Here on the eve of Opening Day, I wanted take a moment and give a brief welcome to the new visitors to the site. March 2008 has seen more visits than any other month except October 2006. Also, I’ve been doing some tweaking to the site over the last month that I wanted to share with long time readers.
Welcome
To those of you who are just discovering the site, I want to say welcome. We have a pretty active and vibrant community in the comments section and I encourage you to participate. Feel free to introduce yourself. To that end, I’ll start. I’m Bill Ferris, an industrial engineer by trade, and a Tigers fan who’s formative years were during the mid 80’s. For more about me (and the site) I’ve prepared an About page. The site has received mentions in various outlets including ESPN.com and SI.com.
What you’ll find on the site is analysis, news, and links. Virtually all of it related to the Detroit Tigers. We have game posts for commenting on each game and a daily wrap of minor league activity.
I have assembled some of my favorite posts into a Best Of page. I’ve been doing this since 2001 so don’t expect the site to go dormant anytime in the near future. I like working with statistics and doing my own research so you’ll see quite a bit of that here. And being a stat guy, you won’t see a lot of talk about pitcher wins and RBI. When talking about pitchers I’m much more likely to talk about strike rates, walk rates, and home run rates. When talking about hitters I’ll often describe them with a line that looks like 260/330/430 which is batting average/on base percentage/slugging percentage.
In the 2006 playoffs MLB started doing something called Enhanced Gameday where they show the trajectory of each pitch. Sometimes I’ll use this raw data – called pitch f/x – to talk about pitcher’s repertoires or pitch selection.
Also, to keep abreast of what is happening on the site, I suggest subscribing to the RSS feed. You can opt to get a daily email each morning of what is new on the site. If you’re note sure what RSS is, I’ve prepared a primer.
New-ish stuff
For those that have been here in the past, thanks for continuing to participate. I’ve cleaned up the dead links in the sidebar and added some new ones as well. If there are great sites you think I should link to, drop me a line or leave it in the comments.
Speaking of comments, I have posted a new Comment Policy. And while we’re talking about policies, I did a Privacy Policy as well. Comments are still editable, but only for 5 minutes. I disabled the AJAX commenting for the time being. I want to be around to see how it works during a game thread and that won’t be possible for these first few games.
Also, the Roster page, Organizational Tree Page, and Payroll page have all been updated and can be found under Site Features.
And I think that’s it. Let’s have a great season.
Bilfer,
You probably have made your predictions already and posted them, however I can’t recall them right now… I would be curious to see what what revisions, if any, you have made one day before Opening…
The week before spring training I called the Tigers to win the Central with 94 wins. I also thought that Detroit had to win the Central because I was convinced the wild card was going to come from the East…
I have since changed my stance a bit… I am calling for 92 wins (I arrived at this from a bullpen that is more scary now than it was in February, and let me thank Homeland Security again for the bang up job they did on Cruceta’s visa…). I also spent much time looking at the Jays and Rays… Both of those teams are poised to give the Yankees fits. I now think the WC comes from the Central, with Cleveland wining 90 games. Most any Tiger fan should be rooting hard for the Rays and Jays, it gives us a better chance at a playoff birth….
In the playoffs anything can happen, like beating a good Yankees team and getting pounded by a meadiocre St. Louis team… I worry about our pitching in any playoff situation. However, if the Tigs take the Central I will consider the season a large sucess.
Last year I predicted the Tigers to win 87, so I missed by one game…
What are your thoughts and predictions a day before the Happiest Season Of Them All starts?
You’re killing me EZ 🙂
Check the post before this one!
Wow, I didn’t realize you could spell stupid with just an “E” and a “Z”, and here I managed it flawlessly.
I thought I had already read that last night, so I went flying by it… As Gilda Radner used to say “Nevermind”
Go Rays and Jays.
LOL
Well I agree with your post EZ – the Jays and Rays should be fantastic, well maybe not, but a lot better than the professors on TV are predicting.
I also think you could include the Royals in that group.
With the Jays they had the second best RA last year in the AL – without BJ Ryan and AJ Burnett for most if not all of the year, they had a serious down year from Vernon Wells, and Rios didn’t “bust out” like he was predicted to
The Rays of course had that semi-huge deal with Minny that went largely unnoticed because it was squished between ours and the Santana trade.
They have at least 1 ace, with two other possible, with solid D, and a speedy lineup
The Royals I think though could easily bust into third (this year) in our division and here’s why:
4 major differences in their Offense
Gordon – had a very hard time his first two months, eased into things, should be much better
Teahen – I agree with what was said in Moneyball – he has the ability to become the next Jason Giambi
Guillen – even with all of his problems he can mash
Butler – the best of the group, I’m thinking Travis Hafner/David Ortiz hybrid
Plus Meche, Bannister and Grienke shouldnt be too bad.
As far as the AL Central (Bill and Ez I don’t think you’re giving us enough credit)
I’m thinking we win 100-105 games, if everything were to go right” and we had a similar 2006 pitching and similar hitting to last year + our additions I think we could win 115 games, if everything goes wrong (which for the pitching starters and pen it almost did last year) I’m saying 90 wins.
Cleveland had a better year last year than they will this year
Twins really downgraded their pitching(Santana and Garza) and lost Hunter (yes they have Mauer and DYoung, big whoop)
The White Sox made it seems like quite a few moves to get even worse, they traded away one of their rocks in their starting staff(Garland), and the other big thing is having JJJJJJosh Fields start in AAA because they dont have room for him in their lineup. They traded for a guy in the OC who although is slick and a decent hitter just had a career year, and Swisher is a guy who most of you would take his offense (100ish walks, decent power, .250ish BA) from Inge, I knew Jermaine Dye was a fluke
The one guy they did add from Cuba looks to be really good is Alexi Ramirez
Now some people might think I’m crazy, but I really think that I can assume that at least 2/4 of our starting staff after Verlander will live up to their potential and/or be durable.
IF we can shut the other team down 60-70% of the time and have slugfests the rest of the time IMO that = a lot of wins, plus the fact that every team in our division except the Royals should perform worse
Anyways thats my opinion and I’m sticking to it!
David, nice call on the Royals…I also think they’re due for an uptick. Many of the “experts” however, seem to think the Pale Hose have righted the ship, and I respectfully disagree with them. I think they’re going to be awful this year, despite Kenny W’s moves to solidify holes. I’m torn on the Twins…they should finally take their long awaited plunge into the cellar, but they always seem to win more than they should.
Predicted finish:
1. Tabbies (Man, I miss “Iffy, the Dopester!”)
2. Tribe
3. Twins
4. Royalty
5. Pale Hose
Hey Billfer I am so excited for tomorrow I won’t be able to sleep!! I’ll be at all four day games this week – but I am also looking forward to being back on DTW and especially posting during away games, and hopefully another blogger night at Comerica Park! cindi
I’ll be watching (mostly reading) from Des Moines for most of the season, and I expect 23 wins from Verlander, 18 from Bonderman, and 16 from Nate. Twelve each from Kenny and Dontrelle puts us in the playoffs. Bautista gets 13 saves and we win the pennant.