Bless You Boys: for Detroit Tigers fans

If you're not familiar with the website the Pitcher List, well you should be. One of our favorite sites for analysis and good writing, the site has evolved from fantasy coverage and video focusing mainly on pitching, into a full-blooded baseball site covering all topics with a lot of great insight. We were pleased to welcome Alex Fast to the podcast to talk about the Tigers 2020 pitching staff and pitching in general.

We talked a lot about Matt Boyd, because Boyd remains one of the more intriguing pitchers and developing personalities in the game. Beyond him, we look through the Tigers rotation and the odds of a better showing this season. You can check out Pitcher List's recent interview with Boyd here.

Joe Jimenez is another interesting breakout candidate, and we'll discuss his stuff, and the Tigers organizational philosophies as it comes to pitching and pitcher usage.

Finally we'll talk the Tigers big three, as Casey Mize, Matt Manning, and Tarik Skubal continue to turn heads in Lakeland.

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I'm told that it's still too early to say anything, so what follows is an hour of silence. Yes of course I'm kidding. The numbers don't matter, although some of them are hilarious, but what's happening on the field and on the backfields as well, does matter. With all that in mind, Brandon Day and Ashley MacLennan will take a look at some early returns. We'll also check in on how several roster battles are shaping up in the early going.

The prospects are making their presence felt in Lakeland, and that's been more fun than anything else. We'll check in on Riley Greene, Casey Mize, Matt Manning, Tarik Skubal and the rest, and what they're working on this spring.

Matt Boyd has become the staff leader, and took his fellow lefties to Driveline this offseason.

Finally we'll discuss Keith Law's farm system rankings briefly, and explore how whining about bias has come to substitute for rational thought and inquiry. Good times.

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On this edition of the Bless You Boys podcast, host Brandon Day is joined by Mark Simon of Sports Info Solutions. Mark has worked supplying statistics for ESPN, has appeared on MLB Network, and is one of the authors of the brand new Fielding Bible V hitting stores next week.

Sports Info Solutions is the creator of defensive runs saved (DRS), probably the most popular and useful defensive metric available. For this new edition of the Fielding Bible, DRS has been radically overhauled to help take the prevalence of defensive shifts into account, and more accurately account for the individual parts of a player's defensive game, as well as the greater whole. It also allows a better sense of which teams do the best job of positioning, gaining or losing value by putting their defenders in better/worse positions to succeed.

We'll talk about DRS and defense generally, and chat about other areas of the game where new metrics are having a major impact, both in quantifying player skill, but also in terms of altering what is measured and valued.

You can tweet any questions about defense, or baseball generally, to Mark @SportsInfo_SIS, and we thank him for joining us for a discussion on the podcast. Fielding Bible V meanwhile, is available for pre-order on Amazon and will hit stores next week as well.

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Mercifully, after a strange offseason, spring camp has arrived full of feel-good stories, talented prospects, a lean, mean Miguel Cabrera, and all the trappings of the 2020 season’s beginning. We’ll take a look at some of the news, notes, and general chicanery coming out of Lakeland with the boys now back in town.

MLB announces pay raises for MiLB players, which is good, but as expected, they seem to come at the expense of a lot of jobs rather than any commitment from owners to treat their players more fairly.

Finally, the sign-stealing scandal won’t leave the headlines as players weigh in with frustration and anger, and Rob Manfred’s story seems to change every day. Now we wait for the other shoe to drop in Boston, and at least one of us (Brandon) fears this is going to get worse before it gets better.

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We’re back with a special edition on the state of the Detroit Tigers farm system. Joined by BYB prospect analyst Jay Markle, we’ll run through a host of prospect topics in this one. Also, I need to apologize in advance for a little racket at times caused by a grouchy graphics card. The sound quality has improved a lot since we started the podcast up again, but we're still working with a time and resource crunch. Thanks for your understanding.

First, we take a look at FanGraphs recent top 39 list for the Tigers system and discuss what surprised us and stood out in their evaluations. We’ll also look at some of the published data they have available and some hints that the Tigers are making some progress in using data to improve their pitchers.

We’ll take turns offering up players we’re higher or lower on than FanGraphs or the rest of our staff seem to be.

Several players are in a position where at least a modest breakout is required this season. We’ll discuss who really needs a good year to stay on track in the system, and which of the 2019 draft class will move fastest.

Finally we’ll talk a bit about the state of the organization, the future and how to get there successfully, and positive and negative signs from the Tigers’ front office.

This will be Jay’s last podcast with us before taking on his new role over at Motor City Bengals, and we’d like to thank him for all his hard work over the past four years. We’ll also miss him personally, but the baseball writing community remains tight knit and ever changing, so perhaps this isn’t Jay’s last rodeo with us here at BYB. Check out his work over at MCB coming in February, and as always we’d also like to recommend our friends over at Tigers Minor League Report for more excellent prospect coverage.

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Sorry. The Tigers have been quiet, and these damned Astros won't stop putting their whole foot in their own mouth. This whole offseason has felt like a steady dose of black eyes to MLB, and baseball you can get here any time now, thank you very much.

Hosts Brandon Day and Ashley MacLennan will talk a little about that creeping pitchers and catchers reporting vibe we're starting to catch as the Tigers Winter Caravan breezed through our social media feeds and then disappeared without a trace as there was no Tigerfest to center these quite random events on.

We'll look at the incredibly tone deaf responses Astros players have offered in their first questioning over the Trash Can Conspiracy, Bang-gate, Bang-hazi, or whatever you prefer to call the cheating scandal. And most painfully, our long-time hero Justin Verlander proves again to be a hypocrite of the highest order, and should probably stop talking and start showing some leadership as the face of the Astros organization.

Nicholas "Nick" Castellanos is headed to Cincinatti on a deal packed full of deferred money and opt-outs. Wish we knew how to do those things here in Detroit. However, Castellanos is good for the Reds, but might not move the needle enough for the Reds to thread it in their brief window for contention in a closely packed NL Central.

Finally we'll chat a bit about FanGraphs new top 38 Tigers prospects list, and one very interesting decision they made at the top of said list.

Thanks for tuning in, and please keep a lookout on Friday when we'll have a lengthy prospects conversation with BYB prospect writer Jay Markle. And as always, please check out our friends at the Tigers Minor League Report for further coverage of the Tigers farm as well.

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The Tigers signed Ivan Nova, which is cool and all, but like all the moves this offseason, they promise a more watchable brand of baseball but don’t do anything for the organization’s longer term goals. But yeah we’re gonna talk a whole bunch about the Houston Astros sign stealing scandal, and the fallout from the isolated, but stern punishments delivered by MLB on Monday.

In the final analysis, pitchers and catchers are the ones needing a technological solution, and some way to surreptitiously convey signs needs to be developed in a hurry. One of the wilder things about the Astros scheme is just how low tech and brazen their signaling system was. Probably other teams who really wanted to could come up with something rather more clever.

Somehow the players involved escape punishment, which sucks, and other than the draft picks, Jim Crane and the Astros get to move on like nothing happened. Other than in the court of opinion where their 2017 World Series title will forever be tainted. Man, these are tough times for a baseball fan. MLB has so many credibility problems going on at once. Can we ever just get back to baseball?

Not bloody likely.

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BYB staff writers/editors Brandon Day and Ashley MacLennan are back after the holiday break, and there is much to discuss. We'll tackle the weirdness surrounding the Tigers decision to end the winter version of Tigerfest in favor of doing in July, and why that seems like a terrible idea poorly communicated. The Tigers did reinvest their Nick Castellanos savings in a few solid stopgap players this offseason and we're reasonably happy with their choices. The club also brought back reliever Alex Wilson, who resumed graduate studies in psychology last year and will function part-time as the Pitcher Whisperer. And finally we'll discuss Dan Dickerson's fanpost on the baseball itself, the juiced ball era, and the league's failing credibility on this and other issues.

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There are a few minor bits of news to discuss as we reach Thanksgiving, but our listeners/readers responded to the call with plenty of good questions, so we dive right into our mailbag in this episode. Hopefully we have a few good answers.

Topics range from the Rule 5 draft and free agency to recent Tigers history, Comerica Park's dimensions, and much more. Thanks to BYB's community for reading our work, listening to the podcasts, and always participating in smart, lively discussion on the site.

On behalf of the whole staff, we wish you all a very Happy Thanksgiving!

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We're back with a special guest, as Emily Waldon of The Athletic Detroit and Baseball America joins host Brandon Day for a conversation on her time scouting the Arizona Fall League, the Tigers roster crunch at Triple-A, and the minor league restructuring proposals MLB has put forward.

-We check in on Daz Cameron, Anthony Castro and some of the action from the Arizona Fall League.

-2020 is going to be crunch time in the upper minors within the Tigers system.

-Rob Manfred says it's his way or the highway, and surprisingly everyone is quite upset about his confrontational posture and desire to contract the minor leagues.

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