Category Archives: Managing & Strategy

Leyland settles on a lineup

According to Danny Knobler, Jim Leyland has settled on a lineup.
Granderson, cf
Polanco, 2b
Rodriguez, c
Ordonez, rf
Young, dh
Monroe, lf
Guillen, ss
Shelton, 1b
Inge, 3b

Now if your reaction was similar to mine, you’re probably thinking “Guillen and Shelton at 7 and 8 while Pudge is hitting third?!?” Yes, the lineup is unorthodox, and one I probably wouldn’t advocate. However, I’m not sure how much of a difference it would actually make.
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Keep an eye on: Chuck Hernandez & the Pitching Staff

Over the last few weeks of spring training, I’ll be writing about the storylines that I think will be most interesting, or at least most vital to the team’s success. The first subject will be pitching coach Chuck Hernandez and how he sets the tone with Tiger pitchers and throughout the organization.

One of the least reported on changes this past offseason has been pitching coach Chuck Hernandez. Given the youth and potential of the pitching staff the topic seems especially relevant.

In the case of Kenny Rogers, I’m not all that concerned. At age 41 he’s probably his own pitching coach anyways.

It does become much more interesting though with the other 3 veteran starters – Jeremy Bonderman, Nate Robertson, and Mike Maroth. For those 3, especially Bonderman, the bulk of their professional instruction has come through Bob Cluck.
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Tiger Roundup

The Tigers moved to 2-0 during grapefruit league action after outslugging Cincinnati 17-10. Danny Knobler reports that Justin Verlander was shaky at first, but managed to pitch his way out of it. And he did it without a visit from Jim Leyland or pitching coach Chuck Hernandez.

Leyland isn’t against mound visits, but he’s also big on individual responsibility. He wants players to think for themselves, and he wants to see how they react in tough situations.

“Get out of your own jam sometime,” he said this morning, before Verlander even took the mound. “Figure out how to do it.”

Former Tiger pitching coach Bob Cluck has found a job. He’ll be a minior league pitching consultant for the San Diego Padres.
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The Optimal Tiger Lineup

On Friday, Lee aggregated various projections for Tiger players to find the average projection. On Saturday, David Pinto web enabled a script written by Ken Arneson based on work by Cyril Morong that optimizes lineups. On Sunday, I do the easiest part of all and stick Lee’s numbers into David’s tool.

First some lineups, and then some explanation. I first put in what would probably be the most common assortment of players the Tigers would use. I’m guessing this would be Rodriguez/Inge/Guillen/Polanco/Shelton/Monroe/Granderson/Ordonez/Young. Various combinations of those players would average 5.330 runs per game. Here are the best and worst variations on that lineup
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The Platoon Ratio

When talking about players strengths and weaknesses, ultimately the discussion will veer towards: “What they really need is a platoon because player X can’t hit Y-handers to save his life.” Okay, so maybe not every baseball discussion goes this way, but I’m sure you’ve all heard it, and perhaps even said it before. That’s why it may come as a shock, but the differences in platoon splits amongst right handed hitters are basically non-existent.

Let’s take a look at that statement again. I’m not claiming that right handed hitters don’t hit lefties better than righties. In fact, right-handed hitters hit lefties 9% better than righties. What’s surprsing is that all – or virutally all – right handed hitters share the same platoon advantage. So all right handed hitters OPS against right handers will be 9% better against southpaws than against right-handers (northpaws?).

Without a lot of indepth explantion, this is a concept that has been revealed by Bill James, and covered by Rob Neyer. Here is probably the best one paragraph explanation I could find:

In fact, if every player played enough games — thousands and thousands of games, I mean — eventually all of them would have roughly the same platoon split. There is some evidence that some types of hitters will have slightly larger platoon splits than others, but essentially they’re all the same. I know, it sounds crazy. But everyone who’s looked at this with any degree of sophistication has come up with the same answer. As James wrote in 1988, “It’s innate. You can’t get away from it.”

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Batting Around the Order

With the talk of starters yesterday, it got me thinking about potential batting orders. Now the value of setting the order is probably overrated. Aside from putting higher on-base guys at the top of the order, I’m not really sure how much sequencing actually matters. The only other real consideration I see is balancing left handed and right handed bats in the lineup to make late game pitching changes more difficult on the opposing manager.

The Core Lineup

This is my proposal for the most typical lineup, with minimal regard to platoon advantages:

  • Placido Polanco
  • Carlos Guillen
  • Chris Shelton
  • Magglio Ordonez
  • Dmitri Young/Carlos Pena
  • Ivan Rodriguez
  • Craig Monroe
  • Curtis Granderson
  • Brandon Inge

The Tigers are still handicapped by a lack of left handed bats. The top of the order was the hardest for me to resolve. Certainly Curtis Granderson would receive some consideration as a leadoff hitter, and he could conceivable hit a little higher in the middle of the lineup. He’s batting 8th in this version just to best leverage his left-handedness.
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Trammell gets short-listed

It appears that Alan Trammell is one of three finalists for the Los Angeles Dodgers managerial job. The other finalists are Orel Hersheiser and Terry Collins.

It would be quite the coup for Trammell to land this job. Given Kirk Gibson’s prominence in Dodger lore, he would most assuredly be part of Trammell’s staff. For both their sake though I’d hope that he wouldn’t give Gibson the bench coach role. I think the combined managerial inexperience of the two was a hinderance.

Tigers complete organizational meetings

The Lakeland Ledger reports that the Tigers finished up their organizational meetings in Florida. The article featured an interview with Jim Leyland. Here are the highlights:

On Pudge:

“I’ve talked with him and we’re OK,” Leyland said. “A lot of that is just frustration when you haven’t accomplished what you thought you could and the season is winding down and you just want to forget it and go home. I’ve seen it before.

Tackling Tram’s Tactics

Does Alan Trammell utilize small ball too much? What about his bullpen use and subsitution patterns. His in-game decision making over his first two years has been a source of frequent criticism on this site as well as others. However, what are the right tactics and how does he stack up against his peers?

With the help of the The Bill James Handbook: 2005 we can take a look at how often Trammell employs steals, pitch outs, sacrifices and a handful of other interesting stats.

One of the first things that people point to is that the Tigers under-performed their pythagorean record each of the last two years. Last year some may be attributed to a porous bullpen and defense, while 2003 maybe attributed to an inferior and inexperienced talent base all around.

The lack of talent in 2003 caused Trammell to employ whatever strategies at his disposal. A lack of offensive pop led to a league leading 92 sacrifice bunt attempts and 161 stolen base attempts which was third highest in the league. For better or for worse Trammell’s reputation as a small ball manager was born.

In 2004 the Tigers’ received an infusion of talent, and the result was a pretty solid offense. With hitters that could actually get on base consistently, Trammell was able to reduce his reliance on the sacrifice. He reduced his sacrifice attempts by a third down to 62. That still ranked as the 4th most in the AL, but at least he’s in the ballpark of the rest of the league now.

He also reduced his stolen base attempts by 30 to 136 which ranked 7th in the AL. Unfortunately that was probably still too often as they were 4th worst in their success rate trailing only KC, Chicago, and Cleveland (more on this later). What isn’t captured is how many of the Tigers’ caught stealings were the result of failed hit and runs. From watching, it seemed that the Tigers ran into outs with missed signs way more than I’d care for, but I can’t really say conclusively without data.

So it seems that Tram has small ball leanings, but a lot of the perception was cultivated when he was managing a team devoid of talent. What’s interesting is that he is one of the lesser small ballers in the AL Central. The table below shows where the AL Central managers rank within the American League.


Manager SBA SB% SacA Sac
Gardenhire 3 3 3 5
Wedge 4 12 6 6
Guillen 8 13 1 1
Trammell 7 11 4 3
Pena 10 14 6 8

Over the last few years the Twins have consistently outperformed their pythagorean projection while utiliizing small ball. On the other hand the Tigers have underperformed while using small ball. The big difference is the execution of the strategy. While the Twins ran quite a bit last year, they seperated themselves from the rest of the division by actually being successful. Once Ozzie Guillen fields his new speed and defense team it wouldn’t surprise me if he leads the league in SBA’s. Conversely, other teams were more successful than the Twins in converting sacrifice attempts, but seemed to fare worse overall. This makes sense because if you can successfully move the runner without giving up an out you’ll be ahead of the guys willing to concede the out.

I’m not trying to draw the conclusion that the Twins win because they steal bases well, or that Gardenhire is necessarily better than his Central counterparts. It is just an interesting look at what strategies have had success, albeit within in a very small sample.

Also, while Trammell is still probably a small ball manager, his reputation was largely developed during a season in which there were extenuating circumstances. His utilization of these strategies seeemed to decrease as he spent more time on the bench.

Other Stuff-

-On a related note, Trammell hardly used pitch outs last year. He let Pudge’s reputation deter the opponents running game. He only called 8 pitch outs last year, down from 28 in 2003. Only 59 runners tried to steal on Pudge, the fewest among full time catchers in the AL. Yet another way in that Pudge helped the Tigers. He helped eliminate the run game, and prevented his pitchers from having to waste pitches.
-I highly recommend picking up a copy of the 2005 Bill James Handbook. In the month I’ve had mine I’ve already worn the thing out and it has about a dozen bookmarks. It has a wealth of interesting stuff that you just won’t find anywhere else.
-If you enjoy women talking about sports make sure and read BatGirl and Blue Cats and Red Sox. Batgirl and her Batlings follow the ups and downs of the Twins from a completely subjective point of view. She leaves out the stats and makes baseball fun. Blue Cats and Red Sox has the travails of a ‘Boston Fan in Michigan’ as she celebrates her Red Sox and Patriots while mourning our Detroit kitties – and she gets points for being a UM student as well.