Mike Smith

@SLR_1985 Verlander had an agency that was willing to sign an extension while he was a Tiger. Skubal has Boras and is part of the union's executive committee. For many reasons he may want to fight for player rights and salaries on an open market. I can't hate him for that to be honest.

@MSmithDetroit I think you’re right…but he’ll never be embraced the same as Verlander here. JV wanted to be in Detroit, wanted to pitch as long as he could in big games, etc. Skubal doesn’t give the indication of either.

Random 40-man player note #37: Tarik Skubal I was part of the group that drafted Justin Verlander and I got to watch him through the peak of his career until I left in 2015. I also grew up a Red Sox fan and used to schedule my week around catching Pedro Martinez's starts in 1999 when he was at the peak of his powers. And I can honestly say that watching Tarik Skubal the last two years is better than any stretch I saw from Verlander. The only comparable I have is peak 1999 Pedro, when he put up one of the most dominant pitching seasons of all time.

You point out a challenge - it is very hard to compare across eras. At the same time, two other things are going on here: 1. Starters are being asked to go all-out on every pitch way more. Verlander often would "coast" at 94-96 for the first 3-4 innings and you'd only see the 97-99 (and occasionally 100+) late. Skubal throws fewer innings, but he also throws harder on average. Skubal averaged 97.0 in 2024 and 97.7 (!!!) last year. JV never averaged more than 96.2, when he did so in 2009 (this only goes back to 2007 though). 2. Verlander is very much a survivor of the test-for-a-witch trial. Throw him in the pond, if he sinks and dies, then he wasn't a witch (not a sturdy starter), but if he floats/can swim, he's clearly a witch and should be hanged (in this case, he gets to pitch at age 43)!

@MSmithDetroit I agree to some extent with you, Mike, but I disagree in this way. Pitching 5 to 6 innings, on occasion 7 for Skubal is nowhere near what Verlander was doing on a regular basis. And that affects your numbers. It also affects how hard you can throw earlier in a game

Grab a mic and unleash a Tigers question or comment. Time for some baseball crossfire. Tigers Intelligence Report open.substack.com/pub/tigersinte…

@bythewaybro Nice info!

Tigers prospect Hao-Yu Lee was back in Tigers camp yesterday in the minor league backfields. He was experiencing a oblique injury, which sidelined him for the entire WBC. 📸: vamossports.com.tw

Yes, the "trade" of him for Taggert + $100K was highway robbery in hindsight. Petit is current on the IL with an elbow injury, it's unclear how long he's going to be out. The Rockies may be on the hook for up to a year of ML salary while he sits on the IL. x.com/MSmithDetroit/…

@MSmithDetroit Any updated thoughts on RJ Petit? Didn’t get much action this spring. And not great results.

Checking in on how Rule 5 pick RJ Petit is doing with the Rockies so far: - 2 outings (2/20 and 2/25) - 3 IP, 1 H, 0 R, 2 BB, 0 K - Topping out at 96, 60% whiff rate on 2/20, 11% whiff rate on 2/25. I'd say it's 50/50 the Tigers get him back.

@tigersMLreport Please start doing your pods with Evan with shades on too, Chris.

@clubex Before his disaster of a year last year, he was in the category of broad base of skills without any exceptional one - guys like Vierling and even Curtis Granderson before his power breakout are other examples. That category of player is often underrated by most pundits.

@MSmithDetroit What is the fascination with Sweeney? He’s shown he can hit velocity, poor OBP, and is average at SS. The team have McG and Javy to fill that slot.

Brieske might have moved to front of the line for an IL60 placement to make room for McGonigle. Horn and Sweeney both seem on paths to be back sooner than May 24. Brieske could start a rehab assignment April 24 and work as if he was optioned 30 days without the service time penalty.

@NickMinton10 Works for me!

@MSmithDetroit He should be the closer in Toledo before he comes up later this year.

Random 40-man player note #36: Dylan Smith Everyone has a guy or two that's their gut feel guy, someone they're higher on than almost anyone else. Smith is one of those for me (point of clarification: we're not related). I keep seeing the guy who can touch 97-98, who was 98th percentile in K%, whiff%, and zone contact % at AAA last year, who has a nasty slider and changeup when it's all working. If he can just stay healthy (is a line we say about so many players), I think he can be that guy for stretches and really help the ML club. I know I'm underrating his inability stay on the field (health is also a skill), just like I underrate the value of someone like Spencer Torkelson who has always answered the bell. I just can't quit Dylan.

Insiders who have been following Kevin McGonigle's spring skills display have seen better defense than was anticipated -- as well as a bat, and makeup, as good as advertised. Tigers Intelligence Report story. open.substack.com/pub/tigersinte…

Good coverage from MLB on the Tigers prospects this spring and what they're seeing in the back fields. Stuff I hadn't seen yet: - Witherspoon stayed in Lakeland all winter and looks great - Salcedo has a minor knee issue and is slightly behind - More love for Callahan mlb.com/tigers/news/ti…

I want to ground this before I start - I am not a scout. I had to work very hard at that side of my skillset just to be adequate. I still read all the scouting coverage from @rogcastbaseball, @ChrisBrown0914, @OPSenheimer, @Fiskadoro74, @joe_rampe and others and put a lot of weight in what they see. That being said, what I've seen from Keith on video and on the statsheet I love: - I watched a lot of him in the Minors. He has a very short swing and can use all fields. He's hit all pitch types, and someone (Jerry?) had a meme that RHP should never throw him a slider. The Hit tool is there for me. - He manages relatively low K rates with relatively high ISO (Briceno does to this an even more extreme amount). The only "downside" is he hits a lot more line drives than truly lofted flyballs. I'm not worried about that. No one was angry that McGonigle and Clark are/were hitters first and are now learning how to maximize their power. Keith's in the same boat - his Hit tool isn't as good as either of them but he has far more raw power (yes, I acknowledge that McGonigle is a freak and manages to show insane power given his frame). - The exit velocities - he's pulled those up fast, from an average of 87.9 in '24 to 90.0 last year. His Max EV was already good at 109.4 in '24 to 110.0 last year to 111.4 this spring. - If you've ever seen those hot streaks he had in the Minors where he'd go 1-2 weeks and absolutely torch everything, including a ton of homers, it's hard to get that out of your head. He looks special even among most baseball players when he's peaking. - The work ethic - this guy does nothing but play baseball. He doesn't drink, he's dedicated to this because he knows his career is over by the time he's 40, he goes out and loses 7 pounds this offseason just so he can be better at 3B. - Subjective without proof: I think he gets in his own head and gets in the way of all his natural talent at times. Once he really gets comfortable in the Majors (which has been hard with all the slow starts and position switches), I think he'll go off and won't look back. So yeah, I'm all-in on Keith.

@MSmithDetroit @dunf7496 @opesandreams Right. So, I want to talk about Keith. What do you think about his power? What do you think the best tools/stats are to project power? I just sort of look at the quality of contact and the spray chart to game it out. What should I be looking at?

Want a sign McGonigle is on the ML club? He's been pulled from the Spring Breakout roster. baseballamerica.com/stories/tiered…

@confusion_reign @dunf7496 @opesandreams If there was a smoking gun on service time manipulation, the club would have gotten in trouble. There are certainly lots of other plausible reasons. In my experience, in this particular instance, getting the extra year of service seemed to be the driving reason to me.

@MSmithDetroit @dunf7496 @opesandreams I’m wary of trying your patience, but I think of it like “the team knows a guy is ready and is not promoting them” e.g. Kris Bryant. There are lots of plausible reasons for recalling Meadows when they did. There’s got to be some supporting evidence

@IYKbaseball @tiger337 @tigers FYI I’m high in Dylan Smith, not Burch Smith.

@MSmithDetroit @tiger337 honestly if the @tigers were a 73 win team Sommers/Smith would be the kind of guys coming north..but they're not..they're an 88-90 win team..so 36 year old 5.79 career ERA and a lefty who has 35 grade command..don't interest me

Jansen Vest Finnegan Holton Anderson Heurter need 2 more De Jesus Rainey Guenther Hanifee not sure there's been a decision made yet..not closing the door on a waiver claim..

@tiger337 @IYKbaseball Both of them can be recalled for an injured player. Horn and Brieske will both go to the injured list at the end of spring and Smith/Sommers can be recalled for them.

@MSmithDetroit @IYKbaseball If we are talking about who is coming north, Dylan Smith has alrrady been optioned and Sommers has been re-assigned.

I'll weigh in one more time. For each day someone is optioned, they don't get service time for that day. For each day in the Majors, they get a day of service. Every 172 days of service counts as one year (often written as 0.172 = 1.000). When they reach 6.000 MLS, they qualify for free agency at the end of that year. For me, it's very simple: at the start of 2024, they had high hopes Meadows could be their starting CF. He already was at 0.042 MLS and there was no reason to option him for a week or two to try to manipulate the years of control - it would have taken over seven weeks in the Minors to get another year of control. Then the worst-case scenario happened - he was absolutely awful and they had to option him. He finally started to right the ship in the Minors about five weeks into that option and it started to make sense to bring him back up. Had they recalled him on July 2, he would have finished 2024 at 1.000 and could have been a free agent as soon as 2029. By waiting until July 5, he finished 2024 at 0.169 MLS and can't be a free agent any sooner than 2030. It was that week, from June 29 to July 5, 2024, where I saw service time manipulation being part of the equation on when to recall him.

@MSmithDetroit @dunf7496 @opesandreams Or am I misunderstanding the service time rules? Which I may be- I’m working on the assumption that optioning him to start the 2024 season would have served the same function as demoting him. Only they wouldn’t have needed him to fail to execute the former

@confusion_reign @dunf7496 @opesandreams You are welcome to that opinion. I'm sharing mine from my perspective as a former FO employee. We don't know for certain which of us is right. I'm fine with that. Done with this conversation for now. Thanks for engaging.

@MSmithDetroit @dunf7496 @opesandreams He started 0-3 with a 7.11 ERA. Why would they care about an extra year of service time? He had pitched 1 full season in his career and that was 4 years prior. They optioned him because they wanted to make changes in AAA.

@confusion_reign @dunf7496 @opesandreams I have no idea what you're talking about at this point. I said they didn't recall him quickly early in July, three months after the period you're discussing, to get an extra year of service. This is going to have to be another one where I'm done talking about this with you.

@MSmithDetroit @dunf7496 @opesandreams He ended the season on the roster- they would have had to option him to start him in AAA. He was optioned in May because he hit .100 to open the season. If he was hitting .200, they wouldn’t have optioned him. It became an issue because he was unplayable

He already came into that season with 42 days of service from the prior year. There was no service time manipulation to be had on Opening Day. Only when he had been optioned for an extended period of time did a year of control come into play, and it seems to me they took that route.

@MSmithDetroit @dunf7496 @opesandreams Because if they valued the year of service why would start him opening day and then carry him for six weeks while he hit .100? When they thought he’d be good it wasn’t a concern but once he was unplayable, THEN it became a determinative factor?