Sure, good teams have bad years; who says the Tigers are a good team though? They have the worst bullpen in baseball, a soft starting rotation, play porous defense, and are one dimensional offensively.

None of the starters are certainties to bounce back. There isn’t a single quality pitcher in the bullpen. Cabrera and Granderson are the only impact players getting any better. They aren’t going to chase quality free agents, and the ones they do, they likely will be outbid for.

DD and Leyland have said some impossibly stupid things since the season ended. Dusty Ryan the starting C next year? No need to be a player in free agency? And they’re not even as delusional as Edgar Renteria; the World Series in 2009? Do me a favor, shut up, and don’t feed me pipe dreams of october glory ’cause I’m not buying.

OVERALL BB%-NAME-SPLIT BB%

12% Sheffield 19%
11% Granderson 16%
11% Joyce 16%
8% Cabrera 9.5%
7% Thames 6%
8.5% Ordonez 5%

That explains it. The guys not hitting the sac flies are drawing walks. Collectively, these guys (in this situation) walked, struck out, and hit sac flies in almost perfectly equal measure.

Double plays:

Ordonez 6
Sheffield 3
Everyone else (72% of all these PA) 2

I don’t think it says anything about their team play attitude, but still, you’d think that with a guy on 3rd (at the least) and less than 2 out, Sheffield and Ordonez would be good guys to have at the plate. Not so much in 2008, at least by comparison to their career numbers and reputations. Expectations. Among the sluggers, Cabrera and Thames were The Guys, despite Thames’s (entirely typical) K rate.

what do you make of Granderson’s team play?

SF per out with man on 3rd < 2 out:

Cabrera .391
Ordonez .260
The Macedonian One .200
Joyce .167
Sheffield .083
Granderson .077

25/13/3/1 – 1.100 – RBI/PA .640

Man on 3rd < 2 out 2008
PA/OUTS/K/SF – OPS – RBI/PA

Thames 16/10/5/2 – .923 – RBI/PA .813
Sheffield 26/12/4/1 – 1.023 – RBI/PA .538
Ordonez 38/23/1/6 – .802 – RBI/PA .658
Cabrera 42/23/5/9 – 1.062 – RBI/PA .833
Joyce 19/12/4/2 – 1.154 – RBI/PA .632

In sum, 19 SF vs. 20 K. Not too shabby. 99 RBI in 141 PA (.702) doesn’t seem too bad, either. Thanks in large part to Cabrera and Thames (48 RBI in 58 PA).

“As a CPA, I resent that. They would however have a future in Congress as such creativity is prized there.”

jim-mt – I was just about to go there when I saw Ron’s post, but you beat me to it.

on streaks and predicting them:

i want to acknowledge upfront that i believe i’m entering ‘beating dead horse’ territory here. i’ll also add ‘dubious comparison’ to that for what’s about to follow.

i was reading about a study of the stock market that covered the last 36 years of activity. it showed that over those 36 years, you could expect to earn an average of 11% on your investment. this assumed that you didn’t do anything with your investment just let it sit for 36 years. the study also showed that if, in trying to pick your spots when investing, you missed just 25 days (in 36 years) during which the market did the best, you’re earnings would drop from 11% to 7%.

what the study was showing was that, if you were in the habit of trying to predict and ride the hot streaks of the market, odds were that you were losing money compared to sticking with a ‘sure thing’. of course, the inverse is also true, that if you managed to avoid the 25 worse days the market has over the course of 36 years that your earning would be much higher.

ok, baseball isn’t the stock market and streaks may be easier to predict in this area…but the over all notion of finding a guy that’s going to produce day in and day out seems more appealing than guessing when somebody is going to hit the cover off the ball.

all this (nonsense) having been said, i’m happy with Thames until they find a consistent guy who will deliver more production than him.

There must be a way with streak players to recognize when they are going cold and heating up and take advantage of that.

Like I always said in response to the “Santiago will cool off and eventually go back to being a .240 hitter” line–that could very well be, but why not play him until then?

Or to look at it another way, knowing where Chris Shelton was headed, in hindsight–would it have made sense to not play him AT ALL in 2006?

For even the most highly touted, statistically ‘perfect’, elite hitters, there’s often an adjustment period, often that can last a couple of years playing full time. It’s expected that they’ll go through struggles. So why expect something different from Thames, especially when he’s never gotten the chance to play every day?

As a contrast, try Ordonez: 1 K in 38 PA; Cabrera 5 in 42 PA (only 1 after the AS break); Inge 1 K in 20 PA.

Interestingly, Philadelphia fans complain about this with Ryan Howard (8 in 42 PA), but even his numbers are better than Thames’…Carlos Pena on the other hand…12K in 45 PA. And yes I think he is overrated.