It’s is split squad action today. It also marks the first telecast of the year on FSN which will have the D-rays and Tigers. Meanwhile, WXYT will have the radio of the Tigers and Braves game.
Nate Robertson will be the starter in the Devil Rays game and Zach Miner will start against the Braves.
Unfortunately, I’ll be unable to watch this afternoon but feel free to comment here.
Game Times 1:05pm
Finally, some real news! Jason Beck reports that Jeremy Bonderman will be the Opening Day starter. He’ll be followed by Kenny Rogers, Justin Verlander, Nate Robertson, and Mike Maroth. While I don’t think the rotation will matter a great deal, this is the same order I would have picked (not that Leyland consulted me). I like the alternating, not only of the handedness, but the styles as well.
The Tigers trimmed 8 players from big league camp: righthanded pitchers Jordan Tata and Virgil Vasquez to Triple A Toledo, righthanded pitchers Eulogio De La Cruz and Kyle Sleeth to Double A Erie and lefthanded pitcher Andrew Miller to Single A Lakeland. Additionally, the club assigned righthanded pitcher Jair Jurrjens and catchers Gabe Johnson and Dusty Ryan to minor league camp.
And as expected, Miller will be starting the year in Lakeland and will likely head to Erie when the weather warms up.
Similar to yesterdays look at interesting offensive stats, now we’ll look at the pitchers. Also like yesterday, I’m not drawing real conclusions or deriving meaning, just making observation.
The big 3 at the back end of the Tigers bullpen are off to a good start. Joel Zumaya, Fernando Rodney, and Todd Jones have combined to allow one run (a solo homer allowed by Rodney) in 10 2/3 innings. Most impressive is the 13:2 strikeout to walk ratio.
Continue reading Spring stats of note – pitching
This is a little more drama then you normally see in the spring, but both benches have cleared today in the Red Sox-Tigers tilt. Josh Beckett plunked Gary Sheffield, and later hit Magglio Ordonez in the head with a hanging curve ball. According to Jim Price, there were several more pitches that were up and in. Todd Jones came in a couple innings later. He pitched to Jason Varitek and then buzzed JD Drew with the first pitch. The next pitch was a fastball that went behind Drew. At that point, Jones was tossed. When Leyland came into get Jones and summon Jose Mesa from the bullpen there were words between Leyland and the Red Sox third base coach. Benches cleared and there was a lot of nothing happening.
Jim Leyland seemed to be the catalyst. This may remain interesting because all the principles involved were regular players.
The two teams meet for the first time in the regular season on May 14th in Boston. This is the only time they meet in the preseason.
Not implying that these stats mean anything, just that they are interesting:
Curtis Granderson’s efforts to cut down on his strikeouts are paying off. After 20 at-bats he’s only fanned once. But is it coming at a cost? He also only has one extrabase hit and only one walk.
By knocking his second dinger of the spring yesterday, Santiago is now the leader in the clubhouse. Santiago came into camp a little bulked up. Could this be the reason for the power surge? Perhaps. Or maybe it is just the flukiness of baseball. Keep in mind that Santiago has 6 career home runs, and 3 of those came in a 2 game span including one off of Pedro Martinez. Still, if he can sustain some level of production, and Neifi Perez continues to struggle, it will be interesting who Jim Leyland takes North. Will it be the veteran with the big contract or a player who may be more deserving.
And speaking of Perez, he has 5 walks in 20 plate appearances which leads the team. This position battle so far is more interesting than I would have expected.
Continue reading Spring stats of note – offense
It’s kind of an American League Centric day. This morning I woke up to be greeted by Baseball Analysts annual Two on Two divisional preview of the Central. The hosts select two bloggers, this time it was Brian from Tigerblog and one of my favorite Twins bloggers (the Twins may have the best group of bloggers in baseball) Seth from Sethspeaks.net. The four couldn’t come up with a consensus, except for the Royals finishing last.
And over at Baseball Prospectus, Kevin Goldstein takes a walk through the minor league systems of each of the five AL Central clubs. On a Tiger note he thinks Brent Clevlen could be an attractive bargaining chip for a midseason trade – especially if Cameron Maybin continues to impress.
John Sickels has another prospect smackdown, this time it is Andrew Miller vs. Adam Miller. Sickels gives a very slight edge to Adam Miller.
Maybe a SLIGHT edge on intangibles for Adam Miller, Andrew gets a slight edge on tools, Adam gets a slight edge on current polish and performance, even on projection. I rated Adam at Number Six on my pitching prospect list, and Andrew at Number Seven. It’s really, really close but overall I think Adam is just a HAIR better.
Apparently Jim Leyland doesn’t want to talk about Mike Maroth not being on the playoff roster. I can’t blame him because that was a long time ago. But it appears to be a sore subject and I’m not sure why.
“That’s kind of a sore subject with me,” a testy Leyland said when asked if the Maroth issue had been resolved this spring. “I don’t think that in my opinion, he was playoff-pitching fit. I guess that’s the best way to say it. I don’t want to get into it, but I’ve read some comments, I know it was disappointing and everything for him, but, particularly with his situation, he really wasn’t a relief pitcher.”
I don’t remember Mike Maroth ever making any comments in the press that criticized or slighted Leyland at all, so I’m really not sure where this is coming from. Maroth has always struck me as a team player, but anyone in that situation would be disappointed. Heck, while I didn’t think he should have been on the roster, I was disappointed for him.
Continue reading One of those link round-up posts
So far the Tigers spring season is off to a pretty good start, even considering the last 2 losses. Specifically the pitchers seem to have picked up right where they left off (minus the fielding errors) in 2007. Sure, the 5.37 ERA might not look impressive on the surface, but if you look at who’s been roughed up it hasn’t been the guys the Tigers will be counting on this season.
Continue reading Spring pitching to care about
The Tigers released some updated ticketing numbers today. As of the start of business today, the Tigers have sold 17,830 full season equivalent season tickets. That’s up from 9500 last year. Plus, in the first weekend of individual game sales they sold 86,606 tickets. That pushes the paid attendance to 1,530,836. As a point of reference that surpasses the 1.37 million they drew in all of 2003 and the 1.50 million they drew in 2002.
Winning does wonders.
What with the game on TV and everything today, I thought a game thread would be in order. Those lucky (or perhaps unlucky given the current economic condidtions) enough to be not working this afternoon can catch the game on ESPN at 1:15. I’ll be at work and looking forward to catching the DVR version when I get home.
The Tigers send out the “power arms” of Justin Verlander, Andrew Miller, Joel Zumaya, and Fernando Rodney.
POSTGAME: There was some stuff to like, and some stuff to not like today. The final outcome doesn’t really fall into either of those categories. The Tigers did draw a number of walks, including 2 with the bases loaded. Granted that was a product of Yankee wildness, but the Tigers did a good job laying off. They also had a number of hard hit balls, but most were foul.
The bad stuff was 3 strikeouts in the first inning with the bases loaded. Considering that was a point of emphasis this spring, it was disappointing to see.
Plus there were a few scares today. Brent Clevlen got beaned by a Yankee pitcher and Carlos Guillen was nearly beaned by Sean Casey.
The relevant pitchers all looked pretty good with the exception of one bad inning from Justin Verlander
Regardless of the outcome it was great to be watching Tiger baseball again.
So, how have everyone’s ticket-getting experiences been today? I got into the “virtual waiting room” and was in there for 40 minutes before my browser crashed. Did anybody else have better luck?
Meanwhile, the cheapest Opening Day tickets on StubHub are up to $138.
3:45PM UPDATE: Things seem to be running along smoother now. The Tigers just issued a release saying that as of 2:15pm both the Saturday, June 9 game against the New York Mets and the Saturday, August 25 game against the New York Yankees were already selling standing room only tickets. At that point nearly 61,000 tickets had been sold today. Combined with the 16,500 full season equivalents that puts 2007’s paid attendance already at nearly 1.4 million. In 2006, individual game sales for the entire first day, which included Opening Day, totaled only 29,000.