Look at Santiago’s numbers, though. He has yet to swing and miss at a ball in the strike zone!

I wonder why these speeches work in sports (as they sometimes seem to.) Personally, I’ve never responded very well to getting chewed out by the boss, whether as part of a group or on an individual basis. Maybe it works for the Tigers when it creates a sense of camaraderie (I can’t possibly be sperlling this right). As in, after the speech, players getting together in conversation, maybe guys who normally don’t talk that much with each other. “Did you hear what he said? Dude’s out of his freakin’ mind, he he. He needs to learn to relax. Maybe he’s not gettin’ any lately, eh? He he. Did you see how he lit another cigarette when he already had one burning in the ashtray? What a nut.”

Or, given the fact that Leyland really does seem to command a great deal of respect from his players, maybe his displeasure really does make everyone bear down and work together just the slightest bit more, just enough to make a big difference in results.

It’s funny, but when I saw the headline I figured the post was going to be about fan patience and how people had been too quick to write off certain players or the whole team after a start to the season no one imagined. I was kind of looking forward to an inspirational mini-sermon. But the stats turned out to be quite inspirational themselves.

The question is, with plate discipline like this, how did the team start off hitting so very inconsistently and often poorly (4 shutouts!). Have they gotten so much better at it just lately?

The lurking question is: Can a hitter do everything right and still get poor results for an extended period of time? Are their hitters who have “tough luck” for a whole month or longer? Polanco’s plate discipline numbers look better than Ordonez’s. But the results were the opposite. So what’s the missing link between nice try and good results?