Bless You Boys

Over a month has passed since Major League Baseball’s owners locked out the players and abruptly cut off negotiations on a new collective bargaining agreement (CBA), freezing all player transactions at the same time. The Athletic reports that the owners are preparing to finally make an offer to the players some time before the end

The 2021 minor league season held plenty of surprises, and the Detroit Tigers had their share. Returning to action after the cancellation of minor league ball in 2020, players had been largely out of sight for 18 months, and much changed in the prospect landscape behind the scenes. The Tigers can look no further than

Welcome to our top 30 prospect rankings for the Detroit Tigers’ farm system in 2022. While the players are still locked out by MLB owners, and there is little on that front to report, the show must go on anyway. The time is right to talk prospects while we wait for word of a breakthrough

The Rule 5 Draft can be summarized as, “Teams try to find a diamond in the rough.” If you’re unfamiliar with the process, it goes like this: if you’ve been playing in the minor leagues for four years (or five, depending on your age when you were drafted), and you aren’t on your parent club’s

The Detroit Tigers have gone through a lot of changes over the past year, and nearly all of them have been for the better. From the major league club’s renewal under new manager A.J. Hinch, to the influx of blue chip prospect talent from the farm system, suddenly a lot of things are going right

Do you have some things you need to change in your life come January 1st? We should all eat better, work out more, spend more time offline with friends and loved ones, and read more books, presumably. But what about our fair baseball club’s players? What sorts of resolutions should the Detroit Tigers themselves make,

The 2021 Detroit Tigers will not be remembered as a team that clapped an enormous amount of home runs by current standards— they finished 24th in the MLB with 179 bombs — but they had many that are worth revisiting. It’s also interesting to note that back in 2012, at the peak of their four-year

Here at Bless You Boys, we strive to provide you with insightful, well-written, and informative coverage and analysis of the Detroit Tigers baseball team. I can assure you, I put my best effort into my sentences to make sure this is well-written. As for the other stuff, look, we’re going on a month of a

With major league baseball still on lockdown through the holidays, there still isn’t much to report from around the league. Negotiators from league owners and the players association met briefly last week, but mainly to hash out some technical details as opposed to core economic issues. And so, we wait. Unfortunately, the most notable news

The Detroit Tigers offered shortstop Carlos Correa a 10 year contract valued at $275 million, according to Buster Olney of ESPN. While Correa remains unsigned during the owners’ lockout of the players, the Tigers moved on by signing Javier Báez to a six year, $140 million contract. Correa was the clear favorite of Tigers’ fans

As talks between Major League Baseball owners and players on a new collective bargaining agreement (CBA) have stalled, one of the most troubling issues is that of “revenue sharing”. That is, money that is funneled from larger to smaller market teams with the idea that doing so will help to “level the playing field” created

We’re still a long way from spring training, and free agency has been rudely interrupted by the lockout, but as there’s nothing going on, this is as good a time as any to take stock of how the 2022 Detroit Tigers are shaping up. To help us, we have Dan Symborski’s new ZIPS forecast for

One of the most contentious issues in the current round of collective bargaining is the issue of teams “tanking”, or not making an effort to field a competitive team and failing to spend on player salaries. The players’ association has made it clear that there will be no new CBA without addressing this issue. Much

Shortly after the calendar turned to 2021, Detroit Tigers general manager, Al Avila, did something he hadn’t done in nearly five years. On January 5th, 2021, he signed outfielder Robbie Grossman to a two-year, $10 million contract. It was the first multi-year contract the Tigers had given to a free agent since they signed Justin

Debate around pitchers tends to center around ERA and FIP, and their component parts. However, there are a few other interesting tools for examining a pitcher’s overall performance in a season. One element that isn’t captured by either statistic is how often a given starting pitcher was, or wasn’t, bailed out of tight situations by

Normally the it would be time for Winter Meetings. Fans would be hoping their team makes a flurry of moves and plucks a gem from the Rule 5 Draft. This is not that year. The lockout has halted almost everything. Normally following the Rule 5 Draft MLB portion, there is a minor league portion that

This year’s selections for overlooked players to be elected to the Hall of Fame are in. The Modern Baseball committee, as you’ll recall, elected Tigers greats Alan Trammell and Jack Morris to the Hall back in 2018. This year it was the Golden Days and Early Days committees’ turn, covering players active between 1950 and

Thanks for joining us once again. Brandon Day and Ashley MacLennan are back to talk about the Javy Báez signing, what it means for the team on the field, and what, if anything it says about ownership and the front office’s plans for the future. Then, we’ll have to get into less entertaining fare. After

The fine folks at BreakingT have done it again, this time celebrating the newest infield phenom for the Detroit Tigers: Javier Báez! Javy’s most well-known nickname, “El Mago” is one he has certainly earned with his dazzling defensive displays (forgive me, I love alliteration a bit too much sometimes). “El Mago” means “The Magician” in

Wednesday afternoon the Tigers announced that they had signed Javier Báez to lock down the shortstop position in Detroit for the foreseeable future. In a move that owner Chris Ilitch describes as a “turning point” for the franchise, El Mago was inked to a six-year, $140 million deal that includes an opt-out after two years.