Category Archives: Offense

Offense, Statistics, Tiger History

Best Tiger Offensive Seasons

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On Friday we took a look at the worst Tigers offensive seasons. Today we’ll take a look at some of the best.

I’ll use a similar methodology to the suckage index only this we’ll call the awesomeness index. What I did was look for the top OPS+ seasons where the player had a minimum of 450 plate appearances (I upped this from the 300 used in the suckage index. The calculation was simply:

(OPS+-100)*PA

It’s not at all scientific, and don’t mind the resulting values too much. This is was simply a way to rank the players combining success and playing time.

The top 10 awesomeness seasons follow:

The full spreadsheet is also available
Continue reading Best Tiger Offensive Seasons →

2006 Season, Offense, Research, Statistics

Examining Depth of Plate Appearances

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Certainly there is more to plate discipline than first pitch swinging. We’ve seen that the Tigers aggressiveness in that regard actually pays dividends. We also know that the Tigers strike out more than any other team in the American League and walk less than only the Cubs and Mariners. One hazard of first pitch swinging is that it short circuits long at-bats, but is there a benefit to working deep into the count?
Continue reading Examining Depth of Plate Appearances →

2006 Season, Offense, Research, Statistics

Even More First Pitch Swinging – Starters vs Relievers

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In the comments to the first first pitch swinging post Nate asked about the differences in the time of game reasoning that the value in wearing down a reliever is minimal. It was easy enough to break it down by starter versus reliever.

The Tigers swung at the first pitch slightly more against relievers going after 32.6% of first pitches as opposed to 30.7% for starters.
Continue reading Even More First Pitch Swinging – Starters vs Relievers →

2006 Season, Offense, Research, Statistics

More on first pitch swinging – runners on base

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While I dispelled some of my issues with the Tigers and first pitch swinging, I still had some questions. I think many Tiger fans can remember what seemed like all those times there were runners on base only to see Magglio Ordonez (or any host of other Tiger hitters) take a swing at the first pitch and pop out to first base. So did first pitch swing rates, as well as success, hinge on whether or not there are runners on base?

First we’ll take a look at if the rate of first pitch swinging varies whether or not there are runners on base: Continue reading More on first pitch swinging – runners on base →

2006 Season, Offense, Research, Statistics

First pitch swinging

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There were a couple ways to describe the Tigers approach at the plate in 2006. The optimist might say they were aggressive, the pessimist might say they were hack-tastic. I guess one measure of this might be their propensity for swinging at the first pitch.

Now with the first pitch, 4 things can happen. There are two take events, a called ball or a called strike. There are also two swinging states, the batter can have put the ball in play or be sitting with an 0-1 count. At various times during the season I saw stats on TV broadcasts or in the paper that show how well certain Tigers did when hitting the first pitch, but that data neglected to take into account the swings and misses (or fouls).
Continue reading First pitch swinging →

2006 Season, Offense, Pitching, Statistics

Link round-up

Defense, Offense, Players, Statistics

The problem with Sean Casey

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When Sean Casey was resgined I indicated I didn’t like the deal, but never really elaborated. My issue is that as nice a guy as Sean Casey is, he just isn’t very good.

Offensively Casey is at best an average hitter. His OPS+ since 2002 looks like this (OPS+ indexes a players OPS against the league average. 100 means the player is average, values above 100 mean above average)

Year	OPS+
2002	78
2003	98
2004	142
2005	104
2006	87

Over the last 5 seasons Casey has had 1 good year, 2 average years, and 2 bad years. Even if Casey can regain his earlier form, that merely means he is an average offensive player at a position where considerable offense is expected.

So for the sake of argument let’s assume that Casey gets back to be a league average hitter. That puts him slightly below average at his position. But what about defense? Continue reading The problem with Sean Casey →

2007 Season, Minors, Offense, Pitching

Lloyd McClendon to be hitting coach

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Jim Leyland has decided to move Lloyd McClendon in to the hitting coach vacancy that was created when Don Slaught resigned. McClendon of course served as bullpen coach last year and spent 4 years as the Pirates hitting coach.

Jeff Jones will be promoted from Toledo to assume the role of bullpen coach. Jones had considerable success working with Wil Ledezma and Zach Miner last year. This will be his 5th stint as Tigers bullpen coach.

Britt Burns will be promoted from A Lakeland to take Jones spot in Toledo and former Tiger Joe Coleman will assume pitching coach duties in Lakeland.

Offense

Slaught out as hitting coach

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Don Slaught today resigned as hitting coach citing family concerns. Judging hitting coaches seems to be particularly difficult. You can look at statistics, but it is hard to know how the coach actually impacts it.

In the Tigers case, the bulk of the players performed similar to their career marks. They added some home run power, with Brandon Inge, Craig Monroe, and Marcus Thames all hitting career highs in homers. At the same time, the Tigers showed an incredible propensity for striking out finishing 2nd in the American League.

Much was made about the team’s inability to take a walk, but their 2006 isolated patience numbers (OBP-BA) were in line with career norms for the bulk of the players. That deficiency seemed to be more a problem with the players than the coaching.

I had 2 main issues with Slaught. The first was the extended slumps that Tigers hitters seemed to experience. Magglio Ordonez went months without homers. Curtis Granderson slumped dramatically for 2 months. Placido Polanco never got on track. And of course Chris Shelton never recovered after an incrdible 2 weeks. He didn’t seem to have much luck in getting them to shake out of it.

The other issue was that too often very average pitchers looked awesome against Detroit. Since Slaught was in charge of preparing the hitters each night, part of that responsibility falls on him.

As for who the next pitching coach may be, I have no idea. I’d like to see Leon Durham promoted from AAA. He’s had quite a bit of success with Thames, Granderson, and Shelton in the past and he was even able to fix Carlos Pena for awhile. As for what I think will happen, I wouldn’t be surprised if Lloyd Mclendon was moved from his bullpen coach duties and given a shot.

In other news, Andy Van Slyke re-upped and will resume first base, outfield, and baserunning coach duties.

2006 Season, Offense, Tiger History, Trade Rumors

I’m just saying

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A collection of observations, links, and items of note from the last week:

Ownership

How many times did we hear this year that the Tigers own the Twins, and the White Sox own the Tigers? Now a popular refrain is that the A’s are a more favorable first round opponent than the Yankees because the Yankees own the Tigers. (I’m not questioning that the A’s are more favorable, just the reasoning). Now did anybody notice that the Tigers went 7-7 over their last 14 games against those same White Sox who owned them. Or more troubling, that the Tigers went 8-8 over their last 16 games against those Twins who they owned?

As for the Tigers 2-5 record against the Yankees, keep in mind that 5 of those games were decided by 2 runs or less or went to extra innings. And as for that last series, the Tigers were outscored by a whopping 2 runs (11-9) over 3 games in the Bronx.

Getting loaded

Since September 15th the Tigers have had 16 at-bats with the bases loaded, or a little more than one a game. During the mighty slump, spanning August 8th to September 14th (34 games) the Tigers only had 12 at-bats with the bases loaded.

I’m not even worried about how they did in those stretches. It’s all about the opporutunities.
Continue reading I’m just saying →

2006 Season, Front Office, Offense

Tiger Blogger Night Links

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I had a great time with my fellow bloggers on Tuesday night despite the soggy losing-ness at Comerica Park. I’ll point you to Ian, Brian, and Samara who have done an excellent job wrapping up the night. But if you want one phrase to summarize the conversation it would have to be “What would Neifi do?” And I encourage you to check out the photography of the supremely talented Sam who managed to make rain look beautiful.

On to some links: