Tiger Tales: Hoping Bengals Give Better Results
ALSO: CONSTANT 'IMPROVEMENTS' HAVE CHANGED THE FACE OF BASEBALL
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Reader Reacts
“I love reading the newsletter. As a former (recovering?) journalist and a lifelong Mets fan, I couldn't help but notice that Rosario's first name was misspelled in today's edition ("Ahmed", instead of "Amed" - https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/r/rosaram01.shtml). The trade at first pained me, as my kids and I love going to minor-league games and collecting autographs and were often on the hunt for Rosario, but we are now loving watching #12 at shortstop!) Anyway, I just wanted to point that out.”
— Mike Schwartzberg, Baltimore, MD
Editor’s note: we admit to the editorial miscue and apologize for the spelling error regarding the Cleveland shortstop. But we still think the team’s new nickname is horrendous. — D.S.
Pregame Pepper
Did you know…
Star Colorado closer Daniel Bard, 37, went onto the 15-day injured list while he deals with anxiety. The nine-year veteran has walked away from baseball before. After spending the first five seasons of his career with the Boston Red Sox, Bard was out of the majors from 2014 to 2020, suffering from the yips, before returning with the Rockies, where he went 6-4 with 34 saves and a 1.78 ERA in 57 games . . .
Watching the Yankee Stadium opener Thursday was like watching an old Mets-Yankees game, since the Giants had ex-Mets Michael Conforto and Wilmer Flores batting back-to-back . . .
Sportico reports Shohei Ohtani will earn a record $70 million this year: $30 million in salary and $40 million in commercial endorsements . . .
Center-fielder Druw Jones, son of Hall of Fame contender Andruw Jones, is starting his march to the majors with the Arizona Diamondbacks after injuries delayed his spring training . . .
Former Mets infielders Daniel Murphy, now 38, and Ruben Tejada, never a slugger, have signed with the independent Long Island Ducks in the hope of staging unlikely comebacks . . .
The last time an Oriole was AL Rookie of the Year, current Baltimore GM Mike Elias was about to turn 7 . . .
Minor League Baseball™ (MiLB™) has announced that the 2023 Triple-A Championship Game will feature the winners of the International League and Pacific Coast League meeting in a single-game format to be played on Saturday, September 30th in Las Vegas. It will follow two League Championship Series involving winners of each circuit’s first half and second half . . .
Leading Off
Detroit Tigers: Storylines and predictions
By Joe Underhill
It’s a beautiful day for baseball! As I type this, teams across the Major League Baseball landscape are preparing for Opening Day.
It should be a national holiday.
For the fans of all 30 clubs, Opening Day signals the beginning of the marathon that is a MLB season and also for the 20ish clubs that have a 50% or less chance (per the odds- makers) of making the playoffs, maybe this is the year their team is Cinderella and makes the improbable run to the post-season.
For fans of the Detroit Tigers, this is the beginning of rebuild 2.0, and with just a 4.1% chance of making the playoffs per FanGraphs. Tigers fans will be looking for evidence that this rebuild is going to be more successful. Following are five story-lines and predictions for the 2023 season in Detroit.
Farewell Miggy!
Miguel Cabrera has been one of the best hitters of this generation. He is one of only three players to amass over 3,000 hits, 600 doubles and 500 home runs in a career. He’s won a Triple Crown, two MVP awards, four batting titles and the list could go on and on.
However, he has said this will be his last year, making 2016 his last “Cabrera-esque” season. Since 2016, Cabrera has suffered from a number of injuries and is dealing with chronic knee pain that will need to be managed. While Cabrera has said repeatedly that he is not interested in a bunch of ceremonies honoring him, those will happen throughout this season.
Prediction: Cabrera plays less than 90 games in 2023, which allows him to feel healthier through the end of the season, and slashes .280/.340/.410 with 15 home runs and 65 RBIs.
Sophomore Sensations!
Riley Greene had his rookie debut delayed by a broken bone in his foot on the last day of spring training in 2022 and struggled offensively for much of his rookie season. Spencer Torkelson struggled throughout the season to find the swing that made him the No. 1 overall pick in the 2020 MLB draft.
Both players are looking to recapture what made them top five prospects going into the 2022 season. Both have looked locked in during their spring training plate appearances, and are among the few players who will be locked into only one position during the 2023 season.
Prediction: Greene will hit .280/.350/.480 with 17 home runs and 30 doubles while posting above-average defensive metrics in center field. Torkelson will hit .265/.340/.550 with 25 home runs and 30 doubles and establish himself as a cornerstone for the Tigers lineup.
Bounce Back seasons!
The Tigers have a lot of players looking to bounce back from subpar 2022 seasons, but the two that will be most important are infielders Javier Baez and Jonathan Schoop.
Former GM Al Avila signed Baez to a $140 million contract, supposedly ending the rebuilding, but that didn’t work out as intended. Baez had his worst year on both sides of the game and if the Tigers hope to surprise people in 2023 they will need him to have a huge bounce-back.
Another possible motivation for Baez is his ability to opt out of his contract after this season.
Schoop is in the last year of his contract and while he continued to play Gold Glove caliber defense, his offensive game fell off a cliff. If Schoop is able to bounce back offensively, there is a good chance he could be moved at the deadline, opening playing time for some of the young Tigers who are either on the team in utility roles, or from the minor leagues.
Prediction: Baez hits .260/.310/.450 with 20+ home runs and 15+ steals. Schoop hits .250/.310/.400 and is traded during the season.
The New Guys!
The Tigers made a number of trades and low risk signings in the off-season.
The acquisitions are highlighted by two position players and two pitchers.
Nick Maton and Matt Vierling are versatile players who will have playing time all over the field. They were acquired from the Phillies as part of the return for closer Gregory Soto.
On the pitching side, the Tigers signed Matthew Boyd and Michael Lorenzen to one-year contracts.
Maton and Vierling are just starting their MLB careers and are looking to establish themselves as everyday players. Boyd and Lorenzen are both looking to reestablish themselves after injuries shortened their 2022 seasons (13.1 and 97.2 innings respectively). It’s already a tough beginning to the year for Lorenzen, as he started the year on the IL.
Prediction: Both Maton and Vierling will establish themselves and play more then 120 games making themselves a valuable part of manager AJ Hinch’s lineup. Boyd and Lorenzen will make 25 and 20 starts, respectively. One of them will be moved at the deadline.
Welcome back!
Injuries impacted the Tigers as much as any team in baseball in 2022. The Tigers used 17 starters in 2022 and will probably need 8-10 in 2023 as they manage workloads due to missed time.
However, the Tigers are welcoming back three players whom they hope will be able to return to their career norms after missing all (or almost all) of 2022: Spencer Turnbull, Jake Rogers, and Austin Meadows.
Turnbull and Rogers are coming off Tommy John surgery, while Meadows missed all but 36 games in 2022 due to a variety of ailments.
Turnbull was looking like an ace, including throwing a no-hitter before surgery. Rogers’ offense was slowly improving to catch up with his plus defensive skills before being shut down in the middle of 2021. Meadows is hoping his track record of strong campaigns followed by ineffective campaigns continues. Meadows put up strong numbers in 2019 and 2021 followed by poor years in 2020 and 2022.
Prediction: Turnbull returns to form. He is able to make 25+ starts and pitch over 160 innings with an ERA+ above 130. By the end of the year Rogers will take over more majority of the reps at catcher while posting an OPS+ over 110. Meadows is healthy and able to play over 130 games, and gets the opportunity to play alongside his brother after a late season call-up, posting an OPS+ above 120.
Final Prediction!
The Tigers will finish 2023 with a .500 record but will miss the playoffs. Every season is a story waiting to be written. Baseball is back and is the greatest sport. Enjoy the stories as they unfold.
Joe Underhill is a high school administrator and diehard baseball fan and fan of the city of Detroit. Joe currently writes for www.tigstown.com. You can follow Joe on Twitter@TransplantedDet. His e.mail is joe.underhill@auburn.org.
Cleaning Up
Massive Changes in Game Make Veteran Writer’s Head Spin
By Dan Schlossberg
With my 75th birthday right around the corner, the timing is right to look back at the myriad of ways baseball has changed since I arrived on the planet.
In 1948, for example, the Boston Braves won a pennant, the St. Louis Browns were four years removed from their only flag, and Babe Ruth was still alive — though barely.
Major League Baseball had two eight-team leagues, no divisions, no interleague play, no planned playoffs, and a 154-game schedule that consisted mostly of day games.
To say a lot has changed since then is the understatement of the century — or at least the last 75 years.
For starters, the Braves have moved twice — to Milwaukee and then Atlanta — and the Athletics are about to embrace their fourth home city — from Philadelphia to Kansas City to Oakland to Las Vegas. Connie Mack must be rolling over in his grave.
The changes began in 1953, when I was 5. That was the year the Boston Braves moved to Milwaukee, triggering huge tremors in the baseball topography that still haven’t stopped. California, for example, had no big-league teams before 1958, when the Dodgers and Giants arrived from the East Coast, but now has five, although the Oakland tenure is likely to be short-lived.
Growing up in the ‘50s, baseball was as easy to follow as it was to play. League winners went directly to the World Series without passing GO or collecting $200.
Players stayed put unless they were sold, traded, released, or demoted. And salaries were not yet beyond the stratosphere.
But the changes ~ where do I begin?
Division play began in 1969, then morphed from two divisions to three divisions per league. The designated hitter made its debut in 1973. Then inter-league play followed four years later.
Babe Ruth’s treasured record of 714 home runs fell twice — first to Hank Aaron, then to Barry Bonds. But suspected steroids abuse shrouded the second guy’s achievement and kept him out of the Baseball Hall of Fame.
At its height, the plague of PEDs (performance-enhancing substances) enabled somebody named Sammy Sosa to become the only man to top 60 home runs in three different seasons, while Mark McGwire was the first to hit 70 in a season.
Neither of them reached Cooperstown either.
Nor did Roger Maris or Dale Murphy, the only players with consecutive MVPs not to reach the Hall of Fame. And they did it without cheating, as did Aaron when he hit 755.
Marvin Miller somehow did reach Cooperstown — even though he and his disciples were the main reason baseball has endured nine work stoppages, one of them 232 days long, since 1972.
Speaking of cheating, the Houston Astros were penalized by MLB for an electronic sign-stealing scheme during the 2017 World Series. The same Astros had switched from the National to the American League four years earlier.
Until 1961, baseball had retained its 16-team structure. When expansion came in 1961 (American League) and 1962 (National League), the main purpose was to crush Branch Rickey’s Continental League, a proposed third major league.
It worked — and also helped the leagues fill voids in cities that lost teams in franchise shifts (the original Washington Senators went became the Minnesota Twins, the Seattle Pilots became the Milwaukee Brewers, the expansion Senators became the Texas Rangers, and the Montreal Expos became the Washington Nationals, etc.).
But no changes in the game were so far-reaching or dramatic as the wave of new rules instigated by current commissioner Rob Manfred during and immediately after the Covid-shortened season of 2020.
This year alone, we have a “balanced” schedule where each of the 30 teams plays each of its opponents. A pitch clock, added in spring training, shows promise in shortening games by a half-hour. Crazy infield shifts and frequent pick-off throws have been eliminated. Bases are bigger, with shorter distances between them.
And that awful Manfred Man — no, not the British singer — mandates an automatic runner placed on second base at the start of every half-inning if a game is tied after nine. This isn’t a Sunday beer league, fellas.
I happen to be a baseball purist, a traditionalist in every sense of the word. I loved the game I knew as a kid and miss it. But I still have my old baseball cards and treasured baseball books — both giving meaning to the phrase “a blast from the past.”
The Good Old Days weren’t just good. They were great.
Former AP sportswriter Dan Schlossberg of Fair Lawn, NJ likes oldies but goodies in both music and baseball. He’s written 40 baseball books and thousands of articles about the game. Book him for a talk and signing via ballauthor@gmail.com.
Timeless Trivia
On Sept. 6, 2020, pitching for the Orioles, Dean Kremer became the first Israeli citizen to play in the major leagues . . .
Gary Sanchez, whose bat has always been better than his glove, will earn $4 million if he works his way to San Francisco from the Giants’ Triple-A affiliate . . .
After leading the world with 62 home runs last year, Aaron Judge hit the first home run of the 2023 season . . .
Cubs starter Marcus Stroman will go down in history as the first pitcher to be tagged for a pitch clock violation . . .
Anthony Volpe, 21, was the youngest Yankee to start on Opening Day since Mickey Mantle . . .
Colorado became the first team of the Modern Era (since 1901) with 17 or more hits while also 17 or more strikeouts in a nine-inning game, the Elias Sports Bureau says . .
This was the also the first Opening Day since 1901 with a pair of five-hit games (George Springer of Toronto and Adley Rutschman of Baltimore) . . .
Manager Bruce Bochy, lured out of retirement by the Texas Rangers, was the beneficiary of a nine-run inning in the opener against Philadelphia — just as he had enjoyed an 11-run frame on Opening Day when he managed the 1997 San Diego Padres.
Know Your Editors
HERE’S THE PITCH is published daily except Sundays and holidays. Brian Harl [bchrom831@gmail.com] handles Monday and Tuesday editions, Elizabeth Muratore [nymfan97@gmail.com] does Wednesday and Thursday, and Dan Schlossberg [ballauthor@gmail.com] edits the weekend editions on Friday and Saturday. Readers are encouraged to contribute comments, articles, and letters to the editor. HTP reserves the right to edit for brevity, clarity, and good taste.