This is Major Thames to Ground Control. The hanging pitch is crushed. And it’s floating in a most a-peculiar way-hay. And the score looks very different… today-ay-ay.

Sorry.

It’s weird how you knew about my modeling career. But the rest of it is too far-fetched and won’t fly. You gave me an idea, though.

I’m going to carry Marcus Thames’s career stats around with me. The next time there’s an argument about expectations and things to prove, I’m going to pull out those stats and say, “Look – here’s what the Detroit Tigers did to Marcus Thames. Now, either start me in LF every day or trade me.”

i would like to know what’s meant with Thames and his swing being “exposed.” Teams and pitchers have the book on him already, don’t they?

Not making a mistake is what a pitcher aims for, but you can’t call that a strategy. Thames seems better than most at making pitchers pay the ultimate price for their mistakes. Mistakes are going to happen, and so it’s nice to have a guy like Thames lurking in the lineup as often as you can afford to. He’s like a land mine.

“As often as you can afford to.” Aside from the pros and cons of Thames himself, the Tigers can afford it mainly because… they’ve got nothing better cooking in LF! No lefty platoon partner, no healthy Sheffield, no better rookie, no reason at all for Guillen.

Mike, I agree on the Thames points you made. And there’s nobody better available. If we had the luxury of low expectations without any anticipated playoff run, you could throw Ryan Raburn or Brent Clevlen out there and see if they are legit major-leaguers. But this is a team chasing the postseason, so production is needed, even if the ceiling is higher for other guys.

Mark: I know. I’m with you on those reason that the club may have made the move. I just disagree with it from all angles — long term, short term, etc. It’d be different if Miner was out of options but he’s not.

Joel: yeah, pretty much. Except Sheffield can walk, even when he’s not hitting.

Edit to your edit Joel: I think i over-estimated what Thames would do everyday. I just am not a believer that he could play 150 games a year and not have that swing exposed. I’m not oppose to the experiment right now since there really aren’t any other options that would be an upgrade of Thames. So, I’m not hating on him being in LF at all, I just don’t think he’s one you go into a season counting on for 600 AB’s, you know?

That describes pretty much every player that has made an appearance in LF this year, including the Artist Formerly Known as Gary Sheffield.

And .240-.250 and 30 HRs would look pretty nice out there at this point… I think most teams in the bigs would take that from their third outfielder (else no one would have taken a second look at Jacque Jones this year).

I agree that as an everyday player, he’d likely get exposed, but isn’t it worth at least testing the hypothesis at this point?

My point wasn’t to argue that Lopez is a better choice to stretch out as insurance for the rotation, it was merely to speculate on some of the reasons why Lopez was chosen over Miner. So I pointed to Lopez’ season K:BB ratio of 3.43, which is much better than Miner’s (and above Lopez’ career norms). I also pointed to the logic that Leyland and Co. might like having Miner’s ability to induce groundballs as an available weapon for a possible DP late in a game.

I think this move was made for this season only because Lopez may have more value in their eyes as an insurance starter with Miner in the bullpen. If they were making a permenant addition to the rotation, I would speculate that Miner would be the guy they chose, for many of the reasons you cited. For right now, an argument could be made that this makes the team better in the short-run.

Great analysis, though. Let me know if you find anything else interesting.

Obviously, small sample size issues. Some guys do better with regular playing time and some do worse. I think it’s time to find out which one Marcus is; if he gets better with more chances, he is a 40 HR, .900 OPS star. If he gets worse, I don’t think playing him over RabJoyClete is costing the team much.
With the LF black hole over the last two years, I can see no reason not to give the guy 85 more starts and see for once and for all what he can do. I’ll take a .248/.322/.560 line.

I’ll also throw in that I agree that I think stretching Miner out would be a better idea. Lopez is better in the bullpen than Miner, and Miner has a much higher ceiling as a starter.

Sean in Ill: He hits into so few DP’s because he elevates the ball with his power and swing-for-the-fences swing-type.

Mark in Chicago wrote:

Mike, you raise a good point that Miner probably has an arsenal that is better suited to the rotation. Maybe they are looking at the walk rates, where Lopez has a huge advantage over Miner, who sometimes struggles throwing strikes. Or perhaps they view Miner’s power sinker as a nice bullet to have in the bullpen when they need a DP grounder in the late innings.

Longer term, maybe Miner ends up in the rotation, but I think they probably talked about him as an alternative at this point, and had their reasons for picking Lopez instead.

Zach Miner walked 32 batters in 93.0 innings as a starter in 2006 (he faced 398 hitters over that time which equates to about 8% of the hitters he faced).

In a relievers role in Detroit since then, he’s walked 42 hitters out of 392 batters faced. That’s 10.7%. 2% more. Even if you take that walk rate (11%) and extrapolate it out over the rest of the year — 93 games left, divided by 1 start every 5 games means he could get about 18-19 starts this year … We’ll say 18. Take away 3 as he stretches out down in Toledo and he’ll have 15 left this year. In 2006 he went about 5.2 IP, on average in Detroit. So we’ll take the 5.2 IP average and apply it to 15 starts, which would give him about 86 innings of work (85.5). He averaged 25 batters faced/start in 2006, so 25 batters faced multipled by 15 games means he would face roughly 375 hitters the rest of this year in Detroit. Apply an 11% BB rate to that and he would’ve walked 41 hitters.

So, how does that compare to his K Rate? Well, as a starter for us in 2006, he K’d 14.8% of hitters and since moving to the pen he’s k’d 54 of the 392 hitters he’s faced (13.77%, so 14%). Taking that an extrapolating it to 375 batters faced, he’d K roughly around 53.

53 K’s, 41 BB’s is a 1.29 K:BB Ratio. His ratio in 2006 was 1.84. Obviously you’d like better than 1.29 but he’s a sinker baller and, like many of them, don’t rely on a ton of K’s (for what it’s worth, he had a 16.8% K rate and 11.1% BB rate in all of his time in Triple-A).

However, what he does get, is above average amounts of Ground balls. He got 47% in 2006 as a starter, 56.1% in 07 and 51.3 this year. League average is about 44%. He faced 398 batters in 06, 232 last year and 160 this year. Apply the appropriate GB rates to each of those samples (.47*398, .561*232, .513*160) and you get 187, 130, and 82 which totals up to be 399 ground balls. He’s faced a total of 790 hitters in the major leagues, 399/790=50.5% GB rate. If he were stretched out and got 50.5% GB’s and 14% K’s, I’d call that a successful back of the rotation type — something I don’t think Aquilino Lopez will be able to match.

Sorry this was so long. I did it on the fly so there might be some info that could’ve been omitted to make it more concise.

You’re right, he’s a pretty exciting .242 hitter!

Some of the upside, besides the obvious HR: 13 GIDP in 1084 career AB! Career OPS .741 (Inge .636) and OPS+ 108.

He’s probably the most exciting .242 hitter I’ve seen, and if there’s something called clutch, I think he’s clutch, too.

Anyway, I’m rambling. Marcus seems like a slightly above average all-around ballplayer. On the current Tigers team, he is somewhat redundant because they already have a softball lineup of right-handed sluggers. He was part of an effective platoon in 2006 with Monroe who also had a good year, and Marcus got 270 ABs last year while Leyland showed too much loyalty to a struggling C-Mo. This year the objective was to get Jones’ lefty bat in the lineup. All of those options are gone and now Leyland has (allegedly) handed Thames the LF job.

Also, I am happy to chat with any of your past girlfriends if you think it will help them realize you’re a smart, witty guy who makes A LOT of money even though you’ve pretty much retired from modeling. I will show them the error of their ways.