Since my June month in review was pretty well received, I thought I’d do another one for July. Unfortunately, ESPN’s sortable stats don’t look like they include the July 31 games yet, so we’re actuallly looking at the month minus one day. And seeing as I’m off on a road trip to visit Great Amercian Ballpark and PNC this weekend, it was now or never for this column.

Overall
Heading into the All-Star break, the Tigers were looking not bad. The Tigers picked up their first home sweep of the season against the White Sox, and then limited the Red Sox to 9 runs in 3 games. For the first half of the month the Tigers were 6-6. Even the first game after the All-Star break was impressive as the Tigers broke their string of <10 run scoring outputs with a 10-9 win against Chicago. After that it was down hill. The Tigers closed out the month winning just 2 of the next 13, and the games weren't even close. Only 3 of those 11 losses were by fewer than 4 runs. Unfortunately the Tigers weren’t able to pull and trading deadline deals, due to a lack of valuable talent. Transactions
The biggest move was the trade of Adam Bernero for Ben Petrick. The Tigers traded from one of their strengths pitching, without even giving up a strong pitcher. Bernero has given up one run in 8 relief appearances for Colorado, while Petrick has struggled offensively for the Tigers.

There was also quite a bit of disabled list shuffling. Cody Ross was the beneficiary of Higginson’s DL stint. Unfortunately, he looked less than impressive in 4 games and was sent back to Toledo to make room for Danny Patterson. Also, in adding Patterson to the 40 man roster, they DFA’d David Espinosa (acquired in Mohler trade). When Higginson was ready to come off the disabled list, AJ Hinch took his place. Hinch has a groin injury and will eligible to come of the DL on August 3rd.

In the bullpen, Fernando Rodney and Steve Avery were demoted in favor Shane Loux and Eric Eckenstahler.

Offense
July was far and away the Tigers best offensive month. While they were still in the lower half of the league in most offensive categories, at least they weren’t dead last by a large margin. Most surprising was that the Tigers were tied for 5th in the in home runs with 28. Now granted, 15 of the Tigers 26 games were away from Comerica Park, but for a team struggling the Tigers have, it’s impressive. Part of this surge may be attributable to the the fact that Omar Infante and Brandon Inge had no at-bats in July, and part of it was just some better hitting. Kevin Witt was the month’s leading hitter at .329/.372/.517. Dmitri’ Young’s batting average dipped and was .262, but his power numbers were still strong with 7 homers and a .565 slugging percentage. Young also led the team in RBI for the month with 14. Alex Sanchez produced well at the top of the order hitting .319/.343/.447 and driving in 10 runs. Despite his decent hitting, he only scored 9 runs due to 6 caught stealings and some base running faux pas. Eric Munson struggled to get hits with a .206 batting average, but his plate discipline resulted in a team high 11 walks and a .313 OBA. He also contributed 5 home runs. Bobby Higginson has hit .500/.550/.813 in 5 games since coming off the disabled list. Even Ramon Santiago has managed to drive in 5 runs this month.

Pitching
The young pitching staff is struggling as the season progresses. Despite an impressive string of 6 games in which they allowed only 12 runs heading into the all-star break, the ERA for the month was 5.42. July saw the debut of Wil Ledezma as a starting pitcher. He didn’t allow a run in his first two starts, but then was hit hard. Matt Roney continues to pitch well at home, and struggle on the road. Nate Cornejo had a couple of very impressive outings against the White Sox. In one start he pitched 8 innings of shut out ball, and in another he took a no-hitter into the seventh (only to get the loss). The bright spot in the rotation was Jeremy Bonderman. While his ERA was 5.16 for the month, 7 of the 13 runs he allowed during the month came in one disastrous start against Boston. He rebounded his next time out and scattered 3 hits over 8 innings. The starter who struggled the most however was Mike Maroth. He had a 6.96 ERA and added 3 losses in his march towards 20 (he did also pick up 2 wins). Most disturbing are the following numbers: 9,11,12. Those are his home runs allowed, walks allowed, and strike outs. That’s an awful combination of “balls not in play.” In the bullpen Chris Mears had several strong outings closing games and July saw the return of Danny Patterson. Two of the Tigers potential trade candidates, Sparks and Walker, both struggled in July which limited their value.

Danny Knobler thinks the Tigers need to make one of those trades that seems meaningless at the time (Greg Gohr for Damion Easley) that turn out to be incredibly fortunate for the Tigers. He’s not sure that Illitch has intentions of spending the money that they will save in expired contracts next year, so the Tigers better hope to get lucky.

Knobler also mentions the Willie Blair/Joey Eischen trade as an example. I think a more convincing one would be the Todd Jones/Mark Redman trade. Redman was damaged goods at the time, and Jones was a lame duck. I think that trade turned out a lot better than most fans expected. Especially if the Tigers get lucky with Knotts/Henkel/Robertson.

Maybe Bernero/Petrick will end up being that trade, or maybe there is another one out there.

Baseball Primer has an article about how scouts grade pitchers. It’s an interesting read and has a report card for Shane Loux at the end.

Last Friday we looked at the Tigers offensive Run Efficiency Average. Today we’ll look at how efficient or inefficient their defense has been. Before I go any farther, if you want more information on REA or TBW, or converting TBW to runs, check out this article by Tom Tippett. Now onto the defense.

Below is a table with TBW (total bases + walks), runs allowed, REA (Run Efficienicy Average which is runs/TBW) and Dif which is the difference between a team’s REA and the league average.

The Tigers defensive REA is .283, or 11 points worse than the league average. Converting this to runs means that the Tigers have given up 21 more runs than they would have had they been as efficient as the league average. Given the fact the Tigers have induced the second most double plays in the league, the Tigers could have easily fared worse on this measure.

To translate all this into Wins and Losses take the difference in runs scored/allowed and divide by 9 (again, I got this from the Tippett article) because that is what the pythagorean method tells us is the number of runs to add a win in a league with an average offense of 750 runs. That means that the ineffieincy of the Tigers defense has cost them about 2 games this year. This is actually an improvement over last year, when the Tigers inefficient defense had a 6 game deficit. This could get worse because the season isn’t over yet, but they are ahead of last year.

I updated the offensive stats to find that the Tigers offense has scored 70 fewer runs than an offense performing at the league average for efficiency. This translates roughly into an additional 8 losses.

Now is this to say that the Tigers should have an additional 10 wins under their belts? Of course not. This just shows what to expect had the Tigers offense been as efficient as the rest of the league. The fact of the matter is that bad teams are just plain bad, and good teams are just plain good. On the offensive side, for the Tigers to be league average in efficiency, they would have to significantly outperform their own inherent badness when there are runners on base. The fact of the matter is the Tigers are not a home run hitting team. They play in a non-homer run hitters partk. And they have hitters who, despite a lack of power, strike out a whole bunch. And while there is the art of manufacturing runs, there is still a basic offensive level that must be achieved that the Tigers can’t seem to muster. Kansas City leads the league in offensive REA despite not being a “great” hitting team. They are second in the league in stolen bases and sacrifice bunts. However, they aren’t a bad hitting team to begin with.

The defensive side is a little bit harder to explain. My guess is that while the Tigers are 7th in home runs allowed, they are 10th in walks allowed. While that’s not good, it’s not horrendous either. What does hurt is that they are dead last by a large margin in strike outs. They have 60 fewer than the next closest team. I’d say that the combination of the 3 stats is what leads to their inefficiency.

So to wrap this thing up, let’s take a look at everything together. The Tigers have 28 wins this season. The Tigers have 10 fewer wins (8 offensive and 2 defensive) than a team that was as efficient as the league average based on run differential. Going by pythagorean, the Tigers would have 30 wins on the season. So summing it all up, based on their actual runs scored, and runs allowed, and average efficiency on both sides of the ball, the Tigers would have 40 wins already. I wish.

The Tigers have been busy this weekend, with a roster move on each of Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. On Friday, Bobby Higginson came off the disabled list, and AJ Hinch took his place. Higginson went 6 for 12 with two doubles this weekend. On Saturday, the Tigers demoted Steve Avery and called up Eric Eckenstahler from Toledo. Eric had a 2.66 ERA in 40.2 innings and a 38/22 K/BB. Avery had been struggling since his first several scoreless outings. Today, Shane Loux finally got the call and he will take Fernando Rodney’s sport in the bullpen. While Rodney didn’t pitch particularly well, he didn’t pitch as bad as his stats would indicate. He allowed a number of soft hits, but could never recover from them. Shane Loux has gone 11-6 with a 3.06 ERA for Toledo this year. He’s a soft tosser that doesn’t strike out a lot of guys, but he doesn’t walk a lot of guys either (58/30 BB/K in 128 innings). Even though Loux is being called up to pitch from the bullpen, I wouldn’t be surprised to see him make spot starts to spell the Roney/Ledezma/Bonderman rotation.

Other Stuff
-Lynn Henning had another good column today. He weighs in on mid level free agents, Alex Sanchez, and the lack of talent at high levels of the organization.
-Ramon Santiago picked up two RBI in the same game. Those were numbers 8 and 9 on the season.

So we know the Tigers offense has been bad. Since I’ve been writing about the Tigers for 100 games this season, I’ve run out of adjectives for bad, so let’s just stick with bad. Last night however, they managed to score 7 runs. Five out of the seven runs came courtesy of two out hits. This is unusual because the Tigers are hitting .176 with runners in scoring position and two-outs. This got me thinking about the Tigers offensive efficiency. Even when the Tigers get baserunners, they seem to do a poor job of turning them into runs. I looked at a simple measure that I called Throughput (it probably has other names as well, don’t mean to be stepping on anyone’s toes), which is runs divided by hits+walks+hbp’s. Essentially, the number of baserunners that turn into runs. Not surprisingly, the Tigers throughput of .307 is last by a long margin. Cleveland is next worst at .351 and the AL average is .380.

I then came across the Run Efficiency Average on the Diamond Mind Site. REA is runs divided by total bases plus walks. Not surprisingly the Tigers are dead last in the American League by an incredible margin.

The league average is .270, and the Tigers are at .225. Last year the Tigers were at .238, and the league average was again .270. In Tom Tippett’s article he points out that it is very rare for teams at the extremes to repeat performances from year to year. Of the 20 least efficient teams since 1974, 19 improved in relation to the league the following year. The 2002 Tigers were the 3rd least efficient team with regard to league average of the last 20 years, and have moved even farther from the mean this year.

So in conclusion, the Tigers don’t get many people on base, and they have a hard time converting those baserunners into runs. As much as I’d like to think that the caught stealings and sacrifice bunts have contributed, I’m not sure they have. True, the Tigers lead the league in caught stealing with 45 and sacrifice hits with 43. However, the Royals have 41 sac bunts and are leading the league in efficiency. Also, the caught stealing number is offset by the Tigers low double play rate. The Tigers have hit into 57 double plays, and the next fewest are Texas’ 68.

The big difference is that the Tigers have had 1485 plate appearances with runners on base. The rest of the league is averaging 1727. Furthermore, the Tigers hit .226/.296/.344 in that situation. What it comes down to is that as bad as the Tigers are at getting runners on, they hit just as bad, and a little worse once they get there. And if the runners are in scoring position, it gets even worse when they hit .214/.289/.336. And while it’s hard to imagine, they are even worse when there are two outs and runners in scoring position, .186/.287/.285.

The Tigers just aren’t good by any offensive measure. Next week I’ll look at the Tigers REA against.

Other Stuff
-I’ve been trying to promote some of the other great blogs out there. Seeing as the Tigers just played the Indians, now would be a good time to mention the Cleveland Indians Report. It’s where I go to check in on the Tribe.
-The more games Ben Petrick doesn’t play at catcher, the less I like the trade. At least he had a break out game last night.
-Work is pretty busy right now, so I’ll probably only be doing two updates a week or so for the next month.

So the Tiger pitching staff has collapsed since the All-Star break. Is it reason to panic, or become concerned (with the Tigers is anything reason to panic?)? Absolutely not. This is a young staff and there are going to be bumps in the road. Jeremy Bonderman was the latest to get shelled. He was hit hard by a very good hitting team in a hitters ballpark. He just didn’t have it last night, and so his streak of 7 consecutive quality starts was snapped. Don’t read too much into the fact that he had a bad outing, because 7 of his last 8 have been pretty good. Now, if he tanks his next three times out, then you can worry a little.

As for Wil Ledezma, again he is a young guy. This was only his 3rd start. In all honesty we probably got a little too excited because he pitched shut out ball in his first two starts. But even looking at his second start, guys hit the ball pretty hard off him, just right at people.

Nate Cornejo and Mike Maroth can start their own support group for guys who take no-hitters late into games, only to get hung with a loss.

The most troubling part of the pitching slump is that it’s effecting a couple guys in the bullpen, Jamie Walker and Steve Sparks. Two of the Tigers more tradeable commodities. Sparks was shelled last night, and Walker had a rough outing on Saturday.

Other Stuff:
-Franklyn German now has 14 K/0 B in 11 innings for Toledo. Is it time for him to come back and to demote Rodney who has walked 9 in 10 innings to go along with 15 hits?
-For what it’s worth, Brandon Inge is hitting .295 .361 .466 with 3 home runs
-In July, Eric Munson has a .321 OBA, and is slugging .457 despite a .196 batting average
-Alex Sanchez has 9 RBI already in July. His previous high in a month was 8 (twice last year).
-Ben over at the Universal Baseball Blog writes about the Ben Petrick/Bernero trade-and he likes it for the Tigers.

I think tonight’s Sox/Tiger game had to be one of the most pitiful displays I’ve seen in a while. Given the fact I’ve been watching the Tigers all year that’s saying a lot. Each team was only credited with one error, but it should have been more. Carlos Lee and Ben Petrick both made bad plays in left that allowed runs to score. Alex Sanchez negated a 3 for 5 effort with two boneheaded baserunning errors. This is a game that the White Sox should have won easily. The Tigers couldn’t figure out Buerhle, and Roney was getting hit hard. But through a pretty poor sequence in the 8th, the White Sox let the Tigers score 4 runs to get with in one.

Instead of the Tigers capitalizing on the White Sox generosity, they allowed two runs to score in the bottom of the 8th. The inning could have been over had Jamie Walker cleanly fielded a comebacker. Instead, that left the door open for Ben Petrick to misplay a well hit ball into a two run double (in all honesty it was a tough play, but it looked pretty bad nonetheless).

Matt Roney has now struggled in all 4 of his starts on the road. The previous three were in definite hitters parks (Coors/Fenway/Kaufman) so it was actually hard to come to a conclusion. And even now, 4 starts is far from a conclusive sample size. However, this has been true of his relief appearances as well. Going into tonights game he had a 2.04 ERA at home and 5.06 on the road. He has 20 walks (13K’s) in 31 innings away from Comerica, and only 11 walks in 35.1 innings at home (20K’s).

Other Stuff:
-On Thursday, the Tigers scored 10 runs in a game for just the second time since September 23, 2001. They scored 11 runs total in the previous two series (White Sox and Red Sox)
-You knew that Chris Mears would give up runs eventually. Fortunately when they came, they didn’t hurt the Tigers.
-Alex Sanchez has twice as many caught stealings (10) as he does walks. Considering his OBA is .297 is it really necessary for him to create more outs? Yes he’s fast, but 17 stolen bases in 27 attempts isn’t that impressive.
-Shane Halter got the start for Eric Munson on Friday. Normally I would complain about this, but Munson has been in a serious funk lately. His average has fallen all the way to .233. Including his pinch hitting attempt tonight, he has gone 27 PA’s (9 games) without an extra base hit.

There are some new (relatively) Tiger blogs. Make sure you check them out:
Brian Borawski Tiger blog
Baseball Pundit

Also, Tigers Central has an article urging Mr. I to go out and spend some money. It’s worth a read.

Without any Tiger news to report, I figured now would be a good time to look around at what is happening on the farm.

AAA Toledo
Shane Loux is the best prospect story in Toledo. He’s likely to find his way into the Tiger rotation at some point this season. He’s 9-6 with a 3.13 ERA. However, he’s not a strikeout pitcher with only 48 K’s in 112 IP. Nate Robertson, acquired in the Redman trade continues to show progress. Despite allowing 10 HR’s he has a 3.50 ERA with 72K/36BB in 113 IP. Franklyn German seems to have found control (or impatient hitters) in Toledo. In 8 IP he has 10 strikeouts and no walks. On the negative side he’s hit 2 batters and given up 8 hits (but no home runs). Matt Anderson continues to get hit. He’s given up 46 hits (4 HR’s) in 35.2 innings to go along with 30 strikeouts and 8 walks.

On the offensive side, the only players of note are demoted Tigers. Omar Infante has gone 8 for 55 with 1 home run being his only extra base hit. The good news about Omar is that he has walked 7 times in 62 PA’s. Brandon Inge is hitting .268/.333/.423 which isn’t great, but might this be progress for Inge? Ernie Young continues to hit well .293/.367/.484 with 13 HR’s

AA Erie
Like Toledo, the story in Erie is pitching. Rob Henkel (also acquired in the Redman trade) continues to impress, despite missing the earlier part of the season to injury. In 56.2 IP Henkel has 54K/19BB and a 3.34 ERA. Henkel could also join the team when the rosters expand to 40, and will compete for a spot in the rotation next year. While Kenny Baugh got off to a rough start at Erie, he’s had 4 consecutive quality starts. Preston Larrison has been disappointing with 43 K/43 BB in 88 IP and a 5.32 ERA.

Offensively CF Nook Logan has 28 steals, but only a .306 OBA. Jack Hanahan (3B) continues to struggle, not hitting for power or average .234/.310/.334.

High A Lakeland
Lakeland actually has some guys that can hit, and walk. Outfielder Curtis Granderson (3rd round 2002 draft) has been putting up solid numbers for Lakeland. He’s hitting .282/.356/.442 with 7 home runs. Fellow outfielder David Espinosa, acquired in the Brian Moheler trade has an OBA of .327, which is impressive given his .236 batting average. However, he probably won’t be ready before he runs out of options next year. First baseman Juan Tejada is also hitting well, .291/.362/.415. Third baseman Ryan Rayburn is hitting 245/.357/.426 with 8 home runs. Lastly, the player nobody is talking about is Donald Kelly. Kelly is a 23 year old infielder who has an OBA of .408 (.301 BA). He plays first, third and short. While he doesn’t hit for much power, he does get on base a ton. I’m not sure why he’s not really considered a prospect. Maybe it’s because he’s a little old to be in A ball, or maybe it’s because he is too skinny (6-4, 190). Whatever the case, you never hear his name and I don’t know why.

Low A West Michigan
The story at West Michigan starts with Jon Connolly and ends with Joel Zumaya. Baseball America has a piece on Connolly in it’s latest issue (you have to be a subscriber). Connolly’s ERA is an incredible 1.24, and he’s only given up 2 home runs and 28 walks in 123 IP. People are still leary though because he isn’t a power pitcher. His fastball is mid to high 80’s and he complements is with a change up and curve ball. His 5.1 K/ ( IP number doesn’t bother me, but the fact he has thrown 123 innings is cause for concern. Considering he’s 19 and only pitched in short season ball prior to this year, this is probalby his highest inning total.

Joel Zumaya is a hard thrower that scouts love, and hitters can’t seem to find. He’s 7-5 with a 2.85 ERA and 85.1 innings pitched. What jumps out at you with Zumaya is his 119K/37BB. Zumaya throws in the mid to high 90’s and received off season tutelage from Barry Zito. Jordan Gerk has also been impressive in the bullpen with 56K/7BB in 52 IP with a 2.00 ERA. Ian Ostlund has 13 saves, and a 0.37 ERA in 23 appearances. He has struck out 31 and walked 4 in 24 innings.

In the outfield Brent Clevlen has come alive. He has 10 home runs to go along with .269/.362/.444. Last year’s first round pick, Scott Moore, has struggled at times this year and is hitting .230 .326 .374 with 5 home runs and 71 strike outs.

R Oneonta and GCL
The big name here is Kody Kirkland, the player to be named later in the Randall Simon trade. Lynn Henning did a piece on the prospects the Tigers received from the trade in last week’s paper, so check it out for more info. Anthony Giarratano, this year’s third round pick, has debuted going 10 for 18 with 3 double and a homer. Jay Sborz, this year’s second round pick made his debut pitching two scoreless innings and striking out two.

Baseball Musings found something good about the Tigers Double Play Rate:

The Oakland Press is running a 5 part series on the demise of the Tigers since 1984. Here is the link to part 1