Defense

“How big is it?”
You need 3 center fielders to cover all the ground out there
Okay, as a joke it’s awful, but it is a common statement amongst Tigers fans. At the very least the belief is that multiple center fielder type players are required to man left and center fields. When you look [...]

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Wrapping up some outstanding items from what very well could be one of the most significant trades in franchise history…
Replenishment
Peter Gammons astutely pointed out that the Tigers were able to make this trade because of Ilitch’s and Dombrowski’s refusal to adhere to the asinine draft slotting system. Not only did a willingness to pay [...]

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Jim Leyland was quoted yesterday talking about how this deal and the players they acquired were like a presents under the tree. Well, now that we can open up the presents, it’s time to play with them. The common refrain is that the Tigers should play Miguel Cabrera at third base and move [...]

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Over the last month or so, David Pinto has released the majority of his studies using his probabilistic model of range (PMR). Today we’ll delve into the Tigers defense using this advanced metric.
I’ve explained PMR in the past, but a refresher is probably worthwhile. The PMR model uses data play by play data [...]

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It’s award season and they are coming out fast and furious. Over at SB Nation they have been releasing the results of their blog ballots. Each baseball blog at SB Nation received 2 ballots, and with Bless You Boys being a solo operation, Ian was kind enough to let me vote his [...]

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Ivan Rodriguez and Placido Polanco were honored today as MLB announced the Gold Glove winners. For Pudge it was his 13th while it was Polanco’s first. But were they the most deserving Tigers? Rob Neyer took a look at the inherent biases or trends in the voting. A couple of these [...]

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This is more an observation than a concern at this point, but the Tigers defense just hasn’t looked good in the early going.
The Tigers pitching staff received many accolades for keeping runs off the board last year. But the stat-minded folks pointed to the the lower strike out numbers and wondered how they were [...]

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In my last post I pointed out that Kenny Rogers, Nate Robertson, and Justin Verlander were the beneficiaries of some combination of good defense and good luck. Basically I was trying to point out that while all 3 had solid seasons, there were some breaks that were beyond their control that went their way. [...]

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I think it is pretty common knowledge at this point, that in large part the Tigers pitchers results exceeded their performance last year. If you subscribe to the DiPS theory, that pitchers have limited ability to control whether balls in play turn into hits, then in general the Tigers pitchers got by without striking [...]

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We’re over the hump of the offseason and news is flowing now. So these link posts might get to be more frequent.

You’ve probably seen this, but Brian from Tigerblog interviewed Ernie Harwell for The Hardball Times. He did an excellent job with the interview so make sure to check it out (if you [...]

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Jason Beck blogs that the Tigers are about to announce their new radio deal with WXYT and WKRK. Dan Dickerson and Jim Price will be returning.
Beck also notes that Jason Johnson will be playing in Japan in 2007.
John Sickels Yankees prospect list has Humberto Sanchez at #3 and Kevin Whelan at #12.
Baseball Analysts put [...]

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