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2007 Season, Game Post

Game 162: Tigers at White Sox

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PREGAME: Sigh.

List of team and offensive feats that may happen today so there is something to root for:

  • Magglio Ordonez needs to not go 0 for 6 and Ichiro Suzuki needs to not make an out and the Tigers have their first batting champ since 1961.  Maggs is also looking to see if he can add on at all, and perhaps move ahead of Norm Cash’s .361 average.
  • Placido Polanco needs one more hit to reach 200.  If he gets to 200, it will mark the first time since 1937 2 Tigers have finished with 200 or more hits.
  • Curtis Granderson is at .299 and will try to push that to .300
  • Ordonez needs 3 RBI to become only the 4th Tiger to ever drive in 140 runs in a season
  • The team is 2 doubles shy of matching the team record for doubles in a season set in 1934
  • The team has 1634 hits which is the highest total since the 1934 club notched 1638

Game Time 2:05
DET @ CHW, Sunday, September 30, 2007 Game Preview – Baseball-Reference.com

POSTGAME: Considering what the Tigers had left to play for, everything came up roses today. Polanco got his 200th hit and finished an errorless season. Guillen got his 2 RBIs. Granderson finished over .300 picking up 3 hits (not to mention a walk, a HBP, and 3 steals).

And Magglio Ordonez already had pretty much locked up the batting title, but a 3 hit day pushed his average to .363. That’s the highest mark for a Tiger since Charlie Gehringer’s .371 in 1937. In case you missed it, FSN Detroit was cutting into the Venezuelan broadcast after each Ordonez hit, and while my Spanish skills are limited to what I learned in high school (which has been refreshed by Dora the Explorer), there was no mistaking the excitement.

Even Mike Rabelo managed to get a homer today, and while the bullpen was going crazy for him, his own teammates were giving him the silent treatment.

It really wasn’t the way anybody wanted to the end the season, but all things considered they made the best of what they had today. And it was fun. It was fun watching the team having fun. Exactly 6 months until we get to start it up again.

Offense, Players, Statistics

Curtis Granderson and his strike outs

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Don’t know if you’ve been following the news out of Lakeland, but it appears that Curtis Granderson struck out a lot last year. It also appears that a goal of the organization is that he strike out less this year. Essentially he just needs to make better contact. And changes in his

There has been a ton of interesting discourse about this over the last few days. Jason Beck notes Granderson comes in with a retooled swing that cuts down on extra movement. John Lowe points out that striking out a lot isn’t necessarily bad, just look at Grady Sizemore.

Leyland made a whole lot of sense when meeting with reporters on Thursday on the subject:

I think he (Granderson) will cut down some (on strikeouts) because he’s going to be a more mature player. But I don’t want to turn him into some get-a-walk, Punch-and-Judy type of guy.”

“I’ve never known how to figure it out. We tell our hitters to be aggressive all the time, and at the same time we tell them, ‘Work the pitcher.’ “

Lowe also quotes Granderson identifying that a more aggressive approach may actually lead to fewer strikeouts

“The simple approach is that if I stay aggressive, I’ll hit less often with two strikes in the count,” he said. “I’ve been aggressive, but I’ve missed pitches. If I can put them in play earlier in the count, I eliminate the two-strike approach.”

I really agree with this. We’ve seen that hitting with 2 strikes is no picnic, and once the at-bat reaches 2 strikes it was over pretty quick for Granderson.

So there is some good stuff on the theory front, but what do the stats say? Detroit Tiger Tales looked at K/BB ratios for the whole team, and Granderson’s K’s out weight his decent walk total and push him into the bottom half of the league. But let’s look a little deeper still…
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