Category Archives: Tiger History

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.
Continue reading Catching up and cleaning up →

Tiger History

Review: Detroit Tigers Vintage Films DVD from A & E

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detroit-tigers-ae-dvd.jpg

A & E television has been building quite the library of baseball DVDs over the last couple years. Looking to continue this trend and capitalize on the resurgence of the Detroit Tigers, they recently released a DVD featuring footage from the Tigers 3 post WWII World Series victories.

Now none of the content is actually “new.” This isn’t a comphrehensive look at the Tigers World Series victories. What it is is a compilation of the World Series specials that are produced each year. However, good luck trying to find them anywhere else, and now they are all available on on DVD.
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2007 Season, Minors, Previews, Spring Training, Tiger History

One of those link round-up posts

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Andrew Miller
credit Roger DeWitt

Miller Time

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.

What’s up with Leyland?

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 →

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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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
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2007 Season, Minors, Tiger History

Aircraft carriers, outfielders, and other news items

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A whole pile of links, plus another great shot from spring training…


Al Kaline chats with Justin Verlander
credit: Roger DeWitt

What are they saying

That would have to be an interesting conversation. What do you think they’re talking about? Maybe Kaline saying, “Listen kid, I know you were rookie of the year, but by the time I was your age I had 4 All Star games and finished in the top 10 in MVP voting 3 times…”

Best Young Outfield

You probably wouldn’t expect a Tigers outfield consisting of exactly one player under the age of 30 to rank among the league’s best outfields, but the Tigers do according to Baseball Prospectus. At least according to their PECOTA upside score the Tigers rank 3rd behind only the Mets and Devil Rays. The centerfield triumvirate of Curtis Granderson, Cameron Maybin, and Gorkys Hernandez has the forecast for the Tigers long term outfield as sunny.
Continue reading Aircraft carriers, outfielders, and other news items →

Fan Experience, Tiger History

Group Project: Preserving Tiger Stadium

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Okay, so we’re not going to all start a campaign to save the old girl before she gets it from the wrecking ball. What I’m talking about is preserving some of Tiger Stadium’s history and charm. Moving some of Michigan and Trumbull to Montcalm and Witherall.

A couple weeks ago I flashed back to the overwhelming sense of green when entering a stadium. The comments went down the road of remembering Tiger Stadium. A commentor named Ed left the following:

I wish parts of Tiger Stadium had been integrated into Comerica. Sometime in July or August I wrote Dave Dombrowski about that very thing. He wrote back…personally!…to say that they have been thinking about that very thing. His letter stated too that they would be considering what they might do and thanked me for my suggestions.

So I thought maybe we could come up with a list of ideas. I’d love the rightfield overhang to make the journey, but that may be a little too hard to pull off. Something simpler might be to the have flags from the other American League teams ringing the top of the stadium.

What would you like to see brought from the old place to Comerica Park?

Former Tigers, Minors, Tiger History

Tuesday Linking

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Short and sweet…

Defense, Minors, Tiger History

Quick Links

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We’re over the hump of the offseason and news is flowing now. So these link posts might get to be more frequent.

On another note, if anybody makes it down to TigerFest and would like to share their experiences drop me a line. I screwed up and waited too long for tickets so the boy and I are missing out.

Tiger History

Trammell and Morris will wait for Hall call

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While it was a great day for Tony Gwynn and Cal Ripken, Alan Trammell and Jack Morris actually lost ground on their quest for enshrinement in the Hall of Fame.

In Trammell’s case it was his lowest vote percentage since he was added to the ballot in 2002. Trammell’s vote total has hovered in a pretty narrow range over the last 6 elections: 15.7, 14.1, 13.8, 16.9, 17.7, 13.4. With him not gaining ground his chances of enshrinement will most likely rest with the Veteran’s Committee.

As for Jack Morris, he’d actually been gaining momentum. Over his 6 years on the ballot he had doubled his support, but backtracked this year. His vote totals since 2001 are: 19.61, 20.5, 22.8, 26.3, 33.3, 41.2, 37.1.

Of course both fared better than Lou Whitaker who failed to gain the requisite 5% in his only year on the ballot. On a related note, The Hardball Times has an article by Dan McLaughlin (aka The Baseball Crank) looking in detail at the Hall of Fame case for various middle infielders. Of course the Tigers double play combo is part of the discussion.