Category Archives: Offense

Managing & Strategy, Offense, Statistics

The Optimal Tiger Lineup

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On Friday, Lee aggregated various projections for Tiger players to find the average projection. On Saturday, David Pinto web enabled a script written by Ken Arneson based on work by Cyril Morong that optimizes lineups. On Sunday, I do the easiest part of all and stick Lee’s numbers into David’s tool.

First some lineups, and then some explanation. I first put in what would probably be the most common assortment of players the Tigers would use. I’m guessing this would be Rodriguez/Inge/Guillen/Polanco/Shelton/Monroe/Granderson/Ordonez/Young. Various combinations of those players would average 5.330 runs per game. Here are the best and worst variations on that lineup
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2006 Season, Offense, Statistics, Uncategorized

Playing with PECOTA part 2

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I’ve already scanned the PECOTA projections for Tiger pitchers and highlighted what I thought was most interesting. Now we’ll do the hitters.

Curtis Granderson

Lee has already done the comparison of who PECOTA thinks should be starting in centerfield for Detroit. And it has been enough of a theme here that I think I’ve beat the horse to death. But PECOTA is a fan of Granderson. Some of his more modern day comps are Luis Gonzalez, Reggie Sanders, Mel Hall, Greg Briley, Leon Durham, and Bobby Abreu. PECOTA sees him peaking in 2008 with minimal fall off in subsequent years. While his value is probably slightly inflated by his small sample defensive stardom, the kid looks like he’s for real.

Nook Logan

I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention that PECOTA has Logan’s breakout rate at 41% and his improve rate at 63%. So the system does project that Nook will very likely be better next year.
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Managing & Strategy, Offense, Statistics

The Platoon Ratio

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When talking about players strengths and weaknesses, ultimately the discussion will veer towards: “What they really need is a platoon because player X can’t hit Y-handers to save his life.” Okay, so maybe not every baseball discussion goes this way, but I’m sure you’ve all heard it, and perhaps even said it before. That’s why it may come as a shock, but the differences in platoon splits amongst right handed hitters are basically non-existent.

Let’s take a look at that statement again. I’m not claiming that right handed hitters don’t hit lefties better than righties. In fact, right-handed hitters hit lefties 9% better than righties. What’s surprsing is that all – or virutally all – right handed hitters share the same platoon advantage. So all right handed hitters OPS against right handers will be 9% better against southpaws than against right-handers (northpaws?).

Without a lot of indepth explantion, this is a concept that has been revealed by Bill James, and covered by Rob Neyer. Here is probably the best one paragraph explanation I could find:

In fact, if every player played enough games — thousands and thousands of games, I mean — eventually all of them would have roughly the same platoon split. There is some evidence that some types of hitters will have slightly larger platoon splits than others, but essentially they’re all the same. I know, it sounds crazy. But everyone who’s looked at this with any degree of sophistication has come up with the same answer. As James wrote in 1988, “It’s innate. You can’t get away from it.”

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Managing & Strategy, Offense

Batting Around the Order

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With the talk of starters yesterday, it got me thinking about potential batting orders. Now the value of setting the order is probably overrated. Aside from putting higher on-base guys at the top of the order, I’m not really sure how much sequencing actually matters. The only other real consideration I see is balancing left handed and right handed bats in the lineup to make late game pitching changes more difficult on the opposing manager.

The Core Lineup

This is my proposal for the most typical lineup, with minimal regard to platoon advantages:

  • Placido Polanco
  • Carlos Guillen
  • Chris Shelton
  • Magglio Ordonez
  • Dmitri Young/Carlos Pena
  • Ivan Rodriguez
  • Craig Monroe
  • Curtis Granderson
  • Brandon Inge

The Tigers are still handicapped by a lack of left handed bats. The top of the order was the hardest for me to resolve. Certainly Curtis Granderson would receive some consideration as a leadoff hitter, and he could conceivable hit a little higher in the middle of the lineup. He’s batting 8th in this version just to best leverage his left-handedness.
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2005 Season, Offense, Statistics

A Model of Inefficiency

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It was a familiar scene for Tiger fans this season. A runner gets to third base with less than two outs. The next batter would invariably seem to do one of three things, a strikeout, a sharp ground ball to third, or a pop out to second. Once that second out was secured, the final out would be a fairly deep fly ball that would have been quite useful one out before. The Tigers seemed to have an uncanny ability to ruin great scoring opportunities in 2005. But was this really the case, or did it just seem that way?

The first thing I did was to take a look at the teams performance with RISP. The Tigers batting average with RISP was a very respectable .273 which was good enough for 6th in the American League. The problem was despite a decent average, the OBP in the same situation was a dismal .335 which was next to worst. Now I won’t go all sabremetric and say that a walk is as good as a hit in these situations. Clearly, a hit is more likely to score a runner than a walk is. However, I think everyone would agree that not making an out, and having an additional runner get on only increases your scoring potential. The other problem is that the nature of outs the Tigers were making wasn’t conducive to run scoring. The Tigers had the 4th most strikeouts with RISP, despite ranking 11th in plate apperances in that same situation.

So was the Tigers biggest problem getting runners on to drive in, or were they especially inefficient at it as well? Below is a table showing TBW (Total Bases + Walks) and REA (Run Efficiency Average). TBW is essentially a summation of a team’s offensive events. REA is simply runs divided by TBW – which gives an indication of how effectively teams cashed in on their offensive events. For more information on TBW and REA, please check out this article by Tom Tippett.

While the Tigers are middle of the pack in TBW, they are near the bottom in terms of efficiency. Next I wondered what the impact of home runs would be on this measure. Afterall, the Tigers play in a park that discourages homers especially for right handed hitters (of which the lineup was heavily tilted towards). Plus, while a run scoring from a home run still counts (as do the runs on base) I was more interested in seeing the teams ability to get the runners they have home.

I modified REA (I call it REA-2) to take out the home runs. By “take out” I removed the homers from the TBW total (or 4 TBWs for every homer) and I subtracted the home runs from the run total as well.

According to REA-2, Detroit is the least capable of getting their baserunners home. Now I don’t know if this means anything, because I just made up REA-2, but it seems to make some sense (feel free to poke holes in it). It serves to further highlight that the Tigers were very inefficient.

So why were they so inefficient? My guess is that it was a combination of their poor on base percentage (or the ability to make outs) short circuiting rallies, a lack of team speed, an abnormally high strike out rate given the team’s other offensive characteristics, and possibly some bad luck. This team managed to combine several attributes that when isloated aren’t necessarily a bad thing. Unfortunately they weren’t isolated. They were a slow team that didn’t hit for a ton of power. They relied on the home run in a park that discourages it. They don’t take walks, and they don’t make contact. The result is an offense that was capable of great things some of the time, but struggled more than their share.

Offense

B. Inge-ing

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So do you believe in Brandon Inge yet? I have to admit that I was highly skeptical that he could pick up where he left off last year. I didn’t expect him to slide all the way back to his .200 batting average ways, but I certainly didn’t expect the 375/453/607 line he’s posted to date. Now this year represents a very small sample, and last year could have been a fluke, but it could also be that Inge has achieved a new performance level.

In June 2003 Inge was demoted to AAA Toledo. When Baseball America named Inge the top Tigers’ prospect in 2001 it was for his defense rather than his offense, but no major leaguer can play good enough defense to compensate for the 155/225/275 he was hitting that season.

While in AAA Inge managed to post a more acceptable 275/327/444. The Tigers recalled him in August and he responded with a 12 game hitting streak. Inge decided to abandon thinking after speaking with a sports psychologist and focus on hitting the ball up the middle. He finished up the season hitting 258/308/404. While his offensive performance still wasn’t great, it was a far cry from his anemic performance in the past.

Using Inge’s 2003 AAA event as the breaking point, I went to the Baseball Musings Day-by-Day Database and looked at Inge’s career numbers before and after the demotion.



           AB    BA    OBP    SLG   HR    BB    SO

Old Inge  677  .183   .242   .292   11    45   187

New Inge  624  .285   .341   .452   19    52   120

When looking at the New and Old Inge, I’m not so sure that Inge’s success last year and this year can be dismissed because of sample size. New Inge now has only 50 at-bats fewer than Old Inge. He also has increased his batting average .102, his on base percentage .099, and his slugging .160. He’s walking slightly more and striking out significantly less.

So is Inge just hitting better, or are there other factors at work? Well, Comerica Park brought in the left field fence which may have contributed to the home run increase. While the dimension changes didn’t occur at the same break point, the New Inge was never subjected to the huge distances the Old Inge was.

Early in his career, Inge was playing every day as the starting catcher. In 2003 and 2004 he was used more in a platoon situation so he may have benefited from facing fewer righthanders and more lefthanders. The following table shows the percentage of at-bats that Inge had against southpaws each year, and the corresponding OPS against each type of pitcher.



          AB   % Left    L OPS    R OPS
2002     321      22%     .684     .585 

2003     330      33%     .761     .527

2004     408      41%     .916     .708

While last year he did get a substantial amount of at-bats against lefties, and he did perform significantly better against lefties, his performance against both lefties and righties was markedly improved.

The other possible explanation is that catching was detracting from Inge’s offense. I have to admit that I thought the plan to turn Inge into a uber-utility guy last year was ridiculous. I couldn’t fathom why they were looking for a spot on the field for his bat. Of course I didn’t expect his offense outpouring. Even during last year’s offense boom, he posted only a .690 OPS while catching. It could be the physical drain of catching, as well as the mental drain of calling a game may have been taking a toll.

I think it’s safe to say that Inge is doing more than riding a hot streak. He did benefit last year from his mix of pitcher handedness, and he may be benefiting from being displaced by Pudge behind the plate. He also happened to develop a new approach at the plate that coincided with these other events. While his minor league history doesn’t support an offensive outburst, Inge is only 27 so improvement is certainly possible.

I know Brandon Inge won’t continue to hit as well as he has this season. However, given his strong start I’m much more confident that he can repeat last year’s performance and even improve upon it than I was 3 weeks ago.