I’ll be a day late on announcing the DVD Giveaway winners. I promise it will be announced tomorrow night. In the meantime, some stuff worth reading:
PECOTA and the Central
The straight run of Baseball Prospectus’s PECOTA projections for the AL Central put the Tigers in 3rd place with 85 wins. Nate Silver makes some tweaks and post-adjustment he’s looking at the Tigers winning 88 games. With his other adjustments that puts them in a tie for 2nd place, one game out. So essentially it’s a 3 team toss-up in Silver’s eyes. Kind of hard to argue with that, unless you’re a White Sox fan who doesn’t like the 77 win projection.
Power ranking season
Fox Sports latest power rankings place the Tigers 6th, down two spots from last week. Meanwhile the Twins surged up 3 spots. Not sure why. But half of the top 6 teams are from the AL Central.
ESPN the Magazine picks Tigers
I don’t think it’s on newstands yet, and you need to be an Insider I think to flip through, but they’re picking the Tigers to win the AL Central.
New displays coming to Comerica Park
You know those fancy, colorful, shiny displays that you see on the facing of the upper bowl of many newer arenas? Comerica Park is getting those. They are also replacing the out of town scoreboard in right-center with an LED display. Similar ones I’ve seen in Pittsburgh and Cleveland seem to display a ton of information, so I think it could be a good thing. It will also make for dynamic ad space so hopefully it will be additional revenue for the club to sink into a Carlos Guillen extension.
I’m not sure I’ll like the strip on the upper bowl though. I’m trying to visualize it, and I think it might take a little away from the retro look of the park.
The Freep also had a story and video looking at stadium preparation for the Opener.
Four Tops get anthem duty
The Four Tops have been tapped to sing the National Anthem for the Opener. No announcement yet on first pitch, but I’d imagine it will be Kwame and Granholm. Gates will open at 10:30am with a ceremony (not the ring ceremony which is on April 4th). Me, I’m hoping for a fly-over.
Things are looking good weather-wise calling for 54 and sunny.
Now if only those tickets would arrive.
Other stuff
- D-Town baseball examines how the rotation will match-up over the first month.
- The Wayne Fontes Experience is rolling out his preview.
dynamic ad space so hopefully it will be additional revenue for the club to sink into a Carlos Guillen extension.
I loved the way you snuck that in. Yes, indeed, Carlos…..please say you want to stay a Tiger.
85 wins in the AL Central sounds right to me.I expect the Tigers to have the season we would have been happy with in March 2006.
I really don’t understand why there is a reverberating sentiment that the Tigers will lose ground this year. The competition isn’t that much better. We added Shef and lost nobody. Justin Verlander may slide a bit but Bondo will make up for it with his best season yet. There are plenty of hitters like Inge and Monroe that could continue to improve their batting averages. I see nothing but improvement from last year. What are the arguments for a let down?
Regression to the mean.
I think the offense will improve; none of the hitters really performed over their heads last year. And I think there will be a more professional/patient approach last year for some of the (relatively) younger guys: Monroe, Inge, Granderson.
But you do have to think that Verlander, Rogers, and Robertson are all likely to underperform this year compared to last year–partically due to pure performance and partially due to dumb luck.
That’s the big question: Can improvements on offense offset any regression in pitching?
Dodger Stadium has the wrap around displays and they are kind of distracting. Nothing too bad though. The out of town scoreboard replacement should be good but I wish they would put up a video screen on the giant scoreboard. Would love to see replays and other better stuff.
I think we’re all underestimating what the addition of a Gary Sheffield can do for a ball club. Even if every hitter from last year repeats, we should still take a huge step forward. We didn’t have anybody who can bring this type of intimidation and RBI potential last year. It changes the way pitchers will have to approach our line-up. I honestly think we’ll have 3-4 more/fewer wins than last year. So basically a repeat of last year’s performance.