It’s no secret that the Tigers offense was far from satisfying this year. It was the second year in a row that the offense seemed to perform below expectations, after having a huge season in 2007. Naturally suspicions and fingers start to point towards the hitting coach. Is the criticism of Lloyd McClendon justified?

McClendon and the Tigers offense seems to be following a similar trajectory to Chuck Hernandez and the pitching staff over the last 3 years. Hernandez came in 2006 and the Tigers had a dominant pitching attack. The staff regressed in 2007 and after an awful year in 2008 Hernandez was deemed the reason and he was let go.

McClendon arrived on the job in 2007 which saw the Tigers put up one of the top offenses in the league. The offense struggled in 2008 and in 2009 the offense was the culprit in too many losses and the Tigers were outscored despite being pretty good at run prevention. The offense was 10th in batting average and runs scored, and 9th in slugging and OBP and OPS.

Performance against expectations

Now one of the tough things about evaluating coaches from the outside is that there are considerable unknowns and there are rationalizations or explanations for most of what happens. What we can do is look at what a player was expected to do prior to the season. We can look player by player and see if there is a pattern of players over or underperforming expectations.

In the case of the Tigers there we knew there would be offensive challenges with the lower part of the lineup as the Tigers made a move towards defense at several key positions. The Tigers also had several key offensive components reaching their mid 30’s and offensive decline should be expected as well. With that in mind the table below compares the Tigers expected performance according to the Baseball Prospectus PECOTA projections to their actual performance across the slash stats.

I’ve applied a color gradient to the difference between actual and projected OPS performance. Of the 12 Tigers with the most plate appearances, 6 outperformed PECOTA and 6 underperformed with 5 of the 12 falling within 20 points of OPS. In other words for the most part the team’s performance followed a normal (not in the strict statistical sense of a normal distribution) distribution without a disproportionate number over or underperforming.

Now the trouble with the Tigers offense is that if you look at those differentials, Miguel Cabrera was the only regular to over-perform significantly while 3 regulars underperformed significantly. So if one were to weight the differences by plate appearance the offense as a group would be shown to have underperformed.

Plate Discipline

In his post season media session Dave Dombrowski spoke of a need for the organization to make plate discipline a point of emphasis. I’m interpreting his remarks to mean more than simply taking walks and not striking out, we can also look at how McClendon’s troops did compared to PECOTA expectations on walk rate and strike out rate.

This may be shocking to many, but the Tigers as a team walked considerably more than expected and they struck out significantly less. On the walk front, 5 Tigers significantly outperformed their expected walk rate while only Brandon Inge significantly walked less than expected. On the strikeout side Guillen, Everett, Inge, and Santiago struck out significantly more than expected but 7 Tigers struck out less than expected.

In terms of walks and strikeouts Lloyd McClendon looks to do favorably.

Do the stats tell us anything?

The stats don’t tell us a whole lot. There isn’t a glaring deficiency that can be pinned on McClendon. In terms of overall performance there doesn’t seem to be anything of note with some players underperforming, and some over-performing. There isn’t a lot there to show that McClendon impacted the team one way or the other. We do see that with the team placing an emphasis on plate discipline, McClendon may be an appropriate choice as the team did walk more than expected.

I do wonder though if the team wouldn’t do better with a new voice. The Tigers are going to need big seasons from Curtis Granderson, Magglio Ordonez, Carlos Guillen as well as continued development from Ryan Raburn, Clete Thomas, and Scott Sizemore. There are limited resources available to get better players so for the offense to get better the incumbents will need to improve.

During Jim Leyland’s post game presser, he made some interesting comments regarding the Tigers approach against Josh Beckett. Leyland thought the Tigers weren’t aggressive enough on first pitches and settled for too many first pitch strikes. The actual quote was:

“That just makes it easy for him,” Leyland said. “I know how good he is. I know it’s not that easy. But for you to get a guy like him, he basically is going to come right at you. He has very good stuff, and then, he’s a very intelligent pitcher. He’s going to come at you, and if he can get you to stand there and take a strike-one fastball, that’s really playing into his hand.”

It wasn’t really a take I expected (and not just because I spent a chunk of my recap praising the Tigers for making Beckett throw more than 5 pitches per plate appearance through the first 4 innings) because the Tigers aren’t really noted for their patience at the plate.

Detroit ranks 7th in terms of percentage of pitches swung at (46.5%). They are often criticized for swinging at the first pitch too often and making too many quick outs. Their walk rate is middle of the pack. They have the fewest pitcher per plate appearance in the American League (3.75 and the league average is 3.84). Swinging the bats has never been a problem for the Tigers this year.

As for last night’s game Beckett recorded first pitch strikes on 19 of the 24 batters he faced. Here is the breakdown:

• Called Strike: 12
• Foul: 1
• In Play – Out: 5
• In Play – Hit: 1
• Ball: 5

The Tigers actually only swung at 30% of the first pitches that Beckett threw. For the season they swing at 28% of first pitches, and the league average is 26%. Last night they had 1 favorable outcome out of the 7 times they swung at the first pitch. Maybe the Tigers get more hits the more they swing away at the first pitch against Beckett, and this is a VERY small sample. But looking at this I don’t see how you can say that the Tigers made things easy for Beckett by laying off the first pitch and if anything their uncharacteristic patience and ability to foul off pitches early in the game made Beckett work harder. And if anything, I think you just need to tip your cap to a very good pitcher.

Beck’s Blog: Leyland critiques approach

9-5. That was the series score. Tigers pitchers kept a very good offensive team to just 9 runs and yet were swept because Detroit went 1-26 with runners in scoring position. The numbers are pretty much mind boggling. And 3 of the Tigers 5 runs came on solo homers. The White Sox took 2 out of 3 games in their weekend series meaning that the Tigers lead is down to a slim 1.5 games. It was a crappy weekend for Detroit baseball. They got swept, they didn’t score, and they lost a relief pitcher for who knows how long. But I’ll find some good news in here somewhere.

Pitching is still good

The Tigers continue to get good pitching. Justin Verlander and Edwin Jackson came out strong and pitched the way they had for the bulk of the first half of the season. Sustained success for both is key to the Tigers playoff chances and with Verlander’s history of second half struggles, and Jackson’s history of never having been this good before, those are both question marks where the early returns are promising.

Also, outside of Joel Zumaya’s blow-up, the bullpen was just as good as the starters. Fu-Te Ni is probably benefiting somewhat from being the new funky-delivery lefty, but his results have been as impressive with the big club as they were with Toledo. I guess the other good news is that the bullpen is nice and rested.

Unsustainable pace

Fortunately for the offense, they won’t continue to be that bad. Going 1 for 26 in any situational split, or any situation period, isn’t a sustainable pace. They’ll at the very least accidentally get a hit at some point in time. But here is the other side of the coin. The Tigers did a good job early in each of the 3 games of making the opposing starter work hard. They were taking pitches, drawing walks, and putting pressure on the starter and thus creating all those scoring opportunities in the first place. That’s the good news. The bad news is that the lineup got destroyed later in the game and the outs came quicker and easier. The Tigers hitters need to carry the types of approaches they were taking early in the game and sustain them throughout and continue to generate the scoring chances.

The Tigers need more offense, and I’d love to see them add a bat, but it goes way beyond that. Even if they trade for a stud, left handed hitting corner outfielder (which is unlikely), he is only going to hit once each time through the lineup. The Tigers have legitimate offensive threats already in the lineup that aren’t producing. One bat isn’t going to have a big impact as long as Granderson/Polanco/Cabrera continue to struggle.

What is Josh Anderson doing in the starting lineup?

One thing the Tigers could do to improve the offense is to remove Josh Anderson from the equation. Anderson had seemingly played himself out of a starting role before the All Star break with Ryan Raburn getting the bulk of the playing time in left field. From June 29th through the break Raburn had 9 starts, Anderson 5 (and one of those was in centerfield to spell Granderson). Raburn hit 323/364/581 over that span and Anderson hit 200/238/350 with no stolen bases. Yet the team gets to New York and Anderson starts 2 of the 3 games.

Raburn is OPS’ing over 800 against both lefties and righties and he has a pretty even mix of plate appearances this year. Anderson is OPS’ing under 650 against both lefties and righties while drawing 88% of his plate appearances against his favorable platoon side. While he is fast, he isn’t a good baserunner. The glaring mistakes are well known, but there are smaller ones as well. On Sunday he slid into second on a fly ball to centerfield. He was stealing and never saw the ball. Plus he had 2 defensive miscues this weekend. One cost the team runs, the other only cost Jackson 6 pitches. Outside of a late inning pinch runner he should have no role on this team, yet he continues to get starts.

Other Stuff

• The extent of Joel Zumaya’s injury still isn’t fully known but it is a re-aggravation of his stress fracture. I’m sure the 3 inning outing in Minnesota didn’t help the situation, but I wouldn’t blame it either. That shoulder has experienced a ton of trauma. I think there are only so many times Zumaya can throw the ball 100mph before the next injury occurs.
• The Tigers were 1 of 7 teams to have scouts on hand for Halladay’s outing yesterday. The White Sox weren’t. I don’t think the Tigers have the pieces, or at least pieces they’d be willing to part with, to get Halladay so I’d chalk up yesterday’s appearance to either due dilligence or gamesmanship.
• What is the smarter financial move for Mike Ilitch, who is faced with decreased revenue due to lower ticket sales and decreased corporate sponsorship, dumping payroll or adding players to keep the Tigers in the hunt? Extended contention and a possible playoff birth will do more to help the franchise’s economic outlook than trying to save on salary. The Tigers need to get through 2010 and then there is considerable salary relief coming.
• Brandon Lyon has added a cut fastball and he has tweaked his delivery.
• Curtis Granderson is holding a wine-tasting charity event this Thursday that features a bachelor auction. For more information on purchasing tickets, or if you’d like to learn how you can take home your very own Granderson or Jackson head over the Grand Kids Foundation site.
• FS Detroit has started to replay each Tiger game at midnight with the Tigers live postgame show to air at 3 a.m. So if you miss either the first time, you have a second chance to DVR it.
• Also coming up on FS Detroit is Batting Stance Guy. He’ll be recreating Magglio Ordonez’s ALCS homer and Justin Verlander’s no hitter. For more on Gar Ryness, check out his appearance on Letterman. He’s already got a compilation of Tigers past and present.

The latest technique to milk productivity from Magglio Ordonez is to platoon him and only give him starts against left handers. Clete Thomas will form the other side of the platoon which means he’ll get the bulk of the starts, especially with the team facing more right handers.

For his career, Ordonez has hit lefties about 12% better than righties (in terms of OPS). That differential is more pronounced this year with an 825 OPS against southpaws versus 611 against right handers. So if there is any advantage Leyland can give to Ordonez, it is probably a lefty only diet.

But where this gets really interesting of course is the impact on the vesting option. As of tonight, Ordonez is 166 plate appearances shy of his vesting option. Through the first 84 games the Tigers have faced 27 lefty starters. At the same rate the Tigers would face 25 more lefty starters this season, and with about 4 PA’s per start Ordonez would come up 60-70 plate appearances short of the vesting option. That is significant enough to not be conspicuous or grievance-able, especially if Thomas or a bat to be named later hits well enough against righties.

As for Ordonez’s take on the situation, it certainly is professional:

“When I produce, I play,” he said.

It seems as if calculating wins above replacement, or WAR, has become the cool thing to do this offseason. We’ve delved into WAR here in the past when evaluating contracts. Now Fangraphs has made WAR available to the masses. Detroit Tiger Tales has already taken a look at the 08 Tigers numbers. And now a call to action from Beyond the Boxscore has inspired me to project the 09 team numbers.

For now I’m focusing on the position players. What I’ve done is to use split the difference for the Bill James and Marcel projections for the 09 players for wOBA. Defensively I’ve used UZR/150 as the base, but in cases where there isn’t a lot of data due to injury or position shifts, I’ve made my best guesses. When in doubt I’ve left players as average defensively, like Guillen in left or Santiago wherever he plays. For playing time, this was entirely subjective and the area that you’ll most likely choose to disagree. That’s okay. This is one guy’s opinion and I certainly have no injury/effectiveness crystal ball. Heck, we don’t even know who the 5th outfielder and other utility infielder will be at this point.

The table below has my projections as of the time of writing. I’ve also built the same spreadsheet in Google Docs that I will update as more information becomes available. This one is just prettier and then anybody commenting will be working off the same initial assumptions.

2009 Detroit Tigers WAR Projections - Position Players

As for the calculations:
Batting Runs: (wOBA-.338)*700/1.15*Playing Time. This converts wOBA to runs by comparing it to league average and then factoring in playing time.

Fielding Runs: UZR/150*162/150*Playing Time. The UZR numbers adjusted to reflect projected games played

Position Adjustment: Position Adjustment*Playing Time. Not all positions are created equal. This accounts for that.

WAR: (Batting Runs+Fielding Runs+Position Adjustment)/10.5 + (2.5*Playing Time). This adds up all the runs and converts it to wins above or below average. The 2.5 is the win difference between an average player, and a replacement player.

The Tigers are in a stretch of games where runs are likely to be at a premium. Between the A’s, the Indians, and the White Sox, they are facing 3 of the stingiest teams in terms of allowing runs. At the same time they aren’t exactly powerful offenses either so the Tigers figure to be playing in a number of low scoring games.

The table below shows runs per game scored and allowed as well as the ranks for the Tigers next 3 opponents.

For a freakishly inconsistent offense like the Tigers, it’s hard to say what type of production they can muster. They’ve made mediocre pitchers look awesome. But looking at the offenses they’ll be facing, if they can manage to avoid the 0-1 run syndrome they can still be in position to win a number of these games.

Hopefully those manageable offenses help a pitching staff that has really been turning things around as well. The Tigers are still 12th in the league in runs allowed per game at 5.04 for the season. But in their last 19 games they have allowed a much more respectable 4.1 runs per game.

Hitting philosophy

Hitting coach Lloyd McClendon said runs scored, followed by on-base percentage, are the most important statistics.

“Batting average is the most overrated statistic in baseball,” McClendon said. “Pete Rose told me, ‘When you are scoring runs, you are doing the job.’

I don’t have a lot to comment on here, but I thought the quote was very noteworthy and that it would make sabermetricians smile.

Earlier in the season we saw that the Tigers were being more patient than they had ever been, and it looked to be a philosophical shift. But with the offense sputtering they’ve gone a little more aggressive (or are being pitched more aggressively) and the walks have gone down.

In April the Tigers were walking 4.36 times per game and the team had a .261 batting average and .355 OBP. In May the walks per game dropped to 2.58 and while the team batting average is now .266, the OBP is down to .336.

It is quoted after nearly every game, with only the loss column frequently changing. Currently it is 1-25, with IT being the Tigers record in games in which they score 4 runs or less. Some people point to it as a sign of the pitching staff’s futility while others question why the offense is scoring so little so often. Like many of the Tigers struggles this year, it can’t be attributed to just one area.

We’ll start by looking at some broader data. Below is data for the American League showing runs scored per game and the corresponding winning percentage so far in 2008.

Not surprisingly it’s hard to win your scoring fewer than 2 runs a game, and the odds increase dramatically with the 2nd and the 4th runs. Now let’s look at what the Tigers have done.

What you’re seeing is how frequently the Tigers scored a certain amount of runs, how frequently it was done in the AL, how many games the Tigers won at each run point, and how many they would be expected to win given AL norms.

The thing with the 1-25 record is that the Tigers have scored fewer than 2 runs 12 times giving them 12 games with virtually no shot to win regardless of the pitching. And in those 4 run games where the team should have nearly a 50-50 shot of pulling out a W, the Tigers have only had 3 such games.

So with some normal pitching, the Tigers should have expected to win at most 3-4 more games. Chalk those up to the staff, but the bulk of the others fall squarely on the shoulders of the offense.

In today’s Detroit News Tigers beat writer Tom Gage writes about RISP. RISP of course is runners in scoring position and Gage goes on to explain part of the Tigers woes by looking at their performance in RISP situations. Along the way he creates a new metric and applies some faulty logic.

Gage notes that the Tigers are the only team in the AL Central with a RISP batting average lower than their overall batting average. Gage then goes on to compare the Tigers to the division leading Twins:

The Tigers are hitting .264 as a team but .251 with RISP. That’s a difference, math majors, of minus 13. The division-leading Twins? After Sunday’s game, they were at plus 46. Their overall batting average was .265, but with RISP, they were hitting .311.

But here’s the kicker, the Tigers have outscored the Twins this year despite the disparity. The Twins have a better record because they are allowing a run a game less than the Tigers, not because they have a better RISP batting average differential.

Next Gage goes on to talk about a new stat loosely termed combined average. It is described thusly

When you combine the two numbers just like combining slugging average and on-base percentage gives you a better perspective about production, you get a total average that provides a more complete view of a team’s offense.

The Tigers’ total average is .515. The Twins’ total average is .576.

That’s also why the Tigers’ apparent offensive edge over the Indians is misleading. The Indians are hitting .243 as a team, 21 points lower than the Tigers. But they’re also hitting .287 with RISP for a total batting average of .530.

First of all I’m not sure why this would provide a more complete view of production, but I’ll be back to that in a minute. Once again the Tigers are compared to a team that has been their inferior in terms of scoring runs. The Indians score 4.47 RPG where the Tigers score 4.74.

But as for the assertion that it provides a more complete view of production, it just ain’t true. Probably the most complete view of production is runs scored, but of course we want to better understand the whys and hows of run scoring. So as we look for answers it is probably worth looking at how any new stat actually relates to run scoring.

Using AL data for this year (which is what Gage is using) I looked at how combined average related to runs. Combined average had a correlation of .43. (Correlation values run from -1 to 1. A value of 0 shows that two items aren’t really related. A value closer to 1 or -1 shows they are highly related.) Now .43 isn’t bad, but we can do better.

Plain old batting average has a correlation of .60. On base percentage and slugging percentage are .79 and .77 respectively. And OPS rocks out a .83.

Looking at RISP stats to see if they are more highly correlated with run production than overall stats we see that RISP batting average checks in at a meager .21 and RISP OPS .39. You know what RISP stat does correlate with runs scored? At-bats with runners in scoring position has a .66 correlation. So one could say the number of the number of RISP opportunities has more to do with run production than the actual performance in those at-bats.

The problem with Gage’s stat is that you’re adding things that are kind of alike, but they don’t get weighted by opportunity. Plus, the RISP performance is factored into the overall already. The other problem of course is that a quarter of the way into the season, numbers are still pretty volatile, especially when looking at splits like RISP where there are only 300-400 at-bats.

There is some value in looking at RISP performance, like if you wanted to see if there was a disparity between a run model like runs created and actual runs scored. But otherwise it’s more of a novelty. (As an aside, using the short form of Runs Created=TB*OBP the Tigers are only 3 runs short of their estimate.)

The Tigers offense, while amassing decent totals, has been a problem due to its inconsistency. In the 22 losses their OBP and their slugging percentage are less than .300. But number like that speak to bigger problems than just their inability to hit with runners in scoring position.

Following last night’s game a frustrated Jim Leyland suggested that he “might shake up the lineup a little bit” for Sunday’s game. He did just that with Sheffield getting the day off and Miguel Cabrera assuming the third spot in the order. But more changes are a-coming starting on Monday. Changes so drastic that Leyland suggested they might be termed drastic.

Now in Jason Beck’s blog he indicated that there wouldn’t be changes in personnel, meaning that Jacque Jones will continue to flail away at the bottom of the order. But aside from that, what could these dramatic changes be?

Shuffling Sheffield, Ordonez, Cabrera, and Guillen would probably be noteworthy, but hardly dramatic. With Pudge Rodriguez and Jones hardly distinguishing themselves at the bottom of the order, it’s not like they would be deserving of a more prominent role. That would probably be more shocking than dramatic. And I have to believe that Placido Polanco is firmly entrenched in the 2-spot.

That leaves me with this thought for the dramatic move. Gary Sheffield to lead-off and Curtis Granderson to the middle of the order. That would certainly count as dramatic, and there would be some logic behind it as well.

Sheffield’s power is lacking. Whether it is age, or injury, or slump he has not been able to drive in runs. But, he hasn’t been totally unproductive with a .340 OBP. He sees a lot of pitches, and when he gets on he’s a smart baserunner. And if you’re wondering if Sheffield has ever hit leadoff before, well he has but only in 10 games. Plus it takes Sheffield out of the 3 hole without significantly disrespecting him.

Meanwhile Curtis Granderson established himself as an extra base machine. The quad-20 trick aside, Granderson gets on base and he does it with power. Plus depending on the sequencing the lefty-righty match-ups in the middle of the order could make things more difficult on opposing managers.

So that’s the move I’m looking for. It would qualify as dramatic and it makes sense. Of course Leyland’s lineups don’t necessarily make sense so maybe Timo Perez will be your new clean-up hitter.

Early in the season during the time of the great losing, there were numerous complaints about the Tigers approach at the plate. They were going up their swinging early and swinging often. I didn’t totally buy into the theory because the pitches per plate appearance were in line with league norms. But we didn’t know whether or not they were really chasing more pitches. But thanks to the folks at Fangraphs we now have a handle on this information.

Just this week they started to report out stats related to plate discipline. We now know how often players swing at pitches out side of the strike zone (O-Swing%) versus how often they swing at pitches in the zone (Z-Swing%). And how often they make contact with said pitches.

I brought in the Tigers data through April 29th and added the pitches per plate appearance and the percentage of time players swung at the first pitch. These data are found on the individual player pages at Baseball Reference. The results as well as some league norms for a point of reference are below:

Some things to note:

• Granderson, Inge, Guilen, Rodriguez and Jones are all seeing more pitches per plate appearance than at any point in their career.
• Pudge, Polanco, and Sheffield, are all swinging at the first pitch less than they have at any point in their careers – and there are some serious track records to work with. For good measure you can add Thames to the list as well.
• Inge, Santiago, and Jones rates of swinging at the first pitch are less than half of their career rates at this point.
• And yes, Pudge is still chasing more than the league norm. But understand that in the last 3 years his O-Swing% were 37%, 38%, and 41% so this is considerable improvement.

The take away is that everybody in the lineup (and even on the bench) is either meeting or exceeding their career levels of patience. And in terms of first pitch swinging there are some significant, significant changes underway. It’s still early in the season and these numbers could certainly, and I’d expect in many cases, to normalize. But if the team has a quick inning here or there or seem to swing at a few too many first pitches or pitches out of the strike zone, know that they’ve still been better than most in this regard.

With this afternoon’s loss to the Blue Jays the Tigers record in day games now stands at a remarkable 0-10. A quick check of the splits reveals that the Tigers have been outscored 57 to 18 in day games. Yes, the offense has mustered less than 2 runs a game before the sun sets.

After dusk the Tigers are 6-3 and have scored 59 runs while allowing 60. So the pitching has been pretty inadequate no matter what time it is. The differences in offense however are dramatic to say the least. The following numbers aren’t inclusive of the Sunday tilt:

And if you look at the individuals, it is the biggest of the boppers (Ordonez/Cabrera) that have the biggest trouble during the day and the most success at night. Guillen has just been good regardless. But for the other two, and you can throw Renteria in there as well, this isn’t reflective of career trends. They’re typically just as good no matter what time it is.

And what makes this even weirder is to think back to the Tigers big rallies:

• April 9th @Boston: 4 runs in the 4th, 2 runs in the 8th, 1 in the 9th
• April 10th @Boston: 2 runs in the 4th, 1 run in the 7th, 3 runs in the 8th
• April 14th Minnesota: 11 runs in the 6th through 8th innings
• April 15th Minnesota: 5 runs in 6th through 8th innings
• April 16th @Cleveland: 11 runs 5th through 9th innings
• April 18th @Toronto: 7 runs in 6th through 9th innings

So by my rough count, 49 of the 59 runs they’ve plated in night games have come after the 3rd inning. That’s about an hour into the game which coincides with sunset. Coincidence?

Try as I might, I don’t have an explanation for this at all. Still, as the days continue to get longer this doesn’t bode well for the next several months. Of course if it has something to do with biorythms maybe it can be solved with a trip to the West Coast.

Some possible theories:

1. This is simply a coincidence. The Tigers have faced better pitchers during the day. It will work itself out.
2. The Tigers batting practice schedule gets thrown off for a day game and they don’t get as much early work in.
3. There is too much glare during the day this time of year and they don’t see the ball well with natural light. The Tigers played 3 day games under overcast conditions and scored 4 runs in one and 5 in another (they were shut out in the 3rd). So in the other 7 sunnny games the team scored 9 runs. Three of the four shut outs came on sunny afternoons.
4. They need an earlier curfew because they are just too sleepy during the day games.
5. Now this last one is a tad far fetched but stick with me: Clete Thomas is a carrier for vampire traits.
   • The players, both those on the Tigers and new comers like Renteria and Cabrera, have never had these types of splits before.
   • Clete is the only position player injected into the clubhouse without a track record we can check
   • Carlos Guillen always wears a cross and he hasn’t been effected
   • He could have infected Curtis Granderson first, dulling his reactions leading to the HBP. The ensuing DL stint is how Thomas made the roster in the first place.
   • Has anyone ever seen Clete eating garlic? I didn’t think so.
   • This would support items 3 and 4 as well.

Table of contents for The Cabrera-Willis Trade

1. Holy Freakin Crap
2. The Cabrera- Willis Trade – early returns
3. The 6 runs per game lineup
4. The New Tigers speak
5. Where should Cabrera play?
6. The Coda

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 above slot money directly allow for the acquisition of main trade chits Andrew Miller and Cameron Maybin, it also meant that a this type of aggressiveness meant that the Tigers cupboard – while depleted – isn’t bare.

Many of the Tigers new top prospects are the product of slot-buster signings in the most recent draft. Headlined by Rick Porcello, the group also includes Cale Iorg and Casey Crosby among others.

The question then becomes how long can this remain an advantage for the Tigers? Surely other organizations have taken notice of the Tigers strategy, and it’s not that different than what other big market clubs have done. While some teams will still religiously adhere to the slotting system, I have to believe that more teams adopt a more aggressive stance on acquiring top shelf talent early on.

Will the Tigers be able to reload quickly by just outspending on the draft? I don’t mean to minimize the work that David Chadd and his scouts do, because it is easy to make bad decisions with big piles of money. But when you’re willing to spend what it takes to get Maybins and Millers and Porcellos, it certainly improves your chances for success.

On the defensive

I just wanted to do a quick follow up on the value of Cabrera’s defense. It was a hot topic here on Friday and commentor Ryan S pointed out that PMR thought Cabrera was okay in 2006. I should have looked at more than one year of data, and in my haste I got a little sloppy. In terms of run value PMR had Cabrera at +5.2 runs in 2006 at the hot corner. Perhaps Cabrera isn’t awful, and simply underperformed in 2007 due to his weight gain, or the crappy Florida environment.

Taking it a little further I also looked at UZR numbers for Cabrera. In 2006 he rated -14 runs per 150 games. That happened to be the worst rating for third baseman who played at least 120 games. In 2007 UZR rated Cabrera as the worst third baseman in the National League at -28 runs while Brandon Inge ranked tops in the AL at +12.

As for his outfield prowess, he was merely below average in UZR splitting time between left and right field in 2004, but was -21 runs per 150 games while manning left in 2005.

Inge’ing away

But as I suspected even before I wrote the post, Inge won’t be playing third base for the Tigers. The high socks will be of a different color in 2007 as Inge has requested to be traded. I understand Inge’s desire to still be a starter, but I have to wonder if it’s in his best interest. He was mighty peeved when he got bumped from his starting catcher role in 2004, but that seemed to work out pretty good for him.

But given his 2007 offensive season, and his remaining contract, there doesn’t appear to be much of a market for Inge. Bless You Boys takes a look at several possible destinations.

Historical Context

Detroit Tiger Tales takes a look at Cabrera’s offense and puts in the context of Tigers history. If Cabrera can do for the Tigers what he has done for the Marlins, his OPS numbers will rank behind only Cobb, Greenberg, Heilman, and Crawford.

The Dombrowski factor

The praise for Dombrowski has been effusive to say the least, and deservedly so. As I’ve mentioned here before, I wrote a piece about Dombrowski for this year’s Hardball Times Annual (shipping now! get it in time for the holidays! please buy the book!). While I wrote the thing in September, it seems so dated given the flurry of activity this off season. But at least some of the main points of the article still hold true – so I got lucky that Dombrowski didn’t change his methodology.

I bring this up because Eric bought the book and read the article and had some comments on it worth checking out.

But mostly I bring up Dombrowski in this post so I can reference a certain article written by Rob Parker in February 2006. I’d link to the article, but it’s gone from the News site (I’m not implying anything – just that you have to pay to see it now), and the cached version in google has even been removed. So I thought it was worth the $3 to buy it from the archives for entertainment purposes. I won’t reproduce the whole thing to avoid any legal issues, but I will quote the beginning of the article:

The worst general manager in Detroit?

It’s not who you think.

Sure, Matt Millen, president of the Lions, has tried to grab the title. His 21-59 record in five seasons is horrendous.

But realistically, it’s got to be Dave Dombrowski of the Tigers.

Why?

At least Millen has an excuse. He had no experience when he was hired to lead the Lions.

Dombrowski has been at this gig for a while — initially with Montreal in 1988, then in Florida in 1993 and with Detroit in 2003.

And he still can’t get it right.

Table of contents for The Cabrera-Willis Trade

1. Holy Freakin Crap
2. The Cabrera- Willis Trade – early returns
3. The 6 runs per game lineup
4. The New Tigers speak
5. Where should Cabrera play?
6. The Coda

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 Brandon Inge. It’s pretty clear that Cabrera is better than Inge and I’m not going to try and dissuade you from thinking that way. But as both Rob Neyer and Lee Panas have pointed out, the chasm in defensive ability between the two makes the upgrade not as dramatic as it appears at first blush. Are the Tigers better served putting Cabrera in left field?

Defensively I’ll turn to the methodology I deployed a couple weeks ago when I was giddy about the Tigers infield defense. Using PMR, we know that Brandon Inge is about 20 plays better than predicted over 4000 balls in play. Cabrera meanwhile is awful. He makes about 31 plays fewer than expected. A swing of 51 plays between the two players is simply huge. That works out to about 40 runs. That number differs in magnitude from Neyer’s (he had it at 40 plays or 32 runs) and Lee’s (46 plays and 37 runs), but you get the idea.

But what happens if Cabrera plays the outfield? I don’t expect him to be a defensive whiz out there either. But it is farther down the defensive spectrum, so while he may be not good, it may not be as glaringly not good. Quite frankly a lower percentage of balls hit to left field are expected to be converted to outs than at third base, so simply in decreased opportunities there may be an improvement in putting Cabrera out there.

For the sake of argument, let’s average the performance of the 5 worst left fielders and say he’ll perform similarly. That would mean that over 4000 balls in play (or about 145 games) he’d miss 25 plays. Now those plays are more costly in left field than third base because they are more likely to go for extra bases so the run value is 21 runs.

But of course there is an offensive component there as well. To estimate left field production with Marcus Thames and Jacque Jones I gave Jones about two-thirds of the playing time with the rest going to Thames. And for the offensive projections I used the Bill James Runs Created projections available at Fangraphs.

Here’s how the two options work out over 145 games:

Cabrera plays 3rd

The total contribution from the 2 positions is 189.2 runs.

Cabrera plays left field

The total run contribution is 183.5

The verdict

It looks to be a wash. Caveats abound here because we’re working on a number of assumptions. James projections see Inge continuing to regress. Does he follow that path or does he bounce back even a little and get a slugging percentage over .400? Along the same lines does Jacque Jones bounce back and figure out how to hit for any modicum of power? Either thing happening swings the balance.

The other item to keep in mind is that the Tigers will be trotting out a rotation with 3 southpaws meaning there will be a greater number of balls going to the left side of the field. While that effects the infield as well as the outfield, there are more plays in the infield. The more balls hit to 3rd, the greater the disparity between Cabrera and Inge defensively.

As for what players you’d rather have around, there are pluses and minuses to both. Inge does provide considerable versatility in his ability to play 3rd base and outifeld and even catcher. If you remember the Tigers need someone to back up Pudge in case Vance Wilson isn’t ready. I know Inge doesn’t want to go behind the plate, but his situation has changed.

Inge is also owed the most money with 3 years left on his contract. That makes him the most desirable for the Tigers to move and the least desirable for other teams to take. Jones only has a year left, but doesn’t offer the versatility of Inge but does provide a left handed bat. Marcus Thames is entering his first year of arbitration, meaning he’ll be year to year and relatively cheap for the next 3 years, but provides the least flexibility and is a highly redundant right handed bat.

While this will cause great consternation among many, I’d advocate for keeping Inge and having him play 3rd base, putting Cabrera in left field, moving Thames and making Jacque Jones the 4th outfielder. If the Tigers can get a decent return for Inge, like prospects or a solid bullpen arm it does probably make sense to move him. But I can’t see moving him just to clear a spot or payroll. The team is far from boxed in at that point, and if Inge absolutely flounders offensively they can shift things around.

And yet another option is to platoon defensively. On the nights when a lefty is on the mound, especially Kenny Rogers, it is probably worthwhile to have the superior defender at the hot corner.

These aren’t easy choices, but they are definitely fun ones.

I love looking at spray charts of batted balls and seeing where hitters have success. I’m funny like that. Fortunately Dan Fox, proprietor of his own blog and writer for Baseball Prospectus has released an application that shows ball in play distributions for the last 4 years and he just released the updated version including 2007 data. With the heavy lifting done for me, I thought I’d take a look at 3 of the Tigers more interesting hitters from the last year.

Brandon Inge

First up is the ever controversial Brandon Inge. Inge had an awful season at the plate as he posted a meager 236/312/376 line. Part of his problem was what seemed to be an endless supply of check swing strikeouts. And that appears to be the largest difference over the past few years. Inge’s batting average on balls in play was .334 which wasn’t out of line with his past performances. His batted ball distribution didn’t differ greatly from his fairly productive 2006 season.

Inge actually upped his line drive rate and had a small improvement in his pop up rate, yet his overall performance dipped.  Maybe he was a little unlucky like he claimed earlier in the season?

Another complaint about Inge is that he became too pull happy.

Inge did become more of a pull hitter in 2006 and it worked to his benefit as he slugged .463 and 27 balls left the park.  He pulled just as much in 2007 but with a lot less success and a lot less power.  We also saw Inge go to the opposite field more often, but it was at the expense of going up the middle.  Based on observation and the data, it seems like it was more a function of Inge being late than looking to punch the ball to right.

Curtis Granderson

Nobody complained about Granderson pulling the ball too much, and he actually was more likely to pull the ball than Brandon Inge was. Of course, when you’re among the league leaders in extra base hits it doesn’t really matter where you hit the ball.

With Granderson’s proclivity for pulling the ball on the ground, it wouldn’t surprise me to see more teams shifting the shortstop closer to second base. I wouldn’t expect an Ortiz type shift because of Granderson’s speed and ability to bunt, but Curtis did hit .600 on grounders through the middle in 2007.

Magglio Ordonez

It seems that any look at Tigers performances isn’t complete without at least glancing at how Ordonez fared. It was a popular refrain from Rod Allen that Maggs was using the whole field, and it really was true. Ordonez hit 42% of his line drives to right field. And overall he hit the ball to right field as much as he hit it to left.

That kind of balance made it impossible for any team to load up one side. And in a spacious outfield like Comerica Park that gave Ordonez a lot of room to work with. Now granted he was still lucky in 2007. You don’t exceed career norms by that much without some things going your way. In the case of Ordonez it was a .318 batting average on ground balls and a .361 batting average on fly balls. MLB norms for the last 4 years were .233 and .272 respectively.

There’s a ton of information available, and it’s all free. So thanks to Dan Fox for his hard work, and let me know if you see anything interesting.