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.
Continue reading Spring pitching to care about
Monthly Archives: March 2007
Tigers paid attendance tops 1.5 million
The Tigers released some updated ticketing numbers today. As of the start of business today, the Tigers have sold 17,830 full season equivalent season tickets. That’s up from 9500 last year. Plus, in the first weekend of individual game sales they sold 86,606 tickets. That pushes the paid attendance to 1,530,836. As a point of reference that surpasses the 1.37 million they drew in all of 2003 and the 1.50 million they drew in 2002.
Winning does wonders.
Spring Training Game Thread: Tigers at Yankees
What with the game on TV and everything today, I thought a game thread would be in order. Those lucky (or perhaps unlucky given the current economic condidtions) enough to be not working this afternoon can catch the game on ESPN at 1:15. I’ll be at work and looking forward to catching the DVR version when I get home.
The Tigers send out the “power arms” of Justin Verlander, Andrew Miller, Joel Zumaya, and Fernando Rodney.
POSTGAME: There was some stuff to like, and some stuff to not like today. The final outcome doesn’t really fall into either of those categories. The Tigers did draw a number of walks, including 2 with the bases loaded. Granted that was a product of Yankee wildness, but the Tigers did a good job laying off. They also had a number of hard hit balls, but most were foul.
The bad stuff was 3 strikeouts in the first inning with the bases loaded. Considering that was a point of emphasis this spring, it was disappointing to see.
Plus there were a few scares today. Brent Clevlen got beaned by a Yankee pitcher and Carlos Guillen was nearly beaned by Sean Casey.
The relevant pitchers all looked pretty good with the exception of one bad inning from Justin Verlander
Regardless of the outcome it was great to be watching Tiger baseball again.
The Guillen Gamble
credit Roger DeWitt
The biggest story out of the Tigers camp right now is a possible contract extension for Carlos Guillen. Michael Young’s 5 year $80 million deal certainly helped to stir the pot. I think that gambling on Guillen is something the Tigers need to do.
Drew Sharp says to let Guillen walk if he wants Michael Young money and years. That’s great, but who do you want playing shortstop then? Before spending really boomed, Orlando Cabrera was inked to a 4 year $32 million deal to play shortstop at the age of 30. The same Orlando Cabrera who has Deivi Cruz and Neifi Perez listed as comparables. This past offseason 30 year old Julio Lugo signed a deal that will pay him $9 million per for 4 years. Granted those deals are substantially less than Young’s contract, but it is still far from cheap.
Continue reading The Guillen Gamble
Dombrowski 48th in Forbes GM Rankings
Forbes has ranked all the general managers with at least 3 years experience from the 4 major sports (MLB, NFL, NHL, NBA). Detroit Tigers GM Dave Dombrowski came just about in the middle at 48th. In terms of baseball GMs though he did pretty well.
The highest rated baseball GM was Billy Beane at 26. Dombrowski ranked 9th among MLB general managers behind Beane, Minaya, Epstein, Sabean(?), Gillick, Schuerholz, Beinfest, and Jocketty.
If you’re wondering about the other Detroit general managers, only Joe Dumars garnered a favorable rank (9th). Red Wings GM Ken Holland came in 90th. Amazingly Matt Millen didn’t come in last (which is just one more reason to question the validity of the rankings), placing 96th out of 98 general managers.
Methodology
Hat Tip Baseball Think Factory
Ticket Experiences – open thread
So, how have everyone’s ticket-getting experiences been today? I got into the “virtual waiting room” and was in there for 40 minutes before my browser crashed. Did anybody else have better luck?
Meanwhile, the cheapest Opening Day tickets on StubHub are up to $138.
3:45PM UPDATE: Things seem to be running along smoother now. The Tigers just issued a release saying that as of 2:15pm both the Saturday, June 9 game against the New York Mets and the Saturday, August 25 game against the New York Yankees were already selling standing room only tickets. At that point nearly 61,000 tickets had been sold today. Combined with the 16,500 full season equivalents that puts 2007’s paid attendance already at nearly 1.4 million. In 2006, individual game sales for the entire first day, which included Opening Day, totaled only 29,000.
Statistical Leftovers
Just cleaning out some leftover data from the pitch-by-pitch analysis from the last couple weeks. These are a couple things I calculated along the way, that never made it into a post. These data are from 2006.
Tiger data
While delving into Curtis Granderson’s strikeouts, I calculated many of the same stats for the rest of the team. Here they are:
Continue reading Statistical Leftovers
Tigers wrap-up 40 man roster signings
The Detroit Tigers today announced the club has agreed to terms with righthanded pitchers Chad Durbin, Zach Miner, Jordan Tata and Joel Zumaya, lefthanded pitcher Wilfredo Ledezma, infielders Tony Giarratano and Chris Shelton and outfielders Brent Clevlen and Marcus Thames. Plus they renewed Jason Grilli’s contract for 2007. This means that everyone on the 40 man roster has a contract for 2007.
Spring Training: Phillies at Tigers
For, lo, the winter is past,
The rain is over and gone;
The flowers appear on the earth;
The time of the singing of birds is come,
And the voice of the turtle is heard in our land. – Song of Solomon 2:11-12
Play Ball!
It seemed only appropriate to channel Ernie Harwell with the first radio broadcast of the year today.
I won’t be doing game threads for all of spring training, but I wanted a reason to post the voice of the turtle.
Game time 1:05pm.