If you’re new here and like what you see, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Need more info on what subscribing entails? Here’s a primer. Thanks for visiting!We know Dontrelle Willis has the big leg kick and the bigger smile, but let’s take a graphical and statistical look at the [...]

While the Tigers received bad news in the form of Casey Crosby’s Tommy John surgery, the news is ridiculously upbeat concerning Rick Porcello. Lynn Henning chats with Glenn Ezell (director of player development) and Jon Matlack (roving pitching instructor) and has all kinds of praise for the first rounder.
“I don’t know what he’ll pitch [...]

As the Tigers continue to look for a veteran starting pitcher, it was probably inevitable that speculation about former 1997 Florida Marlin Livan Hernandez would arise. Dave Dombrowski has a penchant for the familiar, and Jim Leyland seems to have a considerable say in roster construction, and Hernandez is an older NL player. [...]

The Tigers inked Todd Jones to a 1 year deal. If you’re keeping score at home, that’s 2 Joneses today. I’ll have more tonight. In the meantime here is a post looking at Jones’ 2007 season.
Conference Call Notes

People are happy. Todd is happy. Dave is happy.
Jones’ kids are excited because [...]

Drew Sharp had a blurb in today’s Free Press in which he argued that “making a one-year commitment to Todd Jones for 2008 is still a better financial and competitive investment than giving Mariano Rivera three years at nearly $40 million.”
It isn’t that assertion that bothers me. One could make an argument [...]

WPA Leaders

Rank
Name
WPA

1
J.J. Putz
6.17

2
R. Betancourt
5.38

3
Takashi Saito
4.27

4
Heath Bell
4.12

5
Joakim Soria
3.85

6
J. Papelbon
3.72

7
Joe Nathan
3.63

8
F. Rodriguez
2.95

9
Hideki Okajima
2.93

10
Pat Neshek
2.83

11
Carlos Marmol
2.8

12
Brandon Lyon
2.8

13
J. Isringhausen
2.75

14
Manuel Corpas
2.71

15
Tony Pena
2.56

39
Todd Jones
1.57

WPA or win probability added tracks a teams chances of winning over the course of a game and the measure for an individual player is the difference in win probability when a player enters the game compared [...]

We’ve now heard from all the relevant players involved in the should we exercise Pudge’s option discussion. Mike Ilitch weighed in on Pudge last night:
“Pudge did a big thing for us, putting a face on the franchise,” Ilitch told The Associated Press on Wednesday night. “He’s made a lot of contributions.
“I don’t think it’ll [...]

One of the Tigers biggest decisions this off season will be whether or not to exercise Pudge Rodriguez’s $13 million option.  The net cost to the Tigers is $10 million because there is a $3 million buyout.  But be it $10 million or $13 million there is no way that Rodriguez will be “worth” what [...]

While there is a lot up in the air regarding the Tigers roster, one thing isn’t and that is Sean Casey’s future.  Casey met with Dombrowski and Leyland and they let him know he won’t be returning.
This isn’t a big surprise given the Tigers announcement that Carlos Guillen would be moving to first base.  And [...]

The decision has been made, Carlos Guillen is moving to first base in 2008. Kind of a strange time to announce it and then there is this curious quote from Guillen:
Guillen recently said he’d only switch if he was assured that the Tigers were going to replace him with someone good — “a Gold [...]

Congratulations to Curtis Granderson becoming one of only 3 players in the history of Major League Baseball to post a season totals of 20 or more doubles, triples, homers, and stolen bases. While the plateaus are kind of arbitrary it is still a remarkable achievement and helps to highlight just how special of a [...]

Yesterday Maggs got the honors with the Player of the Month award. Today is a Curtis Granderson media blitz.
First, he was the Tigers nominee for the Roberto Clemente award which honors players for their commitment to community and understanding of the value of helping others. Curtis’s work in this area is [...]