2025 Detroit Tigers: We sure do love bargain bin pitchers!

[ohiodevil]

Originally Posted by CONN CHRIS

Alex Cobb for 1 year. If the reclamation ends up with a serviceable back-end starter, good.

Buy him a nail file or get him a specialist to keep his nails from breaking, that guy missed half the time he was in Cleveland with fingernail and blister issues.

Solid pickup for Tigers, I wished the Guards had been able to bring him back, but we had to move our Gold Glove 2B to keep from paying him $23mil per season in a year.

[CONN CHRIS]

Cobb and Gleybor Torres on one-year deals. These are not the droids that you are looking for.

[CONN CHRIS]

Jack Flaherty is back in the rotation. It's as if Detroit just got Liranzo and Sweeney for free!

[CONN CHRIS]

Tommy Kahnle for the bullpen was a good pick up too. This staff is looking good on paper.

Skubal
Flaherty
Olsen
Cobb
Jackson
Mize
Gipson-Long
Holton
Madden
Montero
Manning

Lots of starting options in these times when you can't have enough rotation depth.

[CONN CHRIS]

I want the Bregman 'drama' to end. Sign or don't sign, let's get on with spring training.

[CONN CHRIS]

Originally Posted by CONN CHRIS

I want the Bregman 'drama' to end. Sign or don't sign, let's get on with spring training.

... and Veiring /Jung it is. Let's go Tigers!

(oh, and Cobb was reported as injured the morning of Day 1 in camp - good times!)

[CONN CHRIS]

If you believe the reports, Bregman and Detroit had an agreement on dollars and years with a player opt out after year two. Bregman / Boros wanted the opt out after year one and Detroit would not agree. ugh.

[Hrycaj]

Originally Posted by CONN CHRIS

If you believe the reports, Bregman and Detroit had an agreement on dollars and years with a player opt out after year two. Bregman / Boros wanted the opt out after year one and Detroit would not agree. ugh.

I’m glad he didn’t sign in Detroit. That offer was too big for the Tigers. His swing profile doesn’t suit the park. It would have been a bad fit. Still, I don’t want to hear about how it was great they tried. Your job this off-season was to find an impactful RH bat. If that becomes Torres in a walk year that is great. However, as we sit here in February nobody believes that was the impact bat. Neither does the club or they wouldn’t have offered Bregman that sort of deal. Really glad baseball is back. I’m happy that they bolstered the rotation and bullpen but you had options for a hitter and it was Bregman or bust. I get the park plays into it. Hitters do not want to sign here in cases because of it. So you need to trade to find your power. Then do it.

[Amazin69]

Yeah, the one-year opt-out is apparently a Boras specialty, and the clients (Blake Snell, Padres, for one) almost always take the off-ramp if they've had any sort of a season. As a Mets fan, I am distinctly unthrilled that there's a 90% chance of Pete Alonso drama next off-season, too.

So I would say good on the Tigres for holding firm…but there's the argument about whether you should want Bregman in the first place, as well, which complicates things. IMO, better that this is the Sawx' problem that yours.

[CONN CHRIS]

6-6 in the ninth, first spring game. With the names in the lineup at this point, I am almost rooting for laundry but I love it.

Highlight of the day for me was Hao-Yu Lee's 12 pitch walk. Have been hearing a lot about this kid since we got him in the Lorenzen deadline deal with Philly.

[CONN CHRIS]

It won't keep him off the Toledo roster but Justice Bigbie singled in the game winner. Spring has begun!

[CONN CHRIS]

Andrew Chafin is back on a minor league deal. Colt Keith will be at first today - looking forward to seeing how this goes. "It's easy, tell him Wash"

[CONN CHRIS]

Riley Greene and Kerry Carpenter are 5-5 through the fourth. Ah, the siren's call of spring training!

[CONN CHRIS]

Meada has looked surprisingly serviceable.

[CONN CHRIS]

Good three innings from Olsen today. Javy drew a walk - encouraging stuff.

[CONN CHRIS]

Don't know what's real and not with spring training but it is nice to see Torkleson coming to life.

[Hrycaj]

I would like to know what Trey Sweeny did last season that was so bad to justify Baez playing over him? Other than of course, paying him (Baez) a ton of money. If they trot out some weak "we need veteran leadership on the infield based on what we are doing at the other positions" I may puke. Javy had an OPS+ of 46 last year. I also won't take the injury excuse either. Injuries have nothing to do with the fact that he has never met a slider he didn't like. But for trends sake:

2022 OPS+ 91
2023 OPS+ 63
2024 OPS+ 46

But he is a GREAT defender.....

2022 Defensive Runs Saved -4 with a league leading 26 errors
2023 Defensive runs saved +2 with a league leading 19 errors
2024 Defensive runs saved -4 with a projection of -7 if he kept playing. 9 errors. (He didn't get a chance to lead the league)

It's not as if I believe Trey Sweeney is the answer either. This is not his burner account and his OPS+ of 81 isn't something to put on a banner either. However, that 81 is almost double what Baez did at the plate. That is how bad Baez is as a hitter. Defensively, Sweeny was a +3 in defensive runs saved and it was tracking to be a +12 and he had 4 errors.

So if Sweeny is twice the hitter and actually a more productive glove in the field then why are the Tigers cutting off their nose despite their face here?

[Amazin69]

Javy now has a career OPS+ of 95.

I know that Mets announcer Gary Cohen has chosen to retroactively glaze Javy's time in the orange and blue as "the best two months of [his] career", but aside from how Javy's arrival sent the Mets into the tailspin that allowed them to set the record for "most days in first place [103] by a team that finished under .500", it should be noted that Baez was playing at his same Chicago pace until September 9th (by which point the Mets were completely out of the race, even though the rest of the division had tried their best to give it to us) and only then went on a 18-game heater (.397 BA, 1.083 OPS) to save his stats.

The Mets went 5-13 during those 18 games, btw.

(Pages 53 et. sequitur of the Mets thread have all the gory details. I sometimes re-read them just to wallow in the misery. But I never anticipated we were dodging SUCH a bullet.)

[CONN CHRIS]

Given what they are paying Javy, he will be in the lineup well past any point of reason. That's the entire analysis, unfortunately.

Casey Mize may be having a moment.

[Hrycaj]

Originally Posted by CONN CHRIS

Given what they are paying Javy, he will be in the lineup well past any point of reason. That's the entire analysis, unfortunately.

Casey Mize may be having a moment.

That is the definition of sunk-cost fallacy:

The phenomenon whereby a person is reluctant to abandon a strategy or course of action because they have invested heavily in it, even when it is clear that abandonment would be more beneficial.
"the sunk-cost fallacy creeps into a lot of major financial decisions"

It really blows my mind.