Category Archives: Previews

2007 Season, Fan Experience, Pitching, Previews

Tiger news round-up

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I’ll be a day late on announcing the DVD Giveaway winners. I promise it will be announced tomorrow night. In the meantime, some stuff worth reading:

PECOTA and the Central

The straight run of Baseball Prospectus’s PECOTA projections for the AL Central put the Tigers in 3rd place with 85 wins. Nate Silver makes some tweaks and post-adjustment he’s looking at the Tigers winning 88 games. With his other adjustments that puts them in a tie for 2nd place, one game out. So essentially it’s a 3 team toss-up in Silver’s eyes. Kind of hard to argue with that, unless you’re a White Sox fan who doesn’t like the 77 win projection.

Power ranking season

Fox Sports latest power rankings place the Tigers 6th, down two spots from last week. Meanwhile the Twins surged up 3 spots. Not sure why. But half of the top 6 teams are from the AL Central.

ESPN the Magazine picks Tigers

I don’t think it’s on newstands yet, and you need to be an Insider I think to flip through, but they’re picking the Tigers to win the AL Central.

New displays coming to Comerica Park

You know those fancy, colorful, shiny displays that you see on the facing of the upper bowl of many newer arenas? Comerica Park is getting those. They are also replacing the out of town scoreboard in right-center with an LED display. Similar ones I’ve seen in Pittsburgh and Cleveland seem to display a ton of information, so I think it could be a good thing. It will also make for dynamic ad space so hopefully it will be additional revenue for the club to sink into a Carlos Guillen extension.

I’m not sure I’ll like the strip on the upper bowl though. I’m trying to visualize it, and I think it might take a little away from the retro look of the park.

The Freep also had a story and video looking at stadium preparation for the Opener.

Four Tops get anthem duty

The Four Tops have been tapped to sing the National Anthem for the Opener. No announcement yet on first pitch, but I’d imagine it will be Kwame and Granholm. Gates will open at 10:30am with a ceremony (not the ring ceremony which is on April 4th). Me, I’m hoping for a fly-over.

Things are looking good weather-wise calling for 54 and sunny.

Now if only those tickets would arrive.

Other stuff

Previews, Tiger History

Tiger scented potpurri

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A little bit of this and a little bit of that:

More Curtis

Curtis Granderson opened up his mailbag again. This time he talks about the high socks (love the high socks), his at-bat music, and bubble gum. Hard hitting stuff? Not at all. Interesting? I think so.

I always liked how the Negro League players looked wearing their high socks, and I wanted mine to look like theirs. The only problem is that I couldn’t get socks high enough when I was younger. Now that I’m in the Major Leagues, I can get them as long as I want, and I don’t plan on bringing them down anytime soon.

Ducksnorts

Cyberfriend Geoff Young, proprietor of Ducksnorts a blog about the Padres, recently wrote a book which is now available. The Ducksnorts 2007 Baseball Annual is of course for Padres fans, but I still found it interesting as a Tiger fan. First, Geoff has a great writing style and is great at mixing stats and stories. Second, Randy Smith’s name came up quite a bit, and in a favorable light no less. I didn’t know that it was Smith who traded Sheffield for Hoffman, and picked up several other key members of San Diego’s 1998 team. I also didn’t know that Smith ever got the better end of the repeated deals he made with Kevin Towers.

If you’re interested, the book is available either electronically or in paperback.

Cobb on strategy

Hat tip to The Book Blog for pointing me to this article about Ty Cobb and his daring ways on the basepaths. Cobb talks about taking the extra base and how he worked out a lot of plays ahead of time, trying to calculate the odds of success. Neat stuff.

Other stuff

  • John Heyman names his all under-appreciated team and Carlos Guillen is the infielder.
  • The Dugout notes that Curtis Granderson has just about as many friends on MySpace as presidential candidates Hillary Clinton, John McCain, Mitt Romney, Dennis Kucinich, and Joe Biden.
  • In need of masses: Tom Tango is compiling a community forecast for player performance. If you’re got some serious opinions on how the Tigers (or other teams) players will fare this year, submit you best guesstimates here.
2007 Season, AL Central, Previews

Previews and Predictions

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As we’re entering the final stretch of spring training, the 2007 predictions are starting to come with increasing regularity. Here’s what today revealed.

Simulatin’

The Replacement Level Yankee Weblog ran a series of Diamond Mind Simulations. He ran 1000 seasons using each of PECOTA, Marcel, Chone, Diamond Mind and ZiPS. I summarized how the tigers fared below:

I think it is safe to say that the ZiPS projections look to be the most realistic – kidding of course. The truth of the matter is, and I’ve been thinking this as I read all sorts of projections, all teams in the Central not from Kansas City have a legitimate shot at taking the division.

The composite of all 4 simulations have the Tigers 3rd in the division with 87.4 wins behind Cleveland with 88.3 and Minnesota 89.2. The sims weren’t quite as favorable to the White Sox with a projected 75.9 wins.

Sports Illustrated

A less stat/computer/geeky preview from the folks at SI have the Tigers coming in 2nd in the Central and ranked as the 5th best team in the American League. The scouting report is pretty standard citing the Tigers balance as a strength, and injury & last year’s pitcher workload as concerns.

Cranking Win Shares

While not a prediction system per se, the Baseball Crank takes a look at Established Win Share Levels for the AL Central. EWSL attempts to quantify the talent level on a team by looking at past performance and adjusting for age. The Tigers rank favorably because they are pretty solid top to bottom. The downside is that because of the age of the key players, the age adjustments are most unfavorable.

2007 Season, Minors, Previews, Spring Training, Tiger History

One of those link round-up posts

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Andrew Miller
credit Roger DeWitt

Miller Time

John Sickels has another prospect smackdown, this time it is Andrew Miller vs. Adam Miller. Sickels gives a very slight edge to Adam Miller.

Maybe a SLIGHT edge on intangibles for Adam Miller, Andrew gets a slight edge on tools, Adam gets a slight edge on current polish and performance, even on projection. I rated Adam at Number Six on my pitching prospect list, and Andrew at Number Seven. It’s really, really close but overall I think Adam is just a HAIR better.

What’s up with Leyland?

Apparently Jim Leyland doesn’t want to talk about Mike Maroth not being on the playoff roster. I can’t blame him because that was a long time ago. But it appears to be a sore subject and I’m not sure why.

“That’s kind of a sore subject with me,” a testy Leyland said when asked if the Maroth issue had been resolved this spring. “I don’t think that in my opinion, he was playoff-pitching fit. I guess that’s the best way to say it. I don’t want to get into it, but I’ve read some comments, I know it was disappointing and everything for him, but, particularly with his situation, he really wasn’t a relief pitcher.”

I don’t remember Mike Maroth ever making any comments in the press that criticized or slighted Leyland at all, so I’m really not sure where this is coming from. Maroth has always struck me as a team player, but anyone in that situation would be disappointed. Heck, while I didn’t think he should have been on the roster, I was disappointed for him.
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2006 Season, Playoffs, Previews

World Series Prediction Center

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The Tigers are better than the Cardinals. I don’t think this even requires that much debate. The Tigers won 12 more games than the Cardinals. That in itself is impressive, but they did it in a division with 2 other 90 game winners while the Cardinals 83 was enough to lead the NL Central.

In addition, the won-loss records weren’t flukes. Detroit outscored their opponents by 147 runs while the Cards margin was only +19.

It’s understandable that the Tigers are overwhelming favorites in this series. They have the talent advantage. They are rested. The Cardinals have one day off and are somewhat forced into a particular rotation. The Tigers have an additional week of data and scouting reports to work with.

Normally this is the point where I caution people on getting too over-confident by pointing to the example of the New York Yankees. Remember the Yankees, the consensus favorite for whom the Tigers would merely be something to shoo away enroute to bigger things? The Tigers handled the Yankees in 4 with ease. The difference in this series is that the gap between the Tigers and Yankees wasn’t as great as the gap betwen the Cardinals and Tigers.

Now the Tigers should win, but will they? I think they get it done on the field as well as on paper and I’ll take the Tigers in 6.

The round up

Tiger Bloggers

  • Detroit Tiger Tales has a comprehensive write-up. Lee takes Tigers in 6.
  • Brian is worried about people handing this series to the Tigers before they even play, but takes the Tigers in 6.
  • Mack Avenue Tigers breaks it down by component and likes the Tigers in 5.
  • Greg Eno goes position by position and finds the Tigers should win in 5.

Cardinals blogs

I was hoping to list a handful of Cards blogs predictions, but so far they aren’t up yet – except for Deadspin who took the Cardinals in 7 (and they have links to a bunch of national predictions).

But for the Cards fan perspective, check out Cardnilly, Viva el Birdos, Gas House Gang, Cardinals Diaspora, and Get Up Baby.

Mainstream Media Folk

  • Baseball Prospectus likes the Tigers in 6 in what is the most comprhensive preview I’ve seen so far.
  • The ESPN crew has the Tigers as the consensus, typically in 5 or 6 games.
  • John Donovan from CNNSI says Tigers in 6.
  • Ken Rosenthal says Cardinals in 7.
2006 Season, Pitching, Players, Previews

A heaping helping of Zumaya

There were several Detroit Tiger mentions over the last two days, and many of them included references to Joel Zumaya.

The Free Press had a piece on Zumaya’s new curveball/slider.

“My curve can be a slider,” he said. “If I throw it from over the top, it’s a curve with a 12-to-6 break. If I lower my arm angle, it has more of a slider movement. You’ll see me do that when the count is 0-2.”

His secondary pitch combined with the fastball has Buster Olney making Zumaya his Rookie of the Year pick. (Insider link)

Joel Zumaya has added a curve to his repertoire. I’m picking him to win AL Rookie of the Year. Based on what scouts are seeing in him, he won’t be in the Tigers’ bullpen for long.

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