February 2008

PREGAME: The Tigers make their first road trip today and the destination is Dunedin. Justin Verlander will start and be followed by new papa Nate Robertson. Rick Porcello is also scheduled to pitch today.
Tigers position players making the trip include Curtis Granderson, Placido Polanco, Edgar Renteria, Jacque Jones, Marcus Thames, and [...]

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The Tigers are undefeated, and here we are all of 2 days into spring training. Detroit beat a back-up Toronto Blue Jays roster by a score of 4-1.
Curtis Granderson and Magglio Ordonez were the offense with Grandy belting a 2 run homer and Ordonez picking up two hits. The pitchers had little trouble [...]

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PREGAME: I’m not expecting another 17 runs, but we’ll see what the Tigers lineup can put up against Mike Pelfrey. The Tigers are going with all their regulars save for Gary Sheffield who is busy with that Scott Boras nonsense. Timo Perez will DH in his stead and bat third. Danny [...]

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Tigers seeing records at box office, plan to add seats: ‘It’s amazing how much enthusiasm is out there’ | Freep.com | Detroit Free Press
The team is adding 500-700 more seats on risers under the scoreboard and on the Pepsi porch. The plan is to have them in place for Opening Day. Paid attendance [...]

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Realish, live, Tigers baseball today. It’s the annual spring training kickoff against Florida Southern. The game is 1:05pm. Todd Jones gets the start, and most of the regulars will be playing for only an inning or two. There’s no broadcast, but there is a live box score at the Florida Southern [...]

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The Tigers announced that a limited number of full season ticket packages are now on sale. They also announced, and this really isn’t a surprise, that there will be no single Opening Day seats available when single game tickets go on sale on Saturday morning. So if you want Opening Day at face [...]

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One of the few mysteries for Tigers fans to debate this spring is the batting order. The players that will comprise that lineup have long been identified, but their positioning has a few questions. One of those was answered today with the announcement that Ivan Rodriguez will bat 8th. Does that make sense for the Tigers, or does it even matter. We’ll turn to the lineup optimizer to see what we can find out.

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credit Roger DeWitt

I’d consider this the first bit of surprising news coming out of camp, but the Tigers are impressed with Miguel Cabrera defensively at third has had me a little nervous since the trade was made. A rotation with three southpaws, two of which are extreme ground balls pitchers, means that third base becomes very important. Whether or not this is spring-training optimism talking remains to be seen (Jose Macias was dubbed a gold glove centerfielder by Randy Smith one spring).

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Full squad workouts are now underway.  Before you know it we’ll have the first pitch of the Florida Southern game.  But for now, here’s a summary of the day’s stories out of Lakeland:

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Lee Panas at Detroit Tiger Tales consistently produces interesting analysis.  Now he’s working on a study about consistency.  Fans love guys who they perceive as consistent performers, and tend to get infuriated with streak hitters (at least during the cold streaks).  It turns out that the fans are on to something as Lee found that consistent players have better results. 

But…there’s always a but.

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Imagine if the players turned the tables on the beat writers during spring training and wrote stories about the beat writers.

“The official reporting date wasn’t until the 14th, but he was down here a couple weeks ago getting ready.”

“You can tell he was really working out this offseason. His vocabulary has grown as much as his forearms. Both are the product of intensive typing.”

“He’s excited to be down here. You can hear it in his voice when he talks about how excited he is to get to work.”

“As the new guy on the beat, he’s still trying to get a feel for his fellow media members, but he seems to be fitting in great.”

“As a 6 year veteran, and the only remaining beat writer from that awful 2003 team, it’s clear that he’s a leader in and out of the locker room and the other guys look to him for cues.”

“He’s excited to try out the new language he was working on over the winter. By adding Spanish to his repertoire he should really have an advantage over the competition. If he can gain confidence in it, it could be what he needs to push him from beat writer to elite columnist.”

I kid of course, especially on a day when there is so much news coming out of camp.

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