Monthly Archives: December 2005

Trade Rumors

Should the Tigers want Koskie?

6 Comments

With the Toronto Blue Jays acquiring Troy Glaus and Lyle Overbay, they now have enough corner infielders to defense a pentagon. Corey Koskie is one of the most likely corner infielders to be traded. It’s been thought that the Tigers need to improve third base and get a left handed bat. Koskie would serve both of those roles, but is it a good idea?

To illustrate, let’s go to the good old fashioned Player A versus Player B

             Player A                       Player B

Age        AVG   OBP    SLG          AVG   OBP    SLG

30         300    377    538          292    393    452
31         277    367    445          251    342    495
32         282    345    417          249    337    398

Player B is Corey Koskie and Player A is Detroit Tiger legend and scapegoat, Bobby Higginson. While the numbers don’t match up exactly, both players appear to suffer a decline in average at age 32/33. While Higginson’s numbers declined more rapidly, the pattern appears to be farily similar. I chose Higginson because he was familiar to Tiger fans, but there are other more telling cases.

Using Baseball Reference, here are the 10 most similar players to Koskie 

958  Chris Sabo
949  Melvin Mora
947  Whitey Kurowski
937  Aaron Boone
934  Torii Hunter 
934  Hank Thompson
932  Dave Hollins
932  Jeffrey Hammonds
927  Ellis Valentine
926  Mike Lowell

While Melvin Mora was definitely a late bloomer who has continued to perform well, the rest of the list isn’t too promising. The combined statistics from Age 33 on for that group are 259/321/417. That isn’t too bad, until you realize that over half of the at-bats accumulated by the group were from Melvin Mora last year. Very few of the group played at all, yet alone significantly after they turned 33. Granted, Torii Hunter, Aaron Boone, and Mike Lowell haven’t reached age 33 yet, but Lowell and Boone have already experienced serious decline.Now none of this means that Koskie won’t be a productive player in the future. He would still provide solid defense, and can still work the count. It’s also likely his thumb injury from last year hampered his offensive performance. If he comes back healthy he could regain his old form. But then again, aren’t Tiger fans already saying that about a couple key contributors?

(Special Thanks to Chris who wrote and raised the question).

detroit tigers,baseball

Uncategorized

DTW Year in Review

2 Comments

The post that was 12 months in the making, and 45 minutes in the writing – the Year in Review. (seriously, there is NO Tiger news to report) As you’ve probably realized if you’ve been reading this site for awhile, I like statistics. With that, let’s take a look back:

  • Posts: 210
  • Words: 103,537(not counting this post)
  • Comments: 1156
  • Interviews: 3
  • Visits: 72,000+
  • Page Views: 100,000+
  • Redesigns: 1

I thought about counting up the graphs and charts, but then I was just too lazy.

The most commented on posts were the Kenny Rogers signing, Ugueth Urbina being traded, and our wild and crazy prediction thread.

I’d like to thank all of you who have been here all year, and everybody else who began reading along the way. Thanks for taking the time to leave comments and get the discussions moving. This year has by far been my most successful year, if you define success as visits and recognition that is. My traffic increased by about 300% this year. All of that increase of course came from you coming back again and again, and telling your friends and thanks for that.

But you had to find this place in the first place, and that was faciliated by a number of people. Sean Baligian gave me several mentions on WDFN, and Mike Wendland wrote about the site in the Free Press. Most of my traffic though came from the generous linking of others. David Pinto, Seth Stohs, Geoff Young, Dave Studeman and so many others helped to drive considerable traffic to this site. There are many, many more who linked to me, and to list them all would take the rest of the day. I’d also like to thank Scott at Motown Sports for the opportunity to write for his site, and at the same time promote mine.

I’d also like to thank Dave Dombrowski, Ernie Harwell, and Dan Dickerson for being so generous in their time and their willingness to participate in interviews. This site is still pretty small in the grand scheme of things, but it is a little bigger with a little more credibility (I think) thanks to those interviews.

And of course there is the Detroit/Tiger blogging community (DIBS) who have all been so supportive of this site and each other. I look forward to even more interaction and cross-site discussion in 2006. We’ve got some ideas to grow DIBS in membership, and in terms of community, that I hope we can bring to fruition.

Thanks for a great year, and I’m really looking forward to 2006.

Now if only we can get a winning record one of these years…

Contracts, Pitching

Locking Up Bonderman

4 Comments

With Jeremy Bonderman reaching arbitration, he won’t be had for the $400,000 that he made the past two years. The 2006 season will be the first of 3 seasons where Bonderman will be arbitration eligible before reaching free agency. Now there is a school of thought – that has been applied very effectively in the past by the Indians – that it is wise sign young talent to multiyear contracts and secure their first years of free agency. Of the subset of Tigers eligible for arbitration, Bonderman is the most likely candidate to warrant a long term deal. The question is should the Tigers try to do it?

Bonderman is still extremely young, and still an injury risk. He’s been relatively healthy so far, but has yet to accumulate 200 innings in a season (which is probably a good thing). Bonderman has shows moments of brilliance, but when looking at his seasons in total he is simply an above average pitcher at this time. He started off excelelnt, but a line drive combined with other soreness contributed to a sinking strikeout rate and subpar performance in the second half.

At the same time, the Tigers moves this season have indicated that they plan on Bonderman being a fixture in the rotation for years to come. They didn’t pursue the top shelf pitchers in the hopes that Bonderman can fill that role. Additionally, the spending on free agents continues to drive the price for talent higher. Bonderman will stand to benefit from this surge regardless of if he signs a one year deal or something long term. Will the market continue to get above average pitchers $7 million or more a year, or will there be a correction with a new CBA on the horizon?

As a matter of comparison, last year the Twins signed Johan Santana to a 4 year contract which secured Santana’s first two years of free agent eligibility. To get the deal done it cost the Twins $40 million over 4 years. Now Santana just happens to be the best pitcher in the American League. But, pitchers who have done a lot less in their careers (or are well past their prime) have managed to secure contracts in the same neighborhood just one year later. Some continued growth from Bonderman, and continued growth in the free agent market and 4 years at $6 million per might seem like a bargain.

If you’re the Tigers, do you use the second half struggles as a way to save millions over the next several years? If you’re Jeremy Bonderman, do you turn down a long term contract because you know you can get a bigger payday when you put all the pieces together?

Tiger History

Trammell and the Hall of Fame

4 Comments

It’s Hall of Fame voting season, and with the ballots due in soon, some BBWAA members have begun to post their ballots. For Tiger fans, this is the time of year when we are typically disappointed that our heroes of 84 get shockingly few votes. Now the candidates from that team are down to two, Alan Trammell and Jack Morris. While a case could be made for both, Trammell remains the more compelling candidate. At least as long as Bert Blyleven is kept out t, Morris can’t claim to be the most deserving pitcher on the ballot. On the other hand, Trammell is arguably the best infielder under consideration.

I’m not so much interested in making the case for Tram’s inclusion, but in tracking his chances. A player needs to be on 75% of ballots for inclusion, and Trammell only garnered 17% last year. After a quick search of Google News, here is how the votes breakdown:

Votes For (9):

Votes Against (24):

Now 16 17 18 votes does not a sample size make, so don’t read too much into this. However, things once again look grim, as not even a weak class can get Trammell noticed. As I see more columns in the coming weeks I’ll update this tally.

UPDATE 12/30: Twenty ballots that I’ve come across so far, and Trammell has only received 30% of the vote. At this rate an improvement over last year, but still disappointing.

UPDATE 1/04: Over the 33 ballots I’ve seen, Trammell has only 27% of the vote. Yes, an improvement over last year. But not nearly enough momentum and too low a starting point for real consideration. I think I’m done with the exercise for this year. The ballots have been cast and the results are due next week.

For more info: 2006 Hall of Fame Wikipedia Entry
baseball, detroit tigers

Uncategorized

New Look & New Digs

6 Comments

Well, after a couple days of intense computer time and the scorn of Mrs. Billfer, DTW has received an upgrade. In addition to the redesign which is glaringly obvious, I moved the blog from Blogger to WordPress. Here’s what I’m hoping the benefits will be:

  • Improved readability: The site is now optimized for a 1024X768 resolution, as opposed to not being optimized for any resolution before. For the 85% of you with monitors bigger than 800X600 this should mean more usable real estate. Oh yeah, the humongous banner is now smaller.
  • Better integrated commenting: The comments will now appear right on the page with the post. The pop-up is gone. Hopefully this will make it easier for you guys to participate in the discussion. The benefit to me is that your comments will appear on the page – which gives the site more content for search engines to puruse. Thankfully, I was able to import all 1353 of your comments so none were lost.
  • Improved Navigation: It should be easier for you to find things on the site. It will be easier to move between posts, and there will be better searching. Additionally, WordPress offers category support. Now currently nothing is categorized (and the chances of me going back through the various posts is slim), but newer posts will be categorized logically.

The benefits for me are that everything becomes easier. My blog had simply outgrown Blogger, so even simple changes had become cumbersome. The new design also allows for more & better ad placement. I hope the ads don’t offend anyone. However, I spend a great deal of time on this site, so if I can make a couple bucks I’m going to try.

Now the drawbacks of major overhauls are that sometimes things break. If you have a 800×600 monitor, and go to an older post with a bigger picture/table, things will be screwy. I apologize for that, and please let me know if you see anything. Also, the import didn’t treat some tables kindly. I’ve manually fixed some already, but again, if you find anything let me know the post that’s giving you the problems.

I think that all the links to old content should still work. If you’re coming to really old content, you may hit a page that looks like the old design. I wasn’t able to line up all the links exactly, so I kept a couple old pieces around.

With that, I look forward to your feedback.

And most importantly, have a great holiday season! I’ll be back with more posts next week.

Contracts, Roster Management

Pena tendered

10 Comments

Carlos Pena, Jeremy Bonderman, Mike Maroth, Brandon Inge, and Craig Monroe were all tendered contracts by the Tigers. Midnight last night was the deadline for teams to offer contracts to players who were arbitration eligible, but not free agent eligible (those with between 3 and 6 years of Major League service time).

Now the question becomes which of that group, if any, receive long term deals. The advantage of signing a player to a long term contract at this point, is that you could secure the player’s first year or two of free agency, and perhaps save some money. The downside for the club is that they will probably have to pay a little more in the early years of the contract than they would going to arbitration each year. Also, they are locked into a long term contract when a series of one year deals would have been possible. From the player’s perspective they may give up some money at the end of the contract, to get a guaranteed 4 year deal.

Of the group, I’d say that Jeremy Bonderman would be the most likely to receive that long term deal. Given that Bonderman hasn’t been ace-like for an entire season yet, it may be cheaper to lock him up before that special season comes along. Also, with the escalation in pitcher salaries, locking him up at a lower rate now my be advantageous.

UPDATE: Here is a complete list of non-tenders from around the league.

Uncategorized

Suggested Reading and Sadness

11 Comments

All’s quiet in Tiger land, and looks to remain that way. Tomorrow (Tuesday) is the tender deadline, and really the only player in question for Detroit is Carlos Pena. I fully expect the Tigers to offer Pena a contract, because if they weren’t planning on it they could have actually retained a player in the Rule 5 draft. Plus, Pena is too good to let walk – although a previous regime let Tony Clark go for nothing.

Other arbitration eligible players such as Brandon Inge, Craig Monroe, and Mike Maroth will most assuredly be offered contracts.

Although things are relatively quiet, my fellow bloggers are keeping things interesting. Brian has posted a tidy recap of the Tiger’s 1901 season. Fortunately there are a lot of Tiger seasons so if Brian gets favorable reviews he might do this some more.

And if you want to get geeky instead of historical, Lee continues his series looking at run production.

Don
Finally, for those who were curious about the family situation I mentioned on Friday, my father-in-law passed away rather unexpectedly. He had some health issues, but his passing took everyone by surprise.

While Don didn’t read this site, he wasn’t so much a computer guy, he was a huge baseball fan. Like so many from his generation and the Detroit area, he spent the majority of summer months with Ernie Harwell plugged into his ear.

During the visitation, one of Don’s old high school classmates reminisced that “Don was a heck of a pitcher, probably the best player on our team.” Don instilled jis love of baseball (and many, many, more admirable traits) in his two sons, and his youngest daughter (aka Mrs. Billfer) who all played as kids.

Don had a tremendous work ethic, and it was a race to see what would happen first, retirement or age 70 – 70 won. Don didn’t argue, but he didn’t give in. He spoke volumes without saying hardly anything. He didn’t ask for help, but always offered it. In short a great man.

After suffering several strokes, Don was relegated to a wheel chair and while his mind was intact, his speech wasn’t. For a proud, self-sufficient man the last couple years were probably very difficult for him, even moreso because he couldn’t communicate. Ultimately, he’s happier now in heaven with his wife who passed away just last year, but it doesn’t mean that those he left behind aren’t hurting.

Thank you for reading this, learning a little bit about Don, and indulging me this off-topic post.

Uncategorized

Weekend Open Thread

11 Comments

Due to some family related issues, I probably won’t be posting this weekend. However, I had a couple of things to cover:

1. Based on feedback I changed the look of the comments, they should be easier to read and they now match the site colors.

2. I’m in need of help with CSS for the redesign (it’s not massive). I think I get it all figured out, but then it doesn’t work in IE. So I fix it in IE, and break it in Firefox. I’m just not bright enough and have spent too much time with trial and error. If you are a wiz with floats and such and would be willing to donate 30 minutes to help me, please email me at bill@detroittigersweblog.com

Finally, while I said this was an open thread I’ll suggest a topic:
Based on comments others have made in various posts, what about Nomar Garciaparra? Is he worth Kenny Rogers money (as Tim put it)? Do you guarantee a second year or work out a vesting option (be wary based on what happened with Dmitri Young)? Is it worth having him if it means giving up Carlos Pena?

Roster Management

On Vance Wilson Resigning…

16 Comments

Earlier in the week, Vance Wilson agreed to a one year contract for $750,000. While I hold no grudge against Vance, I’m less than enthused from a roster management stand point. I know it’s not a popular viewpoint, but I’d rather see Brandon Inge resume backup catcher duties.

Now there is nothing wrong with Vance Wilson as the backup catcher. He plays solid defense, the pitching staff seemed comfortable with him, and by all accounts he was the ultimate team player. Any chubby white guy who will break dance in the dugout gets my admiration. He had a very poor year offensively, but teams don’t typically carry a backup catcher for their sticks. But wouldn’t it be great if a team didn’t need to explicitly carry a backup catcher?

Well, the Tigers have that luxury in Brandon Inge. Inge could still be the main thirdbase man, and also backup Pudge. Omar Infante, could be the extra infielder on days when Inge is behind the plate. Infante, who has talent and is still young, needs playing time. The Tigers (and Infante) need to find out if Omar’s 2004 season was a glimpse at his potential or an abberration. When Inge catches the Tigers would be giving up some defense at third, while gaining some behind the plate.

But then there is the whole, “Brandon Inge can’t hit when he’s catching” belief. With the way Inge started last year, I had even begun to buy into the theory. However, his 236/282/400 line after the All Star break has me doubting that theory. I’m pretty sure Brandon could hit that well even as a catcher, which would be a mild upgrade over Wilson. With Omar taking Brandon’s at-bats at third (or essentially taking Wilson’s at-bats) it stands to be a slight net offensive gain.

Then there is the matter of roster configuration. The Tigers have 3 first base/DH types, which is tough to carry on a roster. By utlizing Inge’s versatility and freeing up the backup catcher position, it would make it easier for both Dmitri Young and Carlos Pena to come back. If it came down to keeping one of Pena/Young or Vance Wilson, I’d have to go with Pena/Young.

Uncategorized

Mike Illitch Talks

15 Comments

An interview with Mike Illitch was circulating on AP today (oddly enough though not in Detroit papers). In the interview Illitch concedes he screwed up in his GM hirings when he bought the team after Bill Lajoie said no. He also concedes that he’s not happy with his tenure.

“I’m running out of time with the Tigers – we’re in our 13th year,” Ilitch said Tuesday in an interview with The Associated Press. “If we hit the 15-year mark, I’ll be very concerned.”

Illitch has taken a lot of criticism for his ownership of the Tigers. Quite frankly given the team’s record it is deserved. When he clamped down the payroll after the 2000 season he rightly took a lot of flack. The team seemed to be changing direction each year. However, the criticism that he doesn’t care about the Tigers isn’t fair. Given his spending the last 3 offseason it is clear he was embarrased by the disaster that was 2003.

The article concludes with Illitch wanting to spend more money – if the team is competitive:

“If we can make a significant improvement this year, then I can treat it like I treated the Red Wings, and that would be, `OK, you’ve shown me something now, we are legitimate contenders, so whatever you need you’re going to get.’ But you’ve got to work yourself up to that,” he said. “We’ve got a lot of tradition and we’ve got a lot of baseball fans out there just waiting for something good for the city and baseball.”

Bases Contributed Percentage
New Tiger blog Tiger Town is playing with a new stat called bases contributed percentage. The stat combines baserunning with other offensive metrics to provide a more complete picture. Amongst Tigers Chris Shelton still fairs best followed by Carlos Pena and Curtis Granderson. My only quibble with the stat is that Ron removes HBP. Considering it is an offensive event, that some players are more adept at I think it should probably be included.

In any case, it is great to see so much fresh Tiger writing.

Minors, Roster Management

Kenny Baugh Traded

6 Comments

Former Detroit Tiger first round pick Kenny Baugh was traded today to the San Diego Padres. In return they get low A pitcher Ricky Steik. Steik had a 2.40 ERA as a 21 year old in the Midwest League last year. He had 7.95 K/9IP against 3.6 BB/9IP. Steik was a 7th round selection in the 2004 draft.

As for Baugh, I’m kind of surprised to see him traded. I believe he had one option left. If that was the case he could have stayed in Toledo next year. I know he’s not the same pitcher that the Tigers drafted, but he was effective last year. I thought he could have at least earned a shot as a long starter.

Uncategorized

Soliciting Feedback

14 Comments

Typically once a year I try and get feedback about the site. I realized I hadn’t done that this year, so here’s your chance to rip me or praise me.

I’m currently working on a redesign, so any comments related to layout would be appreciated. What do you like about the current layout, what don’t you like? Do you mind that there are ads on the site? Are they too prominent or don’t you notice them? Is the site readable? Is the text to big or too small? Is navigation easy or not the least bit intuitive? And any other comments are appreciated as well.

Also, I’d love to know what you think of the content. What are your favorite types of posts? Would you prefer I did more short posts, or do you like it better when I save up a couple days worth of things? Do you like the numbers-heavy posts or simply the commentary.

As always, I won’t promise that I’ll implement everything that gets suggested. However, I appreciate all of you and value your opinions. I also take a lot of pride in the site, and want to make it as useful to the reader as possible.

Thanks for indulging me in this non-baseball activity. Feel free to leave any comments, or if you’d prefer you can email me at bill at detroittigersweblog.com. And in case you were wondering, here is the design I’m currently working on: