Monthly Archives: March 2011

2011 Season, Game Post

Game 2011.1: Tigers at Yankees. For lo, the winter is past…

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Opening day.  Is.  Here.   Rejoice.

The voice of the turtle, the warmth of the sun, and the superflous bunting adorning every inch of stadium fascia.  Every team is in first place and hope abounds.  Fresh cut grass, crisp new uni’s, warm dogs and cold beer.  It’s difficult to imagine a better day of the year.

I’m working a full day today, but I’ll be sporting my Tigers cufflinks (they contain little pieces of seats from Tigers stadium) and wearing my home cap.  Thanks to AppleTV and mlb.tv, I’ll be streaming the game on the TV in our lobby.

Who is going to the game?  If you’re not going to the game, how will you watch and/or listen?

2011 Season, Links

News and Notes: Hip Hip…Opening Day

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Lots of chatter out there concerning our Tigers, here are a few good reasons to procrastinate today:

– Lynn Henning gives his player by player projections.

– Freep writers predict anywhere from a 1st to 3rd place finish for 2011.

– Brad Penny had this to say about Verlander – “That might be the best spring I’ve ever seen out of a pitcher,” Penny said.  (As reported by Tom Gage.)  This got picked up by Buster Olney on ESPN insider today.

– stltoday.com had a great, in-depth article about Scherzer yesterday.  At least one Czar thinks Scherzer is poised to become an All-Star this year.

Remember to like our posts on Facebook, let’s get the word out.

Three more days.

2011 Season, Managing & Strategy

Quantifying Ol’ Smokey

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Along with their player forecasts and team breakdowns, Baseball Prospectus publishes “stats” on managers long with a lengthy write-up…”Old Smokey remains one of the league’s better skippers…”

Generally, I think that day in/day obsession with the team grants us better insight then whatever stats BP can come up with, though it is difficult to argue with BP’s algorithmic brilliance and their ability to objectively quantify data, and only data.  Unfortunately, when it comes to managers, the numbers seem to be little more than obscure trivia answers.  With that in mind, I’ve posted some select “manager stats” below.  Pythag is the manager’s 2010 pythagorean expectation (a Bill James invention, read about it here or here), Avg. PC is the average pitch count per game, BQS is “blown quality starts,” REL is relievers used, and Rel w Zero R is relief appearances with zero runs allowed.

BP doesn’t list league averages, so I’ll post the rest of the division for comparison’s sake.

Manager Pythag Avg. PC BQS REL REL w Zero R
Ol Smokey -1 99.8 4 416 242
Manny Acta 0 96.8 4 468 305
Ron Gardenhire 1 93.7 6 465 315
Hillman/Yost 4 96.7 6 332 206
Guillen 2 99.5 11 406

265

Hard to really get much out of that, but interesting fodder none the less.

I do, however, have some more useful figures, courtesy of Baseball-Reference.com.

In 19 years as a manager, JL is 1493 and 1518, for a .496 winning percentage.  (Don’t look for him to get to .500 this year.)  He’s won one WS (’97 with the Marlins) and 2 pennants.  As the manager of the Tigers, he’s fared significantly better, 424-387 for a .523 winning percentage. Sounds pretty good, right?  Not when you look at his second half numbers.  The numbers below reflect Tigers’ records after the All Star break under Leyland.

’06 – 2 games under

’07 – 4 games under

’08 – 14 games under

’09 – even

’10 – 10 games under

Thus, since 2006, Leyland is an astonishing 30 games under .500 after the AS break, and an even more incredible 67 games over before the summer classic.  Looking at one season, maybe two, you can point to player drop-offs or injuries.  But five years is hardly a coincidence.

Continuing, I was shocked to see that JL was in the middle of the pack when it comes to using relievers, part of that is due to his willingness to let Verlander throw so many pitches (I’m not necessarily against that).  Though I did not post it above, his hit & run frequency was also in the middle of the pack for AL Central managers.

So in the end, I’ll leave it up to you guys.  Is Leyland one of the league’s “better skippers?”   Or does he simply have everyone fooled but us?

2011 Season, Links

News and Notes: 3.18.11

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– In case you are not following along, Cabrera is mashing to the tune of .357/.391/.714 for an OPS of 1.105.  I’m guessing his OBP could be higher, but he’s swinging to get into shape.

– Benoit has looked very good with a .71 WHIP and 10Ks in 7 IP.

– Valverde has 4 BBs in 7 IP.  Not good.  Perry has 5 in 8 IP.  Schlereth had 4 in 4 batters.  That beard can’t be helping.

– Coke has looked pretty good this spring, but he’s concerned about the velocity on his fastball.  So am I.

– After the Porcello and Perry regressions, it looks like the Tigers are going to take it slow with Jacob Turner.  Good plan.

– Leyland has decided that Guillen and Zumaya will stay in Florida for the start of the season.  Anyone want to take the under on May 15 as the first date that either will appear?

2011 Season, Links

News and Notes: 3.10.11

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– That’s two days in a row now that young Tiger hitters have come up to the plate in the bottom of the 9th as the tying or go ahead run, both times with the bases loaded, and then watched 3 straight called strikes hum by.  (Worth on Tues, Sizemore on Wed).

– Fangraphs had an interesting post on the Tigers’ rotation a few days ago.   The author, Ben Nicholson-Smith, questions DD’s decision to add depth to the starting rotation.

– 40 IPs for Zumaya might be a little much, as it looks like he won’t be ready for the opener.  We’ve seen this before.  Beck posted some of Leyland’s thoughts about heading into the season without Zumaya in the pen.

– The Cabrera video has been released.  I’m staying away from it, but it’s big news today.

2011 Season, Previews

Baseball Prospectus’ take on the 2011 Season

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I picked up BP 2011 last week and have had an opportunity to review their outlook on the Tigers (amongst other things).  There’s no substitute for picking up the whole thing (it’s only $12.86 on Amazon now), but I wanted to pass along a few thoughts, and get your reaction.

First of all, BP is notoriously pessimistic, and their writers all seem to share the same cynicism and arrogance.  It’s funny in small doses, but gets tiresome after a while.  So while the information is amazing, and their projection algorithms are second to none, be prepared for elongated jabs at virtually everyone.

Anyway, there is a certain amount of nomenclature that is intrinsic to BP, so I’ll try not to focus too much on their less well known stats.  But in case you want/need a primer – here is a link to their glossary.

Also, win totals for superstar pitchers and HR/RBIs for superstar hitters always seem to be low, no? Does anyone know if BP calculates team win totals first, and then lets the individual stats follow that, or is it the other way around?  I’m guessing the players are forecast first.  They have probably posted an article on this in the past, if someone has seen it, please let me know.  I’m really curious to know if they have addressed before.

Team

In analyzing the 2010 season, BP gives high marks to the Granderson/Jackson deal, writing that “it was a bold and controversial move that wound up paying off in spades” citing the payroll flexibility and that “cheap talent is the life-blood of a winning organization.”  A-Jax, Scherzer, Coke & Schlereth combined for 8.9 Wins Above Replacement Player (“WARP”), while Granderson and Jackson combined for 5.9.  +3 WARP is pretty darn good.  Not to mention that Scherzer, Jackson, Coke and Schlereth combined for 26 years of team control when the deal was done (22 now), while Granderson & Jackson were at 7 (5 now) at the time.  More WARP + more player control + less price = great deal.

BP goes on to mention that the Tigers have a “core of young players who could form the base of a championship team,” starting with pitching talent.  According to BP, this is paramount because pitching talent is the most difficult asset to acquire in the open market.

BP feels that the Tigers have as good as anyone to win the Central.  Referencing 2010, the Tigers’ staff could be compared to that of San Fran (could) and BP reminds us that San Fran didn’t have Miguel Cabrera.

Hitters

I won’t go through them all, but a few highlights.  When I list slashlines, it’s Avg/OBP/Slg.

Cabrera projects to have another monster year (36 HRs 110 RBI, .948 OPS), but his projected WARP is only 4.2 (6.4 in 2010 and 4.4 in 2009).  Pujols, on the other hand, projects to an 8.1 WARP, and had a WARP of 7.8 last year, even though by most accounts Cabrera had a better offensive year (higher slugging, higher average, higher OBP). I know that Pujols is a significantly better baserunner but was he 1.4 WARP better?  And considering that Cabrera is 3 years younger, why the gross discrepancy in this year’s forecast?  Anyone at BP reading this?

Like many, BP was blown away by A-Jax’s 2010 .393 BABIP, and projects a still high but more reasonable .346 BABIP for him this year, which results in a pretty pedestrian .268 BA and .704 OPS (actually, pedestrian is generous; an OPS of .704 for a center fielder merits the bench). Jackson is going to have to develop more gap power and cut down on Ks (BP projects 152 of them, down from 170) to be a consistently good player.  .268/.325/.381

Incredibly, BP projects 478 PAs for Guillen, but also mentions that the Tigers’ hopes of Guillen making good on the final year of his $48M contract are similar to their “hope to capture and train a unicorn this spring.”  Still BP thinks Guillen will slug .771, which is great for a 2B, but not so good for a DH/corner outfielder.  .265/.346/.425

Raburn projects to a very healthy .806 OPS over 381 plate appearances. .266/.337/.469

Maggs projects to an. 814 OPS, but his low low fielding leaves him with only a 1.1 WARP. .293/.363/.451

VMart should be everything the club wants him to be; BP sees him batting .287/.357/.458, with 19 HR and a WARP of 2.9.

And because everyone wants to know, Inge projects to a reasonable 1.5 WARP, largely resulting from his fielding prowess.  .228/.309/.385.  stephen, please let us know how you feel about a corner infielder with a sub .700 OPS.

Pitchers

BP projects another huge year for JV, but only 14 wins, which says a lot about what they see behind him.  The interesting parts about their projection is that they think JV’s SO/9 will drop by 5%, yet his BB/9 will increase slightly (3%).  Regardless, he projects to a 5.5 WARP.  Highest on the team by a long shot.

BP sees Scherzer as striking out more per 9 than JV (8.8), but only projects him to 145 IPs, way less than 2009 and 2010.  BP knows quite a bit about injuries as they relate to workload, age & pitching mechanics, but I certainly hope that he gets to to 180 IPs or so. Interestingly, BP refers to Scherzer as a current “ace,” but they really do not get into the low IP projections.  Scherzer’s 2011 WARP projection is 3.6.

Porcello projects to a 2.3 WARP (which is great), but a 1.39 WHIP and 4.40 ERA.  4.4 K/9 like BP suggests just won’t do it.

BP thinks Zumaya will get into 40 games this year, but they project his BB/9 to 4.7 with a 1.45 WHIP an 4.12 ERA.

Finally, Benoit…”Because some teams don’t pay attention to the volatile nature of relief performances, the owner of a 4.47 career ERA with two good seasons in the last five years snagged a three-year, $16.5 million deal with Detroit.  That’s an expensive recipe for heartbreak.”  I still don’t like this deal.  BP projects 71 IPs with a 1.19 WHIP, 9.9 SO/9 and 2.95 ERA for 2011.  I can live with that.

BP also goes into great detail on manager analysis, I’ll save that for a separate post later this week.  Considering the polarizing nature of Ol’ Smokey, I think we’ll have plenty to discuss on that one.

Again, pick up your copy of Baseball Prospectus 2011 here.