Some minor league news and notes:

40 man roster

We’ve talked here already about the Tigers need to trim the 40 man roster and the need to protect players ahead of the rule 5 draft coming up in December. The 40 man will be set initially tomorrow (things could of course change between now and the actual rule 5 draft due to trades/free agent signings).

With that in mind Tigers 40 man roster candidate Scot Drucker really wants to be on a big league roster next year and is offering to pay the the $50,000 rule 5 draft fee for any team that takes him:

@utbaseball30 Deadline for the 40 man rosters tonight, remember to any team that may want me if Im not protected, Ill cover the 50k in the Rule V draft

Not sure if Drucker would look to recoup the $25K if he were returned to the Tigers.

Ronnie Bourquin

The Tigers 2nd round pick from 2006 is eligible for the rule 5 draft. But his status as a prospect was already in doubt as things haven’t gone the way either he or the Tigers would have liked. He finally started to hit in A ball this year before being pushed to Erie where he struggled. Now he’s been suspended 50 games for testing positive for amphetamines.

AFL Championship Game

The Peoria Javelinas will be playing in the AFL Championship game this Saturday. See AFL strike out leader Robbie Weinhardt and other Tigers on the MLB Network and MLB.tv. The game is at 2:45 ET. By that point OSU should be rolling over Michigan so if you need a diversion, see a couple guys who could be helping the Tigers next year finish up their fall season.

Curtis Granderson’s 2009 season has received plenty of scrutiny, and this was even before trade rumors crept up. Granderson struggled at times during the season, and had a hard time sustaining success. His .249 batting average was the lowest of his career and it was a drag on his on base percentage and slugging percentage as well. We know batting average is volatile so did Granderson just suffer from some bad luck, or did something else change? Fortunately we have hit location data to help shed some light on these questions.

Granderson’s batting average was dragged down by a .276 batting average on balls in play. That is a number that should typically be in the .320ish range, especially for someone with Granderson’s speed. A shift like that would lead people to think he was largely unlucky. A closer look would show a shift in his balls in play from the harder to field grounders to the easier to field fly balls. Ask fans what they saw and many would say it looked like Granderson got overly concerned with the homers (a new career high) and that he pulled the ball to much. But what would the data say?

Spray Charts and other data

Below are spray charts for each of Granderson’s last 3 years. These charts were assembled by using data from the MLB.com Gameday application. The hit locations are reported by the MLB.com stringer and aren’t absolute positions in the sense that Pitch f/x measures things, but this serves as a very nice proxy. The blue dots are outs, the orange dots are hits. Click on each chart to get a larger view.

One of the nice things about spray charts is that there is plenty of data and certain trends can emerge. One of the not so nice things about spray charts is that there is plenty of data and they can sometimes be overwhelming.

The pretty orange table to the right takes the above spray charts and puts them into tabular form. The vector is the direction the ball was hit. Second base is 90 degrees from home plate, the first baseline is at 135 degrees and the third baseline is at 45 degrees. The gradient shading indicates the higher percentages, the darker the field, the higher the concentration of balls in play.

While he’s been a pull hitter his whole career, it became much more pronounced in 2009 with half of his balls in play (50%)between the first baseline and the approximate spot of the second baseman. That easily topped his previous seasons where he had 42% and 46% in 2007 and 2008 respectively.

Summarizing the table into  a more compact table gives us:

Dir.	2007	2008	2009
Oppo	16.53%	21.41%	16.53%
Middle	36.23%	34.22%	29.08%
Pull	46.40%	42.60%	50.60%

Opposite is defined as vectors 50-75,  middle is defined as 80-105, and pull is defined as 110-135 (keep in mind these are actually buckets so the something like 76 would fall in the 80 bucket and 46 would fall in the 50 bucket).

Granderson went the opposite way at the exact same rate as 2007, his best season. The 2008 season was when he spread the ball around the most, but the difference between 2009 and the other season was the rate at which he took the ball up the middle.

Pulling the ball isn’t a bad thing

We hear it all the time that batters get too pull happy. Maybe Granderson falls into that category in 2009, but if you look at his overall numbers he hits MUCH better to the pull field. For his career he hits .470 on balls that he pulls versus .302 on balls up the middle and .293 on balls to the left side.

Granderson continued to thrive when pulling the ball in 2009, perhaps dismissing the notion that he was pull-happy. He posted a .457 batting average on pulled balls as opposed to hitting .241 up the middle and .221 to the opposite field.

But I won’t dismiss the notion and instead speculate that Granderson either a)tried to pull the ball too much and balls the other way were accidents or b)had a mechanical change that prevented him from driving the ball when he wasn’t pulling it. Or maybe it was some combination of both, like b) fostering a).

The air outs

The biggest change in Granderson’s batted ball distribution was the exchange of ground balls for fly balls. Granderson’s line drive rate was right in line with his career mark (21.2 % in 2009 and 20.7% overall). But Granderson for his career is a 36% ground ball hitter and a 43% fly ball hitter. In 2009 those numbers were 29% and 49%. This shift helped Granderson’s home run production, but it hurt his batting average on balls in play driving down his overall batting average.

Not all fly balls are created equal. Some fly balls have a chance to become home runs or gappers. Pop-ups have a very small chance of becoming anything other than an easy out. Unfortunately Granderson hit a ton of pop-ups in 2009. Those pop-ups also accounted for a healthy percentage of the balls that Granderson hit to the opposite field.

You’ll see that the Fly Out profile remained fairly consistent in terms of distribution across each of the last 3 years. It’s the fly balls classified as Pop Outs that rose dramatically. Also, Granderson did tend to pull everything that he hit on the ground with only 26 ground outs that weren’t pulled in 2009.

*A brief aside on classifications – These are how MLB.com classified items and they are the ones that made distinction between Pop Outs and Fly Outs. Also, these are pretty much the classifications we have to work with. I don’t have information like “Ground ball single to left” to account for hits that went to the left side on the ground.

For those who prefer the visual representation of the spray chart, the plot below has all of Granderson’s Fly Outs and Pop-Outs for the last 3 years.

Visually it’s easy to see the disproportionate number of red dots as opposed to the other colors. The other thing I think I see (haven’t quantified it) is that there are more deep blue and green dots in left field.

Putting it together

As with most things there isn’t just one answer. Because he still did well when pulling the ball, I don’t think he was necessarily pulling the ball too much. The pop-ups were a large source of the drop in batting average with infield flies having a similar negative impact as a strikeout. It almost always results in an out and almost always fails to advance runners. The difference is that a couple manage to drop (ask Gerald Laird and his love affair with the right field foul line).

Hitters do have some control over infield flies and with Granderson doubling his rate there was probably a change. The 2006 Hardball Times annual shows us that there is a .60 year to year correlation for infield fly rates for hitters so it is something that hitters do have control over.

Using the xBABIP calculator Granderson’s BABIP should have been about .301. So we can ballpark it and say half of his dip in BABIP can be attributed to bad luck, and about half can be chalked up to a change in batted ball distribution.

I don’t know that Granderson needs to use the whole field to be effective. He was very effective in 2007 without hitting a lot of balls to the opposite field. But he probably does need to use more of the field than he did in 2009 when a big chunk of opposite field balls were merely pop-ups.

References

The sites where data was drawn from were linked in the context of the article, but I also used The Hardball Times Baseball Annual 2006
for data on infield fly repeatability. The spray charts and corresponding data were produced by following the examples in the uber valuable Baseball Hacks
book.

Detroit Tigers first baseman Miguel Cabrera and starting pitcher Justin Verlander were voted the Tigers’ top positional player and top pitcher of 2009, in a vote conducted by the Detroit Independent Baseball Scribes.

Cabrera and Verlander each received 20 first-place votes. Cabrera had a .942 on-base percentage plus slugging average (OPS), which was good for fifth in the American League. He had a .324 batting average, 34 home runs and 103 RBIs. All four categories led the Tigers. His Ultimate Zone Rating of 2.8 ranked second of all AL first basemen.

Verlander led baseball in strikeouts with 269 and was tied for first in the AL with 19 wins. He had an ERA of 3.45. He led the Tigers in all three categories.

Voting was also conducted in two other categories: breakout player of the year, for the player experiencing his first taste of success in the major leagues; and most improved, for the player who made the biggest step forward from the previous season.

Rookie right-handed starting pitcher Rick Porcello earned 18 of 20 votes for the breakout honors. The 20-year-old completed the season with a 14-9 record, 3.96 ERA and 89 strikeouts in 170 2/3 innings. Also receiving votes were right-handed starting pitcher Edwin Jackson (1) and utility player Ryan Raburn (1).

Verlander was also named comeback player of the year, rebounding from a 2008 season which saw him go 11-17 with a 4.84 ERA and 163 strikeouts. He received 11 of 20  votes in the category. Also receiving votes were right-handed closer Fernando Rodney (3), Raburn (2), Brandon Inge (1), Brandon Lyon (1), Jackson (1) and utility infielder Ramon Santiago (1).

Voting was conducted during the week of Nov. 9-15.

Established in 2005, the Detroit Independent Baseball Scribes now has 21 members who write primarily on the Internet. Its member writers are affiliated with such online organizations as MLive.com (Booth Newspapers), SB Nation, ESPN.com, Freep.com, Bleacher Report, Yardbarker, MVN, Fan Blog and Fan Huddle.

The Detroit Independent Baseball Scribes include:
Bless You Boys — Ian Casselberry
Daily Fungo — Mike McClary
DesigNate Robertson — Scott Rogowski
Detroit Tigers Den — Austin Drake
Detroit Tigers Weblog — Bill Ferris
Eye of the Tigers — J. Ellet Lambie
Fire Jim Leyland — Mike Rogers
It’s Just Sports — Patrick Hayes
Jamie Samuelsen’s Blog — Jamie Samuelsen
Mack Avenue Tigers – Kurt Mensching
MLive’s The Cutoff Man — James Schmehl and Scott Warheit
Old English D — Jennifer Cosey
Roar of the Tigers — Samara Pearstein
Spot Starters — Blake Vande Bunte
Take 75 North – Matt Wallace
Tigers Amateur Analysis – Erin Saelzler
Tigerblog — Brian Borawski
Tiger Geist – John Brunn
Tiger Tales — Lee Panas
Tiger Tracks — John Parent
Where have you gone, Johnny Grubb? –Greg Eno

Things continue to go well for the Tigers’ Arizona contingent – excepting Scott Sizemore’s injury of course. Robbie Weinhardt’s rough 3 outing start is a thing of the past. Casper Wells continues to hit.  Andy Oliver, Thad Weber, and Scot Drucker are all seeing some success as the Peoria Javelinas lead the league.

Robbie Weinhardt

Weinhardt gave up 7 runs in his first 3 appearances, and none since. In his last 5 outings he’s thrown 10 scoreless innings. He’s allowed just 1 walk and 5 hits with 17 strike outs over that span. His 25 K’s lead the league. Those are remarkable numbers in an offense dominated league.

Casper Wells

Wells is leading the AFL in slugging at .750 and he’s 4th in on base percentage. He did have to leave yesterday’s game when trying to beat out a play at first. The Daily Fungo’s Mike McClary was in attendance and tweeted that Wells was able to limp off under his own power.

The Rest

In Oliver’s last 7 innings (4 games) he’s only allowed 1 unearned run, 3 walks, and 6 hits while fanning 8…Thad Weber has walked only 1 batter in 9 innings while fanning 10…Drucker has been up and down vacillating between good and bad outings. Today was a good one with 3 scoreless frames…Cale Iorg had a 2 game break out that saw him hit a homer and a double. But in 45 at-bats he has a .512 OPS and 16 strike outs.

I don’t remember the general manager meetings being this interesting in past years. Most of the action seems to usually take place at the winter meetings that take place in December. This year the GM meetings have served Tigers fans up with a disconcerting set of rumors with the Tigers making most of the team available for trade. But does this qualify as a fire sale?

It all started Tuesday night when the news hit that Edwin Jackson could be available along with Gerald Laird. Things got more interesting Wednesday afternoon when a New York Post story cited a National League executive who said the Tigers were listening to offers on Curtis Granderson. Olney later tweeted the same information. With two All Stars potentially on the block, a depressed economic region, and a payroll that leaves little flexibility the phrases “financial difficulty” and “fire sale” began working their way into columns. By evening Jon Heyman added Brandon Inge (h/t MLBTR) to the list of those the Tigers could be looking to trade. Are the Tigers slashing payroll?

Dave Dombrowski denied that the Tigers were in fire sale mode. He also iterated that the Tigers don’t have a set payroll yet from Mike Ilitch. So if the Tigers aren’t cutting and slashing the payroll, what is behind all the rumor and speculation?

When the Jackson rumor hit we went through a number of factors and possible scenarios. With Granderson and Inge added to the list it clears up a lot of the possibilities but I don’t think it points to payroll slashing. What I do think it confirms – and this isn’t a surprise – is that the team likely has limited flexibility with their payroll.

What we’re seeing now is every player on the roster with potential value being floated. It wouldn’t surprise me to see Miguel Cabrera’s name or Justin Verlander’s names pop up in the coming weeks. The Tigers have holes to fill and limited means to fill them. They also have a number of contracts coming off the books after 2010. If the Tigers trade a player or two to fill a couple holes and get younger or cheaper at the same time, it’s a win – especially going into a season where playoff aspirations are likely limited.

Granderson, Laird, Jackson, and Inge all make some money, but the 4 are a relatively small part of the overall payroll. Moving one or two of them isn’t going to have a significant financial impact. It’s more a matter of improving the team in the long run.

With Granderson and Jackson in particular the Tigers would be able to net a significant package. These players aren’t going to be given away which means that it is unlikely they are going anywhere, and if they do the team stands to be better for it.*

*The above paragraph is my best attempt at taking a cold and analytical look at the situation. The fan in me is sick about the thought of Curtis Granderson playing for another team. So maybe on second thought the paragraph is an attempt at rationalizing the minimal likelihood of a Granderson trade to make me feel better.

At least one Tiger is assured of some post season hardware. Placido Polanco won his second Gold Glove for excellence in the field of fielding. Polanco had a very fine defensive season and he was one of a handful of players (Mark Ellis, Dustin Pedroia, Aaron Hill) who were deserving at second base.

Polanco was the only Tiger to notch the honor. Gerald Laird was deserving at the catcher position and Brandon Inge could have made a case to be in the discussion at the hot corner. Joe Mauer and Evan Longoria took home the award though at their respective positions.

But back to Polanco’s candidacy. Rob Neyer wasn’t a fan of the choice grouping Polanco with Derek Jeter, Torii Hunter, and Adam Jones as the players that the voters “flat out blew it.” I’m not really sure how Polanco fits in that group. Polanco fared well on both conventional fielding metrics (only 2 errors) as well as the more advanced measures as Detroit Tiger Tales summarizes. Using most objective measures Polanco was a legitimate winner so I don’t know what Neyer is exactly looking for.

As an aside, props to Tigers MLB.com beat reporter Jason Beck who referenced Polanco’s UZR number in his story. It’s great to see the mainstream guys helping to go to the newer stats and it’s the only way that these will gain more traction.

One of the few positives of the end of the baseball season is the Annual Bill James Handbook (aff link) arriving on my doorstep. At one time it was the only place to easily find a number of uncommon stats. Sites like Fangraphs and Baseball Reference and the rise of Pitch F/X data make some of these stats easier to come by, but the Handbook is still a trove of baseball stats.

This year’s edition has the usual favorites like:

• Base running stats: Gerald Laird was one of the better base runners on the team at +11 bases. Ordonez was –17 and dragged down by his GIDP rate and the fact he went first to third in only 2 of his 27 chances.
• The Fielding Bible Awards: Placido Polanco and Brandon Inge ranked 6th at their respective positions while Curtis Granderson finished 3rd amongst center fielders.
• Manufactured Runs: The Tigers ranked 8th in the AL, right in the middle of the pack. The Angels were far ahead of anybody else and the Twins were a solid second. Granderson manufactured the most runs for the Tigers and Gerald Laird was second on the team.
• Manager’s Stats: When the Tigers offense would struggle many would blame Jim Leyland for not putting enough plays on to manufacture runs. Leyland ordered 60 sacrifice attempts which was second in the AL to only Ron Gardenhire. He was second in putting runners in motion to only Mike Scioscia. Perhaps he was trying to hard to manufacture runs.
• Leaderboards: These are my favorites every year. Some things that I found interesting:

• Ordonez had the 4th highest batting average against lefties at .352.
• Everett led the AL with 15 sacrifice hits.
• Granderson had the lowest GIDP percentage at 0.94 which bested Ichiro Suzuki and Carlos Gomez.
• Ordonez had the 5th highest OPS in the 2nd half of the season.
• Verlander threw the 3rd highest percentage of pitches in the strike zone and he had the 2nd lowest stolen base percentage allowed.
• Porcello had the 3rd  highest GIDP per 9 innings.
• Fu-Te Ni allowed the lowest percentage of inherited runners to score and the lowest batting average against lefties for relief pitchers.
• Verlander and Jackson were first and second in total number of pitches thrown at 95 mph or faster.
• Rodney had the 3rd fastest average fastball for relievers and Ryan Perry was 7th (Zumaya didn’t throw enough innings to qualify but he had 198 pitches over 100mph which was more than the rest of the league combined).

Sorry for the late notice, but the Arizona Fall Leauge Rising Stars All Star game is tonight and is being televised. You can catch it on the MLB Network. If you don’t have the MLB Network the game is being streamed online. The Tigers are being represented by Casper Wells and Andrew Oliver and manager Kevin Bradshaw. (Game Notes & Gameday)

The Detroit Tigers announced third baseman Brandon Inge underwent surgery on Tuesday to address the chronic patellar tendinitis in both of his knees that plagued him throughout the 2009 season, a procedure performed by Dr. Stephen Lemos at the Detroit Medical Center.

The procedure involved the debridement and repair of the patellar tendon in both his left and right knees.

Inge will be non-weight bearing for the first six weeks as he regains full range of motion. At that time, he will begin a strengthening and rehabilitation program to prepare him for Spring Training and the 2010 season.

According to the projected timetable, Inge is expected to be ready for the start of Spring Training in February.

Inge had a great start to the season and rode that hot start to an unexpected All Star game invitation. But his second half numbers were abysmal. On July 2nd Inge was sporting a robust 275/367/521 line spanning his first 77 games. Over his next 84 games he’d only muster a 189/266/309 line. The knees, which started acting up in mid June, were often blamed for Inge’s second half slide.

Why is it that people keep insisting that Comerica Park is a great park for doubles? Is it the large centerfield? The huge-mongous gaps between the outfielders? I just don’t know but it just ain’t true but now even the general manager is saying it.

John Lowe wrote about the Tigers lack of doubles as an indictment of the offense. I can’t really argue that point as the Tigers ranked 30th in MLB with only 245 doubles. That isn’t good at all.

What I will take issue with is that the number was remarkable because of their home ballpark. Lowe cites the fact that it was strange that the Tigers had more doubles on the road than at home. He quotes Dave Dombrowski on the subject as well:

“When you talk about the Tigers and our ability not to score runs and not hit the way we should, it’s the lack of doubles,” Dombrowski said. “We have a ballpark that is conducive to a doubles-hitting club. It has tremendous gaps.”

But here’s the rub, Comerica Park is a bad park for doubles.

The table shows the number of doubles hit by the Tigers and their opponents each year at Comerica Park, and on the road (don’t forget back in 2009 the Tigers had one extra road game). For each of the last 5 years – and I didn’t go back further because I think the point has been made – more doubles are hit other places than at Comerica.

The ratio, more commonly referred to as a park factor, routinely puts Comerica Park in the bottom third in the majors in terms of doubles. A value of 1 would be neutral, values greater than 1 mean the park would be favorable and values less than one mean it is unfavorable. Over the last 5 years it’s been about 6% harder to hit a double at Comerica park than at a typical stadium. So can we finally put to rest the notion that it is a good doubles ballpark?

For more on Comerica’s outfield and other park factor goodness, you may want to check out these posts from the archives:

• Comerica Park’s outfield is so big…
• Outfield park factors – part 2
• One more post on Comerica’s outfield

The early encouraging returns on Scott Sizemore’s broken tibia have been replaced with a cringe inducing MRI report. During his examination today, it was determined that the injury will require surgery.

Sizemore told John Lowe and the Freep:

“The torn tendons cause instability in the ankle,” Sizemore said. “They are going to put in a few screws to lock everything into place.”

The team isn’t commenting yet. It looked like a sure thing that Sizemore, the Tigers likely second baseman in 2010, would be fully healed in a matter of weeks and the injury would be a non-factor by February. The prognosis isn’t dire at this point, but there is a possibility he won’t be all the way back by the time players report to Lakeland.

Based on the information available in the Free Press article, Baseball Prospectus injury guru Will Carroll said in an email:

“My guess is he’ll be back for ST, but maybe not 100% while he figures out the ankle. It depends on how he heals. It shouldn’t be too much of a long term issue. I’ve never seen a 2B with this, so it’s tough to judge.

Color me cautiously optimistic

Tigers prospect Scott Sizemore needs surgery | Detroit Free Press | Freep.com

There are a lot of unknowns heading into the Tigers offseason, but one constant assumption has been that the Tigers are working on a limited budget. The only dispute has been how limited. Now there may be reason to doubt that assumption as the Tigers have interest in Cuban southpaw Aroldis Chapman.

Chapman is 21 and comes with a 100mph fastball and the type of price tag that those traits typically warrant. He could find himself getting a Daisuke Matsuzaka type deal. That would seem to limit his suitors to those flush with cash to spend.

Chapman likely won’t end up in Detroit. I can’t see the Yankees or Mets or Red Sox letting him get away. But the fact that the Tigers are even interested in a meeting given the price tag tells me things might not be as fiscally dire as they appear.

Latest Update: Sizemore has a fractured tibia and is on his way to Detroit

Scott Sizemore, the heir apparent at second base left today’s game in the first inning due to an injury. He was trying to turn a double play when a hard slide by Danny Espinosa caused both players to exit. What we know right now is that Sizemore’s injury is to his left leg but I hope to know more shortly.

Mark Anderson’s sources say it is an ankle with no confirmation on severity

On a brighter note Casper Wells hit a 2-2 Stephen Strasburg curve ball out to left center for a grand slam.

Jason Beck caught up with Carlos Guillen late last week and a maelstrom was the result. Guillen wasn’t happy with the way Jim Leyland handled things at the end of the year. Leyland explained his side. The two talked. Leyland says everything is fine. Guillen isn’t saying much else. Guillen was wrong to go public with this. He’s wrong about his own abilities. But he’s far from a selfish teammate.

Guillen was displeased with a couple aspects down the stretch. He was upset that as a left fielder he didn’t get regular playing time and he was upset about the shuffling of the lineups.

From the original article Guillen was quoted as saying:

“Before he points the finger at the offense, he’d better look in the mirror and see what he did,” Guillen said Sunday. “I don’t want to make an excuse, but nobody in the big leagues feels comfortable when you play [lineups] that way. It’s not fun to play like that.”

He also said a lot more about his role as a left fielder

“I don’t want to play left field,” Guillen told MLB.com on Sunday, “because it’s going to be the same stuff this year, the same excuses. He doesn’t have confidence in me [in left field].”

…

“I never asked to change positions,” Guillen said Sunday. “I decided to play a different position [when asked]. I want to win. But I don’t want to play [left field] when [Leyland] uses it as an excuse. … “I did the best I can. I made the move for the team. When I was playing shortstop, I stayed healthy.”

Guillen has said things which could be construed as selfish in the past and has usually recanted them to some extent. Guillen also takes a lot of pride in his ability. When after the 2007 season and he was asked to move to shortstop because of a barrage of throwing errors he said he’d only do it for a “Gold Glove” caliber player.

Look in the mirror

Where Guillen is wrong is that he didn’t stay healthy at shortstop (knees, hamstrings) and he had so many struggles that he couldn’t stay at the position. He couldn’t stay healthy at third (back, hemorrhoids), and he hasn’t been able to stay healthy in left field either.  I don’t think it is for lack of effort or conditioning. He’s just one of those players. So as much as he wants to play everyday, he has to be able to play everyday. Early in the season he told Jim Hawkins he could barely walk because of his achilles tendon. This was even before the shoulder injury.

“Sometimes I feel good, sometimes I can hardly walk,” said Guillen, who has been hobbled since Opening Day by an injured Achilles tendon in his lower right leg, where, he said, he has now developed tendinitis. “It just hurts.” As a result, Guillen has spent more time serving as the Tigers’ designated hitter than he has playing the outfield. And adjusting to the role of DH has not been easy. “I’m used to being in the field every day,” Guillen said. “You feel more in the game when you’re in the field. I don’t feel comfortable as the DH. Maybe one or two days would be okay. But everyday? It’s not me sometimes.”

In that same April article the manager who Leyland is criticizing mentions looking out for Guillen

“Every team gets nagging injuries,” Leyland said. “But I believe Guillen played hurt all last year. I think his back really bothered him. And it showed. I don’t want him to have to go through that again. That’s not fair to him.”

Legitimate Beefs

Guillen didn’t need to air these things in public. That’s not to say he didn’t have reason to be frustrated. He couldn’t crack the lineup when the Tigers faced a string of left handers (prior to his return to switch hitting) and he could barely even get pinch hitting duty because Leyland was worried about them bringing in a lefty – but Aubrey Huff would still get to play. He was lifted for a pinch runner in Game 163. He saw his friend and the hottest hitter on the team forced into a platoon role and become a 3 plate appearance per game hitter.

There were certainly grievances to be had, and things were exacerbated by missing the playoffs and what had to be a second consecutive season of frustration for Guillen. Jason Beck told WDFN that things had been simmering since early September but Guillen stayed quiet so as not to be a distraction (h/t Bless You Boys).

Selfish?

Leyland responded to the criticism by naming Guillen the everyday left fielder. That really isn’t that much of a surprise and it doesn’t mean a whole lot in October. But this is a delicate situation for Leyland because Guillen is a leader in the clubhouse and generally seems to be a good teammate.

When Sheffield started talking about Latin American players being easier to control than African American’s, Guillen came to Sheffield’s defense. When Bonderman underwent emergency vascular surgery it was Guillen who hung Bonderman’s jersey up in the dugout. When Miguel Cabrera was being hounded by the press it was Guillen trying to get him some privacy. When there were problems on the Venezuelan WBC team Guillen was among a group that called for change. He sticks up for his teammates.

It will blow over

In the end I don’t think this will amount to much of anything. Guillen will likely start the majority of games in left field when he’s healthy. He’ll probably start a game or two per week at DH. He probably will get lifted as a defensive replacement, but it probably won’t come until the 8th or 9th inning, though he could mitigate some of that by improving his defense.

Based on last year he’d be a win below average in left field. Whether he can improve remains to be seen but a)he lost valuable practice time due to the WBC and b)he was never really healthy enough to play more than a month at a time in 2009. There were a few pretty poor plays and he played too deep, but visually I didn’t think he was as brutal as everyone made him out to be.

He shouldn’t have taken things public, but it became a bigger story because there just isn’t a whole lot to talk about right now.

The Tigers representatives in the Arizona Fall League now have a week under their belts. Since the opener most have handled the challenge quite well so far with your likely 2010 second baseman Scott Sizemore leading the way.

Scott Sizemore

All he’s done is homer 3 times, double twice, and walk twice in 18 plate appearances. That’s good enough for a 375/400/1.063 slash line and prompting Kevin Goldstein to say “there isn’t really a glaring weakness in his game.”

Casper Wells

Mark Anderson of TigsTown thinks that a big fall could put Wells in the mix for the outfield rotation in 2010. So far he has a 444/450/889 line in 19 plate appearances. He has fanned 8 times though so it appears he’s either hitting the ball hard or not at all.

Cale Iorg

So far Iorg seems to be picking up his AFL season where his Erie season ended, and that’s not necessarily a good thing. He has a 182/182/250 line so far but I guess the good news would be that he’s only fanned 4 times. In Kevin Goldstein’s BP 10 Pack he listed this scout’s comment on Iorg:

I like the tools and what he does with the glove… but he just can’t hit.

Andrew Oliver

After getting knocked around a little bit in his first outing he bounced back nicely fanning 3 and walking 1 in his next outing which lasted 2 innings. He followed that up with a 1 inning stint that saw him allow 2 hits, but no damage while notching another strikeout.

Robbie Weinhardt

Weinhardt also improved with his second outing, but that was really the only way for him to go. But he still allowed 2 runs in 1.1 innings. Weinhardt has allowed 7 runs in 3 AFL innings on 9 hits and 3 walks. For someone who allowed just 8 earned runs in 30 AA innings this year this is certainly uncharacteristic.

Scot Drucker

Drucker isn’t really viewed as a prospect, but he has done well with this opportunity so far. He’s allowed just 1 run on 2 hits in 5 innings despite just striking out 2.