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Tigers sign 3 minor leaguers
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Looks like Ian at BYB has himself a regular radio gig. Congrats Ian!
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When is a line drive not a line drive?
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RLYW is simulating the 09 season and the Tigers look to be about .500 – which is 2nd in the central.
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Think the Tigers swung at too many first pitches last year? Did you know they were middle of the league in this regard?
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WAR projections for the whole AL Central. Tigers are in the hunt.
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How do things like temperature and wall height and foul territory impact park factors?
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John Sickels top 20 list.
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Thoughts and prayers to Mac Thomason, blogger at bravesjournal.com, who was just diagnosed with cancer.
All posts by billfer
Tigers sign Fu-Te Ni
The Tigers have turned to the Pacific Rim to bring in another reliever candidate (yeah, here’s the nearly as confusing translated version). Fu-Te Ni is a lefty reliever from Taiwan. What we can ascertain, thanks in large part this comment and this post from East Wind Up Chronicle, that he will be starting in AAA.
Commentor Yu-Hsing Chen did all the lifting on this on, including digging up some YouTube-y goodness:
Ni is 26 and from the above video his fastball appears to top out at 87 mph. It looks like he has a breaking ball that sits in the mid 70’s. It appears that he had garnered some interest from the Mariners as well. Ni is billed as The Taiwanese Okajima.
This is the second Taiwan signing for the Tigers in the last 2 years with Chao-Ting Tang debuting in the GCL this year.
Tigers relief options dwindling
As we move closer to spring training, the Tigers bullpen still remains highly questionable. This hasn’t bothered me for the most part due to the number of options on the market. And while still not bothered, I am growing more concerned as two more of those options are close to signing deals.
Trevor Hoffman doesn’t appear to be an option as he mulls over a one year offer from the Dodgers amidst reports that he is close to a deal with the Brewers.
Another intriguing possibility, Michigan native John Smoltz, is set to sign with the Red Sos for a $5.5 million base and incentives that could push the deal to $10 million.
I don’t know how excited I would be about either option, but knowing they were out there made me feel better about the Tigers situation. The market for relievers isn’t barren yet. Juan Cruz is in compensation pick purgatory and Brandon Lyon is still available. But the only Tigers rumor floating is that they will watch Chad Cordero throw, along with a third of the league. For a bullpen that has exactly one member who is both productive and not a huge injury risk (Bobby Seay), that doesn’t really instill the warm fuzzies.
Tigers sign Alexis Gomez
Normally the Tigers signing an outfielder to a minor league deal wouldn’t elicit a post from me, but these are slow news times and this is Alexis Gomez. Jason Beck points out that Gomez is left handed and an outfielder, the kind of player that Matt Joyce was but without the upside (I know, let it go). The hope here is that this move is inconsequential. I have nothing against Gomez per se, but I do worry about the ways in which Jim Leyland may ultimately misuse him.
Not pounding the zone
Way back in 2008 I started to run a series using pitch f/x data to look at strike throwing tendencies. Sadly this is the slowest moving “series” of posts ever. Nonetheless, it’s time for part 3 where we look at how teams do when they get strikes outside of the zone. For this exercise I’m not looking at those generous calls off the corners, but for those strikes when hitters go fishing.
The first table we turn to is the fish rate, or the percent of pitches outside of the strike zone that hitters swung at. This is presented by count. As for the pretty shading, red are lower numbers and green are higher numbers.
links for 2009-01-03
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Showing how much teams should be paying for those wins above replacement we've been talking about.
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Curtis Granderson took in the Winter Classic. Hat tip @behindthejersey
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A couple days old now, but the Indians picked up Mark DeRosa. It's a nice trade that gives the Indians a lot of flexibility in the infield, like moving Peralta to third and Cabrera to short. I had the Indians as a narrow favorite in the division, and this makes it less narrow.
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Guillen plays just enough to get his feet wet, but with good results.
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And the 2nd base rankings. Polanco=good
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Lee has started aggregating the defensive rankings. Cabrera=not that bad.
Detroit Tigers Weblog 2008 Year in Review
A look back at the year that was here at Detroit Tigers Weblog:
January
- Debunking the theory that long grass helped Trammell’s defense
- Curtis Granderson stops by for an interview
- Talking Tigers prospects with Jonathan Mayo
- Nate Robertson gets 3 year deal
- Miguel Cabrera becomes very rich
- Jose Canseco is scum ball, Ordonez gets implicated
- A look at the best defensive seasons ever – for Tigers
- Stuff about Brandon Inge
Tigers 2009 WAR Projections – Pitchers
Earlier in the week I posted my wins above replacement projections for the Tigers 2009 lineup. Today I turn my attention to the men on the mound.
For the projections I used the Marcel 2009 FIP projection for pitcher ERA (available at Fangraphs). In terms of innings pitched, I used some judgment. I penciled in Justin Verlander for 200 innings, and every other slot in the rotation for 180. Feel free to disagree with this, I won’t mind. But I think we can agree that the success of the team will largely hinge on the staff’s ability to stay healthy.
Continue reading Tigers 2009 WAR Projections – Pitchers
Tigers WAR Projections
It seems as if calculating wins above replacement, or WAR, has become the cool thing to do this offseason. We’ve delved into WAR here in the past when evaluating contracts. Now Fangraphs has made WAR available to the masses. Detroit Tiger Tales has already taken a look at the 08 Tigers numbers. And now a call to action from Beyond the Boxscore has inspired me to project the 09 team numbers.
Continue reading Tigers WAR Projections
Potential DTW downtime
I just wanted to give a quick heads up that at some point over the next 24-48 hours you may experience some DTW downtime. I’m moving my site to a new hosting company and that would be the root cause. I could either break something (frighteningly likely) or there could be some funniness as the change propagates through DNS. Also, if you leave a comment between now and the move it may disappear. I’m not deleting it, but if the comment hits the old server instead of the new one, well, it will just be gone.
If you are having problems, drop me a note on twitter (@billfer). I’ll also post updates with problems/status there as well.
I’m doing this now because traffic and news usually dip around this time of year. Hopefully it won’t be too disruptive.
Thanks for your patience.
UPDATE: It appears that everything is moved over and complete. Hopefully this speeds things up on the site a little bit, and resolves the downtime that the site has been experiencing. My former host said I had outgrown their site, and DTW was the site crashing their servers. I don’t get that exactly, especially on low volume days, but I’ve moved up from shared hosting to a virtual private server so let’s hope this works.
Prices are dropping, but will it matter?
Buster Olney weighs in on how the economy is impacting team spending:
Throughout baseball, budgets are being downsized from week to week to reflect the latest read on the economy, and what you are about to see — once the smoke clears from the Sabathia and Burnett and Teixeira news conferences — is a stunning drop in salaries for the free agents, a time when solid veteran players might be fortunate to get one-year offers for $5 million to $8 million. General managers throughout the game are reporting, on background, that their payrolls are being locked down, cut down, slashed.
It’s a topic that I’ve speculated on (mostly in the video chats) as it relates to the Tigers. Before the global recession hammered the Big 3 and they had to go looking to the government for money, Dave Dombrowski said he was looking at a payroll in line with last year. But with a dip in attendance that could likely go beyond the slippage due to the team’s disappointing 2008, plus a potential loss of GM sponsorship money, the Tigers could be in a different mindset.
Did they save money on the Adam Everett, Gerald Laird, and Matt Treanor deals, or were they spending what they had to spend? Was Edwin Jackson acquired because $3 million is all they have to invest in the rotation?
With $105 million committed to 14 players, and a likely $9-10 million committed to Fernando Rodney, Marcus Thames, Gerald Laird, Edwin Jackson, and Bobby Seay, That leaves about $15-$20 million to cover Justin Verlander*, 4 guys earning the minimum, and an upgrade to the bullpen. Plus I don’t know if Renteria’s $3 million buyout counts against the total.
That’s the bad news. The good news is that as Olney points out, prices are dropping. And for those worried about the Tigers lack of moves in the bullpen, it isn’t a cause for concern yet. It’s still a buyers market with Brian Fuentes, Trevor Hoffman, Brandon Lyon, and Juan Cruz available. Fuentes and Cruz are undesirable due to the cost of second round draft picks. But as a group there are 4 arms, 3 of which should be in the Tigers price range, and all of which would be an upgrade.
Now if the calendar flips to February, and the four aforementioned guys are packing bags for other destinations, then I’ll join you in being uneasy about a bullpen made up of last year’s incumbents, Casey Fien, and the draft class of 2008.
Detroit Tigers Weblog Live 12.18.08
The next edition of Detroit Tigers Weblog Live will be tonight at 10 p.m. You can check back at this here post tonight, or get the show on the ustream.tv site. There isn’t a lot of news to cover at this point, so I plan to hit on the Matt & Misty May Treanor speculation, the bullpen situation, and some fan experience stuff. And if you watched the last prime time edition, I won’t be drinking Michelob Ultra this time.
I’d like to get to 50 live users so tell your friends that after the Wings game and 30 Rock are done, to tune in.
Links from today’s show:
- Bless You Boys: Treanor the Tiger
- Tigerfest sells out. Stubhub availability.
- Turnbow interest
- Payroll info