The White Sox play Cleveland 3 times and the Twins. They’ll probably also split these games and win 3 of 6.

The Tigers probably just need to win 2 of 5 games to stay in 1st place at All-star break. We’ll probably win 3 of 5 games though.

- A starter

Ideally, a healthy Bonderman

- A strong hitter who is also very good defensively.

Too many of our position players are either/or: Either good defensively OR good offensively. So Leyland has to juggle every night. Other than Inge, Granderson and Cabrera, who is playing well both ways?

Granderson is tied for 11th in the AL, with 19 HRs. Two more homers, and he’s tied for 4th. He’s in the top 20 in the league in total bases. He’s tied for 13th with 15 stolen bases. He’s playing gold-glove caliber center field in one of baseball’s deepest center fields.

It’s borderline, but not crazy, that he’d be on the All-Star team.

It’s worth remembering that we’re 4-2 in the last 6 games in the Metrodome. It’s worth remembering that in the same division we play in, the Twins and Sox have worse records… So whatever you may think of them, they both have serious holes in their rosters, too. It’s worth remembering that Carols Guillen looks like he’s making progress, and could be a huge bat in our lineup — a significant upgrade over the guy who gets bumped every night. It’s worth remembering that this same team rang up 7 wins in a row not long ago.

And we play significantly more home games than road games in the second half.

I think the gloom and doom is a bit overdone.

Boil it down, and this team is really missing Carlos Guillen. He works counts, hits for solid average, has some power, and is a real leader. He does whatever is asked of him, and works his butt off. Get healthy Carlos! It was good seeing that he’s hitting in the cages again.

Cabrera swings at a lot of 1st pitches (so does Flash Anderson, but we’ll save that one); and hits a lot of them, and hits a fair number of them far. So this is not a bad thing (although the whole pitch count thing is complicated, and I think interesting–it’s to the batter’s advantage to swing early; if all the batters do this the team is screwed. See what I mean? There’s a built-in team-vs-individual dynamic there).

One thing that’s not too hard to notice though is that the 1st pitch swingers tend to also be the GIDP guys; I have to assume it’s easy to get the DP grounder if you have a pretty good idea the batter is going to swing at what you throw. (And the reverse works also; Inge and Granderson are regularly at the top in PPA and at the bottom in GIDP frequency).

In fact, the Tigers have 20 1st pitch GIDPs. Add to that 18 2nd pitch GIDPs, and we’ve got 38 on pitch one or two. To put that in context, the Rangers have 40 total as a team. You know how difficult it is to hit with 2 strikes–the AL avg once you get 2 strikes is something like .185; the Tigers team OPS is only .531.
And yet with 1375 PAs with 2 strikes, the Tigers have hit into a grand total of 15 GIDP–that’s about 5 x less frequently, in the most disadvantageous situation a batter can be in, than they do on 1st pitches.

Or to put it another way: at the same rate as 1st pitch GIDPs (20 in 372 PAs), we would have 74 2-strike GIDPs instead of 15. Just what we need right, an extra 59 GIDPs.

Obviously this it more complicated than saying you’re more likely to hit into a GIDP on a 1st pitch than with 2 strikes–primarily the guys who hit all the GIDPs DON’T MAKE IT TO 2 STRIKES, because they’ve already hit into the GIDP by then.

So with a runner on 1st, and less than 2 out–not in scoring position, on 1st–would it be too much to take a pitch or two instead of going for the sucker pitch for the instant GIDP?

***

Try it some time, it’s a fun game, you can play at home. You’ll find you can guess a team’s GIDP leaders by simply knowing PPAs and 1st swing %.

Seriously Mr. Dombrowski, how much more do you need to see before you pull the trigger on a deal? Get us a freakin’ bat before I brain you with one! Damn.

My stomach is in knots whenever we play due to our offensive ineptitude. Every pitch from our starter each night feels like it carries the weight of a postseason game because you just know that we aren’t going to score more than 2-3 runs a lot of nights. Its maddening. For my own health, I beseech you Tigers to please start averaging 5 runs a night again real soon. I can’t take many more of these wasted starts from Jackson, Verlander, and now Galarraga. Step up and help your teammates out by scoring a few runs once in a while, contrary to rumor its not illegal or against the rules to put up 7 runs more than twice a month. …..and now we return to the continuing development of my stomach ulcer. Damn.

But I also suspect that they are pitching around him, choosing instead to face the not-as-feared-as-we-might-think Thames or the fearsome Kelly or….anyway I wish Granderson or Inge were in the 5th spot…