Now Knoxie…he’s my favorite local personality of them all. Remind me to tell you some stories about him if we ever run into each other at a Tiger’s playoff party in 2012.

Loon: Yeah, Granderson has been having a rough time of it lately. Generally when he has a slump like this, he seems to make up for it with an equally impressive hot streak. Hopefully there’s enough games left for that to happen. I’d like to see him hit .300 again.

Roughly zero, Walt.

Of course, Rodney stinks, but the first out of the inning changes most innings, except of course, if you are a Tiger and a reliever.

Oh, I see there was only one called strike. Clearly, though, according to GameDay, pitches #1 (the called strike) and #6 were practically in the same location. The sportsline.com chart is quite different overall, as expected. Pitches #1 and #6 are widely separated there, with #6 shown as being at the low edge of the strike zone and catching the very corner of the plate at best.

At first I didn’t get that the orange text in your 12:35 AM post was a link. I thought it was just emphasis. Awesome. Thanks for giving me a look at the pitches in that at-bat. I’ve known GameDay to show some unlikely (as in inaccurate) pitch locations, but the comparison with those other pitches called strikes says it all.

I’d almost be willing to lay money that when I go to the sportsline.com Game Chart, that pitch will be shown as being out of the strike zone.

Rodney now has 30 career saves and 25 BLOWN saves. I’m no sabermetrician, but I’m fairly certain a 6:5 success ratio has to literally be one of the worst all-time for a pitcher with more than 50 career save opportunities.

No, it’s not a good ratio. And this isn’t a defense of Rodney (25 is too many) but a clarification of the blown save stat.

Using the save/blown save ratio for relievers who aren’t exclusively closers is misleading. As a set-up guy you can get a blown save because you could meet the qualifications of it being a save situation, but practically speaking you don’t have the opportunity for the save because you’re going to get taken out after your inning of work and not get the save. To illustrate, Rafael Betancourt has 16 saves and 20 blown saves. Scot Shields has 18 save and 26 blown saves.

I’m not suggesting that Rodney is better than either – he’s not. Just that the ratio is misleading for non-closers – which Rodney has been for a significant chunk.

What’s the feeling about trading Maggs in the off season? Seems like the drop-off he’s had in doubles and walks this year may portend decline phase. He only has 53 XBH on the year; in his non-injury-influenced years, he has always been good for at least 70 (I don’t know how much the oblique is still bothering him). There are enough teams looking for a RF-DH that there should be a good market. Whaddaya think? What kind of package would you be okay with?

We discussed Maggs a couple days ago.

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