In a normal baseball offseason, all the trades would have already happened. Front offices have all season to call each other up with a million permutations of deals, and the deals they make spawn other deals, and player injuries spawn other deals, and free-agent signings lead to surpluses or needs, and… well, you get the idea. Trading flurries happen in December, and during spring training, and teams work out their rosters that way.

With a compressed offseason thanks to the lockout, the timeline has gotten all mixed up. Now, trades are happening three days before opening day. It’s madness! And speaking of:

Tigers Get

• Austin Meadows

Rays Get

• Isaac Paredes
• Competitive Balance Round B Pick

This trade was announced last night, and I’m writing about it this morning, and so rather than write a block of text about one side’s return and then a block of text about the other, I’m going to try a slightly different framing tool: I’ll walk you through a few levels of how I’ve thought about this deal. It’s an interesting one, no doubt, as trades involving the Rays so often are. Let’s get started!
Read the rest of this entry »

Stephen Ridings strikes an imposing figure on the mound. He also misses a lot of bats. Straddling the rubber at 6-foot-8, 225 pounds, the 26-year-old right-handed reliever is coming off a season where he recorded 42 strikeouts in 29 minor-league innings, and another seven in a five-inning cup of coffee with the New York Yankees. Moreover, he allowed just 20 hits and six walks in the 34 cumulative frames.

Drafted out of Division-III Haverford College by the Chicago Cubs in 2016 — the Yankees are his third organization — Ridings comes out of the bullpen with an attack-dog mindset.

“Right now, I’m the guy that wants to blow doors off,” explained Ridings, whom New York signed in January 2021 after he was released by the Kansas City Royals. “I’m trying to strike out as many guys as humanly possible.”

The 18% swinging strike rate that Eric Longenhagen noted when writing up Ridings for our 2022 Yankees Top Prospect list — the righty is No. 21 in those rankings — comes courtesy of three-pitch mix. A heater that sits mid-to-high 90s and tops out in triple digits is his bread-and-butter, and a slider he began throwing in spring training of last year is his best secondary. A knuckle-curve rounds out his repertoire. Read the rest of this entry »

Toronto Blue Jays pitching prospect Hagen Danner is a converted catcher who gets good ride on his four-seam fastball, and he attributes that quality to his former position. Hearing that from the 23-year-old right-hander prompted me to ask Philadelphia Phillies manager Joe Girardi if what I was told made sense.

“I can definitely see that,” said Girardi, who caught for 15 big-league seasons. “But I don’t think it’s a guarantee; some [catchers] have a little tail to their ball when they throw. At times, I would have a little tail. But [Garrett] Stubbs really gets underneath it, really gets that spin. There are a lot of catchers who do. It’s how we’re taught to throw.”

Good ride typically comes with a four-seam grip, but unlike pitchers, a catcher isn’t standing on a mound with ample time to manipulate the baseball in his hand; he has to receive the ball, make the transfer, and get rid of it as quickly as possible. I asked the catcher-turned-manager about that as well.

“You don’t have time to get the grip, but ideally you want to throw it straight,” said Girardi. “And you can still throw it straight, pretty much, if you don’t have a perfect four-seam grip.”

Detroit Tigers manager A.J. Hinch is likewise a former catcher, so I asked him the same questions I’d asked Girardi. Read the rest of this entry »

After escaping last place in the American League Central for just the second time in five years in 2021, the Detroit Tigers have signaled that they’re ready to contend, committing over $230 million this offseason to free agents Javier Báez, Eduardo Rodriguez, and Andrew Chafin. On Friday, they added another free agent of note, signing Michael Pineda to a one-year deal.

The 33-year-old Pineda, who spent the past four seasons with the Twins, is guaranteed $5.5 million, with an additional $375,000 apiece for surpassing the 50-, 75-, 100-, and 125-inning thresholds, and another $500,000 for surpassing the 150- and 175-inning thresholds. That’s a maximum of $2.5 million in incentives and $8 million in total salary if he throws at least 175 innings.

Pineda hasn’t reached that total in a single season since 2016, when he was a member of the Yankees. Since then, he’s thrown just 378.1 innings at the major league level, having missed half of 2017 and all of ’18 due to Tommy John surgery, drawing a 60-game PED suspension late in ’19 that carried over into the following year, and then missing about eight weeks last season due to an abscess on his inner thigh, an inflamed elbow, and a strained oblique. It appears that he’ll miss some time to start this season due to work visa issues, which could keep him out of camp for another week or two.

When he was healthy, the 6-foot-7, 280-pound righty — “Big Mike,” of course — pitched reasonably well last year, at least from a superficial standpoint, as he posted a 3.62 ERA (83 ERA-) and 4.12 FIP (98 FIP-) in 109.1 innings. Beyond the ERA, however, there were reasons to be concerned. The average velocity of his low-spin four-seam fastball was down nearly two full ticks compared to 2019 (from 92.5 mph to 90.6) — I’m skipping his five-start ’20 here — and four compared to ’16, when he averaged 94.6 mph. From 2019 to ’21, his strikeout rate fell more than four percentage points (from 23.3% to a career-low 19.2%) and his swinging strikeout rate two points (from 12.5% to a career-low 10.5%). Read the rest of this entry »

I recently asked a pair of prospects which of their former teammates have the best wheels, and on each occasion a 24-year-old middle infielder in the Boston Red Sox system was on the short list. One had him numero uno. The other deemed the speedster in question as being a step behind his first choice.

“Corbin Carroll, for sure,” was Ryne Nelson’s response to my question, the top pitching prospect in the Arizona Diamondbacks system naming the organization’s top position player prospect. “That dude flies.”

While that answer was anything but unexpected, is Carroll truly faster than David Hamilton, whom Nelson played with in the Cape Cod League?

“I think so,” said the righty. “I’ve never seen them together, but I have watched Corbin get from home to third in what felt like three seconds. Hamilton is definitely up there, but it seems like Corbin is the fastest player I’ve ever seen in my life. He can really burn around the bases.”

So too can Hamilton, whom Kody Clemens played with at both the University of Texas and in the independent Constellation League during the 2020 shutdown. Prior to my conversation with Nelson, the Detroit Tigers prospect had told me that Hamilton is the swiftest he’s taken the field with. Read the rest of this entry »

Kody Clemens’s game is built around pop. Playing almost exclusively with Triple-A Toledo, the 25-year-old second baseman went deep 18 times last year in just 424 plate appearances. He knows what he brings to the table. Asked for a self-scouting report, Clemens began by saying he’s “grown to learn that a good part of my game is power.”

Born to a baseball family — his father is the seven-time Cy Young Award winner who shares his surname — Clemens grew up swinging from the left side. That was a matter of happenstance, not of design.

“It just came out that way,” explained Clemens, who is No. 21 on our Detroit Tigers Top Prospects list. “When I was young, my dad put a little bat in my hand and said, ‘Hey, hit the ball.’ I guess I stood up from the left side of the plate. It felt comfortable, so I kept swinging that way.”

The tutelage that followed was predictably based on the perspective of a pitcher. “The Rocket” primarily taught his three sons — Kacy and Koby have also played professionally — about attack plans and how to approach at bats. Mechanics were never much of a focus. Read the rest of this entry »

Austin Wells is well-regarded, albeit with a lot to prove on the defensive side of the ball. There’s little doubt that he can mash. No. 15 on our recently-released New York Yankees Top Prospects list, Wells went deep 16 times in 469 plate appearances last year between Low-A Tampa and High-A Hudson Valley. His left-handed stroke produced a solid .264/.390/.476 slash line, while his wRC+ was an every-bit-as-sturdy 135.

Wells is built to bash — he packs 220 pounds on a 6-foot-2 frame — and his size is also befits a backstop. That’s what he wants to be. Asked about his positional future during his stint in the Arizona Fall League, Wells shared that he’s caught since he was six years old, and plans to continue doing so. Since being drafted 28th-overall in 2020 out of the University of Arizona, all 70 of his defensive games have been spent behind behind the dish. Moreover, “there haven’t been any conversations about playing anywhere else.”

Wells was preparing to play in the Fall Stars Game when I caught up to him, and the first thing I wanted to address were the nuances of his craft. I began by asking what role analytics play for a young, minor-league catcher. Read the rest of this entry »

José Cruz Sr. had an outstanding career. Playing for three teams — most notably the Houston Astros — from 1970-1988, the Puerto Rico-born outfielder logged 2,251 hits while putting up a 119 wRC+ and 50.8 WAR. As his grandson, Detroit Tigers infield prospect Trei Cruz put it, the family patriarch may not be a Hall of Famer, but he is in “The Hall of Very Good.”

Moreover, the father of 1997-2008 big-leaguer José Cruz Jr. is a 74-year-old in a younger man’s body.

“He has more energy than anybody I’ve ever met in my life,” explained Trei, who calls Houston home and is No. 14 on our 2022 Tigers Top Prospect list. “I actually work with him, every single day. He throws BP for hours, and it’s some of the best left-handed BP you’ll ever see. He’s got a lot of life in his arm — he’ll really chuck it in there — and along with gas he’ll mix in sliders and changeups. Guys actually come to hit with me, because his BP is so good. He’s amazing, man. I don’t know how he does it.”

The smooth left-handed-stroke that produced 650 extra-base hits is still there, as well. The septuagenarian may not be able to catch up to mid-90s heat anymore, but he hasn’t forgotten what to do with a bat in his hands. According to Trei, his abuelo isn’t shy about standing in the box when the situation calls for it. Read the rest of this entry »

The most recent of my “Who Was Better” polls on Twitter featured Dale Murphy and Ken Singleton, and while it drew only a modicum of interest — only 95 people cast votes — the results were nonetheless telling. Murphy won in resounding fashion — 76.8% to Singleton’s 23.2% — and it’s unlikely that the percentages would have been markedly different with a more-robust sample size. Murphy is a two-time MVP who made seven All-Star teams and was once on a Hall of Fame trajectory. Singleton made three All-Star teams and received nary a vote in his one year on the ballot.

But was Murphy actually better than the less-ballyhooed Singleton, who broke into the big leagues with the New York Mets before excelling with the Montreal Expos and the Baltimore Orioles? Let’s look at a few of their numbers, keeping in mind that Murphy played in 2,180 games, Singleton in 2.082 games.

Murphy: .265/.346/.469, 2,111 hits, 398 HR, .357 wOBA, 119 wRC+, 44.3 WAR.
Singleton: .282/.388/.436, 2,029 hits, 246 HR,.371 wOBA, 134 wRC+, 44.4 WAR.

Peaks matter, so here is the best eight-year stretch for both: Read the rest of this entry »

Episode 957

This week on the show, David Laurila is joined by Dan Dickerson, radio voice of the Detroit Tigers who last joined us back in episode 892, and Don Gonyea, a long-time political correspondent for National Public Radio and a diehard Tigers fan in his own right.

Dan and Don share stories of their decades-long friendship, as well as the baseball they have followed and covered. They reminisce about Mark Fidrych and “the summer of The Bird,” getting to know the legendary Ernie Harwell, following sports and meeting fans while working around the globe, and the fateful day of Armando Galarraga’s near-perfect game.

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