2008 Season, Game Post

Game 73: Tigers at Padres

234 Comments

PREGAME: After enjoying a couple days with little to do in San Diego, the Tigers get back to work tonight against the Padres. The Pads are on a 4 game losing streak and have dropped 5 of their last 6.

I recently participated in a discussion led by Padres blogger extraordinaire. He is the proprietor of the long running blog Ducksnorts (it was around before there were blogs) and a long time internet friend. The roundtable which included Brian from Tigerblog and Lee Panas from Detroit Tiger Tales can be found on Geoff’s site. Geoff also gave each of us an opportunity to ask him some questions. Lee’s were so good I’m just goiing to link to his.

As for tonight’s scrum it will be Eddie Bonine making his second career start and Greg Maddux making his 723rd career start. Bonine was knocked around for 6 runs on 9 hits in his debut, but did keep the ball in the strike zone with no walks. Maddux only has 15 walks in 89 innings this year so he always keeps the ball in the strike zone.

Marcus Thames will have a tough time with the homer streak playing in spacious Petco Park. But he was supposed to have a tough time against Tim Lincecum and it didn’t seem to phase him.

DET @ SDP, Friday, June 20, 2008 Game Preview – Baseball-Reference.com

Game Time 10:05

234 thoughts on “Game 73: Tigers at Padres”

  4. Anyone know the Tigers record when Grandy hits a leadoff homer? For some reason I want to say its not as good as you would think it to be.

  5. Granderson shows naught but disdain for Greg Maddux and his “pitching”. 1-0 Tigers

  9. Looking at the Padres lineup I can’t help but ask myself: who the hell are these guys?

  14. I can’t imagine there have been too many teams in history with two brothers in the starting lineup.

  16. how cool would be 1-0 final with Miner going the 6th ..Crooked hat going the 7th…Zooom going the 8th…and Roller coaster closing the door…if so you read it here first……

  21. First Bonine AB, coming up. I wonder when the last time anyone intentionally walked Pudge was.

    UPDATE: Bonine made contact, but it was a chopper in the infield.

  26. Granderson with a hit and a steal. Mario just informed us that the Padres manage to throw out 12% of all base stealers. Outstanding!

  27. Mario mentioned that Maggs is having back spasms and almost didn’t play today. I wonder if that explains his recent slump.

  28. That Magglio AB was a whole lot of nonsense. Both called strikes were off the plate.

  32. Man, if we could just get this ump in Detroit, Kenny will be able to pitch into his 50’s.

  34. Wasn’t the trivia question who did Maddux make his debut against? He didn’t play his brother until his 5th start. I’m confused. Did I misread the question?

  35. greg….that is why Maddux is pitching into his 60’s cause he gets that pitch every time every ump….kind of an NBA thing

  36. Hopefully Bonine can hang in there — this would be a fantastic game to steal given the pitching matchup.

  41. What an awful call at second base. There’s no excuse for an ump missing a call like that.

  42. Ugh….that’s one reason I stopped following the NBA years ago, different standards, different rules for different players….

    …where’s Questec when you need it?

  44. Ugh. That string of zero’s on the line score brings back bad memories.

    Polly/Carlos/Maggs and Miggs are 0-12.

  48. I’m here for the rest of the game. I guess I didn’t miss much. Grandy homer and that’s it. Bonine looks good?

  57. Eddie’s been hanging on by his fingernails the whole game. Gutty performance, but when you get this good a performance from your 5th best starter, you’ve got to score more runs, Maddux or no Maddux.

  58. I think that homer was due. Bonine is not really that effective. SD is just weak, and although he has pitched a very good game, Bonine is a few innings overdue to give one or two up.

  59. Bonine has done about as much as he can here. Tough to win with no run support.

    I hate leadoff homers…

  61. I think they’ve actually gotten some pitches to hit from Maddux, just that a lot of these batted balls just die on the warning track.

  64. Bonine wasn’t hit hard by the Dodgers and here he should be getting spanked by the Pads. Quad-A pitcher, for sure. What I would give to have Zach Miner in Toledo stretching out to take over this spot.

  65. if we knew Bonine was going to give up only 2 we would all have taken that deal every time out….the Tiggs are in there swing just to swing mode today which they are in alot this year…not many shots for outs

  66. Also, Maddux is such a master. His pitches always look fat and no one seems to be able to hit them. That is skill! His ball moves so much and changes so often they can’t get a thing on it.

  80. Just another typical night for Polanco. A couple K’s and a bomb.

    BTW: I take the credit for that. Between innings I moved from the chair to the couch. That’s the difference.

  82. If Rodney comes in….as I expect he will………I want to be proven wrong about my comments from the other night. Others, especially Billfer, have made me think twice. But I want to see his effectiveness. I honestly never have, although I have been told that he was outstanding 2 years ago. We have a chance now thanks to Polly again…….let’s not lose it!

  85. Get Fernando out of there after this walk. This is a disaster waiting to happen. They can’t afford to have him out there blowing a game like this.

    EDIT: And Fossum warming up. The double digit ERA boys . . . I’m not a Rodney hater, but he doesn’t have it tonight.

  92. Yeah, this is a great low pressure situation for Rodney to be pitching in.

    Then again, he’s a pro, right? He should be juuuust…fiiiinee.

  100. He says, I’m going to give you one pitch. If it’s not a strike, I’m gonna pull you.

  101. It’s all mental now. There were a couple close pitches, but close doesn’t count if you haven’t got 1 over before those.

  103. This sucks guys. We’re going to lose because of this.

    Giles bunts them over, Gonzalez Sac Fly.

    Game.

  106. Mike, what facts are you talking about? I do not dispute what happened in 2006 (which I did not see). I am talking about what I saw last year. I have simply come to be convinced that he is unable to pitch. Relief pitchers do not do what he does……..and he does it more often than not. I have said my peace. Subject closed. I just wish I had a record of every appearance from last year with all the details to show what I am getting at.

  108. Also: the 2nd pitch Rodney threw was insider corner at the knees according to gameday. There were others that are often called strikes, as well.

  111. Sky: Billfer presented facts like 16 of 21 appearances in 2007 in which Rodney did not allow a run to score… there were a few different instances that you might’ve missed in the plethora of comments in the game threads.

  118. I hate Fernando Rodney. Seriously, he’s responsible for the only two losses we’ve had in the last twelve (including this one, yo)

  122. There’s a very real chance of scoring two off Hoffman. But Jim leaves in Fossum. Sweet.

  124. Good thing we dfa’d bautista, he’d have been a much worse choice than fossum or f-rod

  126. lets see we let Bautista go …and we activate Rodney..Keep Fossum…the inmates are still running the asylum….

  127. Well, Fossum can pitch out of the inning and lower his ERA. They kept this guy and cut Bautista . . . and Zumaya’s sitting out in the bullpen because they didn’t want to put pressure on him and instead put a guy who now has a 135.00 ERA on the mound.

    This is absolutely inexcusable. It was clear from the first three pitches that Rodney threw that he didn’t have it (even before the attempted decapitation on pitch #4). Letting him get behind the second hitter was managerial malpractice. Replacing him with a batting practice pitcher was just insane. I’m not one to bash managers, but this was just totally screwed up.

    In one sense it’s a low-pressure situation for Zumaya — even if he does his job quite well, the Tigers will be down 5-2 going into the 9th, this isn’t high leverage.

  128. Strikezone got really small this inning. I guess when the other team is going to give you an out and the ball goes over the batters head for ball 4 your screwed.

  130. Don’t be mislead here, this is all on Rodney.

    Fossum gets squeezed at the plate then gives up a hit with a pulled in infield.

    Bottom line – the options are thin for the Tigers late in the game when its tight.

  133. He wouldn’t have gotten to that but was it just me or was Thames playing VERY deep in LF?

    And this has been my complaint from the get-go of Zumaya being in the majors: WHERE IS HIS CHANGEUP THAT BASEBALL AMERICA CALLED THE BEST IN THE ENTIRE ORGANIZATION IN 2005? Where? It doesn’t even have to be that good to be effective.

  134. In Fossum’s defense (why I am defending him sure beats me), he did get exactly what he was looking for, an infield ground ball…it’s just that it kept going, and became an outfield ground ball (and Thames almost let it keep going still…)…even the first 2-run hit wasn’t exactly drilled, and almost was a playable one…

  144. Maybe you’re right Tbone, I’m watching the nearly unwatchable not worth a crap, choppy mlb.tv at the moment. But part of me’s just going on the high level of suckiness that Fossum has displayed his entire career. Seeing him on the mound makes me pine away for the Grilli days.

  146. There is a limit to how quickly Leyland could get Rodney. He got the bullpen going after 3 pitches. They stalled as much as they could with the umpire coming out to break up to meetings on the mound.

  149. Nobody’s doing anything terrible, but it’s that familiar thing this season where everybody is a bit off–the ball gets through that maybe could have been stopped, the outfield is playing deeper than usual or bobbles the throw, the relay is a bit offline, and then bobbled, they have a chance at a runner but nobody’s covering the base, and you’re left with a what the– feeling without really being able to pin it on one guy or one play…

    Oh and the hit off Zumaya was a pretty good pitch, and apparently 100 mph, which makes me wonder how he hit the thing, he had to have guess exactly what was coming and where…is that too weird an idea here, that somebody was picking up something and tipping off the hitter?

  151. What’s the point of removing Zumaya? All this does is weaken the bullpen for tomorrow even further by putting having Seay pitch to one or two guys . . .

  152. do you think Willie Randolph–Alan Trammel- Sparky Anderson, Matt Millen or Wayne Fontes might be available if they get the call

  154. I am not saying this was the reason BUT that was a p*ss poor strike zone throughout that whole inning…NBA all the way

  155. Coleman, no matter how fast a pitcher is, if he does not make the ball move in slightly unpredictable ways, it will not be long before hitters figure him out.

    I honestly do not believe either Rodney or Zumaya are the answers to the Tigers bullpen problems. Whatever they had in 2006 was gone last year, and I just have a feeling it is not coming back.

  156. I’m with Billfer, Hernandez was on the phone quick. That said, he undid getting the bullpen hot ASAP by sticking with Fossum too long (and keeping him on the roster).

    All that said, and this is no excuse, that strike zone is brutally bad right now.

  157. They took Zumaya out so he could still be available tomorrow, and Seay will be available as well.

    And the pitch that Harriston hit you have to tip your cap. It wasn’t even in the strikezone.

  158. I’d rather see Trevor Hoffman than anyone else in that Padres bullpen to be honest. I was kind of hoping he’d still trot out even with a 4 run lead.

  159. I think Wayne will play hardball, and no way he signs unless you guarantee a golf cart for trips to the mound. I was pitching Chuck Daly earlier; mostly because I completely forget the inning I just watched as soon as the picture of Daly in a baseball uniform and Tiger cap enters my brain.

  161. Is the inning over yet? Gameday seems to think Seay is taking twelve minutes to throw the fourth pitch of the Gerut at-bat.

  162. so Maggs swings at Ball one and ball two…that shows you how screwed up this team is…someone coach them

  165. They took Zumaya out so he could still be available tomorrow, and Seay will be available as well.

    Available, but the bullpen will be weakened, as I noted in my previous comment.

  166. Can we sign Jennie Finch and DFA Casey Fossum? We can surely make up the cost in cutting Fossum with the money made on the guys oolging Jennie Finch from afar.

  168. I refuse to go to bed angry.

    I’ll take away Grandersons bat and Bonine’s nice game as big plusses. Let’s get ’em tomorrow…

  170. “Coleman, no matter how fast a pitcher is, if he does not make the ball move in slightly unpredictable ways, it will not be long before hitters figure him out”

    That’s true of course, but the first batter he faced of the season didn’t fit into my idea of “it will not be long.” What I was thinking more along the lines of is that his re-hab was shall we say well observed, and I’m guessing more so than the average pitcher, one coming back is going to have one or two pitches he’s relying on until he gets back on track. Whether it was just guessing or scouting or evil fortune, it kind of reminded me of Eckersley’s pitch to Gibson, you’re thinking he fouls it if he’s lucky…

  171. Game is over Adam. McNaulty made a hell of a catch at full speed running into the fence down the RF line that comes up to his knees and he flipped over into the wheelchair section — head over heals — and apparently hung on to the baseball. Great catch.

  172. Yeah, when the strike zone is that enormous, it raaaaadically changes the complexion of the game. The hitters have to swing at balls out of the zone. Huge advantage to the pitchers.

    Billfer is right, that hit off Zumaya was way down out of the strike zone. It happens.

  174. Can we start a petition here to DFA Fossum? I actually wanted to start one the day he was called up.

    Whose Jennie Finch?

    …it doesn’t matter, surely she’s better than Fossum.

  175. I was thinking more along the lines of a Derek Jeter type where he went face first into the seats … only McNaulty’s didn’t have seats to contend with but wheelchairs. Thankfully he didn’t spike anyone as he could’ve Cobb’d someone in the face on that play.

  176. Did I reallly just type ‘whose’ there?

    I better get to bed…..

    why doesn’t the edit function work anymore?

  178. I think the misspellings are related to something that happens in the right frontal lobe when the brain is exposed to something traumatic, for example back to back walks in a tie game, and the effect is generally temporary, so not to worry.

  180. I think she has a TV career ahead of her…she has the looks, a name that already sounds like a stage name, and is somewhat known.

    I gotta go now and work up a pilot script for her; I’m thinking “Jennie Finch, Private Arm”…a softball pitcher moonlights as a private investigator…the first time she finds herself in danger, she turns to the weapon she knows best–her right arm, and before the bad guy can even get his finger on the trigger he ends up on the business end of a 75 mph high hard one…and a legend is born…

  182. Well it’s very important that she do her Private Arming right after softball games so she can stay in costume. Plus a 75 mph pitch, or however fast she throws–when it’s dark those things sneak up on you.

    Of course there will be lots of complications, like when she finds out the network wants to use “stunt” foam softballs and special effects instead of real pitching, hopefully we can work through that.

  183. “I refuse to go to bed angry.

    I’ll take away Grandersons bat and Bonine’s nice game as big plusses. Let’s get ‘em tomorrow…”

    I’m with you. However, I do have one concern. Bullpen implosions tend to rattle this team. I wouldn’t call the first game against the Giants a bullpen implosion. The Tigers basically lost the game because of one bad pitch.

    This was a total bullpen meltdown. We can’t let it thwart momentum. We just need to win, and win big tomorrow. None of this one run business through seven innings.

  184. Actually I don’t know if everyone sees the same ads or if it’s one of those deals where the ads decide you’re teenage girl teaching foreign languages in a Midwestern private religious college and inserts the ads accordingly. But my rambling has been partly inspired by the Playboy Mansion Fight Night: Bunnies Celebrities Boxing ad I see every time I type a comment tonight…

  185. T Smith: I’d actually prefer a 1 run win in which the bullpen goes 3 scoreless with like 7 K’s or something. Be real dominant. Probably not plausible, but would definitely boost morale.

    Coleman: That is a concern with the special effects and foam soft balls. hopefully you can get her to work through that. I’ve never seen that ad to which you’re referring to, either.

  186. And to think my concern was that Rodney and Zumaya would be greeting with a bunch of bunts (think about it, we saw how well they handled them in the World Series, and I’m guessing fielding bunts is one of the last things you get around to working on after a long stint on the DL)…and add in Cabrera and it could have looked like billiards out there…

  187. “I’ve never seen that ad to which you’re referring to, either.”

    Ah, then it must be one of those targeted ads, that only shows up if you are a man of taste and refinement…who occasionally every so often actually clicks a link in one of those “hot teens exposed” spams.

  189. Well ain’t that a slap in the face…now the ad at the bottom of the page is:

    Modell’s Sporting Goods.
    Official Sporting Goods Retailer of the BOSTON CELTICS

    That’s just wrong in so many ways…

  190. Jennie has the Angelina Jolie “glance over my shoulder” look going for her; and with blonde hair to boot.

  191. “Jennie has the Angelina Jolie “glance over my shoulder” look going for her; and with blonde hair to boot.”

    True, and I think it will look just fine when she has to go undercover with the big Cher wig and whatnot (careful! the big hair may also be a place to keep an extra softball or two!)

  192. Finch is 6″2 it will be hard to go under cover as a softball player or PI ..too tall…but she can pitch
    …top three in the WORLD….the other two are Cat Osterman 6’3 and Monica Abbott at 6’4 all pitch for the USA Olympic team

  193. Ron: My apologies for a lack of a premonition. I will go on a limb and say this: this is the only game we drop in this series.

  194. “Finch is 6″2 it will be hard to go under cover as a softball player or PI ..too tall…but she can pitch
    …top three in the WORLD….the other two are Cat Osterman 6′3 and Monica Abbott at 6′4 all pitch for the USA Olympic team”

    Well, she does have a 1-2 inch edge on the competition in that respect apparently. Plus, strangely enough I find since moving to California that the majority of women here are 6’1 minimum. Besides, nobody will notice if she employs the special technique that is occasionally used in these projects, ACTING!

    If she acts about 5’9 the audience won’t give it a second thought. (They will notice she looks a bit fat on TV, especially in the softball outfit, and THAT we would have to work on)

  195. “Ron: My apologies for a lack of a premonition. I will go on a limb and say this: this is the only game we drop in this series.”

    Very clever, see how the premonitionaters work. He claims this is the only game we drop in the series; if we also lose tomorrow he will say we dropped one and “got hammered” in the 2nd; and if we lose the 3rd we likely will be “buried” or “soundly defeated” or possibly “spanked.”

    Then again, perhaps I am just responding out of envy, since I haven’t had premonitions. Although the last couple of weeks I did have a few decent demonitions, but I try to keep those out of the blogs.

  196. lets see we used Fossum at 24.00 and Crooked Hat at 135.00 in the 8th…now there are two guys I want in with the game on the the line……….

    ..and Grilli and Byrdak and Bautista, and Jimmy Walker, can’t pitch on this team….that 3mil for Walker is looking pretty good right about now…I would buy more pizza if it would help!

  197. Rodney needs to join Willis for the rest of the season. The Tigers are too hot now to let one bad pitcher take us into another 8th inning loss.

  198. No postgame comments by Billfer and I don’t presume to know the reason but if he felt like the rest of us, just too disheartened to express it. However, watching Maddux pitch was something to see. Watching him is worth the price of admission, imo. Very, very crafty, very, very good.

    We were to until the BP took over. Let’s turn the tide tonight!

  199. With the exception of Cagey Possum the bullpen hasn’t been that bad recently. The promotion of Rodney and Zumaya to the big club at this time is IMHO an example of wishful thinking – I am not convinced they are ready. What is the rush here anyway? Personally, I won’t miss Bautista, but he certainly was doing better than Rodney is, and should have gotten more of a shot, while sending out Lopez, to turn him into a starter at this late date in the season, is still pretty mystifying.

    And then our genius manager goes and uses 2 question marks and a dud, not only in the same game, but in the same inning – another truly brilliant stroke of bullpen management.

  200. I was out last night so I just followed along on my cell phone, but a few comments.

    1) Using Rodney in a pressure situation again is questionable, I’d rather ease him in during a non pressure situation.

    2) Considering the pitching match-up, last night’s game was a chance for a steal, but one that I expected to lose. So no real loss there. Now, if we blow a game today or tomorrow, then last night’s game will be exacerbated.

    3) Our pitching coaches in Toledo need a raise and an afternoon with our bullpen.

    4) Zumaya throwing 100+ is very good news.

    5) Rodney is not that bad. He’ll regress (progress) to his mean.

  201. To me, Rodney is a set up man and is supposed to have the mental fortitude to go into those types of situations and do his job. He’s been rehabbing for months and was supposed to be ready. This was his test; he failed.

  203. Kathy, absolutely. We had two good weeks of no worry and now it’s back to 7th thru 9th inning stress.

  204. Has there ever not been 7th-9th inning stress? Who has been reliable out of the bullpen? Sure Dolsi’s had flashes and a fancy post about him for his one spectacular outing by Billfer, but at the end of the day he’s still a reliever that’s allowed 28 base runners in 19.2 IP. Before that, Bautista had problems finding the strike zone (29 base runners in 19 innings). Aquilino Lopez was struggling when he got sent down to stretch out to be a starter. His last 8.1 IP (small sample, I know) he had 5 K’s, 6 BB’s, 12 hits, 5 ER.

    So the late innings haven’t been stress free for the large majority of this year.

    In fact, Zach Miner’s been our best reliever since late April, yet he can’t get in in a crucial situation to save his life, but even at that, he’s basically got a 1-to-1 K/BB ratio (12 K’s, 11 BB’s in his last 27 innings … but few of those runs have scored with a 1.67 ERA over that span).

  205. “And then our genius manager goes and uses 2 question marks and a dud, not only in the same game, but in the same inning – another truly brilliant stroke of bullpen management.”

    I have nothing to add. This just bears repeating.

  206. A question I feel like I should know the answer to, but don’t: Did Bautista have an option left? At this moment, I would be a lot happier to know he is still in the organization.

  207. Eddie Bonine: 98 pitches, 21 outs.

    Tigers bullpen: 57 pitches, 3 outs.

    Nice.

    Some job by those 2-3-4-5 hitters, 1 for 16 with 5 Ks, 0 BB.

    Nice job by Bonine, but I want to see how he does against a better-hitting team before I think about him sticking for the rest of the year.

    Magglio, so good for so long, and now struggling throughout the 2008 Tigers’ finest hour to date. And he’s hurting? Uh-oh.

    A winnable game, down the drain because the bullpen failed. Bullpen failure. Not bullpen management failure. Rodney was brought into a Rodney situation. Second-guessing the rest serves no useful purpose. Dolsi and Miner have also failed to clean up such messes. Earlier in the year, there was much complaining about Miner being brought into high-leverage situations.

    Unfortunately, no one in the bullpen has stepped up to claim the damage control position. Tigers relievers have been simply awful when coming in with scoring threats. It’s a problem. They can’t contend until someone does step up.

    Rodney and Zumaya are supposed to be ready, and the Tigers necessarily are counting on them heavily. I have no problem with them being brought in to do their jobs, again, again, again, until they either get it right or get hurt again, whichever comes first.

  208. Rod disturbingly claims that the pitch Marcus hit was “in his happy zone”

    I’m glad I get the greatest hits snippets, but I get the sense I wouldn’t be able to take Mario and Rod for an entire game.

    Coleman, glad you’re back. Thought you might have taken my “be gone” a few games back seriously. Then again, why would anyone take me seriously?

  210. A bit off topic, but is anyone else watching Contreras melt down against the Cubs? It’s quite entertaining. Thank you, WGN.

  211. I am watching that game Brian, and enjoying every second of it. I hate the White Sox and everything they stand for.

  212. “Best joke of the thread: Jennie Finch is “hot.””

    If she isn’t now, she will be once I get her on TV on a regular basis. Because, after all, I think that is the definition of “hot,” isn’t it – “somebody who is on TV”?

  213. At least the loses these days have been in tight games. Nothing worse than getting blown out and shutout.

    It won’t be long before Rodney and Zumaya are back to normal. They just need to get these 1st couple games out of the way and get back into the routine of things. I’m sure they both feel a little bit of culture shock because they haven’t been with the team all season.

    If one of us has been away from work for a few months, the first few days back would feel kind of weird and that’s when you’re most likely to make stupid mistakes. That’s life for man, dog, or fish.

  214. That’s very pragmatic, Chief. We don’t really care for that around here, we prefer factless, emotion-driven responses to every situation.

    Anyway, I agree with you to a large degree, although Leyland desreves some blame for throwing Rodney to the wolves after saying he would ease him in. I know Rodney’s a pro and experienced, etc., but he’s also human and bound to overthrow if you use him in a high leverage spot. Not only is it bad for the team, you risk re-aggravating his injury.

    I think they’ll be fine also, but this bullpen is a mess right now and until that happens, we are going to need great starting pitching (like we’ve been getting, frankly) and plenty of runs.

  215. Good point, Coleman. I don’t own a TV, and the last I looked at a television set (I’m pretty sure it was on; there was motion on the screen, but I wasn’t exactly watching) was…um, maybe 3 months ago. So I’m completely out of the hotness loop.

  216. 9 run inning for the Cubs.
    9 runs goto Contreras for the game.
    I knew his good season wouldn’t last. His ERA just went from 3.24 to 3.96. It will probably be over 5 by the All-Star break at his current rate. Just 11 days ago before his start vs the Tigers his ERA was 2.76.

  217. “That’s life for man, dog, or fish.”

    I like that, and agree with the general sentiment.

    However, last night’s game has me in a sour mood, so I will sourly point out that at 34-39, the clock is ticking loud on getting it all together. The Tigers need to find that that rock-solid bridge to Jones sooner than later, whoever it might be.

    More positively, the starting pitching has been outstanding, to say the least.

    Mark, the Tigers still feel hot to me, so your bold prediction for June might not turn out to be so far off.

    Any chance Piniella will get bored with the Cubs and come over when Jimmy hangs it up?

  218. I enjoyed reading the roundtable discussion. t would be nice to be able to read something like that before every series, with some Tiger blogger asking questions of a panel of opposing team bloggers, as a way to get to know the upcoming opponent a little better. How they view their season and recent trends. Bit of a scouting report from the “enemy” camp.

  219. If I cared about Fantasy baseball at all, I would be really glad that I forgot to start Jose Contreras today.

  220. Well Sean, it will take a 7-2 finish to get us back to .500, so perhaps I was a little aggressive in my prediction. It’s not impossible, but not easy either.

    I guess I’m satisfied that directionally it was a decent prediction, as they are clearly playing better. I think the starting pitching deserves a ton of credit for this rebound.

    I will amend it to say they’ll be above .500 by the All-Star break, and within 5 games of first place. (They have 21 games until the break, so a 13-8 stretch is needed. Definitely possible.)

    Sox lost, so it’s another opportunity to pick up a game on first place.

  221. Transplanting the defensive metric discussion:

    If, to perform his job in the field, a SS is supposed to do X number of things well, and he does half of those well and half not very well, one school of thought would hold that the SS is, on balance, average. I would say that the good to great SS does all of those things well, and the difference between good and great is either just how well or the slight difference in failure rate in the highest leverage situations.

    As yet, I fail to understand how piling on the variables and vectors and increasing the granularity of the analysis is better than a more general and more subjective appraisal of how well fielders field playable balls. Either way you end up with a simple score that is going to be interpreted in a simple way. I also find it more predictive to simply ascertain that I have a 2B who excels at making the routine play routinely than to know he performs better on ground balls hit 7 degrees to his right that left the bat at 96 MPH before hitting the ground at Sector 113 of the infield than he does on ground balls hit 5 degrees to his left that left the bat at 91 mph before hitting the ground at Sector 196 of the infield.

    I’m not mocking the granular. It’s just that unless I’m a scout or a GM, it’s interesting only as esoterica. It’s cool to know that one player might be hitting .355 and another .278 on full count pitches put in play, but I’m not going to bring that out in a debate on the relative merits of the two guys.

  222. Chris in Dallas

    I can’t let the discussion of Cubs prospect Donald Veel die without some final comments.

    In my opinion, he’s too tender for the big leagues. More often than not, you’ll find him out getting sauced with some Italian after a game. There’s just no polite way to put this. As a prospect, he’s dead meat.

  223. C-in-D: “More often than not, you’ll find him out getting sauced with some Italian after a game”

    So this guy pretty much has failure written all over him…and yet still am I envious….

  224. Wow and just thinking about “getting sauced” and I mixed up C-in-D with S-in-I

  225. Sean – the value of the granular isn’t so much on the output as it is on the input. The more detail you can provide the model the better you can judge the difficulty of making a given play. The output is typically expressed much simpler and it’s a summation of plays made above or below expected.

  226. Billfer – I see what you’re saying on input vs. output. I shouldn’t fault a more complex and realistic input for not making the output more than what it should be – a summary.

    Any summarizing statistic turns a complex input into a simple output. The greater the variety of relevant and specific information you can put in, the more useful the stat is. That’s why OPS is far superior to batting average (will BA ever become obsolete? It ought to be, and yet I find myself always looking at it out of ingrained habit). That’s probably also why a stat I proposed back in the 70s, 2B/BB-2 (doubles per walk with less than 2 outs), never caught on.

    I think that the “problem” with going nuts on the input for defensive metrics is that the small amount of subjectivity you can whittle away costs more effort than it’s worth. Trying to stamp out the subjectivity entirely is like trying to get to the horizon before the sun does.

    We accept a great deal of “lost data” in our pitching and hitting stats. Success or failure here can be a matter not of feet but of inches or fractions of inches. The 0 for 4 in the box score lingers, and the fact that every at bat was a well-hit ball is forgotten by the end of the next game. A pitcher makes 4 bad pitches out of 80, and we’ll look at the game log and say he just didn’t have it that game, whereas he could have just as well gotten away with 4 bad pitches (and some hittable good ones) in an 80-pitch no hitter.

    I think that the subjectivity of the official scorer and his errors should be ruled out. That’s good. But beyond that, I think you can get very good results by accepting a certain amount of subjectivity and not burying yourself in parameters. Any fan who watches baseball on a regular basis has a pretty good idea of what a playable ball is. I would expect real students of the game to have a refined sense of what is playable and what is extraordinary, and they wouldn’t have to deal in angles and ball speeds to convince me.

    To me, the most useful approach would be to exclude or at least segregate the extraordinary, subjectively but knowledgeably. To the ordinary score, you could simply add the number of extraordinary outs the fielder created. A kind of HR or K figure for defense.

    Here’s a question: Who positions the defense? How often is bad defense attributed to or attributable to bad positioning, either by direction or player error?

  227. “I mixed up C-in-D with S-in-I”

    We’re similar, Coleman, but we can be told apart. He’s the funny one.

    What I had in mind for Mr. Veel was that he was going out with some Italian drinking buddy of his. But if you’re suggesting it could be Italian women instead… yeah, now I’m envious, too.

  228. Speaking of stats, I was compiling my own “2008 clutch performance” stats a couple weeks ago, and the lowest scoring pitcher was Denny Bautista. I wasn’t surprised, since he hadn’t impressed me.

    The memory of that finding lingered, and when I saw Bautista had been DFA’d, it was like, of course, I knew that would happen. Because I’m Mr. Insight.

    I glanced a few minutes ago at the page upon which I had performed my clutch calculations. Alas, an obvious error in math appeared. Turns out Bautista was 3nd only to Jones and Grilli, among relievers. 4th overall.

    Oops.

  229. But with the newer defensive metrics you’re attacking two fronts. One is the subjectivity, which is a huge bugger. Subjectively speaking Derek Jeter is a god at short while objectively he’s one of the 3-4 worst fielding shortstops. The only limitations that David Ecksteins grit knows are actual statistics. The subjective is huge and it rears it’s ugly head all the time. You don’t think there are people out there who’s judgement of a fieldable ball isn’t impacted by what Jair Jurrjens did in his latest start? Not to mention the fact that many fans don’t watch all teams. They see their team and that’s it. It colors their impression of fieldable.

    But in addition to battling the subjective you’re also improving the denominator. The conventional fielding stats only measure your performance on balls you get to. You’ve got to get behind that.

    Maybe for the typical fan it doesn’t make a bit of difference, but if I’m a GM I absolutely want to know what I’m getting in a player.

    There is definitely room for the subjective when analyzing talent. But the fact of the matter is most fans don’t have the ability to do the subjective at the level that is required to make decisions.

  230. “But the fact of the matter is most fans don’t have the ability to do the subjective at the level that is required to make decisions.”

    Absolutely. I know I don’t. Serious non-professional students of baseball could, however, do the subjective well enough to enlighten people like me without getting overly technical. If I could wish DTW posters into being, one of them would be someone who watched all the games and gave us a useful, non-conventional defensive box score of sorts after each one. So apprised, we’d be less inclined to be swayed by drama and hearsay in our opinions on this or that player’s defense.

    I am going to educate myself in the newer defensive metrics. Right now I’m like a movie critic trying to review a film on the basis of secondhand reports, only having seen short clips from it myself. My reservations might evaporate once I know exactly what the methods are.

  231. Often what people would tell you are their subjective opinions are actually opinions that are misinformed or incorrect opinions. For example “Inge strikes out too much” is an actual subjective opinion (the definition of “too much” will vary depending on the relative values you subjectively give different things). But today I kept getting irritated by comments such as “Inge is a total rally killer, almost every time he comes up with guys on base he strikes out.” This is not a subjective opinion, it is incorrect–you can look up the stats and find that Inge is better than average in these situations.

  232. One of the reasons I like to delve into stats in my own weird way is to test impressions I’ve gathered and the opinions I’ve formed from them.

    Not everyone has the patience for statistics, even though they’re readily available (along with past game information down to the pitch-by-pitch level), and some won’t be swayed by them anyway, so you can’t argue with them. The upside is that you don’t have to argue with them then.

    Something that’s gotten under my skin lately is use of the term sample size. I can’t cite an instance where it was abused, but I suspect that sometimes “small sample size” is being equated with “useless information.”

    Without going into a big rant, I’ll just say that sample size is important when you’re to trying to predict things and make projections. Otherwise, you don’t need a large sample size to evaluate and pass judgment on what’s already happened.

  233. And by the way, that Inge is a damned rally killer. Hate that guy. Just my subjective opinion.

    See, by using the word “damned,” I could be saying that he only kills damned rallies, rallies that are doomed to failure anyway. Now that’s coverage.

  234. Absolutely inexcusable play; walk a pitcher (Robertson); not field your position (Cabrera); not field 1b (Robertson).

    Let’s give away another one, boys!

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