The Future of Tigers Pitching is in Lakeland?

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to another episode of Tigers Manage Report podcast presented
by FanDuel. I'm Relicacy A. Simes, Chris Brown, and Brandon
Day and you can find us on Apple Podcasts. Were
where ever listening to podcast? And right now I don't
know where you're at in Michigan, but uh, the certain
storm over here. So Sarah's always committed we're gonna lose power,

(00:21):
Like every time the storm is like powerstorm is gonna
lose Something's gonna happen.

Speaker 2 (00:26):
But uh, it's been a weird year for weather so far,
that's for sure.

Speaker 3 (00:30):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (00:30):
I feel like a hurricane alley over here or something
like that. What's going on here?

Speaker 2 (00:34):
Every time it starts to get nice out, it's like
thirty mile pour winds and storms too and and then
back to cold. Oh well Michigan.

Speaker 1 (00:42):
Yeah, yeah, I was gonna say close it. Oh, oh,
by you, Chris.

Speaker 3 (00:46):
I opened up the pool on Sunday because I saw
it was going to be you know, in the between
the fifties and seventies for like the next week, and
you know, not planning on getting in the pool anytime soon,
but but you know, get it open, get it ready,
get it clean. Yeah, I mean, not really that close,
but it's close enough to open and you know, but yeah,

(01:06):
it was. It was I was out there vacuumen tonight
and then suddenly it was a down for.

Speaker 1 (01:10):
So but by the way, it was funny. We got
a comment last week on Twitter, stop with the non
secutors and uh, tighten up.

Speaker 3 (01:20):
So we're the.

Speaker 2 (01:24):
Podcast that's right, not gonna happen.

Speaker 1 (01:25):
But okay, Tom Masway is the king of the non Secutors,
So switched over for the Michigan Stormchasers.

Speaker 2 (01:36):
Thanks for joining us.

Speaker 1 (01:38):
Uh but plenty.

Speaker 2 (01:40):
Plenty.

Speaker 1 (01:41):
Yeah, there's a front coming in that's Tiger's bats. Yeah,
there we go. Plenty get to the Tigers with the
sweep the toled on one Hens showing their power as well.
Eerie is in the middle of a kind of a
lack of power. Tigers picked up more bullpen arms because
why not.

Speaker 3 (02:00):
There's two.

Speaker 1 (02:01):
There's two more oversign over the weekend. One that signed
today a former top fifteen prospect, and the Lakeland comes
down on Earth after being world beaters for a little while.
And that was kind of an interesting fallback. But I
wanted to give a one of sounds to Bill Gardener,
who passed away the age of seventy six, he had cancer.

(02:22):
The former Tigers manager who really is like for those
who remember, he was the first manager at Comerica Park,
and he was the last. I believe he was the
I believe he was the last manager under Randy Smith.
I believe.

Speaker 3 (02:36):
Yeah, I didn't ye know he Smith got fired what
six days into the two thousand and two season, Yes.

Speaker 2 (02:42):
That's correct.

Speaker 1 (02:43):
But he's also known for being a great Pittsburgh pirate.
He was at a Houston Astros. He was just a
good utility player. Hinch mentioned how he was very welcoming
to him in Houston and scrappy, scrappy scraps.

Speaker 3 (02:58):
Or grap iron I think.

Speaker 1 (03:02):
Legendary mustache he got. He got a raw deal. Here
was the Titans manager. The team he had, well, I mean,
the best team he had wasn't even comparatively speaking to
some of the teams he had with the Brewers, who
I mean, by the way he was managing the Brewers
only one of the worst logo eras of the walk
the Brewers.

Speaker 3 (03:22):
Ever.

Speaker 1 (03:23):
Do you guys remember those mid nineties jerseys they had
the mid nineties logo that was terrible.

Speaker 3 (03:27):
Yeah, that was a bad you know, Yeah, they had got.
That was like right after the Mariners had switched their
logo and people like that was like that was the
hot new hotness was like, yo, we gotta switch us
up and had to put some gold accents in or
something like that. And I actually I used to have
hats back then, and I bought one of those Brewers
hats because I was like, it's new, and then yeah,

(03:47):
I didn't wear it.

Speaker 1 (03:51):
Yeah, yeah, because you don't like hats.

Speaker 3 (03:52):
I well, I bought an Ottawa senator's hat. I was like,
this is gonna be the new thing, and it was,
of course it was not.

Speaker 1 (04:00):
I was.

Speaker 2 (04:00):
I was.

Speaker 1 (04:01):
I was the San Jose Sharks guy.

Speaker 3 (04:02):
That was because yeah, means so that was the thing.
Like Teal was all the rage starting from like the
Hornets like eighty eight or so. Yeah, and and the
Sharks were one of the first Teal teams and so
that was, you know, that was the big thing. And
I was like, the next the next Heal is going
to be black and red and gold the Ottawa Senators
and I don't remember.

Speaker 2 (04:23):
The nineties is a very tealish decade. And yet yeah,
in sports it took over and even got the Pistons
there for a while.

Speaker 1 (04:29):
Yeah, yeah, oh you have a Teal of the Pistons.
Everybody everybody talks about how they love the jerseys now,
and I was like, no, I knew nobody, I know,
single person like those Seal jerseys. Nobody at that time.

Speaker 3 (04:39):
No, they had they were late. That was like like
way too late for Teal for them. That was like
ninety four, ninety five something like that, maybe ninety three.
But my dad's my dad had a Teal Ford probe
like nineteen eighty. It was outstanding.

Speaker 1 (05:00):
But yeah, the definitely Ninja Bee's points out.

Speaker 3 (05:02):
Marlins.

Speaker 1 (05:03):
Don't think they swore that many and three games against
the Tigers, that would be correct. I believe that is.

Speaker 2 (05:09):
More interestingly, though, is that the Twins are up to
something completely godless and untoward. I'm sure I have no
doubt about it. You know, they beat up on Schooble,
they beat up on Baldez, and then they just lit
Garrett Crochet on fire tonight.

Speaker 3 (05:23):
Eleven runs in like one to two thirds innings, run them.

Speaker 2 (05:27):
Right, so you know they're up there. No good. Obviously,
there can be no other explanation.

Speaker 1 (05:32):
There is some sort of voodoo magic in you know,
maybe Prince has uh got you know, rest rest in Peace,
price something, Prince Factor, the Prince Factor, whatever you want.
I may maybe they drink some purple kool aid. I
don't know what they do over there, but it is
look that that Twins team. Maybe they're tip and pitches
like the I think that they lead the league most challenges.

(05:53):
Every pitch they were challenging almost. It was annoying that
Twins Tigers series was so annoying because the Twins so forever.
I felt like every game took forever because the Winds
were constant challenging everything.

Speaker 2 (06:04):
Yep, yeah, yeah, I don't know. It's been weird. There's
something weird going on. They've hacked PitchCom I don't know.
I don't know what it is, but we'll find out eventually,
just like we eventually found out about the Blowers and
the old Metro Dome.

Speaker 1 (06:14):
Yeah, and then the guys like playing dumb. Oh I
had nothing to do with it, Okay, yeah, but no
either way. The Tiger the Marlins right now, seventy four
against the Braves in the top of the sixth inning
as the Pirates. The Pirates offto really goods are fifteen
to five over the Nationals, and I do the Pirates
have the second best rookie in all of baseball because

(06:36):
Kevin mcgoggle had its first one run yesterday in the
Tiger's uniform and hit the ball the right field and
it was good to see Great Ganga on the call
because Ganga also called one of his home runs in Erie,
so full circle moment for him. But the Tigers just
got out and we're able to hit the ball and
then continue to just to do with they the beginning

(06:57):
of last year. And there's all this freaking out, like
all of a sudden, the people that were stayed in
the stats from Sala blabblah blah blah. All the Tiger's
have been fifteen games on a five hundred and all
that that came to a stop over the weekend. It's
slightly and the Marlins are now no slow judus. Marlins
are a pretty good team. They have some young talent.
And you know, I don't know, he hit a home

(07:19):
on off a winner.

Speaker 3 (07:23):
Yep, yeah, yep, same.

Speaker 1 (07:25):
B Yeah, fastball. You know, he serves him a fastball
and he watched it, and uh no, it was a
good weekend overall. But Brandon, I'll start with you. What
are your impressions of the weekend with the Marlins series.

Speaker 2 (07:37):
I mean, just that the Tigers kind of got back
to just being the Tigers. I mean, if if things
hadn't gone so badly down the stretch last year, I
don't think the freak out would have been quite as
acute as maybe it was for some people. I'm sure,
I'm sure most people were pretty calm whatever. But you know,
we basically had, you know, a week and a half
where Carry Carpenter, Riley Green, and Spender Torkelsen did nothing.

(07:59):
And the funny thing about that is that everyone else
was doing great. You know, Hobby bias is tearing it up,
Kevin mcgonagall's the best young hitter in baseball, Colt Keith
can't can't not hit right now, Dylan Dingler absolutely mashing
and raking, and you know, it was it was the
middle of the order back Actually, Glabored Torres has been
very good too, So a lot of things were going right,

(08:19):
but not those not those three things. And I mean,
if if you look at, you know, the Tigers start,
it's getting you know, your two top starters aren't gonna
get blown up that often when you have Schooble and Valdez.
But that happened last week. We had Ken Lee blow
a game, we had the bullpen blow a game, and
next thing you know, you know, they found themselves four
and nine and managed to dig themselves out of it.
And I think, you know, there was a lot to like,

(08:41):
you know, the starting pitching was good, but more than anything,
you know, Riley Green got it going, and everybody else
is still hitting. You know, we're still kind of waiting
on Torklesen. Kerry Carpenter has been kind of a mess
of that group. He's the one that always kind of
concerns me the most just because he's, you know, twenty
nine now and has bad a lot of injuries the
last three years with the back and the hamstrings. Always

(09:01):
seems like something he's never he just never seems quite
one hundred percent right. But he managed to golf a
homer out yesterday as well, so you know, they just
kind of got got right. And it's a good time
to get right because obviously the Royals are coming to
town and we've basically been playing the National League for
the first two weeks of the season, and now kind
of things will start a little more in earnest with

(09:22):
teams that they're more familiar with. And you know, we
all saw the stats coming into the series that you know,
the Tigers had more three hundred and seventy foot you
know outs, you know, three and seventy plus foot outs
than anybody in baseball. You know, some balls just didn't
fly out, you know, they hit him off the the uh,
you know, the batter's eye. In Arizona, we had McGonagall
get robbed of one. This there was just a bunch

(09:43):
of that and there's not that much you can do
about that. It's not necessarily all cold weather related either,
because some of this happened in Arizona and San Diego.
But it was just kind of a fluky, fluky situation.
And as long as you think Riley Green, Kerry Carpenter
and Spencer Torklsen will basically average out to the same
product and that they gave you last year, this is
a significantly better offense. You know, so I feel good

(10:04):
about that. You know, Jack Flaherty still looks a bit
of a mess to me. I still have questions about
the bullpen. Kyle Finegan doesn't looked real good so far.
Will Vest's philosophy is down. Like, you know, there's things
to be concerned about, I think in the bullpen in particular,
but other than that, they look like the Tigers again,
and they should be just fine.

Speaker 3 (10:24):
How about you, Chris, Yeah, you know, they just played
complimentary baseball. The offense woke up, but also the starting
pitching was great. You know, Montero, maz and Schooble all
got the wins. The bullpen performed. We saw three plus
innings save from Drew Anderson that really helped save the
bullpen that they Yeah, they all played well in that
first game. In the offense was still a little Yeah,

(10:46):
they kept hitting the ball hard off paddock because it's paddock,
but it kept going nowhere, going into gloves and it
was super frustrating. But they won two nothing, and then
the offense woke up, and so yeah, you just it's
it's one of those times where like I kind of
wish they didn't have a day off, but whatever, you know,
it's early season. Baseball. Teams have ups and downs, and
they had some strange downs for the you know, the

(11:08):
suddenly resurgent Twins. We'll uh, we'll go back to sucking soon.

Speaker 2 (11:13):
But except for tize Bert Bradley, who I'd agree with
in the comments. I was looking pretty good. Picked him
up in my fantasy league Day one of the season
because somebody dumped him. Somebody dumped Jordan Walker. I'm living
large right now. But what I mean they gave up
on Jordan Walker's twenty three and people are giving up
on him.

Speaker 3 (11:30):
I was like, oh yeah, I think he was. He
was available in our league too. I didn't get him
quickly enough. But you know, it's funny, like there's this
old uh old thing, but you people are say, home,
don't trade with the Rays. They're they're up to something,
and like every time the Twins trade with the Rays,
it works out great for them. Yeah, you know, Griffin
Jackson was a very good reliever, but he's been pretty

(11:50):
bad since he got the Tampa And you know, Bradley,
I understand they were kind of frustrated with Bradley, not
he was just inconsistent in Tampa. They couldn't get him right.
So far looks great, but you know, Joe Ryan has
been a great starter for them too, and he was
I think he was a ninth rounder or tenth rounder
in the twenty eighteen draft. He was like picked shortly
after schoobl so kind of wild to get pictures like that.

Speaker 2 (12:11):
That like but anyway, and that the scouts are looking
at water polo teams all over the country. Who's the
next Joe Ryan.

Speaker 3 (12:19):
Yeah it's Malie Cordell from the Michigan Wolverine. But yeah,
I don't know. The it was just nice to see
some wins and see the offense clicking, like like the
print is said, you know, it's it's basically everybody's performing
to a certain extent except for Tork and even Torque
is just walking a ton, so you'll take that. You know,
he's not striking out seven hundred times. It's it's just

(12:40):
not hitting home runs.

Speaker 2 (12:41):
So you guys think there's a little bit of like
abs brain going on, you know, maybe with Riley and
with Torq, where like the game within a game is
starting to like, you know, they're paying almost too much
attention to it and forgetting to just hit the damn ball.

Speaker 1 (12:54):
I think so. I mean, then again, while the Green
has reached on every single reach, see if he's walking,
he's and even like the the one homer side, look
he's he's also making good contact too, like the bat,
Like everybody was kind of worried about him and not
having the one home run he's getting on base. I
don't know what else you guys want to me, Yes,
is that home run swing? You know you'd like to

(13:15):
but he's struck. His strikeouts are down by ten percent,
and what else? He's doing what he's supposed to do.
And so real quick before the speak of the Rays,
you're Noel Quartet. Maybe I'm butchering the name correctly. Who
was the raise the top fifteen race prospects picked up
by the Tigers. Today, He's been optioned to the FCL

(13:36):
to make room on the Foymann roster. Parker Metals has
been transferred to sixty day IL list. Poor Parker Man
broken arm, concussion, five stitches on his face, and Ryley
Green doesn't have a scratch on him.

Speaker 2 (13:50):
Yeah, I mean, the luck, the luck factor for the
Metals boys is just just absolutely bleak. Yeah. I mean,
it just looked really bad from the start, you know
because as soon as I rewatch it at one time,
you could see, you know, basically like the back of
Riley's head hit Parker in the jaw and I think
knocked him out right there. So he was totally defenseless
and he went to the ground, crushed his head, crushed

(14:11):
his arm, and yeah, I mean, I think we all
knew this was probably going to be, you know, a
sixty day type situation. You know, I was kind of like,
at least he's out through May, and at this point, yeah,
I mean, it's probably gonna take longer than that. So
you know, I don't know what else to do else
to say about that, except that it sucks. But you know,
he was off to a fairly solid start and as

(14:32):
soon as he you know, looked like he was getting
his feed under him, something like this happens. But that's
a president swing in a good bat. Hobby Bias looks
very comfortable playing center field. Hobby BIA's looks like very spry,
like even more than last year. I can't help wondering
if the fact that he got the hit procedure done
last year, you know, this this offseason he was maybe
healthy for the first time in like three or four

(14:54):
years where he could actually like really grind it. And
you know, he's looking looking quick and you know he's
not even like necessarily fast, but happy. Bias has the
most like natural reaction to the baseball of any center
field to go see out there. You know, he's just
he just breaks on the ball immediately, just just great reads.
And so they should be fine. And I know a
lot of people thought that meant, you know, Max Clark

(15:14):
would get called right up. But I think we all know,
you know, the Tigers want to see some things and
you know, try to get him as much experience against
upper level lefties as they can, you know, and we'd
like to see him start, you know, turning and pulling
some balls out of the park and those things. You know,
they just want him to get some reps. I don't
know if if Parker's injury might change their their overall
timetable for him, but you know, for now, I think

(15:35):
they're fine. It's not ideal, but they're fine.

Speaker 1 (15:41):
Yeah, there could be there could be a lot of
things as sure as when Max Clark needs to be
doing the little things. He's doing all the all the
little things. But yeah, you want to see a little
more progress on in the mole pulls or more. I
mean he's been in the ball pull side pretty well.
It's just a matter of in the ball out of
the parking in that lift. But that's something he's always
working on. But no, It's what I found interesting too

(16:02):
about the series is they still haven't played qute unquote
clean baseball. There's still a little bit defensive mishues here
and there. And that's where like, uh something that something
Devili Ninjabe said right here that also actually thank you
for reminding me about this. Matt Verlin looks like he's
kind of like lounging at the ball and he's hidden,
like he doesn't doesn't look comfortable out there right now.

(16:23):
And that's where I've kind of concerned because in spring
look great, but it's just like he's since he's got
up here, he looks a little a little rusty.

Speaker 3 (16:33):
Yeah, you know, I think it's got to be tough
when you're not playing very often and he has it.
You know, it's been they haven't played a lefty yet.
They finally will this series, I believe. Right. Yeah, so
you know, we haven't seen anything really from veer Ling,
and he's gotten some chance, he's gotten more chances than
Jami Jones. But yeah, really does have a home run.

(16:53):
He's got one more home of the door. But yeah,
it's you know, he's this is your starting right field
or what two years ago? Starting maybe, and he's now
relegated to a bench role and there they've had a
hard time finding spots for him. And he's not going
to play much third base because they've got Keith and McGonagall.
So yeah, it's, uh, I don't know, I don't think that,

(17:18):
you know, there's anything crazy to worry about there. And
Matt Feeling is a solid big league player, like like,
he's a Michistry level player, and generally speaking, the less
you have to play those guys, the better. But also
it's hard for them to produce when they're not playing
that often.

Speaker 2 (17:33):
Yeah, it kind of goes to the you know, the
whole thing about the Tigers is that they're just stacked
with average players, you know, in a lot of respects.
They've got a few above average players obviously, but you know,
all the way down. You know, if Matt Vealing ends
up playing for you every day, he's probably fine, But
can can he handle a role like this? He's not
really like a guy with stark splits you know, in

(17:54):
his career either, So he's not you know, like some
dedicated lefty masher the way Juwai Jones is. But Veiling,
you know, has some tools he's quick, he's a reasonably
a good outfielder. I'm just not sure, you know, like
how the if the bench necessarily fits what they need
at this point, now that we know that McGonagall is
one hundred percent in there and you're missing Meadows, it's

(18:16):
it's a little bit of a messy, you know, like
hard to fit some of these guys in the way
that you need to fit them type of roster right now.
And you know they're gonna roll with it for the
time being, but you know, you'd love to be able
to trade for a good, right handed hitting outfielder right now,
you know, I mean, bringing Wensel up is fine, but

(18:36):
if you had Austin Slater, you might actually feel better
about playing a guy like that right now too. So
you know, I mean, you can't can't forecast something like that.
It's it's just an unfortunate injury for for Meadows there.
But yeah, I mean, Verling barely played last year, you know,
wasn't wasn't healthy when he did play, and it might
just take him a little while to get going. But
I've never been a big fan of the swing in general.

(18:58):
But when he's not on time, he looks terrible. And
and that's you know, that's just kind of part of it.
So hopefully he will get on time. We're gonna have
a lefty tomorrow. But of course Cole Reagan's so you know,
not necessarily an easy task for anybody, but you know,
you figure Jones and and Beer like will figure more
into this series one way or the other.

Speaker 3 (19:17):
Turncoat Austin Slater, Yeah, leaving and then breaking up no hitters.

Speaker 2 (19:21):
Couldn't wait, you know, couldn't wait even a couple of weeks,
you know, in the minor leagues for us.

Speaker 1 (19:25):
Now, yeah, it's a good opportunity for him, especially the
Marlins who had the chicken Marcy, who was the Alan
Park native. It was funny there was a it was
born dearborn, like, yeah, everybody's born deerborn. That's where the
hospital was. But it's a productive, uh yeah, product of
Allen Park High School. So it was kind of for me.
Allen Park was a rival, well sort of a rivalry

(19:47):
of us. We were the Catholic school version and there
was the public school. But nevertheless, it was good to
see the big crowds out hand too. I went to
the game on Saturday, and uh, it was over thirty
thousand on hand for that, so good crowds to see.
And the jersey they had the hockey jerseys. They had
a line like almost a mile long for those Tigers
hockey jerseys. Yeah, it was. It was pretty intense. People

(20:12):
were were trying to get as many of those as possible.

Speaker 2 (20:14):
But because you think they might not want to mention
hockey right.

Speaker 1 (20:18):
Now, Yeah, yeah, we'll miss the postseason for the tenth
consecutive season. But uh no, stop stopping, says I'm surprised
the Tigers did not try to find or trade for
a big right handed pat before the season. I think
they probably were looking around, but the market didn't seem
to dictate anything that would.

Speaker 2 (20:37):
Yeah, I mean they kind of put themselves behind the
eight ball right away by, you know, giving labor their
qualifying offering. Labor has been fine, but you know, I
mean it's the same thing, the same reason they signed
Burly and there, you know, to a degree, is just
they're right up against the luxury tacks. You know, they
finally spent a bunch of money and there was only
so many options, you know, for them, and without me
referring to a certain mister Bregman again, you know, I

(21:01):
don't know if what they were looking for was really available,
and they probably thought they kind of had it with Jones.
And of course Jones has had what like ten plate appearances,
so we can't you know, I can't really say anything
about that. But that's the trick of a guy who
has such a specific role, is that by the time
you know, there's a big enough sample size of Jamai Jones'

(21:21):
plate appearances to decide whether mathematically he's doing well or not,
they're going to have to decide before then, because that
might take like half a year.

Speaker 3 (21:29):
Yeah, I mean, they could have I don't know, I
haven't looked back. We were looking at it at the
time over the off season to see like we're the
bats they could get, but like there were some big
free agent right handed bats. But you mentioned it's Bregman,
who we're pretty sure just didn't want to come here,
and that it's the Sheet who is not necessarily a

(21:49):
great fit as a right handed shortstop, who's probably a
second basement and swings at everything. Yeah, that ideal, And
it's Pete Alonzo was a right handed hitting first baseman,
and you kind of already have somebody sort of like that.
You know, obviously Tormosen hasn't been as good as Alonzo,
but it's like, what are you gonna do there? So
it's just, yeah, you try to. They try to made

(22:11):
make the team better in places where they could obviously upgrade,
and that was with the pitching. You know, it's getting
from bar Valvez and Kenley Jansen to add to the
bullpen depth or whatever. So you know, it would help
to have more right handed bats. Who knows, maybe uh,
maybe that's a trade. Dadline, they'll be able to make
some sort of move. Maybe the Astros will keep on
losing and losing and losing and they'll be able to

(22:31):
get somebody from them. But yeah, I don't really care
as long as you get good bats, right, Like, are
we upset that Kevin mcgonagall's facing left. He's like, no, no,
he's fine, So just get a good bat.

Speaker 2 (22:42):
And we haven't faced like basically any left handers. So
the lack of a right handed bat has been not
a factor, you know, really at all. You know, I
mean you can argue with a couple of pinch hit appearances,
but you know, for the most part, it hasn't really
come up. I mean, there's Harrison Vader out there. You know,
there were there were guys that maybe you could have
could have gotten, but is that better than Matt?

Speaker 3 (23:01):
Yeah?

Speaker 2 (23:01):
Yeah, not not really. You know, like maybe because we
haven't seen you know, veiling healthy any year. But yeah,
I mean I don't know that there was a you know,
without really going nuts, I don't really think there was
something out there. And yeah, you know, I don't care
about the luxury tax necessarily. I do care about getting
their draft pick compensation just absolutely worked. Because I'm not
all or nothing this year, you know, I you know,
probably like you guys were looking at a farm system

(23:23):
stuffed with athletic power hitters, and I'm thinking, like, the
Tigers are going to be you know, a pretty good
positional group for a really long time, and you know
they're gonna have to figure out the pitching and something's
gonna have to happen. But I'm not, you know, I'm
not like, oh my god, nothing matters after this year.
You know, the Tigers die after tire school leaves. I don't.

(23:44):
I don't feel that way. So, you know, I just
don't think there was really that great a fit in
the in a right handed bat out there.

Speaker 1 (23:52):
Yeah, I mean I think the Tigers did what everybody Actually,
the Tigers didn't do much, but they did spend on
pitching where they needed it too. So it's just a
matter of perspect percept, perspective and I sordered that word,
but it's. Uh. The one thing that is certain about
the Tigers right now that I definitely can see being
a potential issue is just overall health of like there

(24:19):
the back end of the bullpen a little bit. What
I mean by that is just because I feel like
if one thing goes wrong with the bullpen, like one injury,
kind of throws off the balance a little bit. Yeah,
you have my or you have dance, and you have
vast Vest is not I think with Vest, you know,
talking to you, hearing some of the talking locker room

(24:40):
the other night. He's working on a slider fastball just
it's a matter of time before the velocity was a
little bit. But they're not really concerned about it. It's
just him working on a pitch, and same thing with
Finnegan trying to work on a slider more so, they're
working on a couple of things. But I'm just concerned
that one injury in this early part of the season
where right now you have even to a decent start again,

(25:02):
Minnesota will start losing My thirteen here and there.

Speaker 2 (25:05):
They have to.

Speaker 1 (25:06):
I mean they're a bullpen. By the way, it's deny
these names, like are these guys like sex with Christine Turnas?

Speaker 2 (25:12):
Like who the hell is this guy? Yeah?

Speaker 3 (25:14):
Did you send me that the tweet that somebody put
out that the like the twins have managed to put
together bullpen where nobody throws over ninety four Yeah, I
think in the year twenty twenty six. Yeah, it's crazy, but.

Speaker 2 (25:25):
They all have like a funky angle or you know
whatever nonsense.

Speaker 1 (25:29):
Yeah, they had some long, you know, German sounding names
Funkelberger and just.

Speaker 3 (25:33):
Yerson, Yeah, thunder Birk, yes, Winderberg. Yeah, welcome to the
thunder Dome.

Speaker 2 (25:39):
Yeah. I mean it's like a deep you know, it's
like a deep group of relievers without like a killer,
you know, other than best, Like that'st you know, was
what like the twelfth most valuable reliever in baseball last year.
So as long as best as vest you're you're pretty good.
But yeah, you know, they don't really have anybody else
who's like, you know, intimidating or or are gonna like
put you on your back back heel too much. And

(26:01):
you know, we can hope for Troy Melton. You can
hope for Jackson job later on, or someone pops up,
or Ricky Venasco continues to throw strikes somehow, you know,
I mean, there are there are options, but yeah, i'd
agree with right now that if yeah, if there I mean,
it's kind of that way in general. If the Tigers
have a bunch of pitching injuries, they're they're pretty borked
right now. Is this not too much you know to

(26:23):
draw on right now at the Triple A level?

Speaker 3 (26:25):
Yeah, I mean, you know, most teams are. It depends
on the year you look at look at I mentioned
at the Astros. The Astros were on a six game
losing skid. They still have one of the best offenses
in baseball, but they have zero pitching. It's it's Hunter
Brown and like nobody. So it's it's just tough. So
you just try to, you know, hope for health for

(26:45):
the most part, and I hope that you had it.
You built up enough depth for your younial curate type
U relievers and we'll see what happens.

Speaker 2 (26:56):
Yeah, I mean, you know, I mean, if you think
about last year, like and try to imagine, like what
was the bullpen on May first? I don't don't you know.
I don't think anybody's gonna come away from their recollections
with like, oh yeah, that bullpen was pretty good, Like
you know, I mean they got it done with like
Briskey and and vest and you know, Tommy Cainley was
good for a couple of months and you know they
pieced some things together. But you know, it's a better

(27:18):
unit than that one. I'll say. I'll say that much
for them, but you know, I understand why it doesn't
inspire a ton of confidence for a lot of people.

Speaker 1 (27:25):
Yeah, especially because like he he look at them, look
at the mud hens in a quick second, but better
of the I was going with the train and thought
with this on Oh no, no, okay, I remember now.
The fact that they keep signing arms is kind of like, okay,
well they're still not content. Yeah, they're sending all these
guys they signed. Who's the other guy sagers over the weekend.

Speaker 3 (27:50):
Oh yeah, yeah, the big the big dude, who's got
some he's a big guy. Yah Handley Hunley, Handley, Hope, Oh.

Speaker 1 (28:00):
Grant grant grant home Mom. Yeah, yeah, so they're stashing
them away and wakeland and then you know, like I
mentioned earlier, Janielle Artet, who was drowing nine six, nine
seven to one point in Tampa. Yeah, it's just a
matter of just what they're gonna do with like guys
like Rinky Blaska, who was off to a really good start.
We'll get to him here in a second. But especially

(28:24):
like you're talking about the get back to the like
no team right now is kind of oh no, that's
what I remember what it was now Houston. So, Houston
this weekend lost three like they've lost They've lost two
more starters this weekend, back to back days. It was unbelievable.
I saw a tweet about it. They their picture I
think on Saturday or it was the yesterday and Saturday

(28:44):
they lost two back to back days, the lost starters.
I believe it was something like that, Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 (28:49):
It's been bad. Meanwhile, you know, like you're done is
back to being your done, and yeah they have like
you know, nothing after you know, Hunter Brown. So yeah,
it's a weird situation for them, Yeah for sure. And meanwhile,
you know, we lost a Hall of Fame, you know,
three time Cy Young Award, winning pitcher and Kyder Montero
stepped up and has been absolutely dealing so far, And

(29:09):
I did I dug into it because I was all like,
all right, what's going on? You know, is Kinder really changed?
And now, No, he's just locating, you know, he's just locating.
And he seems like he's more mature now and and
better able to course correct and not get rattled in
an outing. And I think that that maybe that's all
he needed. He did mentioned he.

Speaker 1 (29:26):
Didn't mention to me Saturday. I asked him if he's
trying to throw his change up more and he says,
feels more confidence his change up.

Speaker 2 (29:31):
Now. Oh that's good, yeah, because I mean that's a
good pitch for him, and he hasn't been using the
knuckle curve, you know, it's it's pretty much been foreseen sinker,
you know, slider change up and that's that's pretty much
been it so far.

Speaker 1 (29:43):
Yeah, he says to be he got a lot of
swings Missus of the change up too, I believe in
his last start. So yeah, he said he's trying to
use that more often, because it was it was Saturday
when I was at asked him if that was something
he was trying to set up with his fastball and
feeling confident with it. So that's what a good sign.
And and look the the fact that Hinch told everybody
that he was going to rely on quite a bit

(30:05):
and able to go back it up. He had a
quote about you know, doing that winning that game for Parker,
and he meant it because of their teammate. They have
been teammates for a while, and so that was really
cool to see. Yes, Cam Smith, Mitchell. Look, if you
listen to the podcast long enough, Chris knows about this.
I've been to Cam Smith stand since before the draft.

(30:26):
I love Cam Smith and the fact he's thriving pretty well.

Speaker 3 (30:31):
Yeah, Roger, he said, I don't want Bryce Rayner. I
don't like Bryce Trainer, give me Kam Smith. No, No,
it was it was we didn't think Rayner was gonna
be available. So when we were I remember my draft
that was I was it was I had Rainer Tibbs,
James Tibbs, and Camp Smith is my top three. Smith
obviously made the big leagues immediately and was just he

(30:51):
was fine last year. But you know that's amazing for
a guy who's just basically right out of college and
he's off to an awesome start right now. And yeah,
like there was a DISCUSSI about maybe even having in
play center field. You know, this is the third baseman
who's been playing right field or whatever, so really impressive
start to him. I was, you know, Tibbs looked rough,
he got traded twice, and then all of a sudden,
this year he's got He's hitting three sixty with eight

(31:13):
homers in fifteen games for the Dodgers Triple A club
because they need more outfielder.

Speaker 2 (31:18):
So yeah, yeah, I was. I was pretty much Rainer
or Gillan, and it looks like you probably couldn't have
really made a mistake with the two of them.

Speaker 3 (31:25):
So yeah, yeah, Gillen is looking good too, so yeah,
I mean that that. Yeah, just looking back, that draft
looks pretty spectacular overall, at least at the top fifteen
twenty or so, so tough to go wrong unless you
went wrong like a couple of two.

Speaker 1 (31:41):
So the Weber report here with Toledo is sorts of
just what the Tigers are being able to mud has
been able to do. I cannot talk tonight, folks, sorry,
Ben mal Jerry. Like we we talked about yesterday, we
did a bonus possibly on the Patreon side for paid folks.
We were doing this like down because you twice a
month extra content as a way thank you for being subscribers.

(32:04):
We've subscribers claim its ben Manjuri is off to a
really good start. He hit the ball well. The strikeouts
Chris you mentioned is yesterday his strikeout cut down his
strakeout typically, and he's still continued to see the ball
well in Toledo.

Speaker 3 (32:19):
Yeah. I mean, I think it was like thirty percent
two years ago at Area and then he got it
down to eighteen percent last year and kept it like
that when he went up to Toledo and it's still
like twenty percent. And so he's he's maintained a good
walk word rate with that, and he's always had, you know,
solid to above average tools across the board. Got he
hits the ball hard. He's above average runner, good defender

(32:40):
at all three outfield positions, good arm. You know, I'm
nothing crazy, but if he hits he looks like a
fourth outfielder at least right and he's looking great so far,
Like I think we mentioned it, you know, he got
he hit a solo home run. He started off the
rally Toledo. You see, I put a very at the
very bottom there. They had a near no hitter in

(33:00):
the first game of the week, lost it with one
out in the ninth, I believe, And they finished the
week with a walk off Grand Slam. That was a
seven run ninth inning that started with mal Jerry hitting
home run. And he had a one hundred and nine
mile an hour single earlier in the game off a
ninety nine mile an hour fastball. So he can hit
the ball very hard, and you know, a lot to
like there. He's one of those guys we kind of

(33:21):
we sort of mentioned Trey Cruise's name last year. He's
twenty six. You know, it's a little bit older, but
sometimes guys prove it, and he spent parts of three
years in an area and we're kind of like, I
don't know, and he was Rule five eligible last year.
But if you come up to Triple A and perform
the way he's performed the last couple of weeks, he's
a guy that you can add, I think to the
forty minus roster after the season, or you'd trade him

(33:42):
or whatever. But yeah, making himself a potential prospect for sure.

Speaker 2 (33:46):
He's one of those guys that you know, you don't
think are going to hit, and so you kind of
don't talk maybe enough about you know, his defense, you
know the fact that he's got some speed and got
some power, and then all of a sudden he starts
to have some success at the play and you're like, oh,
you know, I mean this this is a guy who
can do a lot of things for you if he
hits enough. Even if he's like, yeah, like a lefty hitting,

(34:07):
you know, outfielder. You know, he's just there to hit
left handed pitching and you know something like that. You
know there's a role for him there. But yeah, I
mean the Tigers have quite a few of those guys
like Valencia coming out of nowhere last year, Trey Cruz,
And we're going to talk about Gauge Workman, who was
always like the the in general of the tools, you know,
the secondary tools.

Speaker 3 (34:26):
So I'm.

Speaker 2 (34:28):
Yeah, yeah, don't I don't want to believe. But he
isn't striking out very much. And you know, we all
know Gauge Workman can play on the left side of
the endfield. He's got some speed, got you know, plus power.
But you know, until he sustains a very very tangible
change in his you know, strike out to walk ratio
and all that. You know. Yeah, I mean it's hard
to get too excited. We've been there before, you know,

(34:49):
the Cubs. Cubs bought on it last year and you know,
didn't work out for them and probably isn't going to
work out for anybody. But he needed to call Gauge
Workman up to play third base for you for a week. Yeah,
well you'd be fine with that, you know, that's all right?

Speaker 3 (35:02):
Yeah, I mean he's he's a viable, real replacement level
player for sure. Like I just I think back to
I think it's three years ago now, Roger, when you
it seemed like he was having his breakout in Eerie
and you wrote a story about it. Somebody else wrote
a story about it right after you did. It seems
like it happens like every year. There's like a month
where like, oh, he's figured it out and then whoops

(35:22):
one for nineteen with eighteen strikeouts. I just I wish
that he could hit better. It's like a twenty great
hit tool, unfortunately, because everything else is really interesting. We've
talked about it forever and ever. Brandon said, like, if
if there's an emergency or something like that and you
need help. He's the guy who could totally help you.
You just don't want to rely on him batting in

(35:43):
your order every day at the big league level because
he'll hit like one sixty. Yeah, he could be.

Speaker 1 (35:48):
He's a he's a coloridle Rocky. I mean, like honestly,
like the way the Rocky the lead strikeouts.

Speaker 2 (35:54):
Yeah, I mean, that's that is the kind of like
the kind of player they're trying to you know, Stockpile
right now is like the late, late, possible semi breakout type.
But yeah, I mean, you know, I mean, Workman was
interesting for a long time, and we all knew, like,
you know, there were some battles about his swing and
whether or not he should switch hit, and once he
kind of seemed to like give in and start being

(36:15):
more coachable. I was, you know, I was certainly interested
and curious. It just hasn't really Yeah, it doesn't really
come to pass for him.

Speaker 1 (36:21):
So Yeah, as far as the other question goes from
tie here as mad stuff back to the mid high nineties,
it's sitting in ninety two ninety three right now currently. Yeah,
so there's still it's still the vossis not back yet.
He had a pretty decent his outings have not been
bad considering with what he just has with a cutter
and he's been throwing. I mean, he always stows a cutter,

(36:44):
but it hasn't been blown guys with the fastball.

Speaker 2 (36:47):
So just he does have a really deep pitch mix,
and so I don't know, it's kind of interesting to
see him like sort of have to figure it out
without you know, without the for scene. But yeah, I mean,
obviously he needs he needs to get that back. But
you know, after a year of shoulder trouble, you know,
it's not terribly surprising, but it also doesn't doesn't give
you much conviction that it's it's necessarily going to get

(37:08):
back to you know, sitting ninety five ninety six as
a starter. It's kind of been a while since we
saw that.

Speaker 1 (37:13):
Really. Yeah, and then so he gives a long hand
a good I thought he had a really good outing
because this slider was on point. He was throwing a
slider like that was the most command I've seen him
through in a while. Because even when he got up
to Detroit, he rushed them. In his rehab starts, he
looked kind of he always looked off, but that was
the most But he's.

Speaker 3 (37:31):
Got a slider going. We saw that way back in
the day against it was that start against the Angels
or whatever. It's like hitters cannot lay off of it
and they can't hit it. And he's got a pretty
good change up.

Speaker 2 (37:43):
You know.

Speaker 3 (37:43):
The fastball is what it is. It's not particularly special.
He's got some sync that he can add. But yeah,
if he if he set the slider going, then that's great.
And who knows, maybe at this point when we talked
about a bunch with Montero and Madden, like it's nice
to have depth of starters as you need him, but
at some point you wonder if they will just bite
the bullet finally and make him into a full time

(38:05):
reliever where he can maybe just go out there and
let it eat for one inning and the velocity is
a little bit higher, maybe the slider gets a little sharper.
I don't know. But again, he's serving the organization best
right now by being sort of a you know, getting
stretched out a little bit more.

Speaker 2 (38:21):
Yeah, and you want to see if he can kind
of get back. I mean, you know, it's not that
long since he's been back from Tommy John And obviously
the velocity hasn't really come back, but I mean that
was a pretty brief window where he was sort of
ninety four, you know, occasionally ninety five, and it was
a glorious window. And for a second there it was like, oh,
we might have a pretty good four or five starter here,
and you know, yeah, I mean he's kind of back

(38:42):
to depth mode right now, but you know, he's just
getting just working his way back in.

Speaker 3 (38:47):
So how many times do we see like, hey, look
at this fantastic interesting velocity increased and oh he's in
Like yeah, sorry to give I've dropped two oaps already
at like the last ten minutes. But yeah, it's tough.
We just see a lot where like, yeah, they just
starting to look fascinating. And part of the reason the
velocity is up is because something's get a little stretchy

(39:08):
in there.

Speaker 2 (39:08):
Yeah. Yeah, somethings get a little too stretchy. Yeah. Were
we surprised that Dylan Smith got traded for cash? I mean,
I wasn't so surprised that Dylan Smith got moved, but
it didn't. But I kind of thought there might be
other options than him. But you know, he's he's just
sort of like such a prototypically average stuff guy that there.

(39:31):
I think they just finally decided there just isn't that
much upside there.

Speaker 3 (39:35):
Yeah, yeah, yeah. We talked about this a couple of
heads when it went happened. It just the life of
a right handed middle reliever is is very tough because
there's so many of you. They're just you're just the
most common thing in baseball. And and and Dylan Smith's
another guy that had a brief velocity spike at the

(39:56):
beginning of last year. It started looking really interesting and
then we haven't really seen that since he's got a
couple of good breaking balls, he's got an interesting split change.
But at the end of the day, it was like,
well it's just kind of an average mix, and you know,
I don't know what you're gonna get for him. I
think they basically got cash because he's got options, so
they were able to like they can the other team

(40:17):
can stash him in the minors and work on them,
and the.

Speaker 2 (40:20):
Tigers pick up, you know, two other relievers that they
want to work with, and just kind of the cycle,
the cycle of life for.

Speaker 3 (40:26):
Thee that's that's exactly a point, right like these these
guys are are readily available, Like Heurett was a top
one hundred prospect to some places a couple of years ago,
and now he's readily available as a is a reliever.
So it uh, it's unfortunate we like Dylan Smith uh
and hopefully fight success. But it's you know, we've seen
this before with Alex Faido and and you know, Mason

(40:49):
England and any other number of relievers. They kind of
just time for them to go and they hopefully catch
on somebody else.

Speaker 2 (40:54):
Yeah, And it's always interesting when that happens due to
like look at you know, I'll look at other sites
once our guy gets go somewhere else like Angler, and
they see the same thing that we all wrote about,
you know, like oh, if he you know, if he
can tweak this and if he can do this. But
it's just like will he ever, you know, and and
that's always the question. But it is interesting to kind
of see like the cycle of them moving from one
team to another and each fan base being like, well,

(41:17):
you know, if he can yeah, like we've been there, brother,
We've seen the same thing. But you know, good luck.
But yeah, Dylan Smith, great dude, wish him all the
success in the world. Hopefully he does well. Be cool
to see him break out, just not.

Speaker 1 (41:28):
Too much, yeah, especially because the Giants. Giants could use
you know, another arm or two to supplement themselves. But
I do like what you said here as far as
like the Tighters could trade more. Yeah, yeah, it's yeah,
Tighters could trade more.

Speaker 2 (41:47):
Yeah yeah. I mean it feels like they're just not
very active and never are going to be.

Speaker 3 (41:52):
You know, it's a there's an element of smogginess there
where they're and by smog, I mean the dragon from
the Hobbit right, like where they're just collecting all the
little gold pieces they can and they don't want to
give them up. And instead of you know, maybe trying
to make a trade and something that helps both teams,
they're just like, nah, no, no, we're good. But we'll see,

(42:15):
we'll see what happens that this year's deadline. I hope,
you know, you hope that they're still competitive in the race.
But I did know somebody earlier in the chat did
ask if there are any good promotions coming up now
that they were here for Eerie UPMC soon, and so
I was looking it up. There is Adam Ripley any
good promotions coming up. There is an eerie ice cream

(42:35):
bucket hat coming on May second Saturday, the first one
thousand fans, and then you have there's a military appreciation,
you get a green baseball there. What day is at
Saturday May sixteenth? And then the big one I think
that people are going to be into is the Moon
Mammoths Saturday, May thirtieth. They're one hundred or the first
fifteen hundred fans get like a little babble trunk Moon Mammoth.

(42:55):
I think that'll be big. But you know, you can
always just go online and check out the promotions. We
don't know. If they put something on Twitter, we'll retweet it.
But it's not the sort of thing that we like
go digging deep for to find out, like, hey, this
is your promotion that you want. Although you did, Roger,
you did find that there was that McGonagall bubblehead one
for the Tigers.

Speaker 1 (43:11):
Yes, I did so, Yeah, there's a one of our
We we get affiliate emails all the time about like
if you wanted to if you get we get a
certain percent of if they click on the link. So
if you click on the link on our Twitter up
at the link here if you buy the Google Bubble ahead,
a few bucks go back to us. So it's a
little thing to do. I am going to Erie this weekend.

(43:32):
I'm going Becase just to get to Yeah, so Jason
and the crew out there. So yeah, Jake, we're gonna Jars. Well,
we'll talk about Jarvis a little bit later because Jarvis
is leading the International League in hitting right now and
steals and and there the steel. No, but Erie, there's
some you know, here's okay, there's one stat line I

(43:54):
wanted to mention here because it's important to me. I
think it's important to mention this is that is one
of Joe Miller. Miller is pitching an Eerie for the
first time. He is, the velocity is increased, I still think,
and I'm gonna talk to him. I want to go
down there at the bottom line is the reason why
going down there, because I want to see what Joe
Miller is, his velocity is, and where he's sitting at

(44:15):
because I think there's something there because the strikeouts are up.
He's not a strikeout pitcher and now a strikeouts are
out up and so that's that when I look at
that stat line, four innings, five hits, a run, three walks,
five k's. It's somebody who I think is in that
process of figure things out. I don't know if that's
too much of a stretch, but I mean, if you

(44:36):
look at the rest of the stat lines for the week,
Andrew Dinkins one for eighteen walks and strikeouts. I'm trying
to find some optimism here.

Speaker 2 (44:44):
Well, I mean the optimism is Brett Calahan, you know,
you know, more assists, more dingers, you know, not striking
out too much, you know, adapting reasonably well so far.
But of course, you know, this is what like seven games.
So I'm happy for my guy that he's off to
a pretty good start. Peck's been struggling a little bit.
But we also did see Peck against, you know, quite

(45:06):
a bit of upper level pitching in major league camp,
and he held his own pretty well and definitely looked improved.
But yeah, I mean, until you know, they get Loronzo back,
and until they get Bersanio back, and until you know,
like some of the pitchers move up and we see
Andrew Sears and Jake Miller, it's just a little bit
of a wasteland in Eerie right now. And I'm sorry

(45:26):
to the you know, to the guys on the team.
It's not like, you know, you're terrible or anything, but
there's just not a whole lot of like super hot
prospect action going on at the moment. Joe Miller, you know,
has always like head command and knows how to pitch.
So you know, if you if a guy like that
suddenly gets two three more miles per hour, that's you know,
that's a viable lefty right there. So hopefully, you know,

(45:46):
we have to give it plenty of time and see
if he can kind of sustain that. But that is
like an interesting development for sure.

Speaker 1 (45:52):
Ksora is the most asked about pitching prospect.

Speaker 2 (45:55):
We have in this well seams shifted wake guys.

Speaker 1 (46:02):
Yeah, well it is cool. But here's another thing too,
as far as like h Simons, Simon goes he's off
kind of like that was a much better appearance. But
what I like about Brett Callahan. There was a question here,
as Mitchell said, is Callahan the third best alf prosperly
behind Clark and Chris Rodriguez. I think Maljerry. I think

(46:24):
I put Maljerry then Callahan.

Speaker 2 (46:26):
Yeah, I mean Maljerry's not really a prospect anymore. But yeah,
you know, I mean he's a little older, but yeah,
I mean he probably is number third. I mean you could,
you could go Randy Santana, you know, if you want to,
if you want to go young.

Speaker 3 (46:39):
Yeah, so yeah, Callahan's twenty four. So the fun thing
for me this week, I happened to be in Baltimore
on business and I looked it up in my hotel
was fifteen miles from Bowie, which is where the you know,
well the Chesapeake now bass Sox play and they were
playing Eerie. So I went down there on Wednesday Tuesday.

(47:02):
One day, I froze. I was incredibly cold, but I
went down there and watch it, and yes, it's it's
it's kind of a tough watch. But Brett Callahan's dad
did come up and say hello and introduce himself and
we talked about baseball for a bit. He said, I
heard you guys in the podcast. You said you want
parents to come up and talk to you. And I
was like, yes, we do. I really appreciate it. And

(47:23):
he was pointed out, you know, my criticism of Callahan
has been that, you know, maybe he doesn't I'm a
little bit worried that he might not be able to
hit lefties, and he was like, you know, I was
looking up his splits and he's actually better get his lefties.
I'm like, O good for enough, It's good. And Callahan,
like we talked about before, I think we were comparing
him to Carpenter a little bit the other day. Yeah,

(47:47):
but he's got better secondary tools than Carpenter, which is
kind of why I say, like, you know, projecting anybody
to hit twenty plus home runs the big leagues is tough, right,
and you got to be able to hit. You gotta
be able to do it consistently. And so we don't
know if Callahan could do that, but the secondary tools
are there, and if he keeps hitting, he'll get a
chance to get up to Toledo probably this year, because
they don't have a lot of upfield depth, and he's

(48:09):
he's a guy who could play center, he could play right.
He's got a seventy great arm, Like it's a legit canon.
Both of his outfielders just this week, we're great on
the fly throws and he's stealing. He's running up a
storm and kind of the whole team is running right now.
Because they don't a lot of a little bit. Yeah,
it's a little bit of what they need to do.
But but yeah, so yeah, I mean, I'm excited about

(48:31):
Brett Dellahan. We've had we have him on our our
top thirty. I think he's thirty one or whatever. I
think we technically have Chris Rodriguez and Jackson Strong higher,
but Strongs off to kind of a slow start. So
and this is you know, kind of the most fun
time of the year for us when we're considering rankings.
Is like this first six to eight weeks when you

(48:52):
get a look at guys who have changed over the offseason,
and some guys just you know, they cant have to
slow starts, So you get after the hot stars and
we move them up. And I think, you know, keeps
us up and we'll move him up.

Speaker 2 (49:03):
So I've always been more of the Callahan guy, just
because you know, he just sort of has it built
in to pull the ball in the air like that.
That his approach, and you know, that's kind of how
Carry Carpenter got where he is. It's not that their
swing is the same, but like you say, like I mean,
if he hit that well but with speed and better
defense and a huge arm, you know, you've got a
legit player there, And I mean, I think the thing

(49:23):
about Callahan is that all those secondary tools give him,
you know, a really long leash. Like even if you know,
it doesn't work out with the Tigers and they don't
end up using him, he's going to get picked up
places because you know, he's got you know, borderline plus
power to go with all that defensive ability and speed.
So yeah, I mean, super interesting player. I think for me,
he's just a little bit of a free swinger and

(49:43):
just needs to you know, just needs to kind of
pick better pitches to hit. And if he keeps doing damage,
he's gonna have to because they're gonna start dumping tons
of breaking balls and off speed in at him, and
you know, then we'll then we'll see what we see.
But there's always that like this guy is kind of
breaking out and people get excited and then it's like, okay,
but now all the teams know this guy is breaking
out and they're going to counter that, and you know,

(50:04):
can you adapt back? You know, those are the games
and so and that's why these things take a long
time and why we probably sound like we're dithering a lot,
you know, like, oh, maybe this you know and possibly this.
It's just because it takes time to prove it out
because other teams are going to test them in all
those different ways before you can really get super stoked
about a guy.

Speaker 1 (50:23):
Yeah's you here with the question, is there possibility Tigers
did They're going to get back to the swing of things.
School the Tigers did scooble solid by low balling their
arbitrary off for making it likely he won't get his
upper number.

Speaker 2 (50:38):
I don't think they did it on purpose, but yeah,
I mean, I think that's a pretty fair assessment of
what happened. I think if the Tigers had offered twenty
three or twenty four million, they probably would have won.
But you know, going five million less than that, you know,
I think that that put the arbiter in a in
a position where it was like, well, look, you know
the over under is here, he's definitely got to be
over So, I don't know, I don't think they played

(51:00):
that real well, I'll definitely.

Speaker 3 (51:02):
Agree, yeah, I mean, I don't think like the situation
is that they did that on purpose so that School
would get a bunch of money. I don't think that
was the case. I think they could have just given
school a bunch of money if they wanted to. I
think this was it was very much a proxy war
between the union and the owners, and the Big League
Baseball strongly suggested the number that the Tigers should put

(51:22):
out there, and they probably told the Tigers this is
your argument. You're gonna make the argument based on history, right,
and nobody else has gotten this money. And then schoobl
had all the arguments otherwise in his favor, and there were.

Speaker 2 (51:35):
So yeah, and I mean that's Scott what Scott Boris?
You know, does those kind of did that specifically?

Speaker 1 (51:40):
You know?

Speaker 2 (51:41):
I mean that that was all about like setting up
for the CBA. You know, it's about more than just
the Tigers versus schoobl I mean that that and you
probably wouldn't fight with Scott Boris. I mean, is there
a smarter guy in sports? Like do we think Rob
Manfred is sharper than Scott Boris? I don't know. I
think I think Scott Boris like probably has a run
office worth of you know, thunderlings who would be better

(52:03):
running a team than probably you know, eighty percent of
the front offices that are out there. I mean, that's
all he has to spend on his expenditures otherwise are low,
so he's got the personnel.

Speaker 1 (52:13):
You know, Oh no, no, no problem. Seed appreciates the question.
And also, yeah, I get to mention this, Scott bors
has better scouts than some baseball team too.

Speaker 3 (52:21):
I mean, yes, they're paid better, and they probably he
probably has more, right, Like, like, you know, you think
about it. I don't know what you know is standard
standard agent fee? Right? Five percent?

Speaker 2 (52:33):
What is it?

Speaker 3 (52:34):
Who knows? Scott You're get t Schooble, You're getting three
million from this one client, right, Like that's crazy, and
you know, none of it matters, right because Schooble doesn't
seem to be upset about it at all. He's pitching,
he's tech Schooble. He had the rough outing against Minnesota,
but otherwise he's been awesome. The Tigers don't seem to

(52:56):
be upset about it all. They just, you know, it's
that weird sort of business like to go, all right, whatever,
move on, We'll sign Valdez for thirty eight million. M Yeah.

Speaker 2 (53:06):
I mean, I think the only thing that really plays
into is I mean, if you're on the side of
like not thinking that Scott Harris is very good at
all this and is you know, I mean I think
I think objectively, they've done a brilliant job drafting. I
don't think you can argue with them on that score.
But you know, in terms of like managing rosters and
trades and all that, you know, I haven't been very impressed.
And you know, I guess you can. You know, you

(53:28):
can spin it that way too, But you know, I
don't know what they were told. I don't know what
the league told them. I don't know, you know, the
machinations that go on with something like that that go
beyond just Google versus the Tigers either, So who knows.

Speaker 1 (53:44):
Yeah, by the way, the much as like Adam, you're
welcome with that, we just we tend to just it's
it allows people to give a you know, what's going on.

Speaker 2 (53:56):
For us.

Speaker 1 (53:57):
I like going back and watching the clips or posting
the videos because like, for example, props to Tiger's truck
oil for giving us a Witherspoon's second start. But it
just allows us to kind of sometimes we'll do is
I'll watch a clip and I'll slow it down like
four or five times to do an analysis or what
have you. And like that's what I was with Miller.
I went back and just start. I have to I

(54:18):
should have posted the start. I should have done that well,
Joe I was going back and grabbing Joe Miller's start.
But Booie Now boe used to have the worst camera
angle and uh in the Eastern League it was behind
home plate and like on the roof.

Speaker 3 (54:30):
They now have one in center field. But it's so
far offset. Yeah, it's and it doesn't have velocity. So
I'm like, you know, you could get a little bit
out of it, but generally speaking, I like it if
you can get behind home like behind the picture like
West Michigan doesn't show velocity, but you still have the
behind the picture view, so you get a better idea
of the fuel of pictures of the movement. So I
grabbed La Salt's recent start too. I just haven't got

(54:51):
it up yet. But honestly, for me, doing that is
a lot of it is just kind of helps me
scout the pictures right to take it and you look
and you're able to cut it up and look at
their pitches and look at the sequencing and look at
the location and stuff. You get a better idea of
what kind of prospects they are. So I'm glad somebody like,
we don't get a ton of watches on those, they
get like one hundred and fifty.

Speaker 2 (55:13):
I watch all of them, of course.

Speaker 3 (55:14):
Yeah, I appreciate it all.

Speaker 2 (55:15):
One of your biggest patrons, no doubt.

Speaker 3 (55:17):
And then you know the shorts that we do, shorts
you do want to just showing the guy getting strikes.
It's like, all right, here's here you go. He's got
lots of strikes, and those do much better, I think,
just because they get caught in like the wash of
the algorithm that's showing it. But yeah, it's a lot
of I don't know, it's it's.

Speaker 2 (55:32):
Nobody would ever do it. Yeah, no one would ever
do it. But remember how I used to ask you guys,
like like there should be like more load lights like
that would be a lot more valuable if you see
like where a guy's struggling. But nobody wants to do
that and nobody wants to watch it.

Speaker 3 (55:43):
We've done that. We do that occasionally, like I I
did time Madden's first triple A start when he gave
up like seven runs. It was like, just so you
can see it, But yeah, we don't. You know, there
are a lot of these players a lot of family
watching and you don't want to like be mean or whatever,
but it does help to see when guys like what
they need to work on. So yeah, yeah, especially yeah

(56:06):
yeah he said never nude.

Speaker 2 (56:13):
Yeah you guys and Lance Brunzowski videos you Yeah, no,
that's it helps overall just getting a gauge on things period.

Speaker 1 (56:22):
So for me, I definitely love, especially with the amount
of stuff that's going on West Machine in Lakeland, where
Chris Aga said, it's like both him and I will go, Okay,
who are we getting tonight and then we just kind
of switch off on assignments, like all right, man, I
got you.

Speaker 3 (56:40):
Well, yeah, this year we try to If you're going
to rank that the four teams, it's like the most
exciting to watch, it's Lakeland is pretty close number one,
just because the number of players will watch, and then
it's tweeted, oh, because you get Clark and you got Valencia,
and you get Cruise and get some other guys, and
then it's like, I don't know, depends on who's pitching. Yeah,
he does have you know, Callahan and Peck and then

(57:01):
Joe Miller in West Michigan has La Sault Strong and
and some other you know, guys we would like to see,
but there's slim pickens, I think generally from those two teams.
So we try to take one of each, like I'll
take one Toledo, you get one Lake Linden, and then
we'll pick it in the middle.

Speaker 2 (57:14):
But yeah, by the way, I was just gonna say,
and something I do, and I don't know if you
guys do this, but I like to watch a guy closely,
like a couple of tens, and then not watch him
and like not watch for like a couple of weeks
and then come back because you know, I mean, I
think if you can, you can lock in so much
that you're like, you know, you get caught in the minutia.
And sometimes it really does help to just like to see,

(57:36):
you know, see if a guy keeps it going, or
see if he turns it around and then come back
to it. You know, It's like it's like giving yourself perspective.
So sometimes that helps as well.

Speaker 1 (57:46):
I tend to also, I'll switch, I'll focus.

Speaker 2 (57:51):
I remember I remember going down so deep on Matt Manning,
you know, to where I was like I knew what
Matt Manning's shoelaces look like, and you know which side
the knot was tied from.

Speaker 1 (58:00):
No, and that's that's it. But then I'll go I'll go,
like I said, I'll look at a picture for a
minute and then I'll just literally go all right, I'm
just position player, and I'll slow down a like that over.

Speaker 3 (58:10):
And over again.

Speaker 2 (58:11):
Yeah, it's like watch closely and then sometimes just glance
and and see if something stands out, you know, and
and grab you.

Speaker 3 (58:18):
One thing I like to do. You know, the Tigers
are still relatively strict about innings and pitches right now
early in April. They they've forever had. You know that
if you go over thirty pitches in one inning, that's
your last inning. And there's a hard stop at thirty
five pitches, even if you're in the middle of it
at bat they pull you if you're at thirty five pitches.

(58:40):
And they you know, very few guys have gone more
than four innings. We saw Joe Millard went into the fifth.
They've let some guys do that. So I do like
to try to get these early starts when they're doing
three four innings, and then I like to wait for
a little bit until they get to go five or six,
and then generally after that, I tend to lean toward
putting their good outings up, but I also like to
put what anybody jumps the level, right. I want to

(59:02):
get that first start, just to see how it looks
against new competition. So that's how it goes. And there's
gonna be a lot of them this year because there's
a lot of fun pitching there in Lakeland.

Speaker 2 (59:10):
Yeah. Yeah, and well someone asked earlier, like, what are
the Tigers look for in scouting pitching. Let's just say
that till we get to Lakeland and then we can
talk about it. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (59:19):
Uh. The what I think with Jake as far as
what they do with the arms College Arms West Michigan
one at a time, Well, it really depends on what
happened I think Erie is. Once Erie gets healthy, it
might be hard for that lateral movement from West Michigan
to move up.

Speaker 3 (59:38):
Yeah, and Kelvis Salcedo is coming back relatively soon. They've
got some other guys. Yeah, like you said, Sears, when
Sears comes back, Uh, Jake Miller will come back at
some point. That there was some yam. Yeah, so that
they're they're part of that is part of what makes
Erie kind of tough to watch right now is all
those guys are injured. So yeah, but but yeah, these

(01:00:00):
things will work themselves out, right, Like they'll figure out
a way to get all these guys datings they need,
and they'll move them up if they have to.

Speaker 2 (01:00:06):
I think it's fair to say though that, like, you know,
I mean, if Malachi is throwing strikes, he should probably
move up to West Michigan. Like there's not much for
him to do. I kind of figure like he and
Jacobs they're just sort of waiting until the weather improves
a little bit. And then yeah, you know, kel Thistle
will be in Lakeland and maybe Owen Hall or someone
will make an appearance, you know, and and and push
some of those guys up. So it probably won't be

(01:00:27):
too long for those guys, those two at least. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:00:30):
And also they're the FDLS right around the corner too,
so probably scl we'll see what they have armwives down there,
and then that could also play a factor into it
as well.

Speaker 2 (01:00:38):
Yeah, like like Carlos Rodriguez has already you know, like
gotten added to Lakeland, you know. So yeah, I mean
if guys are showing out and extended spring camp and
stuff like that, then maybe somebody will move faster and
we'll get a little pop up from someone.

Speaker 3 (01:00:50):
Yeah, and those guys can't pop up out of nowhere
like Rodriguez and both showed up.

Speaker 2 (01:00:56):
What a great name.

Speaker 1 (01:00:57):
Yeah yeah, he's roommates with U Solsino, as we found out.

Speaker 3 (01:01:01):
Right, Yeah, yeah, buddies. So yeah, I mean we didn't
talk about West Michigan, but not a whole lot happened.

Speaker 2 (01:01:09):
And I'll throwing harder and that's about it.

Speaker 3 (01:01:12):
Yeah yeah, And he actually, you know, his his outing
was not bad. He ran into he got two outs
in the third and he gave up a blop single,
got two outs in the third, and then gave up
like four straight hits and like the first two were
very seeing eye hits and the next two were hit hard.

Speaker 2 (01:01:28):
That was it.

Speaker 3 (01:01:28):
It was five singles, they scored three runs and then
he was really pitch efficient other than that, So again
it was He's like he could have gone five or
even six were the middle of the season and it
would have looked better. But just you know, their cappin
in at four innings. Like I said, I I recorded
that one. I'll cut it up and put it up tonight,
all right, Right, So.

Speaker 1 (01:01:47):
Lakeland yeah, they were Wi beaters, and then the last
two games all of a sudden just disappeared.

Speaker 2 (01:01:53):
Uh.

Speaker 1 (01:01:54):
They they scored, they give a fourteen runs yesterday.

Speaker 3 (01:01:58):
Yeah, they were. They were an unstoppable killing machine in
those first four games, just just decimating walking eighteen times
a game. And then it's something that the switch flipped
and they lost I think eight to four and then
fourteen to nothing. They got one hit on Sunday. It
was like, oh, man, but you know that Daytona team
has a couple of very interesting young arms. That Cologne
kid I was looking up. He was like an eleventh

(01:02:20):
rounder a couple of years ago. So yeah, he was
sitting upper nineties and.

Speaker 1 (01:02:26):
Twenty one spaces and missus what it was, Chris twenty one?

Speaker 3 (01:02:28):
Yeah, I think so. The only hit he gave up
was a four hundred and seventy seventy foot run by
Price Writer, which is like, if you're gonna give up
a hit, go ahead. But yeah, and then you know
they've got a couple of other good arms. So but yeah, fun,
fun week to watch. Unfortunately, a couple of the starters
had rough outings. That's part of what happened on Saturday
and Sunday, right, But that's gonna happen with your younger guys.
You know, Allie Tanner is the youngest pitcher on the staff.

(01:02:51):
He's still nineteen. And cab Ly's is you know, he's,
you know, a new pitcher. This is his first it
was his second prope here. So it's gonna happen.

Speaker 2 (01:03:01):
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:03:05):
Well so in terms of how what they look for
in arms guys in Lakeland, what does it serve the
process there?

Speaker 3 (01:03:13):
Well, I mean, I'm interested to hear what but Brandon
thinks about this. I will say that the main thing
that I've come up with is that there's not one
thing that they're really looking for. They're looking for unique traits,
guys who do something differently than than and it could
be one particular pitch. It could be an arm angle,
it could be spin. The one thing that they do

(01:03:33):
seem to really like the target is extension. But not
everybody they've gone after does have good extensions. So it's
it's I don't know. I don't really couldn't couldn't tell you.
Whereas I can tell you exactly what they're looking for
in hitters, I can't tell you what they're looking for
in pitchers.

Speaker 2 (01:03:47):
Now, yeah, I mean it's kind of what I would
say as well, is that it's it's kind of a
grab bag, like you know, they want a guy who
has like one plus pitch and that they think they
can figure the rest out on. And we do see
them leaning into extension with guys like La Salt and
obviously we've talked about that all the way going back
to Manning and Gyps and Long and some of those
guys that you know, they they like extension if you don't.

(01:04:07):
But it's kind of like balancing factors like if you
don't have a big fastball, but you have extension, they
might take you. If you have you know, velocity and extension,
then they might love that. You know, there's some tendency
toward cutting four seamers a little bit that I see.
And you know, they obviously like you know, teaching guys splits,
and some guys that they're taking have a split and

(01:04:28):
come here with one. But they've they've they've tinkered with
a lot of those guys. So yeah, I mean, I
really think they're looking for like athletic, like coachable guys,
you know, who have enough of a physical presence to
think that they might be able to throw hard enough,
and you know, I mean there's all those things, like
I mean, if you love a guy that has a
high spin rate on at least one of his breaking balls,

(01:04:50):
and they look for all those things, But yeah, I
don't I don't see any sign that they're and I
don't think it would work anymore to be like the
Rays were for a while, or like you know, the
Astros like all high four seamers and you know, power
twelve six breaking balls. You know, they did that thing,
like really really leaned into that a very specific kind
of paradigm of pitchers for a little while. But you

(01:05:10):
have to keep changing. And yeah, I mean I think,
you know, they're looking for guys with different arm angles.
They're looking for value too.

Speaker 3 (01:05:16):
You know.

Speaker 2 (01:05:17):
I think they look at a guy like Malachi Witherspoon
and think like, yeah, there's a lot of risk there.
There's you know, relief risk, there's injury risk. But at
the same time, he has major league stuff already, and
you know, if if he happens to figure it out,
you know, maybe everybody else undervalued his ability to put
it together. So it's kind of a grab bag. And
you know, I mean it's it's it's kind of easy
to argue with the Tigers because obviously they've also heavily

(01:05:38):
focused on getting really you know, high end prep arms
and that has gone you know, pretty miserably so far.
And that's kind of like the one standout thing in
their drafts that we've we've all talked about a lot
the last three years. But you know, when it comes
to comes time to find like, you know, scrappy little
college pitchers who have you know, decent strike throwing ability
and tuning them up a little bit, they've had success

(01:06:00):
with that. You know, they had success with ham Jake
Miller is that type of dude. Troy Melton was like,
you know, not not real well regarded, although he was
starting to be when they drafted him. And they've had
more success, you know, with those college arms, and that's
you know, part of the reason why we like some
of the Juco guys. You know, you know, at least
they've had like a little bit more more seasoning, whereas
you know, I mean, if you wanted to ask me

(01:06:21):
what what they're looking for in the draft, it's like
dudes who will get broken immediately for two years. That
seems to be what they're looking for, you know, But
they've also had a lot of that success, you know,
in those small college ranks with players and that you know,
we can we'll talk about that too, I'm sure. But
you know, they're they're just taking center fielders and shortstops
you can hit, and you know, a bunch of them

(01:06:42):
are improving their bat speed. And I would love to
know what the Tigers are doing to train bat speed
right now, because they seem to be having a lot
of success. From Colt Keith all the way down. You know,
little Zach McDonald all of a sudden pumping at one
fourteen on us and stuff. You know, I did not
see that coming. I knew he hit someone Awaits last year,
but yeah, that was impressive.

Speaker 1 (01:07:01):
I think one thing they look with these college arms
is really the ability to cliches of sounds. Just it
almost looked and this happened. I think with Lay's is
post surgery guys, Like they looked at a lot of guys,
I mean a lot of obviously, I know a lot
of these arms are they're in the process of recovering

(01:07:22):
from something. For example, school was off. I mean, remember
he was coming back from an injury and then they
were able to they were they commit they once they
committed to these guys, and they looked at him early
on to stick with that.

Speaker 2 (01:07:33):
So River Hamilton like they probably knew that TJ was coming,
and that's an arm I think we all really like.
But you know it's it's it's saying to ourselves, Okay,
well he's not going to be pitching for us until
twenty seven probably, So.

Speaker 1 (01:07:48):
Yeah, I think there's an inherent risk. A lot of
that is an inherited risk that they are just being
loyal to because they're scouting is like, hey, you know
this is especially the Northeast to the Northeast. They continue
to like the amount of pitching the Tigers from Northeast
is astonishing to.

Speaker 2 (01:08:02):
Me and nobody else is looking there. Yeah, exactly, Like, yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:08:05):
That's what I'm saying, Like, it's, you know, could we
different from a draft profile from ten years ago? I'm sorry,
let's go ahead.

Speaker 3 (01:08:10):
Well no, it's not. It's not even just pitching, right,
it's it's you know, Goodman was from Northeastern St.

Speaker 1 (01:08:19):
Joe's you know, these like a bunch of retweets today,
Cruzi else there was another you know that Mel Jerry's
from Northeastern.

Speaker 3 (01:08:29):
Yeah, yeah, so they they've gone, you know, they're finding
players up there. So it's that's good, you know, good
on the area scouts up there. But yeah, I you
know it is it's it's fun just about every game,
it's fun. You're gonna see some interesting guys.

Speaker 2 (01:08:43):
We did.

Speaker 3 (01:08:44):
We talked about this a little bit last night, but
we could just run through, like you know, Bryce Rainer
obviously get that monster home run. No walks in ice
strikeouts is not good to see. It's a strange thing
right now. You know a lot of people have pointed
out that his swing doesn't look right. You know, his
load is a little bit weird. He's got a big
leg kick. It's not necessarily messing him up in terms of,

(01:09:07):
you know, hitting the ball hard. He's still hitting the
ball very hard. When he hits it, there's more swing
and miss, and there's just less swing in general right now.
And I don't quite know what's going on that. The
only thing I could think is that he's just not
fully comfortable swinging the bat full effort. Other than that,
like or he just wants to see as many pitches
as he can. But it's it's odd I point it out,

(01:09:27):
it's seven games.

Speaker 2 (01:09:28):
Let's just keep that in mind from him.

Speaker 3 (01:09:30):
Yeah, but like his final at bat yesterday, now it
was fourteen to nothing, and maybe he didn't care anymore,
and but he took he took five pitches, didn't swing once,
and three of them were like right down the heart
of the plate. And it's just like I do all right,
And so I don't know, I don't know what it is.
And yeah, to your point branding, yess, it is seven games,

(01:09:52):
and you don't want to make too much about that
at all. It's just a strange kind of early season
phenomenon right now.

Speaker 2 (01:09:58):
Yeah, called strikes take it as like up like eight
and a half percent. Like his swinging strike rate is
actually like lower than it was last year, even though
like the regular whiff rate is a little higher. But yeah,
it's just he's just kind of standing there like waiting
for like the perfect pitch or something. But I don't know,
you know, he's been out of it for ten, you know,
ten months, and yeah, I don't I'm not exactly sure

(01:10:21):
if he's just having a little trouble pull on the
trigger or what. But yeah, the one pitch we did
see him connect with. He hit harder than any tiger
in the stack cast era has ever hit, which was
kind of staggering.

Speaker 3 (01:10:33):
It's absolutely absurd for a twenty year old to do
that just and.

Speaker 2 (01:10:37):
I mean his swing hasn't changed that much like to me,
like like the kick is a little bit bigger, and
he's a little bit more bent over, but he's always
kind of done the like the low drag, you know,
And I don't know, and you know, like.

Speaker 3 (01:10:51):
People talk about this a lot, right, like, oh, you
know that swing's not gonna work or whatever, but you
know there are a number as long as you you
can find a way to be on time, right, it
doesn't matter what the swing looks like. Now, obviously more
hand movement and more stuff like that, it's gonna make
it harder to be on time. But if that's been
your swing your entire life, and you're still connecting with
velocity and you're not swinging through breaking but like sure,
whatever whatever works. If people are skeptical that it's going

(01:11:13):
to work, and he's in low A, so maybe it
won't work against higher level you know, breaking balls, but
he really isn't struggling to hit velocity, like the pitch
he hit was ninety seven miles an hour, right like it.

Speaker 2 (01:11:24):
Yea, and that was always saw last year. Great, great
fastball hitter. Still still trying to adapt to seeing you know,
more junk.

Speaker 3 (01:11:31):
Yeah, so you know, early, still a very exciting prospect.
He's playing in the field, so he shaved his head, so.

Speaker 2 (01:11:40):
Arm looks good. I haven't really seen him have to
like absolutely air one out, but it still looks like
easy seventy, you know, just relaxed seventy across the diamond,
so he's probably got the whole thing back. We're pretty cool.

Speaker 3 (01:11:51):
Yeah, I've noticed a couple throws. Yeah, and it's it's
exactly like it's not like he hasn't had to rear
back and five a missile, but you can tell it's
easy v loow in there still like it's just he
just flicks his wrist and it's like a you know,
closed line. So so yeah, still super exciting, still fast,
still hits the ball hard, Still playing short stop, all good.

(01:12:12):
Just figure out this swing stuff at some point.

Speaker 2 (01:12:15):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:12:16):
The rest of the offense, you know, Rucker headed down week,
Zach McDonald kind of a down week, oddly enough, though,
I mean they scored so many runs this week partially
from walking a ton, like we said, and they have
a lot of guys who like wander Nandez is this
kind of just he's just like the fourteenth man on
the roster, and he's like nineteen twenty years old, one

(01:12:37):
of the younger players in the team, and you go
up there and he's got a really advanced approach for
a kid who hasn't played much baseball. It's like, well,
this is interesting. But again he's like the like the
twelfth guy you'd mentioned of this team.

Speaker 1 (01:12:49):
So yeah, and there's a good like I said, you
were mentioned, you're high on Goodman, and he still shows
a lot of like another possibility of another infielder good
give the Tigers back them into their vibe to you.

Speaker 3 (01:13:03):
Yeah, yeah, you told me Man. Yeah he plays second,
he plays sure, he plays third, he's got uh, he
looks good on defense. He's he's another guy who's very
patient at the plate. And it was just kind of
waiting for him to sting the ball a little bit more.
But yeah, the offense is fun, but we're here to
talk about the pitching because the pitching is the most fun.
And we've said, yeah, we saw we got to see
Jacob's second start, which was electric.

Speaker 1 (01:13:23):
Uh.

Speaker 3 (01:13:24):
In with him, it's you know, the fastball is just
is dirty. It's ninety four eighty six with a ton
of ride.

Speaker 1 (01:13:31):
Uh.

Speaker 3 (01:13:31):
And he's got a really nasty change up to and
he should probably throw a little bit more. And he's
got some breaking balls, Like he's got the whole thing.
It's just a little bit more efficient with your strike throwing.
And he's also seems like like in the first inning
he got a strikeout and he was like screaming and
like stomping off the mountain. I'm like, yes, low A,
get into it.

Speaker 2 (01:13:51):
This is good.

Speaker 3 (01:13:51):
We need a guy who's just like amped up. So
that was cool to see.

Speaker 2 (01:13:55):
Yeah, some little and vibe.

Speaker 3 (01:13:57):
Yeah, and then you know, we talked about like Witherspoon,
like like you said, Brandon, like this is this is
upper nineties four Seemer sinker like three different breaking balls,
like the cutter, slider, hill, occasionally drop in a curve.
Doesn't seem to have again. Second starts still no change ups,
no splitters, whatever. Maybe then'll come, maybe it won't. You
don't necessarily have to have one, but I think it

(01:14:18):
would help. But yeah, like if he's throwing strikes. He's
way too good for low A and then you know,
we got I think that was the first look I've
had at Grinselh. I want what did I call him?
The gritch? Yeah, and that's a really fun look. It's
I don't know if you guys both watch that too,
but it's like, you know, that sort of unusual over

(01:14:41):
the top angle from a lefty and then with like
a pretty nasty change up and and the fastball. It's
it's like ninety ninety two, but you it's one of
those ones where you can see the hop on it,
like you're like, that looks harder than it is. So
he's a guy that I worry about breaking balls from
that arm angle and maybe he ends up as a

(01:15:03):
reliever down the road, But it looks like it'll work
at least for a little while.

Speaker 2 (01:15:06):
Yeah, Yeah, I think he's at least interesting. It does
sort of not look starterish, and he does kind of
like from that arm angle.

Speaker 1 (01:15:14):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:15:14):
I mean, it's it's tough to throw anything that really
moves horizontally, and he might need need something like that
because you know, but who knows, maybe he maybe he
gains more velocity. I mean, he's just starting out. You know,
I like Lee's arm, you know, I think Lee's got
kind of a whip and an interesting pitch mix without
really anything dominant. So he's he's fine and could develop.

(01:15:36):
But all these guys probably are more like you know,
future you know, lefty reliever types, you know, maybe spot
starter types. But you know, but Jacobs looks really good,
you know, and his his junior year, the you know,
he was struggling to kind of maintain that hop on
the fastball, and his his iv B was all over
the place sometimes and his command was sometimes all over

(01:15:56):
the place, and probably that hurt his draft stock. But
he's been he's been dialed, and I mean he's you know,
it's like eighteen nineteen and duce fertible coal break. He's
got a pretty flat plane, he's got a pretty good
change up, and yeah, I mean, actually the slider is
a little like I think in my scouting report, I
kind of was just like average, you know, average, But
he's broken off some pretty pretty good sliders too, So

(01:16:17):
he's he's definitely interesting. Throws plenty of strikes, and yeah,
as soon as his command, you know, maybe honestly he
should be at West Michigan anyway. But you know, as
soon as his command you know, perks up, you know
he's probably ready to move into the upper levels fairly
quickly if things peak going well.

Speaker 3 (01:16:32):
And yeah, we've talked about what twiska before. Still it's
really it's really fun to watch him. His velo bump
is very impressive, you know, sitting ninety three and a
half now he's up to ninety five and a half,
touch ninety eight, and he's he's a little bit like Jacob's.
And then it's a lot of fastballs. It's kind of
scattered command. He's got what they're calling a sinker. It's
ninety miles an hour. I think it's a change up.

(01:16:54):
It looks like a change up, it acts like a
change up. And then you know he got swings and
missus with that, and the fastball and the breaking balls,
which I thought looked better in the backfields. He didn't
get any whiffs on him, but I think that's that's
a work in progress. But this guy, I don't think
he may have just turned twenty one. Yeah, and you
know it's a two way player and a juco, you know,
so this is a really impressive arm and a guy

(01:17:15):
that keep an eye on. It's gonna be an arrow
up I think for him, as long as he can
stay healthy. He says, just learn how to pitch. But
the arm is really nice. And then we talked about
this a fair amount last night, Roger, but I do
want to bring it up because this was the big
surprise to me, was Charlie Christensen. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.
I don't know if you got to see his start, Brandon.

Speaker 2 (01:17:33):
No, I didn't. I saw the numbers, but that was a.

Speaker 3 (01:17:37):
Yeah. I mean, I like, I don't want to make
too much of this, and like I said the same
thing last night, but this this is a fifteenth round
pick who's sitting ninety three ninety five with a sinker
seven feet of extension, a low arm slot. He's throwing
two different breaking ball he's got a cutter and like
a sweeper, and he's gotten a viable change up from
this low arm slot. I don't know how. And it's

(01:17:58):
seventy five percent strikes in his first pro outing. He's
just pounding the strike zone. Five strikeouts, seven balls in
the ground. That's it perfect interesting, it's it's fun. And
the pitch so yeah, like there's a sweeper, another sweeper,
and you'll see he'll he'll throw a cutter at like
eighty nine. Oh, it's forcing her there with a little ride. Yeah,

(01:18:22):
he hurt you up. It's always we never.

Speaker 2 (01:18:24):
We never have a guy like that. Look at almost
Yeah that was Phil. Yeah all right, So I paid
this guy no attention to be honest, and until I
saw the numbers come through, Like yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:18:39):
Like this eighty eight mile an hour change change up
splitter thing. Uh, I don't know how he throws it
from that armslot, but it works.

Speaker 2 (01:18:47):
I like, like I get, oh, yeah, I'd love to
see the grip on that thing. What the heck is
he doing to make it do that?

Speaker 3 (01:18:55):
Yeah, I get a little wary right of guys with
funky arm angles at the low levels, because yeah, a
lot of these hitters just haven't seen to it's like this,
but like it's the starter's mix and strikes from that
art our mangle and it's relatively like it doesn't scream
reliever the delivery to me, Like, yeah, it's a long
arm swing or whatever.

Speaker 2 (01:19:15):
But he's pretty smooth. Yeah, Like it was like a
lot of guys who are like that are really tight,
like Malachi in particular, Like it's kind of kind of
a tight like I'm I'm squeezing this thing. Yeah, he's
he's slinging it in there pretty well.

Speaker 1 (01:19:31):
Don Trader, John Shriver a little bit, a little bit
like you know, I think.

Speaker 2 (01:19:35):
I like all kind of is what may Yeah, I
thought about too.

Speaker 3 (01:19:39):
My My initial thought was like this looks like Brady Singer. Yeah,
he was the first rounder. But to say that, like
he's throwing like I said, he's not throwing a ton
of fastballs, but there you see it's like consistent ninety
four five.

Speaker 2 (01:19:54):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:19:56):
So yeah, like I I said, I don't want to
make too much for the one start, but but.

Speaker 2 (01:20:00):
He has our attention.

Speaker 3 (01:20:02):
Yeah, for sure, Like from for a fifteenth rounder. It's
pitching is so good now. And like the average EXI
velocity on seven malls and play was sixty eight miles
an hour.

Speaker 2 (01:20:11):
Yep, that'll do. Yeah, that's uh that's pretty damn interesting.

Speaker 1 (01:20:15):
Actually.

Speaker 2 (01:20:17):
I mean, and you know, I've been, uh, I've been
going down deep down the new pitching rabbit holes because
every year there's there's more new ones. And yeah, I
mean the thing that just keeps happening is that you know,
they're just getting faster and faster at like teaching guys
new pitches and trying and and just trying stuff. You know,
it's interesting hearing older pitchers talking about you know, like
how you know you just couldn't do it. You know,

(01:20:38):
like there would never be time to like work on
a new pitch unless you were pretty convinced it would work.
And now you know, now guys are getting biofeedback and
you know, five minutes and like kind of halfway dialing
stuff in and one bullpen and like taking it into games.
So yeah, it's it's just always interesting to see someone
who does something unique like that. Yeah, that's a pretty
pretty interesting arm angle with that stuff. Mister Christian All right.

Speaker 3 (01:21:01):
Yeah, I don't really know what, Like I said, like
you don't want to make too much about one started
low a for a guy, but he was a small
school like Central Arkansas. And again, you know, fifteen years ago,
sitting ninety three to ninety five was like a plus fastball.
This is a fifteenth rounder, so it's just kind of odd.
And yeah, but like this again, they have like seven

(01:21:22):
eight arms down there that are just fascinating. Ali Tanner,
we talk about another guy with a ton of ride,
a ton of spin, good velocity, really spinds a breaking ball,
has a good splinter nineteen years old, just needs to
throw strikes and get more comfortable. But yeah, so we
ask for pitching. They have a whole bunch of it
down in Lakeland. We'll see how many of these guys
can stay healthy and how they keep pitching as they

(01:21:44):
get up higher levels. But this is what makes Lakeland
so fun to watch this year is there's so many
of these guys and they're all interesting in one way
or another.

Speaker 2 (01:21:50):
Yeah, and we'll get you should get called back soon,
which will be exciting. And the bullpen this week too,
is he Yeah, and then we just hope, yeah, you know,
like somebody you know, Owen Hall, one of those guys,
like you know, finally finally pulls it together.

Speaker 1 (01:22:04):
Yeah that' that'd be awesome, especially because it just one
breakthrough would be fantastic.

Speaker 2 (01:22:11):
Yeah. I could really could really use someone to pop,
and could really use like Andrew Sears and Jake Miller
to get healthy and like start working their way up.
So we have some options in the second half this year.

Speaker 1 (01:22:20):
Yeah, something to watch. But thanks so much for watching
us this evening, and thank you for listening online. Uh
As far as like the real quick the fan dual
odds of the Wookie of the Year kind of thing.
I was looking into World Series odds and and those things,
and so as part of a technically because we're you know,

(01:22:40):
we're sponsored, and I was just kid mcgonagall's odds are
still he's taking over as far as ods go.

Speaker 3 (01:22:49):
Yeah, by f War, he's us he's the highest ranked
rookie ranked. It's it's you know, zero point nine f War,
slightly higher than the Laughter and South Stewart, but they're
going to get dinged for playing first base in corner
outfield respectively. Right, So McGonagall, as long as he plays
averageish you know, shortstop, third base, it keeps hitting. And

(01:23:12):
nothing he's done so far is fluky and the slightest. Yeah, right,
like this is the guy we knew he was. He
Pitchers will keep looking for ways to attack on and
we'll find some success. But you know, you could keep
you could try to throw him nothing but breaking balls
and change hips, but he'll eventually adjust to that. And
you think like, okay, well I've got him fool down
and throw him fastball. No, it doesn't matter. He can
see eight hundred straight curve balls. If you throw him fastball,

(01:23:34):
he is going to hit a one hundred and ten
miles an hour.

Speaker 2 (01:23:36):
I don't really think that we yeah, I mean I
don't think he's even scratching the surface. It's not like
one of those things where you're like, oh, you know,
is this fabric related? Is he is he gonna cool down? No?
I don't think he's like really tapped into it yet.
You know, I think that that homer might kind of
free him up a little bit, because I think there's
going to be a plethora of home runs from the
kid this year, probably still twenty twenty five. Even after

(01:23:58):
you know, not hitting one for the first fifth team
games or whatever, fourteen games, the power is gonna come.
I mean he's, uh, he's everything we dreamed of guys.

Speaker 1 (01:24:06):
Plus yeah, two three to win odds plus.

Speaker 3 (01:24:09):
I mean yeah, Like we've looked it up several times
in the past, like the best rookie years ever for
Tigers players. I think it's like Dale Alexander and Austin
Jackson and a couple other people and there's like five
war and uh no, you don't want to you know,
he's got to stay healthy, You've got to keep producing.
But if he does, if he's the player he's right now,

(01:24:29):
it's like a seven seven win player. Yeah, heres the
WN all.

Speaker 2 (01:24:35):
Right, yeah, man, I think he would. He's on like
a nine more pace right now.

Speaker 3 (01:24:39):
Yeah. I mean, obviously you don't want to extres like.

Speaker 2 (01:24:42):
That, but I need more.

Speaker 3 (01:24:43):
But you know, maybe I guess maybe he's Mike Troup.
Maybe it is a nine more rookie season.

Speaker 1 (01:24:47):
Yeah, we're talking about lou Witaker Alan Trammell Territory. There
was the there was a stat to pull up the
other day, doubles. He has six doubles in sixteen games,
and that was more than I think it was, like,
uh since Brennan b oh, yeah, well so.

Speaker 3 (01:25:02):
And you know what was interesting is is he was
an absolute doubles machine in West Michigan last year. He
was hitting a few home runs, but it was like
a double every single game. And then he got to
Erie and then it was just a ton of home runs.
And part of that's the part, part of it's the
league part of it. I think it was him really
leaning into that, polling the ball in the air, and
we started hard doing the same thing when he got
the erie, and it's I think it's just something that

(01:25:22):
it only makes sense that you get more comfortable doing
it the later on in the season.

Speaker 2 (01:25:25):
So yeah, and maybe you get attacked more, right, Like
you come up to that level and they're like, oh,
you know, I'm not scared of this kid, and they're like, okay,
well after a couple of weeks, you might might want
to repick that.

Speaker 1 (01:25:35):
Yeah, yeah, scared. He's scared nobody. But thanks so much
for watching as much listening. If you're not a Patreon member,
we just put out a newsletter. Yes, this actually this
Morning covers all the teams, including the Tigers, and we
put some video on there is free for if it's
free for everybody, so if you sign up, you become
a Patreon member. Bam, it's right there. We also have

(01:25:57):
some paid content, including Jerry's picture profiles where we break
down Jerry briks On your picture after the game, and
there's some stat cast data in there. Uh, we're doing
a little bit more video and there. So uh, it's
been it's content galore. I mean, we we put some
stuff on the website, getting me wrong, but Patreon is
where we're for figuring out the juice. We'll figured out

(01:26:18):
the sauce.

Speaker 2 (01:26:22):
Trying to find those ways to balance, you know, to
balance the things.

Speaker 1 (01:26:24):
Yeah, yeah, perfect balance, Yeah, the balance of things. And
also thank you for subscribing. We're over three thousand subscribers
on YouTube. Continue to like and spread the word about
us and let us know that, let people know, Hey,
we've got more views than w any draft.

Speaker 2 (01:26:39):
So there we go on the banner. Yeah, yeah, I
have a good time. If you want to go over
to bless You Boys, there's an article there where I
just kind of like gamed out like how we can
keep Peter Montoll starting for like weeks until yeah, until
that gets forced. There's plenty of ways they can do that,

(01:26:59):
so you don't even to read it.

Speaker 1 (01:27:00):
Just trust me, Yeah, trust me out trust uh.

Speaker 2 (01:27:05):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:27:05):
We'll go ahead, and when we don't do the minor
league recap, Brandon does a really good job over there
as well. They have a fantastic CRUSI Blessed Boys dot com,
Tiger mL Report dot com, Tiger's EML Report dot com,
and our Patreon. So Tiger go to Tiger's my Report.
I think right, I'm getting there. Yeah, Tiger's reporting, so uh,

(01:27:26):
stay close. Everybody, have a good night.

Speaker 2 (01:27:40):
Yeah,

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The Future of Tigers Pitching is in Lakeland?

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