6/5 11:35 Tigers @ Yankees

[casimir]

26 minutes ago, kdog said:

Every reliever should be on the block if the Tigers can get a decent prospect. They need as many lottery tickets as possible.

 

12 minutes ago, mtutiger said:

Except Lange. 

Anybody is available for the right price.  Except for maybe Fetter.

[mtutiger]

3 minutes ago, casimir said:

 

Anybody is available for the right price.  Except for maybe Fetter.

The price for Lange needs to be really, really high. He's controllable through 2028, and he's basically the heir apparent for the closer role.

The others, I don't care as much, but I can see them not delivering enough of a return for Lange given his age and talent.

Edited June 6, 2022 by mtutiger

[Hongbit]

48 minutes ago, kdog said:

Every reliever should be on the block if the Tigers can get a decent prospect. They need as many lottery tickets as possible.

I’d prefer to not let Al make any more trades.  

[mtutiger]

I can see Michael Fulmer as a trade piece as he is hits free agency in 2023, but trading Alex Lange, who is one of the best relievers in baseball right now? Who is under control for the next six years? The bird in the hand for the next six years is more likely than not gonna be worth more than what you get in return.

Especially with Al doing the trades.

[Sports_Freak]

1 hour ago, kdog said:

Every reliever should be on the block if the Tigers can get a decent prospect. They need as many lottery tickets as possible.

It's not so much we have to trade, it's more about opening roster spots for returning players.

[chasfh]

Didn’t we get Lange himself as a prospect in exchange for a veteran dump? That was just three years ago.

So if we’re going to turn around and dump Lange for yet another prospect, when he himself is just one year removed from prospect status, then exactly what the hell are we doing here??

[Tiger337]

1 hour ago, mtutiger said:

The price for Lange needs to be really, really high. He's controllable through 2028, and he's basically the heir apparent for the closer role.

 

I know he's been good this year, but we've heard this before about relievers.  He is 26 years old and wasn't even that great in the minors.  I'm not going to get too excited after two good months.  That being said, I agree he won't bring much back in a trade, so they might as well find out whether his early season dominance is for real.   

[mtutiger]

11 minutes ago, Tiger337 said:

I know he's been good this year, but we've heard this before about relievers.  He is 26 years old and wasn't even that great in the minors.  I'm not going to get too excited after two good months.  That being said, I agree he won't bring much back in a trade, so they might as well find out whether his early season dominance is for real.   

I'm open to the idea that he may be a little over his head at the moment (even though his peripherals this season suggest he's more real than not).

But even so, if you have a guy like this who is controllable for six upcoming years and you feel reasonably confident can be a part of a winning ballclub within that time frame, the price for a trade needs to be pegged accordingly.

Otherwise, as Chas asks, what are we doing here? 

[Tiger337]

13 minutes ago, mtutiger said:

I'm open to the idea that he may be a little over his head at the moment (even though his peripherals this season suggest he's more real than not).

But even so, if you have a guy like this who is controllable for six upcoming years and you feel reasonably confident can be a part of a winning ballclub within that time frame, the price for a trade needs to be pegged accordingly.

Otherwise, as Chas asks, what are we doing here? 

I doubt we even care about him in six years.  With a young reliever, I'd never look that far ahead.  You won't get anything for just him, but if he was part of a package for some hitter than can help them the next couple of years, I'd do it.     

[gehringer_2]

1 hour ago, Tiger337 said:

I know he's been good this year, but we've heard this before about relievers.  He is 26 years old and wasn't even that great in the minors.  I'm not going to get too excited after two good months.  That being said, I agree he won't bring much back in a trade, so they might as well find out whether his early season dominance is for real.   

that's the thing with pitchers - sometimes the light goes on late like with Andrew Miller - and usually by then a guy that teased enough pure stuff to still hang around has probably been moved to relieving. Miller's first good season was at 27, and he was an asset for about 5 yrs after that. Sure he is at the top end of the possibilities but it's understandable why teams still hate to part with live arms.

OTOH, when I look at Fulmer it seems that even when he is successful he is getting his outs by the skin of his teeth stuff wise. Of course I might have thought that about Rivera if I had watched him more. Probably a wrong impression but it sticks with me.

Edited June 6, 2022 by gehringer_2

[gehringer_2]

1 hour ago, chasfh said:

Didn’t we get Lange himself as a prospect in exchange for a veteran dump? That was just three years ago.

So if we’re going to turn around and dump Lange for yet another prospect, when he himself is just one year removed from prospect status, then exactly what the hell are we doing here??

we could ask  David Forst.....

[RandyMarsh]

Lange definitely looks good but it's such a small sample it's hard to know how much stock we should put into it at this point, hell that would hold true even if he looks like this all year. There's just a small percentage of relievers that are consistently good year in and year out that the likelihood of him being one of those rare guys is pretty small. It's possible which is why you wouldn't just give him away but if for some reason somebody offers you a good prospect package I probably wouldn't turn it down. Of course for the reasons I stated at the beginning are the reasons that no team would likely do that but hey you never know what is going through certain team's heads. 

[SoCalTiger]

I agree with trading any reliever at this point including Lange Fullmer and Soto but for major league ready players not lottery tickets. 
 

Turnover could be massive. It’s shocking so much has gone sideways. Baez  and Meadows are the only sure starters for next year. Hopefully Tork and Green also but nothing is promised. 
 

Probably time to turn this over to someone else for the trading and player acquisitions. Need some creativity  I know it won’t happen and to be fair there are lots of injuries and sub par play. 

[Tiger337]

6 hours ago, gehringer_2 said:

that's the thing with pitchers - sometimes the light goes on late like with Andrew Miller - and usually by then a guy that teased enough pure stuff to still hang around has probably been moved to relieving. Miller's first good season was at 27, and he was an asset for about 5 yrs after that. Sure he is at the top end of the possibilities but it's understandable why teams still hate to part with live arms.

OTOH, when I look at Fulmer it seems that even when he is successful he is getting his outs by the skin of his teeth stuff wise. Of course I might have thought that about Rivera if I had watched him more. Probably a wrong impression but it sticks with me.

Will Vest is having a good year too.  Maybe, Fetters is a coach who can get the most out of relievers.  Relief pitchers are so volatile though.  They often have random good years within a mediocre career.  You can't really build around them.  

[mtutiger]

3 hours ago, SoCalTiger said:

I agree with trading any reliever at this point including Lange Fullmer and Soto but for major league ready players not lottery tickets. 

I do agree generally that none of these guys should be traded for lottery tickets... major league talent that can fix the deficiencies of the current roster.

[mtutiger]

4 hours ago, RandyMarsh said:

Lange definitely looks good but it's such a small sample it's hard to know how much stock we should put into it at this point...

Is it a small sample size though? His string of success actually stretches back to into the second half of last year, where he posted a sub-2.0 era after being called up at the end of the season over 18 appearances. 

Factoring that in, that's close to a half season worth of data points that suggests he's pretty good.

[Tiger337]

4 minutes ago, mtutiger said:

Is it a small sample size though? His string of success actually stretches back to into the second half of last year, where he posted a sub-2.0 era after being called up at the end of the season over 18 appearances. 

Factoring that in, that's close to a half season worth of data points that suggests he's pretty good.

I think that's a small sample size.  Even a full season for a reliever would be a small sample size.  

[mtutiger]

4 minutes ago, Tiger337 said:

I think that's a small sample size.  Even a full season for a reliever would be a small sample size.  

Fair enough... agree to disagree on this one

[Tiger337]

Just now, mtutiger said:

Fair enough... agree to disagree on this one

42 innings is a small sample size.  That doesn't mean he won't continue and have a great career, but it is a small sample size.  His 38 innings (and 5.63 ERA) for Toledo and Detroit through July last year was also a small sample.  

[mtutiger]

5 minutes ago, Tiger337 said:

42 innings is a small sample size.  That doesn't mean he won't continue and have a great career, but it is a small sample size.  His 38 innings (and 5.63 ERA) for Toledo and Detroit through July last year was also a small sample.  

Again, agree to disagree on this one.

[Tiger337]

3 minutes ago, mtutiger said:

Again, agree to disagree on this one.

I don't think it's something to agree or disagree on.  It is a small sample size.  A scout could say that he sees something physically different in Lange between the beginning of 2021 versus the end of 2021/2022. That wouldn't be so much a sample size argument though.  It would be a scout seeing a real change.  You'd still need more innings to see if he was for real, but the probabilty of success would be higher.  

[mtutiger]

20 minutes ago, Tiger337 said:

I don't think it's something to agree or disagree on.  It is a small sample size.  

Just setting aside what actual baseball people think, it is something to agree or disagree on. You think we need to see more from Lange, I'm less inclined to think we need to see more. Can't get more subjective than that. 

Based on what I have seen over the last 35 or so appearances from Alex Lange, he looks pretty good and is the real deal. And the cost should be awfully high if he's on the block.

Edited June 6, 2022 by mtutiger

[Hongbit]

Avila has missed on almost every single trade he’s made.  The Lange/Richan for Castellanos deal is one of the few that yielded anything.   Asking him to now trade Lange for someone that will have value seems like a reach based on his horrendous track record.     

[Stanley70]

29 minutes ago, Hongbit said:

Avila has missed on almost every single trade he’s made.  The Lange/Richan for Castellanos deal is one of the few that yielded anything.   Asking him to now trade Lange for someone that will have value seems like a reach based on his horrendous track record.     

If the Tigers 6 years into this rebuild have to move young major leaguers to restock the farm system, it shouldn't be Avila doing the trading. 

I seriously doubt Avila would even consider doing it anyways. Possibly they would move guys with expiring contracts,.

 

 

[gehringer_2]

1 hour ago, Tiger337 said:

42 innings is a small sample size.  That doesn't mean he won't continue and have a great career, but it is a small sample size.  His 38 innings (and 5.63 ERA) for Toledo and Detroit through July last year was also a small sample.  

 

1 hour ago, mtutiger said:

Fair enough... agree to disagree on this one

I say it's the wrong question. I'd actually take slightly different approach on this one and put it as "there is no such thing as the right sample size for most relief pitchers"

So in baseball I would say you have three kinds of variations you have to measure. The first are things that have relatively small random inputs are almost fully controlled by the player and they stabilize quickly - K rate for a hitter is good example. 50-100 AB is all you need to predict pretty accurately what a hitter's K rate for his next 100 AB is going to be and probably his career. Then you widen the view and you get things like BA or OPS, where there are huge random inputs between how well the batter strikes the ball and the outcomes, they take a lot longer to get predictive - probably more than a season - some say ~1000 AB. So those are differences in how the stats behave created by the game process itself. But then you have the whole different problem of the player changing. Now most pros are relatively consistent, if they weren't they wouldn't have made the majors, but even there you get major and micro  injury and other weird stuff going on with the person. Those effects defy statistical measure because they are really changing the thing you are measuring - which can basically invalidate all your prior samples and make you start over measuring the players new state. (like injured Cabrera vs healthy Cabrera - measuring one does not predict the other). Again, most players in the pros are constant enough in their persons for statistical measure to work reasonably well on them.

But I would say this is generally not very true for relief pitchers. These are guys (mostly) like Chafin's tee shirt says - are failed starters. They failed as starters because they didn't have enough 'reserve' pitching ability to survive throwing a lot of pitches consistently, which probably means they are working right at the edge of a talent cliff where the downside is not good enough to pitch in the majors. (e.g. if you have 3 or 4 pitches and can't control one on a day you may get by, if you have only 2 and you lose the feel for one you are probably toast....) For these guys a tiny physical fault, the slightest shift in their mental or neurological state, may have them crossing that line between good and bad - esp from season to season. So the problem isn't in the statistics, it's in the persons. You can't take meaningful long term predictive statistics on a thing that is changing no matter the sample size. In a case like that the only statistical sampling worth anything is that done at a time scale shorter than the person is likely to change over, and then the predictive value is limited to that same short time frame, and since relief pitchers don't pitch a lot you do hit real small sample size effects there as well. So in 20 innings of relief work we may have some reasonable idea what Soto is likely to do tomorrow, or maybe for the next 20 IP(walk rate, whiff rate, velo), but 3 months from now or next year? Forget it. Statistics can't help you when there it something changing with the player, and there probably will be with a Soto or Jimenez. The consistent relievers you can do statistical projection with are the outliers of the species. But the problem is not in the statistics one way or the other, it's in the players.

Edited June 6, 2022 by gehringer_2