The Tigers signed 8 players today, bringing the total number of players signed to 25. Five of the eight are sporting their first big league contract. The players are:
Two national publications came out at the end of last week and said that the Tigers could be good this year. Now they didn’t say the Tigers would be good, just that they could be good.
First Baseball Prospectus’ Tigers notebook had this to say:
But is the ridicule justified this year? The AL Central isn
Some brief notes an links as I prepare to have 14 preschoolers over for a birthday party tomorrow…
The Detroit Tigers avoided arbitration hearings completely this year with Craig Monroe now under contract. He signed for one year and $2.8 million. A fair deal all around, and the two sides essentially split the difference from their initial offers.
I’ve been doing quite a bit of defensive comparisons lately, and using a bunch of metrics. Coincidentally there were a couple of articles today summarizing the various measures. Jon Weisman of Dodger Thoughts did a piece for SI outlining the quest for the perfect defensive measure.
In the same vein, David Gassko of the Hardball Times compared the various metrics in articles located here and here. (via Baseball Musings)
A nice article about Curtis Granderson visiting his middle school alma mater.
With Tiger Stadium playing host to Bud Bowl (a big party/concert) over Super Bowl weekend there have been a couple articles about it’s current state. ESPN had a long piece about the Stadium, and the lack of events held since the final game.
The Bud Bowl is one proposal that the city did approve. Rottach said Detroit is charging Anheuser-Busch $40,000 to rent the stadium. More important than the money, though, was the thoroughness of Anheuser-Busch’s proposal, which included a commitment to return the stadium to the exact specifications it had before.
Earlier in the week the Free Press ran a story, complete with pictures, about how run down the stadium had become. It included a picture of a tree growing in the stands, and part of a wall crumbling.
Remember when it seemed like Chris Shelton didn’t have a position? In fact one local columnist didn’t include Shelton in last year’s Top 10 Tiger prospects because:
Shelton does not have a position and is unathletic. Last season, when he did get to play in the major leagues and rehab assignment at Toledo, he did not sting the ball. He hit well in arizona, but the caliber of competition was down this year.
Well it turns out that Shelton can play first base. According to PMR, he was a pretty average fielder last year, and given his offensive production, average defense is quite sufficient. (While he made more outs than expected, he fell in the middle of the pack). What’s more is that he was a superior defender compared to Carlos Pena.
| Player | InPlay | Actual Outs | Predicted Outs | DER | Predicted DER | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Chris B Shelton | 2337 | 152 | 146.52 | 0.065 | 0.063 | 0.00234 |
| Carlos Pena | 1363 | 98 | 105.67 | 0.072 | 0.078 | -0.00563 |
Similar to what I did in the Granderson/Logan comparison post, the numbers were interesting enough that I wanted to compare range stats between the two.
| Category | Pena | Shelton |
|---|---|---|
| Innings | 429.1 | 738.1 |
| Zone Rating | .798 | .857 |
| Range Factor | 9.50 | 10.21 |
| FRAA | -2 | 0 |
Shelton comes out on top is every category. I’m not sure if everyone was just flat wrong in Shelton’s ability, or if he improved his game through a ton of hard work, but the results are encouraging. Now what isn’t included in first basemen range is the footwork around the bag. I’m not sure how it could even be quantified, but just from watching that seems to be an area where Pena excels.
While I still want to see Pena get at-bats, it is becoming more and more difficult to find reasons to take Shelton out of the lineup.
There was a surprising quote from Detroit Tigers assistant GM Al Avila in the Toledo Blade.
“Within the Detroit Tigers organization, catcher is probably our weakest position,” Avila admitted.
Okay, so that wasn’t the suprising part.
“We do have the best catcher in the organization coming to Toledo in Max St. Pierre.
“He’s a year at the most away from being a big-league catcher. I don’t know if he will be a regular, but he will be a regular if he hits. Defensively, he can do it. He can catch and throw, and he plays with a high energy level.”
Max St. Pierre, who will be 26 in April and hasn’t had an OPS over 700 since he was a 20 year old in West Michigan (it was 701 that year). While the fact that he may be the Tigers best catcher in the organization is disheartening, the fact he’s on the brink of the majors is surprising to say the least.
Indicators like this go a long ways towards explaining why the Tigers drafted Chris Robinson in the 3rd round and have invited him to the Major League camp during spring training. Baseball America prefers Robinson to St. Pierre ranking him as the best defensive catcher in the organization.
A couple weeks ago I wrote a post making the case why Curtis Granderson should be the starting centerfielder for the Tigers over Nook Logan. The the bulk of the agrument was based on Granderson’s offensive superiority. I intentionally didn’t delve into defense for a couple reasons. First, defensive metrics are tricky. It’s rare that you can get all the metrics to agree on any given player. Second, that problem becomes magnified when you’re dealing with small sample sizes as is the case with Curtis Granderson. However, there are enough metrics out there that we can take a look, as long as we take a grain of salt along with it.
Baseball Musings has posted the PMR for centerfielders. I lifted the following table, and included some of the prominent centerfielders in the game. Please note, this isn’t a leaderboard, but a sampling of some who ranked near the top.
| Player | InPlay | Actual Outs | Predicted Outs | DER | Predicted DER | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Curtis Granderson | 1044 | 119 | 110.91 | 0.114 | 0.106 | 0.00775 |
| Andruw Jones | 4309 | 365 | 337.56 | 0.085 | 0.078 | 0.00637 |
| Jim Edmonds | 3538 | 319 | 297.13 | 0.090 | 0.084 | 0.00618 |
| Aaron Rowand | 4128 | 388 | 362.99 | 0.094 | 0.088 | 0.00606 |
| Nook P Logan | 2730 | 282 | 270.92 | 0.103 | 0.099 | 0.00406 |
Baseball Musings: Probabilistic Model of Range, 2005, Centerfielders
Continue reading Defending Center
Baseball America has released their list of the top 10 Tiger prospects and things are looking up:
The Tigers, who entered 2005 slotted 29th in Baseball America
Seth Stohs has posted a list of the top 20 rookie hitters and pitchers that he expects to make an impact in 2006.
On the pitcher list, he has Joel Zumaya ranked at number 20, and Justin Verlander ranked at number 10. While those may seem a little low, I think the presence of both pitchers slightly depresses their individual rankings. Either could easily be one of the top handful, but with only one rotation spot it isn’t clear who will have the biggest opportunity for impact.
Now unfortunately the Tigers don’t have anyone on the Top 20 hitters list. Even more unfortunate is that there is a former Tiger on the list. Anderson Hernandez, who the Tigers sent to the Mets in exchange for Vance Wilson, checks in at 17. Hernandez didn’t distinguish himself with the bat in 2004 for Erie. However, last year he tore up the Eastern League with Binghamton with a 326/360/426 line before being promoted to AAA. At AAA his power numbers dropped, but he still maintained a .354 OBA. With his offensive surge, and solid glove work he made the Mets top 10 prospect list from Baseball America. He’ll also have a chance to compete for the second base job this year.
UPDATE: It appears that Lance Parrish will also be in uniform next year. He’ll be in the Dodgers organization managing Rookie level Ogden.
However, if you look at just ground balls Infante isn’t quite as impressive. He is only 6 plays better than expected on ground balls, meaning that he fields more than his share of pop-ups or he was good at standing where line drives were hit. However, he is still second on the list. Second only to former Blue Jay, former Tiger, current Blue Jay John Macdonald.
It should also be noted that even though Omar was second in difference of actual and expected, his actual DER was the highest among all shortstops for groundballs.
“I don’t know what’s going to happen,” Monroe said. “I know my agent (Adam Katz ) has been talking with John Westhoff (the Tigers’ vice president/legal counsel). They’ve had a lot of conversations. Things seem to be going well, but I haven’t really thought much about my contract or talked to my agent much about it.
“That’s why we hire agents. Let them take care of their part, I’ll take care of getting ready to play.”
While on the Comerica Park tour during Fanfest, I noticed a large display just outside the Tigers clubhouse. It was actually on a wall adjacent to the clubhouse, facing the kitchen/food area. It was floor to ceiling high and featured Tiger history by decade. Each decade featured one photo prominently which presumably represented the Tiger of the Decade. Al Kaline was the 60’s, Willie Horton the 70’s, Trammell the 80’s and Whitaker the 90’s. It raised several questions for me.
I took in Tigerfest today with my family. It was my first Tigerfest in 4 years, and I came away amazed at how much people love the Tigers. We parked at Grand Circus Park and took the people mover to Joe Louis Arena where we looked out and saw several thousand people waiting to get inside. This was 10 minutes before it was set to open. Since we had two little ones with us, we decided to just do another loop on the people mover rather than wait in the cold.
By the time we returned the crowd had entered the Joe, but there was still a 20 minute wait to even buy tickets. The support the Tigers receive is tremendous, and I can’t help but wonder what things would be like in Detroit if they had given fans any reason to cheer in the last twelve years.
Continue reading Tigerfest 2006
A few links and items that you may not have seen but might find interesting:
Beyond the Boxscore has created the Ray Lankford wing of the Hall of Fame for players with “no real shot at the Hall of Fame, but a great career nonetheless.” Unfortunately, or fortunately I guess, the Hall is populated by many ex Tigers. Trammell, Whitaker, Morris, Parrish, Freehan, and Lolich are among the 246 inductees.
Okay, you probably saw this but I was in California when this came out, and I happened to miss it. Craig Monroe is the Tigers last unsigned arbitration eligible player. The teams have exchanged figures and are $600,000 apart. Detroit offered $2.45 million and Monroe is looking for $3.05. I imagine that the two sides will reach an agreement pretty much in the middle and Monroe will get a salary close to his buddy Carlos Pena, despite having double the win shares.
Remember 12 months ago, heck even 8 months ago when the AL Central was generally regarded as an exceptionally weak division. Now it seems you can’t read an article that doesn’t it declare it the best division in baseball. A recent post about the AL-C generated nearly 200 comments on John Sickels blog (although it is a pretty boring discussion for Tigers and Royals fans).
Is the Central really that good? How was everybody so wrong going to the season? What changed to make it better? Will it be as strong this year?
Okay so there wasn’t that much interesting stuff. That’s the problem with being on the road, I get thrown off my game.