While I dispelled some of my issues with the Tigers and first pitch swinging, I still had some questions. I think many Tiger fans can remember what seemed like all those times there were runners on base only to see Magglio Ordonez (or any host of other Tiger hitters) take a swing at the first pitch and pop out to first base. So did first pitch swing rates, as well as success, hinge on whether or not there are runners on base?
There were a couple ways to describe the Tigers approach at the plate in 2006. The optimist might say they were aggressive, the pessimist might say they were hack-tastic. I guess one measure of this might be their propensity for swinging at the first pitch.
Now with the first pitch, 4 things can happen. There are two take events, a called ball or a called strike. There are also two swinging states, the batter can have put the ball in play or be sitting with an 0-1 count. At various times during the season I saw stats on TV broadcasts or in the paper that show how well certain Tigers did when hitting the first pitch, but that data neglected to take into account the swings and misses (or fouls). Continue reading First pitch swinging→
Perez will be 30 next season. He plays all out field positions and hits left handed. His major league career numbers are 262/301/373 with his best season coming in 2002 for the Mets when he hit 295/331/437. In part time big league duty since then he hasn’t topped an OBP of 301.
He was productive at the AAA level last year hitting 295/349/515 so maybe he can help the Mud Hens win another International League Championship.
Morosi also notes that Bobby Seay will be returning with a minor league contract as well.
I’m remiss on this one, but Lee has a new stat called RPE (Run Preventing Event). It is simply a rate at which pitchers do the things that typically are favorable for the pitcher (K’s, ground balls, infield flies). I really like the stat for it’s simplicity. While DIPS and FIP are more analytical and provide more information, this seems to be more readily digested by the general public.
Cameron Maybin will get a Spring Training invite to hang out with the big club. This isn’t a big surprise. Everything I’ve heard has him starting at Lakeland and moving to Erie this summer.
The Replacement Level Yankee Weblog ran a Diamond Mind simulation using CHONE projections. It has the Twins as the favorites in the Central and the Tigers making the playoffs 21% of the time. The projections have the Tigers pitching staff regressing from awesome to decent. THT has more on regression to the mean.
Retrosheet has the files for 2006 available now. I’ve downloaded them and just begun to poke around. Hopefully I can come up with some interesting stuff in the next couple weeks. If you have anything you’d like me to check into, let me know. I won’t make promises, but if it is interesting and easy enough to do, and I have the time, I’ll give it a shot.
If you subscribe to the RSS feed, or get the email updates, you may have noticed something new the last few days. I’ve incorporated del.icio.us links. I find that often times I come across interesting stuff on the web, and I want to share it with you. If I can, I’ll usually include it in a post like this one. Often times though, that won’t happen for a couple days, and many times they never make it in. But now, each day you’ll get all the stuff I bookmarked from the previous day. Some days there wont’ be anything, other days there’ll be a lot. I’m able to do this conveniently through Feedburner, which is why it will only appear in the feed and not on the site. It won’t change what I post here, but it is just another way to give subscribers some fresh and interesting content.
The 2007 Bloggies are taking nominations. This year there is a sports blog category. If you feel so inclined you could nominate your favorite sports blogs.
There’s a new Tiger blog, Dtown Baseball. It is authored by DTW commentor Eric Jackson. Eric did some further investigation into Tiger lineup configuration and examined the assertion that the Tigers used 120 different lineups.
Eric raises a great point that there are many distinct lineups, but that there was still considerable consistency.
He looked at the top 5 spots in the lineup and found that the sequence of Granderson-Polanco-Rodriguez-Ordonez-Guillen started 51 times and averaged 4.76 runs per game. He also found a bunch of other stuff and it’s definitely worth a read (plus there’s a graph). Continue reading Even more about lineups→
Happy New Year to everyone. Let’s hope that in a baseball sense, 2007 is just as prosperous as 2006.
On another note, I’ve updated the Roster page (and added The Hardball Times) and the Organizational Tree. Both now reflect the current roster which should almost ensure a trade this week.
Go Blue!
News, views, and analysis on the Detroit Tigers and baseball