Two of the Tigers top pitching prospects are injured, or at least experiencing enough discomfort to disrupt the starts to their respective seasons. Cody Satterwhite has landed on the disabled list for the Erie Seawolves and Casey Crosby will miss his first start with the Lakeland Flying Tigers. Continue reading Satterwhite and Crosby in Pain
Yearly Archives: 2010
Game 2010.001: Post Game
Well that was a nice start to the season. The Tigers went up against the defending Cy Young winner and managed a win. The offense came through. The bullpen came through. The new guys each got a chance to make a favorable first impression. All in all a good day in Kansas City.
Game 2010.001: Tigers at Royals
My first thought about this game is the same this year as it is every year, “it’s about time.” And the pitching match-up is certainly Opening Day worthy with Zack Greinke and Justin Verlander doing battle.
Greinke is pretty good at pitching, what with that well deserved Cy Young award and all occupying a space on his mantle. Greinke led the league in ERA (Verlander was 5th), he led the league in WHIP (Verlander was 5th), he was 2nd in strikeouts (Verlander was 1first), he was 5th in innings pitched (Verlander was first). These are some good pitchers.
What I Think About the 2010 Season
I’m not going to do a big prediction post this season. I did make some predictions for Baseball Daily Digest. I have the Tigers finishing second behind the Twins, and pretty much have the AL Central finishing the same as last season. I think the Tigers are about an 82-83 win team with enough upside and risk that the basement and first place are both within reach in a narrow division.
Having said that, here are some thoughts (almost like predictions) about what we’ll see this season from Detroit.
- Scott Sizemore will succeed. I’m not predicting ROY awards (though I wouldn’t be shocked) but he’ll hit well enough that his average fielding won’t be an issue. Plus he’ll say the right things and do all those little things that are so popular that fans will love him.
- Magglio Ordonez’s contract will be an issue once again this season as he approaches his vesting milestones. He’ll hit over .300 and be productive enough that cutting him won’t be a viable option.
- The Tigers will use at least 9 starters this year.
- Andy Oliver might not be one of those starters, but I bet he sees big league innings this year.
- Clete Thomas is the first Mud Hen to be called up.
- Adam Everett will struggle with the stick (even for his standards) and there will be calls for Brent Dlugach by mid May.
- Jeremy Bonderman gets more starts than Dontrelle Willis
- Verlander wins the Cy Young award
Opening Day Link Round Up
It’s finally here. Real Tigers baseball again for the first time since game 163. Here are some items of interest that may help you get ready for today:
- Kurt gets a little bit poetic as he waxes about the dawn of a new season.
- Lee uses the John Dewan spring slugging indicator to see who has a chance to breakout in 2010.
- BYB went to the enemy to scout today’s game Q&A with Will McDonald of Royals Review
- Tigers’ Austin Jackson learning power comes later – freep.com – Detroit Free Press
- ESPN predicts the 2010 baseball season – ESPN
- AL Central preview- predictions and projections – Sporting News staff reports – MLB
- 2010 MLB Preseason Experts Picks – MLB – SI.com
- Tigers manager Jim Leyland plans to rest Brandon Inge some; Inge wants 162 games
- He’s no Placido Polanco, but rookie second baseman Scott Sizemore has Tigers talking
Opening Day Mega Chat Extravaganza
Please join myself and a significant chunk of the Tigers blogosphere for a live chat today at 3 p.m. It looks like we’ll have a dozen (or more, the responses keep coming in) bloggers and Tigers writers stopping by in the hour leading up to the first pitch of the Detroit Tigers’ 2010 season. You may remember we did this once before at the trade deadline and despite the chaos and moderating challenges, it was also a lot of fun.
Minor League Rosters Announced
The Tigers organization made the official announcements of their minor league rosters today. The rosters below were compiled from posts at TigsTown (and Mark Anderson – @TigsTownMark), Motown Sports, and Nick Underhill’s site.
A couple of things worth calling out:
- Audy Ciriaco and Cody Satterwhite are both starting their seasons on the DL. In Satterwhite’s case it is a torn labrum. While I don’t know the severity this is often a career-altering type of injury.
- 2009 second round pick Andy Oliver will receive the aggressive assignment to AA meaning he has a chance to see time with the big league club in 2010.
- Another 2009 pitcher, Adam Wilk will be pushed to Lakeland after successful stints at the lower rungs in his debut year.
- The Toledo team is pretty stacked and the infield and outfield should provide some exciting nights at Fifth-Third field. That crowded outfield forced Ramirez to Erie even though he spent last season at AAA. Jason Beck notes that he will get the bulk of his reps in centerfield so the move may me as much about defense as offense.
- Take 75 North and TigsTown both covered some of the cuts/retirements that are a little surprising including Brett Jensen and Jordan Newton.
Opening Day Still a Hot Ticket
In Detroit we take great pride in the festive atmosphere that surrounds Opening Day. It really is a Detroit holiday and there are often claims that we have the best Opening Day in baseball. The game is always a sellout, and thousands more that don’t have tickets still make the trek. It appears that even with a down economy and a team with questionable prospects that the secondary market is booming for tickets in 2010.
SeatGeek, a site that monitors the secondary market for sports tickets issued a report and the Tigers-Indians game on April 9th is the fourth priciest MLB ticket on the market at $141. It trails only the Yankees opener, a Yankees-Red Sox match-up, and the Minnesota Twins opening of Target field. But other Tigers tickets are down 15% compared to the second half of 2009. Part of that could be seasonal impact as well.
On Stubhub Opening Day tickets are starting at $99 for standing room and you’ll need to go over $125 to get an actual seat.
Do you have tickets for the opener yet, do you plan on heading down?
Programming Note
If you happen to be in the metro Detroit area this morning around 9 a.m. flip your radio dial over to WDFN 1130 AM. I’ll be talking Tigers with Sean Baligian and Tom “Killer” Kowalski. If you’re not in the Detroit area you can catch the stream at http://detroitsportstalkradio.com.
If you missed the segment, here is a link to the podcast. We talked about the Nate Robertson trade, the back of the rotation, and the potential of the offense. Thanks to Sean and Killer for having me on.
Robertson traded
Jeremy Bonderman and Dontrelle Willis have secured the final two spots in the Tigers rotation, and Nate Robertson secured a spot with the Marlins. The Tigers today traded Robertson and $9.6 million of his $10 million contract for Marlins left handed prospect Jay Voss. For my thoughts on the trade, well, just look back a couple days.
Robertson outpitched his two competitors not only this spring, but last year as well. The stats say that Robertson should be in the rotation. It has to be a tough pill for Robertson to swallow.*
links for 2010-03-30
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Yep. Samara’s at it again.
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Who has the top rotation in the Central? The Twins, the Tigers, or the White Sox?
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Cool Sparky Anderson story.
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Wow. Heat maps and all kinds of goodness. Almost overwhelming.
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Inge joins Nate Robertson as the only other Tiger to make his full time home in the Detroit area. Of course both are free agents after this year so the number could be back down to 0.
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Tom Tango, saber-stud, is soliciting the wisdom of the crowds in forecasting playing time for the 2010 season. Help build up the sample size and weigh in on the Tigers (or any other team you fell suited to chime in on).
It’s Kelly right?
Yesterday Jim Leyland dropped some hints as to what his preferred 25 man roster would be when the team breaks camp this week. Actually he’s been dropping hints all along but he certainly helped to remove some doubt yesterday. It appears that Don Kelly will be the last position player on the roster.
Leyland offered reporters up this nugget:
I’ll give you one hint: ‘If Larish could play center field, his chances would be better.’
Which certainly hurts Jeff Larish’s chances of making the team. And I read it like Lee does that the preferred candidate be able to play both infield and outfield. This likely becomes more important as Leyland states his intention of resting Brandon Inge early in the season and the team’s questioned (and answered) level of comfort in Scott Sizemore.