In a recent blog post for The Freep, Jamie Samuelson wondered about the impact that Jim Leyland’s tirade and Curtis Granderson’s return to the lineup had on the team’s recent success (this was written on Friday morning before the Twins games). In fact he said:
Look, the odds were that the bats would come around. But sorry, you just can’t ignore the tirade and the centerfielder as having some impact. I’ll leave it to the stat gurus to figure out the why (I’m sure detroittigersweblog.com is at it as we speak!) Maybe Polanco feels less pressure with Granderson in front of him, or with Granderson on base.
PREGAME: It will be Justin Verlander taking on Scott Baker at the Metrodome tonight.
Baker faced the Tigers once and he limited the Tigers to 3 runs over 7 innings before the explosion. On the season Baker is striking out more than 5 batters for every walk he issues. Baker has allowed 6 homers but they’ve all been solo.
Verlander has one quality start on the season. Now would be a good time for a second.
POSTGAME: Well, Verlander pitched pretty good. Marcus Thames made some nice plays. Curtis Granderson had a real nice at-bat culminating in a home run (only the second run of the series for Detroit). That’s it for highlights. Again. Ergh. Three games below .500 again. Ergh.
Rochester 6 Toledo 4 Mike Hessman hit his 10th homer and added a walk. Dane Sardhina doubled and singled. Willis was the starter on his rehab assignment and allowed 2 runs in 4.2 innings.
Erie 9 Altoona 10 Wil Rhymes was 4 for 4. Kody Kirkland homered, singled, and drove in 4. Josh Rainwater allowed 6 runs and didn’t make it out of the 3rd inning.
Lakeland 5 Dunedin 4 Scott Sizemore had 3 hits and a walk. Ryan Strieby and Mike Bertram also had 3 hits apiece including a homer for Strieby. Jonah Nickerson allowed 4 runs on 7 hits, 2 walks, and 3 K’s in 5.1 innings.
Quad Cities 3 West Michigan 16 Jordan Newton had a single, a double, and two triples. Audy Ciriaco also had 4 hits. Cory Middleton homered. Jon Kibler pitched 7 innings allowing only 1 run on 2 hits, 4 walks, and 7 K’s.
Dontrelle Willis made his first rehab start for the Toledo Mud Hens. The one thing everybody should be looking for was to see if Willis had regained any modicum of control. I haven’t seen postgame reports or interviews yet, but the box score tells a favorable story.
Willis pitched 4.2 innings and allowed 4 hits and two runs. But the big numbers were 0 walks and 4 strike outs. He threw 72 pitches and 71% of them went for strikes. Encouraging signs to be sure.
My guess is that Willis makes one more start and if the results are similar he would rejoin the Tigers rotation in Kansas City. If you’re wondering what would happen to Armando Galarraga, I’m pretty sure that it wasn’t coincidence that Willis made a start the same night that Galarraga did. Things could get shuffled and maybe someone else in the rotation develops a tired arm, but otherwise Galarraga would be the one heading out.
PREGAME: From the Tigers perspective this game could be deemed the quest for .500. After the 0-7 and 2-10 start the Tigers and their fans would like nothing more to effectively hit RESET on the season. And it can all come true with a drubbing of Livan Hernandez and another surprising start from Armando Galarraga.
Galarraga continues his tour of the upper midwest (and Canada) as he heads to the dome in Minnesotra. He’s two for three in quality starts and has spun a 1.50 ERA.
Hernandez was a target of the Tigers this offseason while they were looking for a 5th starter. Actually I think he was leverage to use against Scott Boras while negotiating Kenny Rogers contract but that’s neither here nor there. He started off the season in dazzling fashion allowing 6 runs total in his first 3 starts while going 7 innings in each. But he’s struggled a little as of late including being tagged for 7 runs by the Rangers in his last start.
POSTGAME: It could have been worse. Okay, not much worse. Galarraga wasn’t sharp. Guillen had a costly error. The Tigers couldn’t take advantage of numerous scoring opportunities. The bullpen got shelled. And Denny Bautista left the game with an apparent shoulder injury. Yeah. This wasn’t good.
I’ll be on WDFN 1130AM (wdfn.com) this morning at 10:35 am. I’ll be on It is What it Is with Sean Baligian. As always, I’ll post the audio when it is available. You’ll also be able to find on the WDFN podcast page.
Rochester 1 Toledo 5 Mike Hessman went 3 for 3 with a walk including his 9th homer. Brent Clevlen homered and tripled and is now hitting 284/346/526 – but still striking out in a third of his at-bats. Yorman Bazardo only allowed 1 run on 3 hits in 5 innings, but he did walk 3. Casey Fossum added 3.1 innings of 1 hit relief.
Erie 2 Akron 6 Danny Worth singled and walked. Max St. Pierre was 1 for 2 with 2 walks and is hitting a surprising 371/443/532. Danny Christensen allowed 4 runs, only 2 of which were earned, in 5.2 innings.
Lakeland 7 Dunedin 2 Justin Justice was 3 for 4 with a homer and a walk. James Skelton singled and added 3 walks. Duane Below allowed 7 hits and 4 walks in 5 innings, but only 2 runs crossed the plate and he added 6 K’s.
Early in the season during the time of the great losing, there were numerous complaints about the Tigers approach at the plate. They were going up their swinging early and swinging often. I didn’t totally buy into the theory because the pitches per plate appearance were in line with league norms. But we didn’t know whether or not they were really chasing more pitches. But thanks to the folks at Fangraphs we now have a handle on this information.
Just this week they started to report out stats related to plate discipline. We now know how often players swing at pitches out side of the strike zone (O-Swing%) versus how often they swing at pitches in the zone (Z-Swing%). And how often they make contact with said pitches.
I brought in the Tigers data through April 29th and added the pitches per plate appearance and the percentage of time players swung at the first pitch. These data are found on the individual player pages at Baseball Reference. The results as well as some league norms for a point of reference are below:
Some things to note:
Granderson, Inge, Guilen, Rodriguez and Jones are all seeing more pitches per plate appearance than at any point in their career.
Pudge, Polanco, and Sheffield, are all swinging at the first pitch less than they have at any point in their careers – and there are some serious track records to work with. For good measure you can add Thames to the list as well.
Inge, Santiago, and Jones rates of swinging at the first pitch are less than half of their career rates at this point.
And yes, Pudge is still chasing more than the league norm. But understand that in the last 3 years his O-Swing% were 37%, 38%, and 41% so this is considerable improvement.
The take away is that everybody in the lineup (and even on the bench) is either meeting or exceeding their career levels of patience. And in terms of first pitch swinging there are some significant, significant changes underway. It’s still early in the season and these numbers could certainly, and I’d expect in many cases, to normalize. But if the team has a quick inning here or there or seem to swing at a few too many first pitches or pitches out of the strike zone, know that they’ve still been better than most in this regard.
PREGAME: Nate Robertson takes the mound looking to earn a 3rd straight quality start for the rotation. Robertson pitched well his last time out working 7 innnings on only 89 pitches. But the Angels bunched their baserunners in the 4th inning when 4 runs scored.
He’ll be opposed by Ian Kennedy who has struggled so far this year. He’s been knocked out in the 3rd inning on two different occasions and with a 15:17 K:BB ratio he looks like he good be pitching for the Tigers. One positive for Kennedy is that he’s only allowed 1 homer in 19 innnings this year.
POSTGAME: We’ll probably hear the naysayers talk about how this wasn’t the Yankees at full strength. They didn’t have two big guns in Alex Rodriguez and Jorge Posada. Well, tough. Yes it’s a break to play a team when they are struggling or banged up. Just ask the White Sox who took 5 of 6 from a slumping Tigers team that had the top third of the line-up banged up or missing altogether. But they still count as wins. Continue reading Game 29: Tigers at Yankees→
Toledo 3 Louisville 4 Matt Joyce was 2 for 4. Erick Almonte singled and homered. Jon Connolly allowed 4 runs, 2 of which were earned, in 6.2 innings.
Erie 4 Akron 8 Wilkin Ramirez who homered twice yesterday was a homer short of the cycle today. Deik Scram and Ryan Roberson each had 2 hits and Scram added 2 walks.Andrew Kown allowed 4 runs on 4 walks, 4 K’s, and 6 hits in 5 innings.
Lakeland 5 Dunedin 6 Rick Porcello pitched 4 innings of shut out ball before allowing 2 runs in the 5th. He walked 3 and didn’t fan anybody. Ryan Strieby had 3 hits, including a homer, and a walk. Jeramy Laster bested him with 2 homers and a single.
West Michigan 6 Wisconsin 1 I just noticed that every team in the org is on the road tonight. Joe Tucker had 4 hits. Kody Kaiser doubled and homered. Kyle Peter singled twice and doubled. Lauren Gagnier fanned 11 in 6 shut out innings of work.
PREGAME: The Tigers look to get an early grip on the series in New York.
Jeremy Bonderman will look to not walk everyone. He’s allowed 13 in his last 2 starts and 21 in 27.1 innings this season. Somehow he has a 4.28 ERA but it won’t stay that low if he can’t find the strike zone with any kind of consistency.
Andy Pettitte has been up and down this season with 3 quality starts and a couple un-quality ones. His last time out Cleveland got to him for 5 runs in 5 innings on the strength of 11 baserunners and two homers.
POSTGAME: Did the Tigers just make it through a game with only 2 pitchers? Did a starter get 23 outs? Did Placido Polanco hit 2 homers? Yes, it all really did happen.
The Tigers have dealt Jason Grilli to the Colorado Rockies for Zach Simons. This frees a spot for the activation of Francisco Cruceta who will join the team tomorrow.
I’m surprised on a number of levels.
That the Tigers would part with a pitcher given the woes of the starting rotation. The starters aren’t going deep and have generally been unreliable. Meaning the Tigers could use extra options as spot starters (like Zach Miner) and the Tigers have leaned heavily on their long men.
That they’d make the move without Cruceta available to join the team considering Bonderman has walked 13 in his last 2 starts. They might need that arm tonight.
That Grilli would be trade-able at any point in the season.
That Zach Miner wasn’t optioned to Toledo. I think Miner can be effective but the guy has given up runs in 5 of his 10 outings this year. He’s been good in 3 of the last 4 appearances, but still…Grilli has been more effective this year and has pitched 11.1 scoreless innings since some early season rockiness. The longest scoreless streak for a reliever this year is 13.1 IP just as an aside.
As for Simons, he’s a 23 year old right hander in High A ball. He was transitioned to the bullpen last year and bumped up his strike out rate to nearly one per inning. He does struggle some with control with a walk almost every other inning. Beck’s Blog: Cruceta to join Tigers, Grilli traded
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