Yearly Archives: 2005

Minors

Maybin report

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Cameron Maybin’s hometown paper, the Asheville Citizen Times, has a
nice article about his experience in the Detroit Tigers instructional league. There isn’t any major news in the article, but it echoes the favorable reviews that he received in an MLB.com article last week. The article speculates that Maybin may start at West Michigan next spring. Oh yeah, and the pic of Maybin in Tiger uniform is courtesy of Roger Dewitt. He has a whole collection of IL pics at Motown Sports.

In other minors-related news, the Tiger contingent has turned in mixed performances in the Arizona Fall League. Kody Kirkland continues to hit well in limited playing time. David Espinsosa started off hot, but as cooled down and seen his playing time diminsh as well. Don Kelly has struggled not only with the bat, but he has committed 4 errors as well.

As for the pitchers, Humberto Sanchez has had two very good outings, and two outings where he struggled – particularly with his command. Adam Peterson and Mark Woodyard have had a hard time getting hitters out.

Player      AB    H    HR    BB    SO    SB    AVG     OBP     SLG 
Kirkland    20    8     1     3     4     1    400     500     700 
Espinosa    46   12     1     7     6     1    261     352     370 
Kelly       55   13     0     6     5     2    236     306     273  

Player        G     IP     ERA     H     HR     BB     SO 
Sanchez       4   17.1    3.63    20      1     10     19 
Peterson      7    9.1    6.75    13      3      3      9 
Woodyard      4    5.0   12.60    14      1      3      6

The silver lining is that Espinosa’s slide may make him less attractive to other teams in the Rule 5 draft, meaning the Tigers may be able to retain him without giving up the roster spot.

Managing & Strategy

Trammell gets short-listed

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It appears that Alan Trammell is one of three finalists for the Los Angeles Dodgers managerial job. The other finalists are Orel Hersheiser and Terry Collins.

It would be quite the coup for Trammell to land this job. Given Kirk Gibson’s prominence in Dodger lore, he would most assuredly be part of Trammell’s staff. For both their sake though I’d hope that he wouldn’t give Gibson the bench coach role. I think the combined managerial inexperience of the two was a hinderance.

Front Office, Managing & Strategy

Tigers complete organizational meetings

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The Lakeland Ledger reports that the Tigers finished up their organizational meetings in Florida. The article featured an interview with Jim Leyland. Here are the highlights:

On Pudge:

“I’ve talked with him and we’re OK,” Leyland said. “A lot of that is just frustration when you haven’t accomplished what you thought you could and the season is winding down and you just want to forget it and go home. I’ve seen it before.

Defense, Statistics

Good and Bad Gloves

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David Gassko of the Hardball Times introduced a new defensive measure of range earlier this season. While the initial article didn’t do a lot to sell me on the system, he has calculated the 2005 rankings.

Ivan Rodriguez, Nook Logan, and Brandon Inge were the top defenders in the American League at their positions (Inge was actually tops among all third sackers). The fact that Logan beat out all AL centerfielders was surprising. Not that I don’t think Logan isn’t good, but just from a playing time aspect. Because the measure used is a counting stat (essentially runs saved), I didn’t think Logan would have enough time in center to finish at the top.

On the other end of the spectrum, Carlos Pena and Magglio Ordonez finished near the bottom at their positions. Again, I’m a little surprised merely from a playing time perspective.

But the most surprising finding is that Rob Fick was among the best first basemen.

Now whether or not you buy into this system – and I haven’t yet – it is reassuring that a couple of those critical “up-the-middle” positions were rated very highly for the Tigers. But then again, of the 3 Tigers who finished at the top it doesn’t appear clear cut that they will be manning those positions next season.

Pitching

Hernandez Completes Coaching Staff

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The Tigers announced today that Chuck Hernandez will be the team’s new pitching coach. Hernandez had the same position with the Tampa Bay Devil Rays for the last two seasons. However, outside of Scott Kazmir he hasn’t had much talent to work with.

I don’t know much about Hernandez, so I tried to find some information about his philosophies or styles – and I didn’t come up with much. Here is what I found:

Relating to pitchers: (link)

“He’s a hands-off guy,” Holtz said. “If a guy is having a tough time, he adds levity. He doesn’t keep the same approach with every player. He treats everyone individually. He’s somebody who likes to get to know the pitchers. He keeps things fun and I like that approach. He loosens guys up. He doesn’t like to mess with guys who are pitching well.”

On Pitching to top hitters: (link)

“You have to constantly change your recipe and try to slow down the great hitters,” Hernandez says. “You can’t give him the same menu every day.”

And that’s about all I found. He’s held the position of minor league pitching coordinator, and his staff in Tampa was very young so he should be comfortable working with kids. In any case it will be interesting to see the direction that the major league staff, as well as the minor league pitchers take.

Uncategorized

Tiger Tales and more

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There is a new addition to the Tiger blogosphere. Tiger Tales is written by Lee Panas, who if you spend time on various Tiger message boards you’ll recognize as Tiger337. I only know Lee from his comments on Motown Sports, but I find myself agreeing with him more often than not. So if you enjoy my site I’m sure you’ll enjoy his. Expect the site to be loaded with analysis. In only his first week he’s done some extensive work with runs created.

Quick Hits
-Continuing to highlight my Tiger blogging brethren, check out the artsy baseball pictures that Sam has posted on Blue Cats and Red Sox. I have a hard time appreciating art in general, but I have no problem enjoying this.

-Several people have emailed me about the Ugueth Urbina machete incident. If you’re interested in some more information, Phillies Nation has a pretty good collection of links covering the situation. As for my take, whether or not any of this is true doesn’t change my opinion that Ugie probably isn’t right in the head. On another note, what can possibly happen next to make the Polanco trade appear even better. First the Tigers get a productive player -who appears to be a stand-up citizen and teammate. Then he practically begs to sign an extension here. And then Urbina goes nuts. Short of Polanco cloning himself, and his body double playing for free, I don’t think this can trade can look any better.

2005 Season, Statistics

Tiger Win Shares 2005

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Next in my series of recapturing the glory/trauma of the 2005 season I take a look at Win Shares. Other posts so far in the series include DL Time, Runs Created by Position, and Offensive Efficiency.

The image you see below is a treemap. Offense is represented by the light orange boxes, pitching is by the middle tone of orange, and defense is the darkest shade. (For more on treemaps and some earlier examples click here or here)

Treemap of 2005 Tiger Win Shares

Inge led the team in Win Shares with 16.7. He also had by far the most playing time so the feat isn’t that astounding. Chris Shelton led the way with offensive win shares with 12.8.

Jeremy Bonderman led the staff in pitching win shares with 9.5 while Jason Johnson and Mike Maroth each contributed 8.5 It’s worth noting that during his time with the Tigers Kyle Farnsworth accumulated 5.9 win shares.

Pudge’s biggest contribution came via defense where he led the team with 8 win shares (although from what I’ve seen defensive win shares favor catchers).

As a team, 50% of the Tigers win shares came from the offense, while a third came from pitching and the remainder were defensive.

If you’re interested in perusing more win shares data, or for an explanation of win shares, check out the Hardball Times. And if you’re really interested in learning about win shares, it is probably best to go right to the source and get the Bill James book – Win Shares which describes the measure and methodology. (FYI – That’s an Amazon affiliate link which puts a few coins in my pocket if you choose to purchase the book)

Minors

Tigers AFL Update

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The Arizona Fall League is about a week old, and it’s time to take a look at how the Tiger representatives are doing. The Tigers sent six players to the AFL: David Espinosa, Don Kelly, Kody Kirkland, Humberto Sanchez, Adam Peterson, and Mark Woodyard.

Player      AB    H    HR    BB    SO    SB    AVG     OBP     SLG
Kirkland     7    3     0     1     3     1    429     556     429
Espinosa    17    7     0     1     1     1    412     444     529
Kelly       20    6     0     1     2     0    300     318     300

Player        G     IP     ERA     H     HR     BB     SO
Sanchez       1    4.0    0.00     3      0      2      7
Peterson      3    4.1    4.15     5      2      1      5
Woodyard - DNP

Of the group Sanchez probably has been the most impressive. In his only appearance, over half of his outs came via the strikeout. He did battle a little wildness with a couple walks and a couple wild pitches, but it was very impressive nonetheless.

Peterson was hammered for both homeruns in his first outing, but has been effective in his two subsequent starts.

The position players have played reasonably well also, with all 3 hitting for a good average, but without much power.

It remains to be seen how much weight the organization will place on these performances. In the cases of Kirkland, Kelly, Espinosa, and Sanchez none are currently on the 40 man roster. If they aren’t added, they become eligible for the Rule 5 draft. A very good AFL showing could make these players more attractive to other teams looking for help, in turn forcing the Tigers to find a roster spot to avoid losing them.

To keep track of how the Tiger contingent, and the Mesa Solar Soxs are doing, MiLB.com has the
stats here.

2005 Season, Offense, Statistics

A Model of Inefficiency

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It was a familiar scene for Tiger fans this season. A runner gets to third base with less than two outs. The next batter would invariably seem to do one of three things, a strikeout, a sharp ground ball to third, or a pop out to second. Once that second out was secured, the final out would be a fairly deep fly ball that would have been quite useful one out before. The Tigers seemed to have an uncanny ability to ruin great scoring opportunities in 2005. But was this really the case, or did it just seem that way?

The first thing I did was to take a look at the teams performance with RISP. The Tigers batting average with RISP was a very respectable .273 which was good enough for 6th in the American League. The problem was despite a decent average, the OBP in the same situation was a dismal .335 which was next to worst. Now I won’t go all sabremetric and say that a walk is as good as a hit in these situations. Clearly, a hit is more likely to score a runner than a walk is. However, I think everyone would agree that not making an out, and having an additional runner get on only increases your scoring potential. The other problem is that the nature of outs the Tigers were making wasn’t conducive to run scoring. The Tigers had the 4th most strikeouts with RISP, despite ranking 11th in plate apperances in that same situation.

So was the Tigers biggest problem getting runners on to drive in, or were they especially inefficient at it as well? Below is a table showing TBW (Total Bases + Walks) and REA (Run Efficiency Average). TBW is essentially a summation of a team’s offensive events. REA is simply runs divided by TBW – which gives an indication of how effectively teams cashed in on their offensive events. For more information on TBW and REA, please check out this article by Tom Tippett.

While the Tigers are middle of the pack in TBW, they are near the bottom in terms of efficiency. Next I wondered what the impact of home runs would be on this measure. Afterall, the Tigers play in a park that discourages homers especially for right handed hitters (of which the lineup was heavily tilted towards). Plus, while a run scoring from a home run still counts (as do the runs on base) I was more interested in seeing the teams ability to get the runners they have home.

I modified REA (I call it REA-2) to take out the home runs. By “take out” I removed the homers from the TBW total (or 4 TBWs for every homer) and I subtracted the home runs from the run total as well.

According to REA-2, Detroit is the least capable of getting their baserunners home. Now I don’t know if this means anything, because I just made up REA-2, but it seems to make some sense (feel free to poke holes in it). It serves to further highlight that the Tigers were very inefficient.

So why were they so inefficient? My guess is that it was a combination of their poor on base percentage (or the ability to make outs) short circuiting rallies, a lack of team speed, an abnormally high strike out rate given the team’s other offensive characteristics, and possibly some bad luck. This team managed to combine several attributes that when isloated aren’t necessarily a bad thing. Unfortunately they weren’t isolated. They were a slow team that didn’t hit for a ton of power. They relied on the home run in a park that discourages it. They don’t take walks, and they don’t make contact. The result is an offense that was capable of great things some of the time, but struggled more than their share.