Category Archives: Pitching

Pitching, Roster Management, Site News, Tiger History

Catching up and cleaning up

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Things have been lighter for the last week on the blog. Part of that is a lack of terribly interesting news coming out of Lakeland – which is a good thing. This offseason I’ve been trying to compensate for these lulls by cranking through some analysis. That’s kind of what I’ve been doing, I just have nothing to show for it yet. I hope the benefit will come once the season starts. All of this of course is irrelevant to you, but I still wanted to write it anyways. Mostly because I’ve been spending an inordinate amount of time on the blog, but with very little actual content to show for it yet.

Also I want to apologize for some of the comments that came through this weekend. Late Saturday night and into Sunday a bunch of spam comments advertising the sorts of things you don’t expect to see on a Tiger website got through the spam filter. I took them down as quickly as I could, but I apologize if anyone was offended.

Moving on to all the stuff I haven’t been writing about…

The other LOOGY

Edward Campusano seemed to be gaining more and more of a lock on the job with each appearance. That is until he left with elbow tenderness. Never a good sign. While it seems that elbows are more fixable than shoulders, those fixes often require surgery after rest fails to clear up the problem. There’s been no further word so it’s hard to comment on the extent of it, but anecdotally speaking these things just never seem to go away on their own.

With that I was prepared to write how Bobby Seay probably had the best shot at that last bullpen spot. Seay has been quite good this spring allowing 1 run in 8 2/3 innings with a 7:2 strikeout to walk ratio.

But then Jason Beck writes that Leyland sounds likes he is comfortable going just with Ledezma – recognizing that Joel Zumaya, Fernando Rodney, and Todd Jones will be the guys called on to get the critical outs.

If Leyland truly is okay with one lefty, the best bet is probably an option-less Chad Durbin over Zach Miner who still has 2 options left.
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2006 Season, Defense, Pitching

Making their own luck

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In my last post I pointed out that Kenny Rogers, Nate Robertson, and Justin Verlander were the beneficiaries of some combination of good defense and good luck. Basically I was trying to point out that while all 3 had solid seasons, there were some breaks that were beyond their control that went their way. But I as thought a little more, specifically about gold glover Rogers, how much did the pitchers help their own cause?

Fortunately, Pinto has already published the individual PMR numbers for pitchers. By subtracting the pitcher’s contribution from the total team’s defense when he was on the mound, we can see who was leaning on the guys behind him the most.

The order of the list gets shuffled. Kenny Rogers accounted for a third of the plays above expected. And Justin Verlander had pretty much neutral defense behind him. Meanwhile, Nate Robertson got the most help.

In the comments to the other post Brian questioned why some pitchers consistently exceed or lag their fielding independent stats. The pitcher’s ability to help his own cause may – emphasis on may – in some cases be a part of the reason.

2006 Season, Defense, Pitching, Statistics

Luck of the Pitcher

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I think it is pretty common knowledge at this point, that in large part the Tigers pitchers results exceeded their performance last year. If you subscribe to the DiPS theory, that pitchers have limited ability to control whether balls in play turn into hits, then in general the Tigers pitchers got by without striking out a lot of guys because the defense was so good behind them. Part of me wondered it the pitchers still deserved some of the credit. That perhaps they were allowing more “fieldable” balls, thus having better defense behind them.

Well David Pinto at Baseball Musings has answered the question.
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2007 Season, Pitching, Spring Training

Spring stats of note – pitching

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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.

Beginning at the end

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.
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2007 Season, Pitching, Spring Training

Spring pitching to care about

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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.
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2007 Season, Minors, Pitching, Spring Training, Statistics

This time it counts…a tiny bit

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So while yesterday was the exhibition to the exhibition season, this one was against the New York Mets, a bona fide big league club. And the Tigers won. Mack Avenue Tigers has the wrap-up so I won’t duplicate it here. I will just point out good games for Marcus Thames, Curtis Granderson, and Andrew Miller and a pretty rough game for Neifi Perez.

Because of research and video blogs and interviews, I’m a full week behind on links and such so I’ll try to catch-up.

Scott Sizemore
Scott Sizemore – credit Roger Dewitt

Pictures

When the big club is away, the kids will play. Roger DeWitt caught some of the action so if you want to see the possible Tigers of the distant future, you can see Dallas Trahern, Jeff Larish, and Audy Ciriaco (who I’m hoping has a big year) sporting Tigers road garb.
Continue reading This time it counts…a tiny bit →

2006 Season, Pitching, Players, Playoffs

Kenny Rogers extra giddy-up

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Here’s a fascinating post looking at Kenny Rogers stellar playoff performances.

The author uses video to break down Kenny’s mechanics and demonstrate the extra effort and the quicker tempo Rogers was throwing with against the Yankees. Particularly interesting was the video comparison showing a regular season start and the Yankees playoff start. Rogers rushed his delivery considerably in the playoffs and the result was a significantly faster fastball.

Now I’m pretty sure that Kenny Rogers couldn’t throw like this and make it through a whole season. So don’t be looking for crazy-angry-emotional Kenny in a midseason tilt against the Royals. But in the process he probably learned something about himself that he can draw on in tough situations.

Pitching, Tiger History

Best Tigers Pitching Seasons

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We’ll wrap up our look at best and worst Tigers seasons of all time with the best Tigers pitching seasons. The methodology is quite simple, and if you’ve read the other parts of the series will look quite familiar.

Using data from Baseball Reference PI I looked at the best seasons in terms of ERA+ with at least 20 starts. I then calculated an awesome index as: 

(ERA+-100)*IP

Now of course this discriminates against relief pitchers. Willie Hernandez in 1984 should certainly be part of any discussion. However, ERA isn’t really a great measure for relief pitchers, and ERA+ is of course derived from ERA. That and I wanted to keep this pretty simple. So really, this should be titled Best Tigers Starting Pitching Seasons.

The top 10 seasons are below.

The full spreadsheet is available
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Pitching, Statistics, Tiger History

Worst Tigers Pitching Seasons

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Following up on last weeks look at the best and worst offensive seasons, we’ll look at the pitchers now.

Armed with the power of the Baseball Reference Play Index I was able to pull the worst Tiger season in terms of ERA+ for those pitchers with at least 10 starts. Using the suckage index calculation of 

(80-ERA+)*IP

from Batters Box here are the ten worst pitching seasons in Tigers history.

Full spreadsheet available
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2006 Season, Pitching, Statistics

Plate Appearance Depth for pitchers

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After taking a look at how hitters did as plate appearances grew longer, it seemed easy enough to see how the pitchers fared.

I decided to take a look at two Tigers with contrasting styles, Jeremy Bonderman and Kenny Rogers
Bonderman performance by depth of PA
The MLB 2006 norm was for OBPs to start increasing once the plate appearance went beyond 4 pitches. However, Bonderman’s stayed relatively flat throughout. This could be indicative of Bonderman’s unwillingness to “give in” to an opposing hitter. It was an approach that had pretty good results for Bonderman, but the rise in slugging percentage may indicate he got burned this way on occasion.
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2007 Season, Defense, Fan Experience, Former Tigers, Pitching

Midweek Linking

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