So I tried the AudioBlogging thing, but I screwed up the first time and hung up before publishing the post. When I went back to try it again, it wouldn’t let me post without purchasing more posts from the website. I don’t entirely understand that because the service is touted as being free. Even now I don’t see anyway to pay for additional posts. I’ll try it again tonight, so we’ll see what happens. On to the report…

The crowd was a little bit sparser than I would have hoped/expected. Comerica and the surrounding area looked pretty good, at least for Detroit. While neither game was full, there was a decent crowd on hand for the legends/celebrity softball game.

As for the Future’s game, our seats are right in the upper deck, 3 rows from the top. We’re looking right down the 3rd base line. So while we have a good view, I can’t really tell you how Verlander or Zumaya looked with any sort of detail. I can say they both hit 99mph on the stadium gun. Both received a nice ovation – especially Justin Verlander.

For the softball game, the fans got warmed up for Kenny Rogers appearance by thoroughly booing Chris Webber. Sweet Lou Whitaker probably got the largest ovation…at least for someone with out breasts. As a Whitaker fan, it was awesome to hear Louuuuuuuuu resonate throughout Comerica each time he touched the ball or came to bat.

Jennie Finch pitched for the National League team, and if you needed another reason to like Finch, she wears the old fashioned stir-ups – and she wears them high.

Other Comments/Observations

• It’s been experience that the concession experience at Comerica Park can be mixed. I’ve had some good experiences, and some very awful experiences as well. Yesterday the experiences were all positive. There were more vendors in the stands, and all of the stations were well staffed. SportsService brought in additional help from Cincinnati and Cleveland to help out – and so far it’s working.
• I was surprised to see how many bleachers were removed for media tables in right field. While they did take out the back rows of bleachers, it looks like the auxilliary media will get their fare share of home run balls.
• Budweiser took over the parking lots beyond the outfield. They have a stage set up, and they even brought the clydesdales. However, yesterday nobody was over there. While the city looked good, nobody was really buzzing about downtown. Hopefully that will change today and tomorrow. I’d love to see the city more alive.

Typically when I do one of these post, its out of laziness. This time, there are a lot of things I want to cover – briefly.

Matt Roney leaves
While this actually happened a week ago, I just never had a chance to comment. Matt Roney, as those of you who survived the 2003 season remember, was a Tigers Rule 5 pick. He had mixed results out of the bullpen for the Tigers that season. Last year he went to AA Erie and worked as a starter posting an unremarkable 4.93 ERA and 6.01 K/9.

This year Roney moved to relief and split time at Erie and AAA Toledo. Betweent he two clubs he struck out 50 and walked 17 in 50 innings. He also allowed only one home run.

Roney had a clause that if he wasn’t on the 40 man roster by July 1st he could request his release, and he excercised that right. Why is this an issue? Matt Roney is only 25 and was striking out a batter an inning. Meanwhile he was blocked on the roster by Mark Woodyard and Doug Creek. Now Woodyard has been doing okay for Toledo, and is 26. Doug Creek has been struggling for the Tigers (6 homers in 15 innings) and is 36. For a team trying to build and maintain young depth allowing Matt Roney to walk made little sense.

Wish List
Beyond the Boxscores recently posted a team of All Time All Stars he’d like to see take the field. It’s a pretty interesting concept and Brian’s list is pretty thorough.

Lou Whitaker and his game breaking speed
One of the things that Lou Whitaker didn’t possess that any HoF second basemen have is a high stolen base total. However, in the midst of a recent study by Tom Ruane (found via Studes at Hardball Times) there was a piece on the value of stolen bases. Specifically he looked at the context of each stolen base and found out which were the most important.

Lo and behold that Whitaker showed up 7th on the list of players who’s stolen base value was higher than their raw totals would indicate. Now I just need to find the address of the Veteran’s Committe to get this information to them.

Dmitri’s Struggles
I know that many of you want to see Dmitri Young traded. I also know that this is driven partly by Chris Shelton’s emergence, but also in large part due to Young’s struggles his year. However, Dmitri Young will be extremely hard to move because he has an option that is most likely to vest, and he’s been struggling. So Young will be here for awhile.

Fortunately he’s hit the ball pretty hard the last couple games. And actually, until his recent spiral downwards he had been hitting the ball pretty hard – just without the results. He’s 36th in the AL in line drive percentage which means he’s still hitting the ball hard. Thirty-sixth isn’t a reason to get excited, but it should probably indicate a better line than 244/307/461.

So don’t worry, Young will get better – but he isn’t going anywhere.

Audioblogging
I will give the audioblogging thing a shot. Unfortunately I don’t really have any ability to control appearance, or add titles, or basically anything else. So check back during the Futures Game and Legends game for audio updates. I’m not sure how they’ll turn out, what with blogging from a stadium full of ambient noise, but we’ll see.

Fanfest
I took the family to FanFest yesterday and I was very impressed. You could easily spend 3-4 hours there, and there is something for all ages. I was particularly impressed with the volunteer staff. There were very friendly orange-shirted staff everywhere who were great ambassadors for visitors to Detroit.

Every week Dave Studeman writes a “Ten Things I Didn’t Know Last Week” column which always inspires further analysis. A couple weeks ago one of his items was about the White Sox distribution of runs scored. He found the White Sox were making the most of the runs they were scoring. To concisely summarize, when a team scores runs 2-7, those runs do the most to increase your chances of winning. The White Sox have been good at scoring 2, 4, 5, and 6 runs a game, while being held to 1 run or less infrequently. Dave posted a follow up article about run distribution, which has more detail and more research. This all made me curious about how the Tigers were scoring their runs.

Below are charts that show 1. How often the Tigers scored each number of runs in a game (the total height of each bar) 2. Their record when scoring at a certain level (the mix of orange=wins and blue=losses), and 3. The cumulative percentage which is plotted on the right hand axis (ie The Tigers score 2 runs or less about 28% of the time.) I’ve done a chart just for the Tigers, as well as all of baseball so far this season.

Now of course the distribution for the majors is smoother than for the Tigers, just because there are more games. While the Tigers are about league average being at being held to less than two runs, they have a huge spike at 3 runs. As a result while the league scores 3 runs or less 41% of the time, the Tigers are held to that mark 50% of the time.

Now what about runs allowed? Below is the same graph, only by runs allowed.

You can see that the Tigers are much more likely to allow 4 runs, which tyically isn’t a bad thing. This year when opponents score 4 runs, the winning percentage is .527. Unfortunately, the Tigers have won only 7 of the 17 games in which they allowed 4 runs. Looking back at the runs scored chart and that spike at 3 may help explain this.

As far as win expectancy goes, Dave showed what the winning percentage was from 2000-2004 based on runs scored. Using Dave’s numbers and multiplying by the Tigers actual distrubtion, the Tigers expected wins would be 38.2. Being that run scoring is down slightly this year, I also peformed the same analysis based just on this year’s data. The result for the Tigers was 39.1 wins. Keeping in mind that this data doesn’t include Thursday’s game, both measures nailed the Tigers actual record of 39-43.

Conversely, based on the runs allowed distribution the Tigers expected record would be 43-39. Now the fact that the Tigers actual record matched what their runs scored would predict, and not what their runs allowed would predict is interesting – if not confusing. I’m not really sure what to draw from that and if anybody had ideas, please share. And just to throw one more measure out there, going into last night’s game the Tigers pythagorean record was 41-41.

UPDATE 11-12-05: Versions of these graphs for the whole 2005 season can be found here

Here are a couple of things that Tiger fans might be interested that help out worthy causes in the process.

All Star BBQ Buffet
If you’re heading down the the All Star game festivities and aren’t sure where to park or where to eat, this might be perfect for you. Mario’s is hosting a BBQ Buffet to benefit CATCH (Caring Athletes Team for Children

Next year the Tigers may do something that no other AL Central team has done – field a team with a $100 million payroll. Based on the current high price contracts, the younger core reaching arbitration, and any free agent acquisitions the Tigers payroll could swell to triple digits.

Below are the contract terms for players already under contract for 2006:

Player            Salary
Ordonez      $15,000,000
Young        $ 8,500,000
Rodriguez    $ 8,000,000
Percival     $ 6,000,000
Guillen      $ 5,000,000
Walker       $ 1,250,000
Verlander    $   900,000
------------------------
Total        $44,650,000

Dmitri Young’s contract for next year is a vesting option, meaning that if accumulates enough plate appearances the option kicks in. I’m assuming that Dmitri isn’t going anywhere, and he’ll be on the payroll next year. Also, Jamie Walker has an option year that I would anticipate the Tigers would pick up. Walker’s a solid reliever and is a good value.

On the other end of the spectrum the Tigers have a number of players who have less than 3 years of service time. These players aren’t eligible for arbitration, have no leverage, and can be retained cheaply. For the purpose of this analysis, I’ll assume that each will make $400,000.

Player            Salary
German       $   400,000
Spurling     $   400,000
Rodney       $   400,000
Shelton      $   400,000
Robertson    $   400,000
Logan        $   400,000
------------------------
Total        $ 2,400,000

I’m not positive on the contract status of Nate Robertson and Omar Infante. Robertson saw limited action in 2002 and 2003, but I’m speculating it won’t be enough for him to qualify for arbitration.

Omar Infante on the other hand had limited time in 2002, about half a season in 2003, and full seasons in 2004 and 2005. He may qualify for arbitration so he’ll be included in the next group of players. Those are players with between 3 and 6 years of service time who are eligible for arbitration, but not eligible for free agency.

For this group of players the salary numbers are all estimates. In the case of Jeremy Bonderman and Brandon Inge, I expect the contract value to be slightly more because I anticipate the Tigers working out long term deals that will buy out the remaining arbitration years and early free agency years.

Player            Salary
Bonderman    $ 4,000,000
Inge         $ 4,000,000
Maroth       $ 2,000,000
Monroe       $ 1,750,000
Infante      $   750,000
------------------------
Total        $12,500,000

So far I have the Tigers estimated at a payroll of $60 million. Of course that only covers 18 players. The remaining roster places are harder to guess because currently those spots are manned by pending free agents.

Jason Johnson, Kyle Farnsworth, Placido Polanco, Rondell White, and Vance Wilson are all key contributors who aren’t under contract for next year. Collectively those players are making approximately $14 million. Whether or not the Tigers retain those players, odds are the Tigers will be paying significant money to man those spots.

Whether or not the Tigers keep Johnson, they will most likely be paying more for his spot in the rotation. If the Tigers keep Johnson, he will likely earn a raise of $1-2 million based on his performance. Alternately if the rumors are true, the Tigers could be in the hunt for AJ Burnett in which case that roster spot will cost at least $4 million more. Some cheap alternatives would include Joel Zumaya (although probably a year away yet), Sean Douglass (so far so good but two games does not a trend make), or Wil Ledezma (can he find his command?). In terms of next year, all would probably provide a dropoff based on how Johnson has been pitching thus far.

Unless the Tigers get a great offer for Polanco, or Omar Infante somehow starts ripping the ball, I expect Polanco to be back. It sounds like he loves Detroit so far, and he’s the type of hitter that the Tigers have been lacking. Plus he plays solid defense at several positions. If the Tigers resign him, I would expect it to be for approximately $5 million.

Kyle Farnsworth has pitched well enough this year for someone to pay him closers money and give him a shot. Hopefully it will be the Tigers paying him almost closers money, knowing that with an aging and injury suseceptible Troy Percival there will be probably closing opportunities. Again, barring a very desirable trade package, I’d like to see Farnsworth back with the Tigers – but it will probably cost them $3.5 million instead of the $2 million he’s currently receiving.

Vance Wilson is a veteran back-up catcher. If the Tigers don’t sign Wilson again, they will sign another veteran back-up catcher who will make approximately the same salary. The position is a wash whether or not they resign Wilson.

That leaves Rondell White. White has done what the Tigers have asked of him. He’s a great clubhouse guy, and has been one of the Tigers more consistent hitters. While he doesn’t have an arm, he gets to all the balls he’s supposed to. But, he probably won’t be back with the Tigers. This is the one position where the Tigers may go cheaper by giving the outfield spot to Curtis Granderson. Of course they could also look for a left handed slugger who costs a lot more.

If the Tigers retain Farnsworth, Polanco, and either resign Johnson or a free agent pitcher, the Tigers will then be committing at least $15 million more. That puts the Tigers at a payroll of approximately $75 million. There are still a few roster spots left, and the Tigers haven’t added that left handed bat yet. Once some filler for the 40 man roster is added, the Tigers could very well be in the $85-90 million range. So under this scenario they aren’t quite to the century mark, but they could definitely be pushing it.

Like the Tiger offense, I was missing in action this weekend. I went up north which meant no TV coverage. While there was something nostalgic about sitting outside listening to the game on the radio, it also makes it difficult for me to comment effectively. Afterall, the last game I saw involved me and the boy taking in a Friday night beating by the good guys. I’ll try to catch up and be concise (yeah right).

Justin Verlander
The debut was probably a success overall. He definitely battled first inning adrenaline, and he couldn’t find his curveball. That said, he recovered very well and I don’t see there being any long lasting negative effects from the 3 run first inning. He ran out of gas in the sixth inning, but considering the amount of energy he expended in the first inning combined with his age that wasn’t unexpected.

No Offense
With the exception of the 10 run demolition on Friday, the Tigers offense continues to underwhelm. They were shutout on consecutive days and continued to struggle to score relevant runs. Unfortunately I don’t have any explanation, and there isn’t much that can be said that hasn’t already been said.

Against Wang on Sunday, at least it sounded like the team was hitting balls hard, but had nothing to show for it. I’m not going to make excuses, and just state my perception here: the Tigers were hurt by Comerica Park during the homestand. I don’t blame the ballpark in general because both teams have to play in it. The Tigers in general have been helped watching opponents fly balls die in its recesses as often as they’ve been hurt by their own. However, during this homestand the Tigers seemed especially proficient in finding the warning track – moreso than their opponents. It’s still no excuse for not scoring runners from third, but it is my view that the Tigers hit the ball better on the homestand than their runs scored would indicate.

Now during the doubleheader the offense was just pathetic. It wasn’t a matter of the park, or spectacular pitching. They were just bad. Bad approaches, bad results, and no excuses.

Tram on the hot seat
Like it or not, Trammell’s job may be in jeopardy right now. I’m not calling for his head, but if he wants a stay of execution, the Tigers must post a winning record over their next 10 games. They have two more against the Indians, and 4 against both the Devil Rays and Royals.

As I’ve stated before, I don’t feel that Trammell is that bad of a manager. I don’t agree with everything he does, but I also don’t think he is hurting the team. As much blame as he gets for the offense underperforming, he should get equal credit for the pitching staff overperforming.

As for him getting guys fired up, or yelling more, I don’t really see that as an issue. The Tigers have a number of veterans that shouldn’t need to be motivated. As for the situational hitting, the hitters know what they need to do in certain situations – they just aren’t executing. As manager, he bears the brunt of the responsiblity whether or not he has the ability to effect changes.

I don’t want Trammell gone, but if things don’t get better soon he might take the fall.

Kevin Hooper
To make room for Justin Verlander, the Tigers DFA’d Jason Smith for the second time this season. Once Verlander was optioned back to Toledo, the Tigers recalled Kevin Hooper. Hooper is a 28 year old career minor leaguer. He has a career 347 OBP which is okay, but only a 341 slugging percentage. This year he was hitting an uninspiring 246/283/313 for Toledo this season.

According to this report Kirk Gibson doesn’t sound too enthused about the switch from bench coach to hitting coach.

I’m not sure that I like the move either. While I can definitely see Bruce Fields as a bench coach, I’m not sure I can see Gibson instructing hitters.

Now not being around the hitters or clubhouse, I’m really not qualified to comment on the respective coaches ability, but this is my perception. Fields was a capable hitting instructor in that he could recognize flaws in swings and approaches and communicate those to the players. But at this point, they just weren’t responding. Approaches weren’t changing, nor were swings (see Infante with his bat pointed toward the infield at the beginning of his swing). There are some players who seem to really respond to Fields, such as Craig Monroe, who will probably still go to Fields for advice.

As for Gibson taking over the role, there are some elements of his teaching that I’ll probably like. For example, as an analyst, when guys got in hitters counts (2-0, 3-1), he’d advocate looking for a specific pitch. It wasn’t a matter of swing if it’s a strike, it was swing if its a pitch you can hammer. As for his ability to break down and analyze a swing, I just don’t know.

From the bench coach perspective, Fields has managerial experience and actually seems like a natural fit.

Danny Knobler is reporting that Magglio Ordonez will be starting tonight. No information yet about other roster moves, but I’d guess that Alexis Gomez is being sent to AAA.

The Tigers began what is arguably their biggest homestand in several years by being swept in agonizing fashion. Most glaring was the Tigers inablity to get runners home, even in terrific scoring situations. The series once again sparked debate about the Tigers lack of clutch hitting. I’ve countered this in the past by highlighting that the Tigers acutally hit better with RISP than the league average (even after this series it is 280 vers 275 for the league). But one of the problems when talking about clutch hitting is defining what constitutes clutch.

For example, one would think that Pudge’s triple leading off the 9th would be considered a clutch hit. Or any of the pile of hits the Tigers accumulated during the 13 inning game could be considered clutch because they kicked off, or kept alive potential rallies in a close game. In any case, let’s try looking at the Tigers ability to generate runs in scoring situations.

Using the splits at ESPN.com, I compiled the following table of performance with runners in scoring position. I show the Tigers performance in each measure, the league average, and where the Tigers rank.

So the Tigers are nearly average in opportunities with RISP, yet they convert (runs/PA) at a pretty low rate. (Note: I know that the conversion rate is probably influenced by the type of situations. A PA with a runner on second and two outs is weighted the same as bases loaded and nobody out. However, I didn’t have that level of detail available. And even if I did, shouldn’t the better offenses get credit for getting themselves in better situations?) Why is this? Their batting average is better than average, and their OBP is right at the league average. So they’re not making more outs than other teams.

They are however getting fewer extrabase hits than other teams. But they aren’t significantly lower, and the values aren’t park adjusted so the impact probably isn’t all on slugging. But if we keep looking, you’ll see one of the Tigers problems that I’ve highlighted before. They are striking out way too much, especially considering the lack of power.

The story however, gets worse for the Tigers when the bases are loaded. In 70 plate appearances the Tigers have only converted that into 41 runs. The batting average is 217, and that’s even a weak .217. The Tigers have only mustered 3 extrabase hits in that situation. Meanwhile, they have struck out 18 times in those 70 PAs. State differently, the Tigers have failed to put the ball in play in out of every 4 bases loaded opportunities.

The Tigers aren’t as bad as they showed in this series. However, their strikeout rate and below average slugging percentage still continue to haunt this team.

First Pitch Swinging
While it may seem odd to pick on the Tiger with the longest hitting streak, Craig Monroe wasn’t exactly working the count during this series. Earlier in the year, I praised Monroe for his plate discipline. And while I don’t know how many pitches he swung at out of the strike zone this series, I do know that in 14 plate apperances in this series he swung at the first pitch 11 times. Right now Monroe has a streak of 8 consecutive times up that he hacked at the first pitch.

I’m not against swinging at the first pitch. There are times to recognize that pitchers are throwing first pitch fastballs, and try and capitalize on that. But 8 times in a row?

Monroe wasn’t alone with some questionable approachs at the plate, I just don’t have the time or energy to break them all down.

National Love
As the Tigers were getting swept, they were receiving lots of positive national attention. They were the front page story on ESPN.com and Justin Verlander reached the top of the Baseball America Hot Sheet.

According to this report from the Richmond Times-Dispatch, Justin Verlander will start the back end of the double header on July 4th. Unfortunately the game isn’t slated to be televised in the Detroit market. (ESPN is picking up the first game).

As for the pros and cons of this move, check out the previous post and comments where we hash it all out.

The interesting thing is the Tigers have had a mentality making moves to win now. I’m not sure that Verlander gives them a better shot at winning than Wil Ledezma or Matt Ginter would. Was the decision to give Verlander the start based on the Tigers being swept by the White Sox? Is the selling about to commence? Is this the Tigers last week to prove something to Dave Dombrowski?

Verlander will be pitching on a couple of extra days rest, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. The speculation has been the Tigers would shut him down at around 150 innings. That would imply that he only has 7-9 starts left this season anyways, so stretching those out will help prolong his season. Now not all innings are created equal. His innings dominating A ball probably require a little less effort than major league innings. As for how this will impact his total workload will be up to Bob Cluck.

I’m not necessarily advocating this, but Danny Knobler raised the issue of Justin Verlander pitching part of the doubleheader on the 4th. My first reaction was “absolutely not!” But then I thought, would it really be that bad?

If everyone understands that this is a one game call-up, and that no matter how he performs he would return to Erie, I don’t see it having major consequences. From a roster management perspective, the Tigers are already using a 40 man spot, and option year for Verlander. From a service time standpoint, one day of service time isn’t going to accelerate his arbitration clock.

Now Verlander only has two starts at AA, and he’s done well, but that is very limited exposure above A ball. If he pitches poorly, it could rattle his confidence and mess up the progress he’s made. If he pitches well, the Tigers will face pressure to keep him up (which I’d be against).

So while there aren’t really compelling reasons not to bring him up, there are even fewer reason to give him a shot. While it would definitely create a buzz, that is about the only positive. I’m not sure that he would give the team a significantly better shot at winning than Matt Ginter or Kenny Baugh would. While it would be more interesting to see Verlander pitch, that is a pretty lame reason.

I guess my take is that I wouldn’t be upset if it were to happen, but I don’t really see the point.

What do you guys think? Please Discuss.