Once again Tom Tango, aka Tangotiger, is conducting his scouting report by the fans, for the fans. I’ve linked to this in the past, but basically you the fan get to rate players defensively across several categories. Tom then compiles the data and makes it available to the masses.
He has instructions on his site, and the one I’d want to highlight is :
Try to judge “average” not as an average player at that position, but an average player at any position. If you think that Willie Bloomquist has an average arm, then mark him as average, regardless if you’ve seen him play 2B, SS, 3B, LF, or CF.
DO NOT CONSIDER THE POSITION THE PLAYER PLAYS!
It’s an off day for the Tigers, so take 5 minutes of the time you’d spend watching the game, and take the survey. It’s quick, and easy. And the bigger sample size the better.
TRIVIA: Can someone tell me the why the D on the tigers home jerseys is different from the D on the cap? Thanks.
There’s a reasonable answer to that question, but I’m pretty sure I can’t remember what it is. Maybe I should try this thing the kids call ‘Google’.
googled it, couldnd’t find any “why”
I Googled it, too. There was an ESPN Page 2 story from the guy who does Uni Watch that described the two different “D”s phenomenon in some depth – it looked like it was during the ’06 Series – and even the Tiger front office people who were asked didn’t know.
It has changed over time (the article provided links as visual evidence). They attributed it to different companies printing the logos, but didn’t have any paper trail that would give a definitive answer.
I kind of like when there are questions that have answers but nobody knows.
what’s the link?
I Googled it. All I got was porn.
So here’s a story about this I heard. Please do not accept as definitive truth.
Somewhere in the late 80s or early 90s, MLB made all teams digitize their logos and send them in to the main office, you know, to get with the age of com-pew-tars and such. The Tigers basically typed the letter ‘D’ in Olde English font on their computers. However, the ‘D’ in this font was different than the ‘D’ that they had used for ninety-some years. It was noticed later, but no one really saw the need to change it; it’s not like there was any trouble telling them apart from different teams. So to this day, things the team controls have one ‘D’ and things the league controls have a different ‘D’.
Makes almost too much sense and is therefore probably wrong, but this is what I’ve heard.
A possible clue is offered through Wikipedia. There, the jersey D is said to date back to 1924, whereas the cap D dates back to 1934.
If I had to guess – and I do – I would guess that the cap logo is a more fanciful variation on the original jersey D. The D on the jersey looks closer to what I consider the true Old English character. It could be that they wanted to change to a fancier D in 1934, but ran into some kind of practical or logistical difficulties making such a change with the jerseys. Maybe they ran out of money after the caps were done – this was during the depression, after all.
Non olde English D related, but the folks at BP let me know the following:
Top 5 2008 AL Center Fielders, by VORP
Player, Team, EqA, VORP
Grady Sizemore, CLE, .302, 53.0
Josh Hamilton, TEX, .303, 46.0
Curtis Granderson, DET, .290, 37.1
Ichiro Suzuki, SEA, .278, 29.5
Torii Hunter, ANA, .272, 28.5
And a final installment in an analysis from a few days ago by Nate Silver over there. I won’t link since it’s subscription-only, but I’ll give you the outlook part for free:
[deleted by billfer…that’s too much premium content to post. Also, don’t post quotes or material from other sites without including the link]
Stopping by to say “Hi” to my fellow Tigers fans. Wouldn’t ya know, day off tomorrow and no game tonight..Grrrr Guess I’ll take a look at the scouting report link and have a beer or two 😉
Link to Page 2 story mentioned earlier.
Nice link, Matt. I’m surprised it’s all so wrapped up in mystery. Anyway, I like both Ds where they are. Phooey on uniform uniformity. I think.
Sorry, billfer. I’ll be more careful next time.
BTW if you do have a BP subscription, here’s the link…
http://www.baseballprospectus.com/article.php?articleid=7943