Al Avila says Ausmus is back.
Lynn Henning tweet 3:46 pm.
Followed shortly by the official club statement from Al Avila:
Beck’s post, which also includes the statement, in case the twitter picture is too small to read.
Category Archives: Managing & Strategy
Jim Leyland Retires
This goes a long way towards explaining how emotional he was after clinching the division.
Discuss.
Leyland and Bullpens
I’ve never met Jim Leyland personally. I’m sure he’s a swell guy (perhaps Tom in Lakeland can give us a few anecdotes). For the most part, I like what he does with the team.
But I think he’s wrong about the bullpen.
Can you name a single reliever from the Tigers’ system that’s seen some kind of lasting success in a Tigers uniform? Our best relievers in recent history were FA signings (Benoit, Dotel, Valverde). Other relievers have left the Tigers and turned into ALL STARS elsewhere (Grilli, Rodney). Let’s get a discussion going on this and see who else we can come up with.
When Rondon came up yesterday, we all knew that Leyland would look to use him as soon as possible. Leyland loves to throw young guys into high pressure situations. No matter what the failure rate.
Smyly threw 14 pitches. During which he, oh, you know, struck out the side. Unless Smyly is going to start tomorrow, there was no reason to pull him. Especially after the Tigers failed to score in the 10th, because that means that we’ve not burned another pitcher after Rondon if Rondon gets through the inning (I’m certain that Rondon was only going to get 1 inning). It was a complete gaffe on Leyland’s part, and it may have cost us the game.
Now, if Rondon turns into the closer we need, and he can mature so quickly during the season that he’s a weapon in the playoffs, then let’s remember tonight’s trial by fire.
But Leyland’s track record doesn’t look good.
“Slow Starts” in the Leyland Era
(the following was contributed by poster Jeff Molby)
There’s been a lot of talk about “slow starts” and “choking down the stretch” during the Leyland years. With 7 years of data points available, I figured it’s time to see if there’s anything to it.
There’s not. I didn’t bother to weight the numbers based on games played, so data isn’t perfectly accurate, but it’s close enough for our purposes. The most you could say is that June is a good month and August is a bad month, but really that’s just because of the volatility (mostly due to injuries) of the 2007 and 2008 teams.
Pull those two years out of the sample and what you have is a team that’s consistently a bit above average. I know I’m viewed as one of the resident apologists, but I remember The Lost Decade all too well. If you had approached me in 2005 and offered a decade of “slightly above average”, I’d have kissed ya and invited ya over for dinner.
A Public Apology to Jim Leyland
I was wrong (again…so I think). On September 27th, prior to game 156, I posted that this would likely be Leyland’s last regular season game in Detroit. Now I’m certain he’ll be here next April.
As intolerable as Leyland’s idiosyncrasies, tendancies and hunches are, it is these same foibles that have him in his 2nd WS as a Tiger in 6 years. Take that in for a minute.
If you take a close look, it’s really the positives that emerge from his faults (as we see them) that have the Tigers playing for their 5th World Series title.
He’s loyal to his players, almost to a fault. Every single one of us has either written, said, or thought “why is ______ still playing?” Likely all 3, and likely multiple times. So how do guys like Peralta and DY, who had career low years, respond? By leading the offense and winning ALCS MVP, respectively, of course. Heck, Phil Coke seemed destined for the island of misfit toys next to Charlie-In-The-Box and the spotted elephant when he couldn’t get lefties out in the 6th inning. Now he’s striking out Raul Ibanez with the deadliest slider you’ll ever see on a 3-2 count.
His lineups are crazy…but he gets everyone involved, and keeps players fresh. In the playoffs, we had key contributions from guys like Garcia, Kelly and Worth. Kelly scored a key run, Garcia set Tigers pinch-hitter records, and think about that play Worth made in game 2 of the Oakland series. Santiago doesn’t make that play; Peralta certainly doesn’t. Thank goodness Worth was ready to play.
His bullpen management could politely be called stubbon and is a constant source of derision on the DTW. But let’s credit him for loosening up in the NYY Series, even if it was a game too late. He could have easily, and likely justifiably, used Valverde in game 4, but he stuck with Coke, in a move that I think foreshadows the World Series – go with Coke, or the hot hand (if it’s someone else).
He’s an emotional guy, which likely explains his seemingly non-rational decisions. But that emotion forges a bond with his players, and as hard as Mitch Albom tries to fabricate it, you won’t see a better moment than the one we witnessed when he pulled Cabby in the season-ender after Cabrera had clinched the triple crown.
About a month ago, I posed a question on here and asked how far would JL have to advance for you to want to bring him back next year. I said 1 series, which he’s eclipsed. Several of you commented that no matter what you wanted him gone next year. Has anyone else changed their mind? A recent Freep poll concluded that 70% of respondents want JL back. Where do you stand now?
One final thought:
“Sometimes I look around the stadium and I get a tear in my eye,” Leyland said. “I wish I didn’t show it. But to see those people waving those towels? To see them so happy? I truly believe the game impacts their lives.”
He’s talking about us.
Quantifying Ol’ Smokey
Along with their player forecasts and team breakdowns, Baseball Prospectus publishes “stats” on managers long with a lengthy write-up…”Old Smokey remains one of the league’s better skippers…”
Generally, I think that day in/day obsession with the team grants us better insight then whatever stats BP can come up with, though it is difficult to argue with BP’s algorithmic brilliance and their ability to objectively quantify data, and only data. Unfortunately, when it comes to managers, the numbers seem to be little more than obscure trivia answers. With that in mind, I’ve posted some select “manager stats” below. Pythag is the manager’s 2010 pythagorean expectation (a Bill James invention, read about it here or here), Avg. PC is the average pitch count per game, BQS is “blown quality starts,” REL is relievers used, and Rel w Zero R is relief appearances with zero runs allowed.
BP doesn’t list league averages, so I’ll post the rest of the division for comparison’s sake.
| Manager | Pythag | Avg. PC | BQS | REL | REL w Zero R |
| Ol Smokey | -1 | 99.8 | 4 | 416 | 242 |
| Manny Acta | 0 | 96.8 | 4 | 468 | 305 |
| Ron Gardenhire | 1 | 93.7 | 6 | 465 | 315 |
| Hillman/Yost | 4 | 96.7 | 6 | 332 | 206 |
| Guillen | 2 | 99.5 | 11 | 406 |
265 |
Hard to really get much out of that, but interesting fodder none the less.
I do, however, have some more useful figures, courtesy of Baseball-Reference.com.
In 19 years as a manager, JL is 1493 and 1518, for a .496 winning percentage. (Don’t look for him to get to .500 this year.) He’s won one WS (’97 with the Marlins) and 2 pennants. As the manager of the Tigers, he’s fared significantly better, 424-387 for a .523 winning percentage. Sounds pretty good, right? Not when you look at his second half numbers. The numbers below reflect Tigers’ records after the All Star break under Leyland.
’06 – 2 games under
’07 – 4 games under
’08 – 14 games under
’09 – even
’10 – 10 games under
Thus, since 2006, Leyland is an astonishing 30 games under .500 after the AS break, and an even more incredible 67 games over before the summer classic. Looking at one season, maybe two, you can point to player drop-offs or injuries. But five years is hardly a coincidence.
Continuing, I was shocked to see that JL was in the middle of the pack when it comes to using relievers, part of that is due to his willingness to let Verlander throw so many pitches (I’m not necessarily against that). Though I did not post it above, his hit & run frequency was also in the middle of the pack for AL Central managers.
So in the end, I’ll leave it up to you guys. Is Leyland one of the league’s “better skippers?” Or does he simply have everyone fooled but us?
Postcard from LA
No, I wasn’t in Los Angeles for this series. This is more of a collection of postcard sized thoughts from the Tigers weekend series against the Dodgers.
Armando Galarraga
The theme for Galarraga was inconsistency with the slider. There were times that it was awesome, like when he got Manny Ramirez and Matt Kemp flailing at pitches well outside of the strike zone. And then there was the at-bat where he hung multiple ones in the middle of the plate to Casey “freaking” Blake. It’s likely that Galarraga has one more start to make a statement before Max Scherzer is busting down the door to come back. Of course there is that other factor known as…
Dontrelle Willis
Willis looked terrific at times. He was getting ground ball after ground ball. He was working efficiently. And then things got funky with 2 outs in the 4th innings. A single, a wild pitch, and a walk seemed to set things in motion. Willis did hang in against Reed Johnson who worked a 9 pitch walk. But then it was HBP and Willis never looked comfortable again.
That seems to be the story with Willis this year. It is a pretty fine line that Willis walks between effective and excruciating.
Strategery
I’m not so much a fan of National League baseball. I don’t care to see pitchers hitting, or being lifted while they are still effective for a pinch hitter. That said, Saturday and Sunday provided some interesting maneuvering by Jim Leyland. It worked on Sunday, not so much on Saturday.
Saturday we all understand the ramifications of Magglio Ordonez being lifted earlier in the game so he wasn’t available in the 9th inning. It’s kind of the nature of the beast and Leyland went all in earlier in the game. It happens. But I think back to a moment in the top of the 4th inning where the Tigers had 2 on and 2 outs and Armando Galarraga up. I understand wanting more than 3 innings from a starter, but Galarraga hadn’t been particularly effective and the Tigers needed runs. Leyland let Galarraga hit, the inning ended, and Galarraga came back and gave up 3 runs in the bottom half of the inning.
I’m not saying that Leyland messed up. It was the 4th inning after all. But with the benefit of hindsight it is easy to look back and say what if. I guess that’s the draw of NL ball.
Things went better in the 9th inning of Sunday’s game where Dontrelle Willis played a key role without getting in the batters box. It forced Torre’s hand and he did what Leyland wanted by bringing in the lefty. That Sherrill fell behind 2-1 and set up the perfect squeeze situation certainly made everyone look smarter.
R3L2O
The Tigers were remarkably efficient in the famous runner-on-third-with-less-than-2-outs scenarios this weekend. They capitalized in such a scenario in the first inning in each of the 3 games. For the season the Tigers have had 98 R3L2O scenarios and have scored 46 runs. The 47% success rate is below the league average of 49%.
Odds and Ends
- Danny Worth played some dazzling defense. The fact he has chipped in some singles is gravy at this point. He’s bringing to the table what Adam Everett is supposed to. This is probably premature, but how much more time does Everett have to get his batting average into the .220 range?
- The Austin Jackson play was scary, but fortunately there doesn’t appear to be physical damage beyond swelling which will hopefully go down quickly. Coincidentally enough there was a segment on Baseball Tonight on Thursday about David Wright’s struggles with the low and outside pitch since his beaning last season. I don’t know about the statistical relevance of those struggles, but it was the first thing that I thought of after seeing Jackson get up and walk off the field.
- Joel Zumaya was pretty nasty, but his fastball was down in velocity. He was sitting at 98-99mph and only hit 100mph once. I don’t know if this is cause for concern, or if it was done by design. It is something to watch though. Clearly, he was still effective, but he’s had a lot of multi-inning relief appearances and it bears watching.
The week that was
Things have been very quiet here at DTW lately. While it wasn’t my intention for things to go dark here, when it’s a one person gig sometimes life gets in the way. Fortunately life will be out of the way this coming week so my winter meetings coverage should be pretty robust and very timely. In the mean time I’ll use this post as a way of catching up on everything that got neglected.
Brookens returns to the big leagues
The Tigers announced yesterday that Tom Brookens would be the new first base and outfield and base running coach. Brookens is an organizational soldier and it’s nice to see him get the opportunity to don the Old English D again. But it does raise the question about the qualifications or importance of positional coaches.
Brookens of course knows baseball. The former 4th overall pick in the 1975 draft had a 12 year big league career and has managed in the Tigers organization at Oneonta, West Michigan, and Erie. But very little of that career came in the outfield. Very little.
Junkballing: Pitchers, Playoffs, Plunkings
Debating Saturday’s starter, some news on a tiebreaker playoff game, and more from MLB’s punishment roulette wheel.
Figaro?
Alfredo Figaro has been tabbed for the start in a very key game on Saturday. This is the product of a rainout on Monday and a very young starter who’s arm warrants careful protection.
Rick Porcello simply isn’t an option for this game. Nick Blackburn, also bumped by Monday’s postponement is going on 3 days rest. Quite frankly the Twins don’t have the same type of investment in Blackburn’s future that the Tigers do in Porcello’s. This isn’t a matter of saving Porcello for the rest of the season, it is a matter of not being foolish with an elite talent.
Now Rob Neyer has suggested that the Tigers would be better served by pitching Verlander on short rest on Saturday and giving Porcello the start on Sunday. This is much more palatable from a workload perspective. Verlander looks to be a freak in terms of his ability to handle high pitch counts…so far. We’ll know more by how he responds next year. Continue reading Junkballing: Pitchers, Playoffs, Plunkings
Porcello’s 15 starts
Earlier in the week Jim Leyland made the announcement that Rick Porcello’s next start would come July 21st and that he has 15 starts left. Porcello has been on inning and pitch restrictions as the Tigers try not to burn out one of the most promising young arms in the game. Through his first 16 starts he has amassed 87 innings. With 15 more starts and assuming the same type of restrictions on start length he would finish this season with 165-170 innings. But do those 15 starts include a potential postseason appearance?
I decided to look at how things shake out the rest of the way. Barring rain outs and keeping the rotation intact Porcello’s remaining starts could be:
| Date | Rest |
| 21-Jul | |
| 26-Jul | 4 |
| 1-Aug | 5 |
| 6-Aug | 4 |
| 11-Aug | 4 |
| 16-Aug | 4 |
| 22-Aug | 5 |
| 28-Aug | 5 |
| 2-Sep | 4 |
| 8-Sep | 5 |
| 13-Sep | 4 |
| 18-Sep | 4 |
| 23-Sep | 5 |
| 28-Sep | 4 |
| 3-Oct | 4 |
That’s 15 starts and it takes us right into the Tigers final series of the season against the White Sox. So if the Tigers do make the post season, does Rick Porcello have a role? Does he pitch out of the bullpen? Do they wait and see what happens? Or do they skip him at some point. In late August there are a couple of off days and the Tigers could push him back meaning he doesn’t pitch in the final series, saving a start for a potential post season appearance.
Maggs and Clete to platoon
The latest technique to milk productivity from Magglio Ordonez is to platoon him and only give him starts against left handers. Clete Thomas will form the other side of the platoon which means he’ll get the bulk of the starts, especially with the team facing more right handers.
For his career, Ordonez has hit lefties about 12% better than righties (in terms of OPS). That differential is more pronounced this year with an 825 OPS against southpaws versus 611 against right handers. So if there is any advantage Leyland can give to Ordonez, it is probably a lefty only diet.
But where this gets really interesting of course is the impact on the vesting option. As of tonight, Ordonez is 166 plate appearances shy of his vesting option. Through the first 84 games the Tigers have faced 27 lefty starters. At the same rate the Tigers would face 25 more lefty starters this season, and with about 4 PA’s per start Ordonez would come up 60-70 plate appearances short of the vesting option. That is significant enough to not be conspicuous or grievance-able, especially if Thomas or a bat to be named later hits well enough against righties.
As for Ordonez’s take on the situation, it certainly is professional:
“When I produce, I play,” he said.