Category Archives: Players

Former Tigers, Players, Statistics

The young and the retired

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Feeling sick, need sleep, short post…

  • While there has been plenty of talk about prospect rankings, what about the players who broke in last year. Who are the sophomores to watch? Bryan Smith at Baseball Analysts has compiled the top 20 sophomores. Detroit Tiger Curtis Granderson checks in at #12.

    Do the Tigers really appreciate what they have in Granderson? Are they really considering starting Nook Logan at centerfield this season? In 2004, Granderson broke out at one of the minors easiest stadiums to hit a home run in. His numbers were helped by an August that was disproportionate to the rest of his career. He was an anomaly, but this year, showed that his breakout was for real. Granderson might not be the next great Tiger, or even a consistent All-Star. But for a team like Detroit, that has been “rebuilding” for so long, he’s the long-term answer at one position. PECOTA loves him, but I don’t see enough power developing for a superstar to shine through.

  • Does speed kill or does it annoy? I found some research from Cyril Morong about the impacts of base stealing. He used Scott Podsednik as his case study. He found that the value from Podsednik’s stolen base was outweighed by his below average offensive showing. Now there are other elements to speed, such as scoring from first on a wild pitch, but…you guys all know where I’m going with this.
  • It’s old news now, but Troy Percival has retired – sort of. He’s retired in the sense that he’s not playing anymore, but not in the sense that he still isn’t under contract and earning $6 million this year. Fortunately the Tigers will get some insurance relief (I want to say I read $3 million somewhere but I can’t find it now). Brian and Sam have wrapped up Percival’s career pretty thoroughly. I was pretty positive about the Percival signing at the time, as the idiocy in the following paragraph will show:

    The other reason I

Defense, Players, Statistics, Uncategorized

Shelton Game

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Remember when it seemed like Chris Shelton didn’t have a position? In fact one local columnist didn’t include Shelton in last year’s Top 10 Tiger prospects because:

Shelton does not have a position and is unathletic. Last season, when he did get to play in the major leagues and rehab assignment at Toledo, he did not sting the ball. He hit well in arizona, but the caliber of competition was down this year.

Well it turns out that Shelton can play first base. According to PMR, he was a pretty average fielder last year, and given his offensive production, average defense is quite sufficient. (While he made more outs than expected, he fell in the middle of the pack). What’s more is that he was a superior defender compared to Carlos Pena.

Player InPlay Actual Outs Predicted Outs DER Predicted DER Difference
Chris B Shelton 2337 152 146.52 0.065 0.063 0.00234
Carlos Pena 1363 98 105.67 0.072 0.078 -0.00563

Similar to what I did in the Granderson/Logan comparison post, the numbers were interesting enough that I wanted to compare range stats between the two.

Category Pena Shelton
Innings 429.1 738.1
Zone Rating .798 .857
Range Factor 9.50 10.21
FRAA -2 0

Shelton comes out on top is every category. I’m not sure if everyone was just flat wrong in Shelton’s ability, or if he improved his game through a ton of hard work, but the results are encouraging. Now what isn’t included in first basemen range is the footwork around the bag. I’m not sure how it could even be quantified, but just from watching that seems to be an area where Pena excels.

While I still want to see Pena get at-bats, it is becoming more and more difficult to find reasons to take Shelton out of the lineup.
detroit tigers, chris shelton, carlos pena, baseball

Defense, Players, Statistics

Defending Center

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A couple weeks ago I wrote a post making the case why Curtis Granderson should be the starting centerfielder for the Tigers over Nook Logan. The the bulk of the agrument was based on Granderson’s offensive superiority. I intentionally didn’t delve into defense for a couple reasons. First, defensive metrics are tricky. It’s rare that you can get all the metrics to agree on any given player. Second, that problem becomes magnified when you’re dealing with small sample sizes as is the case with Curtis Granderson. However, there are enough metrics out there that we can take a look, as long as we take a grain of salt along with it.

Baseball Musings has posted the PMR for centerfielders. I lifted the following table, and included some of the prominent centerfielders in the game. Please note, this isn’t a leaderboard, but a sampling of some who ranked near the top.

Player InPlay Actual Outs Predicted Outs DER Predicted DER Difference
Curtis Granderson 1044 119 110.91 0.114 0.106 0.00775
Andruw Jones 4309 365 337.56 0.085 0.078 0.00637
Jim Edmonds 3538 319 297.13 0.090 0.084 0.00618
Aaron Rowand 4128 388 362.99 0.094 0.088 0.00606
Nook P Logan 2730 282 270.92 0.103 0.099 0.00406

Baseball Musings: Probabilistic Model of Range, 2005, Centerfielders
Continue reading Defending Center →

Players

Granderson versus Logan

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Lynn Henning has a piece in today’s Detroit News once again touting Logan as the Tigers starting centerfielder – and leadoff hitter. Let’s take a look at this step by step.

But he was pretty good the first half of the season

We submit that one of Leyland’s pet projects during spring training will include doing everything possible to make Nook Logan a starting center fielder and leadoff batter.

Those who tried to do the same thing with Logan last year — former manager Alan Trammell and his coaches– will say to Leyland: Good luck. And they have a point. But Leyland and new hitting coach Don Slaught will work with Logan under the assumption that a guy who hit around .300 into June can hit .270 for a season if he makes some manageable adjustments.

I’m fully on board with trying to develop Nook Logan offensively, then again I’m on board with trying to develop any player offensively. But people are too fondly remembering Logan’s early start in the context of his entire professional history. Logan’s season last year was fueled by a very impressive 45 at-bat April in which he posted 422/447/578 line. It would be the only month of the season that his OPS was north of 700. From May 1st on, his line was a meager 231/286/296.
Continue reading Granderson versus Logan →

Injuries, Players

7-22=Suspicion

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It has been widely reported, Ivan “Pudge” Rodriguez reported to spring training 22 pounds lighter than last season. In the steroid suspicion era, any significant weight loss will raise eyebrows. Combine the weight loss with an impending new drug policy, and allegations of steroid use by ex-teammate Jose Canseco and it’s pretty easy to see why people are pointing to this as potential proof of Rodriguez’s use of performance enhancers.

Quotes of Rodgriguez in the News, Free Press, and Booth Newspapers indicate that he altered his offseason workout routine to emphasize more running and less lifting. His explanation did little to quell suspicions as he was implying that the byproducts of his routine would be a less muscled physique. Also, skeptical folks might ask how a hard working, well conditioned athlete could lose 20 pounds in a couple of months. Afterall, it’s not like Joe Sedentary decided to get off the couch and start excercising to lose his beer gut.

Rodriguez most likely lost the bulk of his weight through the other component of his offseason regimine – he changed his diet. There is a Miami based nutrionist Sari Mellman, who has many professional athletes as clients. Some of those clients lost 20lbs. following her guidance. Her program involves taking a blood sample to see how the blood reacts with 150-200 different types of food. Apparently, food requirements vary from person to person. This blood test identifies the foods that are most beneficial and most harmful to the individual. If your body has an inability to properly process a type of food, it causes an inflammatory response. Mellman’s program claims to adjust your diet so that your body can learn to properly process these problem foods. The positive results, in addition to weight loss, are supposed to include an improved immune system, more energy, and better recovery time.

Here is a listing of some of her more prominent clients and their successes:
Ricky Williams goes from 250 to 229 (2002)
Vernon Wells goes from 245 to 225 during offseason (2004)
Jack Nicklaus loses 20lbs
She also lists Junior Seau, David Boston, and Dwight Freeney among her NFL clients. Other MLB clients include Adam Dunn, Ken Griffey, and Brad Penney.

I don’t know that Pudge’s change in diet resulted in the substantial weight loss, but seeing the effects that a nutrionist had on other well conditioned athletes leads me to believe it is possible. My main point is that there are other ways to explain the weight loss than suspecting that he went off steroids.

Contracts, Players, Roster Management

Tigers Sign Carlos….Pena

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The Tigers signed a Scott Boras client named Carlos today. They agreed to a one year deal with Pena. I don’t have the terms yet, but I’ll update when I do. This means that the Tigers have inked their 3 arbitration eligible players (Inge and Sanchez were the others) to one year deals.

UPDATE The contract is 2.575 million with a 25k bonus for 625 plate apperances.

Pena showed some life after the All Star break last year hitting 250/362/513. While he struck out a whole bunch, he did improve his plate awareness garnering a walk every 8 plate appearances. Offensively last year he was an about average first baseman, so $2.6 million shouldn’t be too bad heading into his age 27 season.

UPDATE 2 With the signings of Martinez, Pena, and Wilson the Tigers have 15 players under contract for next year. I couldn’t find Wilson’s contract, but he made $720,000 last year. The Tigers payroll for the 15 players under contract is $56 million. The other 10 players who will be on the big league roster (barring trades of course) are all “renewable.” The total cost of those 10 will be about $4 million (give or take a half million). That puts the payroll for the big league roster right at $60 million as it currently stands.