Richmond 3 Toledo 5
Brent Clevlen was feeling it tonight with 2 dingers and Mike Hessman added his 27th. Timo Perez chipped in 2 hits as well. Virgil Vasquez allowed 2 runs in 7 innings on 6 hits, no walks, and 3 K’s. Aquilino Lopez struck out the side in the 9th for the save.
Bowie 1 Erie 9
Mike Hollimon had 3 hits including his 9th and 10th homers. Jeff Larish went deep twice as well. Kody Kirkland also hit a homer, but only one. Andrew Kown pitched the complete game and fanned 5 while walking none.
Daytona 8 Lakeland 4
Wil Rhymes homered, singled and walked. Danny Worth doubled and walked. Kyle Sleeth started and it wasn’t good. He only lasted 1 2/3 innings allowing 3 runs on 4 hits and 3 walks.
Beloit 4 West Michigan 5 12 innings
Santo De Leon had 3 hits and Gorkys Hernandez added 2. Jonah Nickerson allowed just 1 unearned run in 5 innings while fanning 5.
Oneonta 4 State College 3
Justin Henry and Mike Sullivan each had 3 hits and a walk. Sean Finefrock allowed 1 run on 5 hits, 2 walks, and 3 K’s over 6 innings.
GCL Phillies 1 GCL Tigers 0
Christopher White and Carlos Ramirez had 2 hits each, and that was it for the offense. Emmanuel Miguelez was solid allowing 5 hits and no walks while fanning 5 in 6 shut out innings.
Monthly Archives: July 2007
Game 87: Tigers at Mariners
PREGAME: Before the season started, this series looked like a nice one to ease into the second half. But the Mariners are the surprise team of the AL. They’ve won their last 3 and are 14-6 in their last 20.
It’s a great pitching match-up tonight with Andrew Miller taking on Felix Hernandez. Interesting story about the Mariners took place right before the break. The awesome blog USS Mariner wrote that King Felix was throwing too many fastball in the first inning. The post was handed to Hernandez by his pitching coach and mixed things up. The results were sparkling, 8 innings of 2 hit shut out ball.
Here I lamented Andrew Miller’s reliance on the fastball in the Atlanta start. He definitely mixed in more pitches against Boston. I’m still waiting for thanks from Chuck Hernandez (kidding of course).
Placido Polanco is sitting out tonight, and left fielder Marcus Thames will bat in the 2 hole with Omar Infante manning the pivot.
Game Time 10:05pm
DET @ SEA, Thursday, July 12, 2007 Game Preview – Baseball-Reference.com
POSTGAME: Well, Miller pitched good. He mixed his pitches, and kept people off balance. He also induced more ground balls than in his other starts. He’s a ground ball pitcher, as indicated by his extreme differential in the minors, but that hasn’t shown up at the big league level prior to tonight. Of course 3 of those ground balls were mishandled (one by himself) and it probably cost him an inning of work due to the extra workload.
Normally that’s a concern, but the bullpen pitched 4 innings of no hit ball and only allowed a walk and a hit batsman. Macay McBride came in and struck out the side in his inning of work.
As for the offense, not a lot of extra base power, but they did continue to threaten. They just couldn’t push many men across. It happens. The only particularly frustrating spot was not scoring with runners at the corners and no one out.
As for the weirdness, there was plenty and Beltre was in the middle of it all. On a check swing that went past Pudge, Beltre asked for the appeal and had it granted, and ruled in his favor as a swing allowing him to get to first. I don’t recall seeing that before.
And then he stole second, prompting Pudge to get upset about Betancourt stepping in front of the plate and getting tossed. It was interference and it does get called on occasion (I think Pudge got that called against the Cardinals earlier this year). And Pudge did bump Winters, not aggressively mind you, but he did bump him so I won’t even dispute the ejection.
As for the other weirdness, with the Beltre single, and then going to second, and then sliding past second, and then running towards left field while Carlos Guillen repeatedly tagged him, only to have Guillen later drop the ball, and have Richie Sexson come in to score, and have Beltre ruled safe, and then Marcus Thames calling for the appeal that Beltre missed second, and then Beltre being ruled out, and then the run scoring.
I don’t know what to make of it except that Bruce Froemming must have left his heart and his judgement in San Francisco because Beltre did touch the base. Froemming even indicated he was safe during the play. And Guillen did tag Beltre. Eh, what are you going to do except maybe retire? I think Froemming managed to screw both teams on the same play.
links for 2007-07-12
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Still trying to get back. Plus some hitting philosophy from Leon Durham.
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Playing with enhanced gameday data some more. You may have noticed I always link to these articles. I just find them fascinating.
Tigers Minor League Wrap 7/11/2007
INT 7 PCL 5
It was the AAA All Star game and Timo Perez walked away with MVP honors picking up 3 hits and 2 RBI. Mike Hessman chipped in with a homer.
Eastern League AS Game – Fogged out
Daytona 3 Lakeland 4
Danny Worth went 2 for 4. Justin Justice was 3 for 4 with his 5th homer. Angel Castro allowed 2 runs on 9 hits, no walks, and 3 K’s in 7 innings.
West Michigan – DNP
Oneonta 4 State College 1
Chris Calson doubled and homered. Justin Henry, Mike Sullivan, and Casper Wells all had 2 hit games. Alfredo Figaro pitched 7 shut out innings allowing 5 hits and 3 walks while fanning 3.
GCL Tigers 5 GCL Blue Jays 2
Roger Tomas banged out 3 doubles. Shawn Roof singled and added a walk. Brandon Johnson allowed 3 hits and 2 walks while fanning 5 en route to 6 1/3 innings of shut out ball.
Let’s talk about me
With no baseball today, I wanted to do a little housekeeping and update you with some site news.
Tweaking the look
First of all I made a small tweak in the template. The content use to size down for an 800×600 resolution. This was kind of a pain in terms of the stylesheet and getting things to display properly. And today I noticed that in IE 6 the display was broken due to my post last night (but I can’t quite figure out why). So I checked my site stats and less than 5% of visitors are on monitors that small. So resizing is no more. You’re at a fixed width now which looks okay for 1024×768 resolutions and up. It will allow me to make the charts and tables a little bigger and easier to see. I hope I haven’t put anyone out by doing this.
Paying the bills
Second, I’ve added a couple more advertisements. I’m going to tweak the placements and watch performance. I don’t want to clutter the site too much with that stuff, and if there isn’t a worthwhile payout I’ll just take them down. But if you are in the market for tickets to sold out games, feel free to use the StubHub link or purchase from one of the sponsors on the side.
You wanna hang out?
Third, I was pondering a DTW and all other Tiger blog get together at Comerica Park. Many of us bloggers got together last year and had a great time. But I was wondering if there’s interest on the part of the readership here to do such a thing. If you’re interested leave a comment or use the contact form. You’re not committing to anything at this time, I just want to get a ballpark number of people interested in going to the ballpark.
Delicious Links
Fourth, for the last month or so you have probably noticed the link posts that come up a couple days a week. I’m using del.icio.us to help me out with it. When I see something I find interesting, I can quickly bookmark it. Then once a day del.icio.us will take all those bookmarks and create a post. I don’t get to provide a lot of context, but it is a really quick way for me to share stuff that I think you might find interesting. Plus, all those bookmarks are then available for everyone to view or search at del.icio.us/detroittigersweblog.
You talkin’ to me?
Finally I wanted to give a shout out to the most frequent commentors here. Your top 10 (not counting me of course):
- Adam (479)
- Kathy (473)
- Mike R (455)
- Anne (260)
- Joey C. (180)
- stephen (173)
- Kyle J (142)
- Dave Wagner (132)
- Kevin in Austin (126)
- David (124)
Thanks to not only the top 10 here, but to everyone who helps keep the discussion flowing here. It’s a big help and motivation to me to have this much participation. While we don’t always agree, I appreciate the discussions and the fact that we can keep it civil. So thank you.
links for 2007-07-11
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Interesting article, and BP is free this week
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Eric notes the Tigers have a tougher go than their Central mates
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Dayn Perry says the Tigers are the tops
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Lee looks at the AL contenders
5 million down the drain and other adversity
One of the more impressive aspects of the Tigers leading the AL Central and being a half game off an MLB leading pace is that they have had to battle injuries. However, the Tigers may have actually been lucky in this regard, sort of.
Taking a look at the Tigers team stats one will see that the team has used 36 different players already this year. But if you look at the split of position players and pitchers, the split is quite remarkable. The Tigers have used only 14 different position players this year, and one of those is Ryan Raburn who was just called up to take Neifi Perez’s spot after the suspension. So the Tigers have stuck with the same 13 non-pitchers all season.
Now it’s not quite as clean as that though. Vance Wilson was slated to be the back-up catcher, but hasn’t spent a day on the active roster. Plus the Tigers have sustained nagging injuries to both Carlos Guillen and Brandon Inge (and it looks like Placido Polanco now as well). Neither required a DL stint but kept them both out of the lineup for a week.
So with only 1 position player sub, that means there have been 10 supplements to the 12 man pitching staff. Of the 12 pitchers on the opening day roster, 7 of them have spent time on the DL. And of the 7 that stayed healthy, 2 of them were traded (Maroth and Ledezma). And a 3rd one, Bobby Seay, was an injury replacement to begin with. So Justin Verlander, Chad Durbin, Todd Jones, Bobby Seay and Jason Grilli are the only members of the opening day pitching staff who have been on the active roster the whole season.
As a point of reference, the Tigers used 19 pitchers all of last year.
Meanwhile, Fernando Rodney has had 2 stints and even injury replacements Zach Miner and Tim Byrdak have found themselves DL’d.
All told the Tigers have amassed 364 days on the disabled list – so far. This doesn’t include another 4 to 6 weeks for Joel Zumaya or the rest of the season for Vance Wilson. It also doesn’t include the season long injuries to Tony Giarratano or Edward Campusano. While they are both DL’d, that is more a matter of roster management than having to find replacements. The wages paid out to those on the DL is approximately $5.5 million so far. The bulk of that is the $3.6 million portion of Kenny Rogers salary that kind of went to waste.
But injuries to the pitchers are only part of the problem. The other part has been overwhelming ineffectiveness over the first 3 months of the season. Jose Mesa was jettisoned after being really bad consistently. Now the Tigers are paying him to pitch for the Phillies, which is still better than paying him to pitch for the Tigers.
Aquilino Lopez, Eulogio De La Cruz, and Yorman Bazardo have all been given a shot. Acquisitions Jose Capellan and Macay McBride are trying to establish roots in what has been a very transient population thus far.
So the Tigers have had to get creative. They’ve looked to trades as well as the minors to try and help the bullpen. But the lucky part is that pitching is the area that the Tigers had the depth to be able to sustain some issues. The fact that the position players have remained intact is the bigger part of the team’s success so far. And that the one that needed to be replaced was truly the 25th man on the roster seems particularly fortuitous.
Tigers Minor League Wrap 7/10/07
GCL Blue Jays 2 GCL Tigers 9
Only one of the Tigers affiliates was in action tonight. Charles Furbush allowed 1 hit, and 2 walks while fanning 10 in 5 shut out innings. Hayden Parrot went 4 for 5 and Luis Arlet was 3 for 4.
2007 All Star Game
With 5 Tigers in the game, as well as the coaching staff, I figured it deserved a game thread.
I don’t have a lot of hopes or wishes or expectations for this game. Mostly just that the AL wins, cuz, you know, just in case. Plus, no injuries for our Tigers (and that Polly doesn’t make his worse). And finally, that Carlos Guillen gets some significant PT after missing out in 2004.
You’ll probably have to wait a couple innings to see all the Tigers starters bat, because they occupy the 6-7-8 spots.
All Star news and notes
Poor Placido Polanco. Two days before his first All Star appearance he injures his back. Now he thinks he’ll play but Jim Leyland isn’t so sure. And as much as I want for Polanco to have his moment, I don’t want it to ultimately hurt the Tigers.
I guess that’s one reason I find it a little strange that Leyland is batting his guys at the bottom of the order. I know he really doesn’t want to be perceived as playing favorites, but I don’t think anyone would really mind. Especially if it meant that Placido could still make the start and come out a little sooner after his first at-bat rather than potentially having to wait until the 3rd inning.
I did watch the Home Run Derby last night. My son was into it and that’s cool. Magglio Ordonez went out quickly, and it looked like his stance was considerably different than what he’s used this season. Hopefully that’s a good thing that he went quite different, easier to revert back to the old form. It looked to be less spread out and less closed. Of course it was hard to see on the split screen because it was important for ESPN to show us Barry Bonds head (make jokes about its size and such at this point) at that very moment.
I realized it’s less the HR Derby that annoys me than ESPN’s coverage of it. And it’s so drawn out. And Berman/Morgan seemed to barely pay attention to what was happening. Throwing it back to the studio was idiotic, but necessary since Baseball Tonight was banned from being there. And really, this is the time that John Kruk decides to advocate plate discipline and taking pitches?
Tigers Minor League Wrap 7/9//07
Erie 7 Akron 4
Jackson Melian, Andres Torres, and Erick Almonte each had 2 hit games. Matt Joyce hit his 13th homer and drew a walk. Jon Connolly allowed 2 runs on 9 hits, 2 walk, and 2 K’s in 6 2/3 innings.
Lakeland 1 Sarasota 2
Mark Haske had a solo homer and that was it for the offense. Mike Hernandez had a real rough night with 4 K’s. Elezar Aponte pitched well allowing just a run on 6 hits, a walk, and 7 strikeouts in 6 innings.
Great Lakes 8 West Michigan 6
Audy Ciriaco had 3 doubles and a walk. Scott Sizemore added 2 doubles among his 3 hits. Matt O’Brien was knocked around for 6 runs on 11 hits in 5 2/3 innings.
Oneonta 6 Hudson Valley 2
Cory Middleton homered and singled. Chris Carlson added his 3rd homer. Justin Henry was 1 for 2 with 2 walks and now has 10 walks and 2 K’s in 46 at-bats. Guillermo Moscoso allowed 3 hits, 2 walks and 7 K’s in 6 shutout innings.
GCL Braves 5 GCL Tigers 7
Aaron Furhman allowed 4 runs, all in the 2nd inning. For the day he gave up 8 hits, no walks, and he fanned 6 in 5 innings. Craig Maddox hit his first homer. Hayden Parrot went 3 for 5 . Londell Taylor ans Shawn Roof had 2 hit games.
Tigers Run Distributions
One of my favorite exercises is to examine run distributions. With the All Star Break it gives me a chance to look at where the Tigers rank in terms of runs scored and runs allowed by game.
First up we’ll take a look at the offense and runs scored per game.
To explain the graph, the column height represents the total number of games in which the team scored x amount of runs. The orange represents the number of games the team won and the blue is the number lost. The yellow line shows the cumulative percentage of games played at that run level.
This pretty much reiterates what we already know. The team is rarely shut down completely, and frequently puts a pounding on teams by scoring more than 5 runs in 59% of their games. MLB as a whole has only topped 5 runs in 46% of games.
But what you’ll also notice is that the Tigers need all those runs. Even when scratching out 3 runs, the team only won 4 o f 14 games.
For some context here is the same chart for all of MLB in 2007:
The flip side of course is runs allowed. Here is the Tigers distribution:
Now the other thing we can do with this is look at the distribution, compare it to the winning percentage at various run levels for MLB, and come up with expected win totals.
Working with the run scored distribution and multiplying by the expected winning percentage we see that the Tigers expected record given a normal runs allowed distribution would be 50.1-35.9. That’s pretty close to their actual 52-34 record.
Now of course the Tigers runs allowed distribution isn’t representative of MLB. Performing the same exercise with runs allowed, one would expect the Tigers to have a 42.6-43.4 record given normal run support. So essentially without the strength of their offense they’d be a .500 team. This is hardly earth shattering news in that the bats have clearly been the strength of this team. But it does help to highlight the magnitude that the different components have contributed to the resulting record.
The other thing to note is that on both counts the Tigers record is shy of their actual record. So one could conclude that the team has been a little lucky given the way that things have shaken out. I want to emphasize the little part of luck. If you look at their pythagorean record, they are right on pace with their actual. So this isn’t to say they are doomed or aren’t a good team. I also wouldn’t call this predictive, but simply a record of what has happened so far.