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PECOTA has the Tigers winning the Central in about a fifth of the simulation scenarios.
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A look at prospect Rudy Darrow
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And he runs like Pudge now. The Polanco decision will be an interesting one and a lot will come down to how Scott Sizemore and Michael Hollimon fare.
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Tomi not only is a UM cheerleader (Go Blue), but she also mentions that her best feature is her smile and she's a Tigers fan. And there is a photo gallery. And she's pre-med.
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I just hope he doesn't try it more than 15-16 times.
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Remarkable story about Carlos Guillen and some of the personal struggles he faced last year. It's hard not to like this guy.
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A while back (when I had more time for writing about the Tigers) I wrote a preview piece for Razzball. It's up now, with one of my favorite video clips.
All posts by billfer
This Porcello Kid
Spring training is never short on stories about guys being in the best shape of their lives, or young kids making a favorable impressions on the coaching staff. But the Rick Porcello hype is reaching a fever pitch, and the first spring training game hasn’t even been played yet.
Jim Leyland made the familiar comments about taking the best players early on, and the brass mentioned Rick Porcello has an outside candidate for the 5th starter spot. I pretty much shrugged off that talk for the following reasons:
- The Tigers already have 3 candidates for the 5th starter spot (Willis/Robertson/Miner) and will already be sending a player with a substantial contract someplace other than the rotation.
- It seemed more like a managerial challenge to both the rookie, as well as the other guys in competition to see how they would respond.
- Porcello spent last year on a strict pitch count limit with a hard stop at 75 pitches. Plus, the hard stop not only held down his intra-game workload, but it held down his seasonal workload at 125 innings. Breaking camp with the team would be a significant jump in required workload.
But then Jim Leyland said…
“You can protect (one) pitcher in the majors — maybe one starting and relieving. … In other words, you can make up your mind that a starter is going to pitch five or six innings and get him out of there — you can do that a few times. You can’t do it all the time. …
Presumably Porcello wouldn’t be at the 75 pitch limit, but even a 90 or 100 pitch limit for a full big league season would be a significant jump in workload. In the minors Porcello was focused on using his 2 seamer to get groundball outs early in the count. He was quite effective in this regard and it had 2 effects. One, he only needed about 14.4 pitches per inning. Second, it limited his strike outs to a low 5.1 per 9 innings. At the big league level he’d be looked to employ his full arsenal and miss more bats (I’d hope anyways), thus driving up his pitch count.
PECOTA player cards aren’t available for pitchers yet, but I’d guess that the system doesn’t love Porcello at this point due to the low strike out numbers. But scouts and people who know these things felt that Porcello had pitches that were big league quality at the beginning of last year.
I’m less concerned with Porcello being rushed due to his stuff needing more refinement (though some time to work on the pitches that were de-emphasized last year might not be a bad thing) and more so from a workload perspective. Unlike the Jeremy Bonderman situation where there weren’t really other options, the Tigers do have a couple other arms to consider for the spot. I wouldn’t be opposed to Porcello breaking camp with the team, but I’d probably prefer more of the Justin Verlander approach where he makes a couple spot starts to fill in for injuries or double headers.
Recapping the first workouts
The beats were busy with the first official workout of the spring. Seriously, multiple stories and blog posts throughout the day, even a live blog from Morosi. A quick rundown of the stories from Tiger Town…
Rick Knapp
After 20+ years in the minors, this was Rick Knapp’s first day as a big leaguer. This got a fair amount of attention and Jim Leyland was pretty excited for him.
“This is huge for him,” Leyland said of Knapp. “All those years in the minors, and now this is his first day in the big leagues. It’s one of the most exciting parts of our first day of camp, to be honest with you.
I’m a fan of the Knapp hiring and am I excited to see what he can do. But Chuck Hernandez looked to be a genius in 2006 before he suddenly forgot how to coach (that’s sarcasm). I do like that he doesn’t seem to have a specific pitch or philosophy (other than throwing strikes) and instead tailors the message to the individual. For Zumaya it is an emphasis on long toss and a change-up.
Dontrelle Willis
Part of Knapp’s plan for Willis is for just to be himself (the successful self from his days with the Marlins, not last year’s version). The early reports are positive, but it is only day 1. Part of that is due to improved conditioning that has him five pounds lighter.
Willis, along with Robertson and Miner are all in the mix for the 5th starter spot. It has led Henning to once again speculate a trade could be coming. There are obstacles in the way of course, like those big honkin’ contracts that don’t mesh with the 08 seasons for Willis and Robertston. But… I’ve heard similar rumblings. That’s not to say they’ll come to fruition, but I don’t think Henning is off base with this. The Tigers rotation, while not as strong at the top, matches up well with the rest of the division looking 1-5 (or 6 or 7).
Zumaya and Rodney
Joel Zumaya is trying to gain weight and get back into his 2006 form. Whatever it takes is okay by me. Meanwhile Fernando Rodney is sporting an alligator tooth around his neck. It came from an alligator that was wrestled in a river. Supposedly.
PECOTA hates the AL Central
Baseball Prospectus has posted the first iterations of the 2009 PECOTA numbers and have forecasted the divisions based on projected playing time and roster construction. Because we care about the Tigers around these parts I jumped immediately to the AL Central:
CLE 84-79 MIN 79-83 DET 78-84 KAN 75-87 CHI 74-88
Wow. So the division is kind of up for grabs. Cleveland has a clear, but not insurmountable, edge (which seems correct intuitively also) and then a giant hodge-podge. As for being down on the division, it could be worse. The AL West is going to the A’s with 82 wins. The AL East has 4 teams at .500 or above, and the rest of the AL has 2.
As an aside, I realize that PECOTA harbors no animus towards specific players and/or teams. It is a sophisticated and yet emotionally devoid mathematical projection system. Neither it nor its creator have agendas.
The individual projections are subscriber only, but I will say that the system thinks Zach Miner will be a better pitcher than Armando Galarraga or Edwin Jackson. (And I don’t think that’s unreasonable)
links for 2009-02-04
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In these link posts there is one link that I say is a must-click. This is the one. Please read about Kyle's plans to try out for the Tigers this year. He did it last year as well and had a wonderful tale. This year he is doing it to raise money for the homeless in Lakeland Florida. Please read the story, and if you're a fellow blogger please consider linking it up.
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Will it be Larish, Clevlen, or Raburn for the last roster spot? One of these things is not like the others. One of them hits left handed and can't play centerfield.
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Verducci says the Tigers are a decent worst to first candidate. I have to agree.
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More Inge-y goodness
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I would only ad Bad Day – the Chipmunks version.
Work in progress
The official reporting date is over a week away, but things are getting busy at Tiger Town. The fact that Zumaya is on a mound is progress in itself. For more, Roger DeWitt has a nice collection of images from yesterday’s workouts.
Tigers agree to terms with Justin Verlander
The Tigers and Justin Verlander have agreed to terms on a one year deal. I’ll update with terms when I find them. And the streak of not going to arbitration continues for Dombrowski.
UPDATE: It’s 3.675 million. A couple hundred thousand less than I thought.
Also know that this doesn’t prevent a longer term deal at all. Miguel Cabrera and Fernando Rodney signed one year deals the last couple years, only to sign longer deals within a few weeks.
About that Verlander contract
In a world without substantial baseball news, the fact that Justin Verlander hasn’t inked a deal yet is garnering some attention. When the two sides submitted their numbers to the arbitrator, they were about a million dollars a part (Verlander wants $4.15 and the Tigers offered $3.2). The Tigers have never had an arbitration hearing under Dave Dombrowski, but that possibility is increasing with the hearing date set for February 13th.So what should Verlander get paid?
Continue reading About that Verlander contract
Oh those intentional base on balls
The Tigers struggled with walks in 2008. This is well documented and fairly obvious with the Tigers issuing more walks than every team other than Texas. It resulted in Chuck Hernandez losing his job and the Tigers bringing in a coach who built his reputation on pounding the strike zone. But a significant chunk of those walks came at the hands of Jim Leyland.
The Tigers led the American League in intentional walks with 63. The next closest team had 45 which means Detroit issued 42% more walks than the next most free pass happy team. It also means that instead of ranking 13th in the AL in walks, they rank 11th in unintentional walks. Still poor, but not as ridiculously awful.
Continue reading Oh those intentional base on balls
links for 2009-01-29
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Are you a 4th grader? Do you know one? Curtis Granderson is looking for some art work for his new book.
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Lee with more great sabermetric work. No surprise that Cabrera and Ordonez are the best on the team at driving in runners. It may surprise you though who was number 3.
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Gerald Laird is good at limiting the running game, among the best actually.
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The sad story of Juan Encarnacion.
Feeling cold?
Are you tired of the snow? Tired of the cold? This should help.
(yeah, I kind of like the Always a Tiger campaign)
Tigers on National TV
Awful Announcing has the preliminary schedules for both Fox Sports and ESPN. In the case of ESPN the schedule is only through July. It looks like the Tigers will be shut out of privilege of Joe Morgan calling their games – at least early in the season. But they are slated to be on Fox Saturday baseball six times.
The Fox dates are:
- May 2nd against Cleveland
- June 20th against Milwaukee
- July 4th at Minnesota
- July 25th against Chicago
- August 29th against Tampa Bay
- September 19th at Minnesota
Considering the Tigers struggles on Sunday Night Baseball (and Joe Morgan), being kept off the ESPN probably isn’t so bad. Unfortunately for those out of the greater Michigan viewing area though, it probably means you’ll miss those Saturday games though because they will likely be the B or C games on Fox.
Awful Announcing: A Look At FOX And ESPN’s Early Baseball Schedule For 2009