Happy Friday, everyone! We\u2019ve made it through the week, thank goodness, and our reward is the official return of baseball games! Sure, you can say Spring Training doesn\u2019t matter, but tell that to a fan who has been starved for live games since October. The Tigers won\u2019t have their first game until tomorrow, but hey, something to look forward to! In the meantime, the Tigers have unveiled their new home and road alternate jerseys and they\u2019re pretty darned slick!<\/p>\n
The other biggest news of the week is that MLBPA executive director Tony Clark, who has led the Players\u2019 union since 2013, stepped down amid a sea of scandal (personal, not baseball-related) and his interim replacement Bruce Meyer has been announced. This is a terrible time for the players to be shifting leadership as debate over salary caps and the CBA is running rampant. We\u2019ll have a bit more on that below.<\/p>\n
So let\u2019s get into the news bites for the day and prepare ourselves for baseball tomorrow!<\/p>\n
Last season, McGonigle, 21, dominated the Arizona Fall League, slashing .362\/.500\/.710 with six homers and 19 RBIs, winning the league\u2019s MVP award. That performance came after he hit .305\/.408\/.583 with 19 homers and 80 RBIs in 88 games split between Low A, High A and Double A during the regular season. He projects as a future batting title winner with 20-25 home run power. He\u2019s selectively aggressive at the plate, is very quick on inside pitches and goes the other way extremely well on tough pitches down and away. He\u2019s also solid defensively and is a good base-runner. If the Tigers give him a legitimate shot to make the roster this spring, he should, given his polish and talent.<\/p>\n
Clark, 21, leads all potential rookies in swag and speed. He profiles as an elite leadoff hitter who will reach base consistently and steal bases at will. He has solid bat speed and above-average plate discipline and he makes good swing decisions. Clark is a tremendous defensive center fielder with solid first-step quickness and well above-average range in all directions. He also has the arm to stop base-runners from taking the next base. He\u2019ll be a fan favorite quickly in the Motor City and, along with McGonigle, should give the Tigers an extremely fun and bright future. He\u2019d be higher on my list but he\u2019s likely to start the season in the minor leagues as he has just 43 games of Double-A experience.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Happy Friday, everyone! We\u2019ve made it through the week, thank goodness, and our reward is the official return…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":583000,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2386],"tags":[5,147,53,3536,2583,4,3537,594],"class_list":{"0":"post-582999","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-detroit-tigers","8":"tag-baseball","9":"tag-detroit","10":"tag-detroit-tigers","11":"tag-detroit-tigers-news","12":"tag-detroittigers","13":"tag-mlb","14":"tag-mlb-news","15":"tag-tigers"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/116103531994926105","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/582999","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=582999"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/582999\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/583000"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=582999"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=582999"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=582999"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}