but the knee would come and go - you could watch to see if he was picking up his left foot from day to day/week to week or just swinging flat footed. There's always a possibility the layoff or some off-season routine or treatment will help the knee, or it could just get worse. So I won't try to guess what Miguel can contribute. Clearly last season he was not ready to go when the season started (329 OPS in his 1st 17 games, 747 the rest of the way) - . Hinch had given him 40 AB in ST, could have done a little but not much more there. 

Edited December 3, 2021 by gehringer_2

[Tiger337]

3 hours ago, Dan Gilmore said:

Candelario is not remotely a black hole. I disagree with your three categories (decent/meh/black holes). Baddoo might not do much in 2022, but his 2021 OPS was .766, OPS+ was 113. 
 

i see a team with seven regulars that vary from good offense to average, with a few supporting position players that are likely to be a bit below average, but not black holes. You see it differently.

My goal for them to win 90 games as many years as possible.  If they do that, then it's usually an interesting season.  90 games also puts them in the post-season crap shoot which is additional entertainment.   

[casimir]

6 hours ago, AlaskanTigersFan said:

I like Schoop. Don't get me wrong. But he's not a top 15 second basemen in the league..... And he's our 2nd best hitter on our team now. And we are ready for the playoffs? Oof. I want to be optimistic. But let this marinate for a second and honestly tell me you disagree....... 

 

Our pitching is lightyears ahead of our hitters any day. Our only prayer is Torkelson and Greene come up and don't act like Jared Kelenic which very well could happen. Then we'll have 3 decent hitters (Tork, Greene, Baez) and 2 Meh hitters in our lineup (giving Grossman some love just cause of his OBP). Tough to be in the playoffs with 5 hitters and 4 black holes.....  

I don't consider Schoop the 2nd best hitter on the team.  I think Candelario, Grossman, Baez, and Schoop are the best current hitters with major league experience, and I'm not sure they are appreciably better than one or the other of themselves.  They're different than each other, each with their own strengths & weaknesses. 

I don't know if you are criticizing the OBP of Grossman or not, but I consider it a positive.  If he can maintain that, a decent bump in his BABIP (which was a little below league average last season), that'd be fun.

Again, what I don't like about Schoop last season was how volatile his season was.  I'm not surprised he had a slow start because he got a late start in Lakeland (I think it was travel or visa issues due to COVID).  So he kind of started behind the curve with the bat and then was learning 1B.  But after his torrid June, he was just kind of average to below average.  So I don't know what to expect.

I don't know what to expect out of Baddoo.  There's just not enough of a history to feel comfortable.  But he did show some skills on offense, some power, lots of speed.  He seemingly improved his batting eye early on in the season, so that's good.

There certainly are a lot of expectations riding on the bats of Torkelson and Greene.  But even if they are above average for the year, there are average to above average hitters accounted for over half of the lineup spots.  Maybe Baez is the only all star potential of the bunch, but I like the fact that the "lineup depth" should be longer in 2021.

I like what I've seen out of Mize & Skubal, and I like the addition of Rodriguez.  I'm not as optimistic on Manning.  The bullpen...... ugh,.... can you we ever be confident in a Tiger bullpen?  I like Alexander and Fulmer and Soto.  But I just don't know about the rest of the bullpen.

So I guess I don't know if I'd say the pitching is light years ahead of the hitting.  I've never really thought about that in as much as is either side of it good enough on its own vs the rest of the league.

[gehringer_2]

9 minutes ago, casimir said:

I don't consider Schoop the 2nd best hitter on the team

Schoop is an odd one. A little like Upton in that when he is slumping, he looks so  unable to find the ball that he should have been out of baseball two years ago, then a week later he's got the zone down cold and is hitting every ball hard. In Schoops case it is way more than just the random BaBIP noise that all hitters go through. He literally does go from a great to a terrible hitter and back again. Sleep issues? Allergies? Bio-rhythms?

[Motor City Sonics]

The most disappointing thing I've heard is the used the juiced balls for Harold Catro. 

[oblong]

[Jim Cowan]

They are incredibly excited.  "Incredibly" seems to have replaced "very" in our vocabulary.  Personally I find it to be very credible that they are excited.  Or should I say incredibly credible.

[oblong]

Happy was the dombrowski word of choice 

[diaspora04]

On 12/3/2021 at 9:57 AM, 1776 said:

. . . Rather, it is simply lowering the bar in a way that redefines what is considered successful.

Like a Swarthmore College beauty pageant?

[casimir]

19 hours ago, oblong said:

Can he pitch?

[Shinzaki]

23 hours ago, Jim Cowan said:

They are incredibly excited.  "Incredibly" seems to have replaced "very" in our vocabulary.  Personally I find it to be very credible that they are excited.  Or should I say incredibly credible.

I always liked using "super" because it wounded so...California.  Given all the homeless people and drug issues out there these days...maybe sounding like that isn't a good thing

[diaspora04]

23 hours ago, Jim Cowan said:

They are incredibly excited.  "Incredibly" seems to have replaced "very" in our vocabulary.  Personally I find it to be very credible that they are excited.  Or should I say incredibly credible.

I don't recall Duce using either word.

[oblong]

 

[Tiger337]

1 hour ago, diaspora04 said:

I don't recall Duce using either word.

He rarely even gets excited.  Never mind "very" or "incredibly".    

[RandyMarsh]

Lol I remember us all talking about this ab in the game thread. Nice to see that we weren't just being hyperbolic or reactionary due to it being a game thread.

 

[KL2]

On 12/3/2021 at 12:03 PM, 1776 said:

KL2

Is it. Nobody wears Tshirts for finishing 83-79.

Let me put it this way, if Michigan lost saturday would anyone have said. It's OK the year was fun and at least they were in the conversation?

Edited December 8, 2021 by KL2

[RandyMarsh]

12 minutes ago, KL2 said:

Is it. Nobody wears Tshirts for finishing 83-79.

Let me put it this way, if Michigan lost saturday would anyone have said. It's OK the year was fun and at least they were in the conversation?

I can't speak for all fans but for me personally it's not all about banners and Tshirts, it's the experiences you get along the way. Those several years the Tigers were good they didn't win the whole thing but I got so much enjoyment out of going to playoff games, watching big games with friends or just the nerves/butterfiles I got watching important games at home by myself. Same for any other sports team I root for including Michigan.  Those experiences and memories are things that I won't ever forget and mean alot to me even if I never got to experience them win the whole thing.