Another great week for the Tigers, just when things looked there darkest. This team has a way of bouncing back when it seems like they are going in the tank. Here’s hoping they keep it going…

• With their recent string of one run wins, the Tigers have improved their record to 32-30 in games decided by less than two runs. In one run games, their record now stands at 18-20.
• I don’t know if you’re familiar with Dougs Stats, but it is a website that has various baseball statistics. They are your typical stats, but he has a section for The Last 20 games. A quick check shows that the Tigers are tied for the fewest errors in the AL over the last 20 games with 7. The Tigers still haven’t been walking much, where they are second to last. But fortunately they have cut down the strikeouts and have the 3rd fewest over that timespan.

  On the pitching side they have struck out the fewest hitters over the last 20 games, and allowed the second most home runs which goes along ways towards explaining and ERA of 5.18.

  As far as individual acomplishments, Placido Polanco has more hits than anyone else in the AL over the last 20 games. Chris Shelton has the 5th most strikeouts in the AL, but also the third most walks with 14 (which means he has roughly 1/6 of the teams walks over the last 20 games).

  There are more Tigers on the various leaderboards, and it’s just a fun site to peruse. Dougs Stats – I recommend it.

• Another great way to spend a lot of time is looking at Fan Graphs. They have presented a ton of information for each player in a graphical format. For example, in the case of Brandon Inge you can see his dropoff in batting average this season:
  

  But then you can also see that about the time his batting average started dipping, he started hitting a lot more ground balls and fewer line drives and flyballs.
  
  This is just one example, and they have a ton more charts. Good times for baseball geeks.

• As for Carlos Pena, it is great to see him hitting the ball like he did against Toronto. The unfortunate thing is that there is pretty much no way the Tigers will keep him, or be able to trade him for much. Pena is making $2.6 million this year – which is quite a bit to pay for someone who spent half the year in the minors. Normally, you’d think that would work to the Tigers advantage when it comes time to offer a new contract. Unfortunately, the CBA dictates that the Tigers offer must be at least 80% of the previous year’s contract. So the Tigers offer would have to be at least $2.08 million which is probably more than they’d want to spend.

  As for trading Pena, the team that acquired him would be subject to the same salary rules. Also, the the other teams will know that Pena is most likely going to be non-tendered, meaning they’d have a shot at him anyways – at a much lower price.