Tag Archives: jeremy bonderman

2008 Season, Injuries, Managing & Strategy

Shuffling the deck and rehab news

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A cornucopia of Tigers news that has come out today. Jim Leyland is prepared to make some changes, even if it means hurting some feelings. The skip says:

“So I’m going to change some things around here and see what happens. I think that’s important. As I said, I don’t know if it’s going to work. I don’t know if it’s going to make people angry, but that’s the way it goes.

“I don’t mean for this to sound negative, I don’t mean it that way, but this isn’t about feelings. It’s beyond worrying about egos. This is about doing the job. I’m going to try some stuff.

“We have a great group of guys and I think they’ll understand. They might not agree with it, but the manager has to do what he thinks is best for the team. If this team is what I think it is, they’ll go along with it.

“We have to get it rolling somehow,” Leyland said. “I’m not really a 40-game guy, or a June 1 guy, but you can’t just sit there when it’s not working.

“My general manager has given me a hell of a team here. I haven’t really coached it to the right flow. But I’m not going to sit still. I don’t want to be patient to a fault.”

One thing you can’t accuse Leyland of this season is being complacent. He’s shuffling batting orders, moving people aroudn the diamond defensively, giving pitchers different roles in the pen. The hope is that something sticks. Some of the moves coming out are:

Miggy drops to 6th

Jim Leyland dropped Miguel Cabrera to the sixth spot in the lineup. I have to believe that this move is more psychological that strategic. Let me rephrase that. I believe that the implications of this move will be more psychological than strategic.

Lineup configuration has a pretty limited impact on run scoring. Cabrera hasn’t put up his typical numbers, but has still been an offensive force. He has struggled with RISP to the tune of a 639 OPS. If there is a thought that he’s pressing, perhaps moving him down will take pressure off of him to drive in runs. I don’t really believe any of that and chalk it up more to sample size issues. I’m somewhat supported in this because he has a .903 OPS with men on.

Still odd that Cabrera is productive and gets moved from 5th to 6th while Sheffield was allowed to flounder at the 3 spot.

Rotation flip-flop

With the off day yesterday Leyland is flipping Jeremy Bonderman and Kenny Rogers in the rotation. I’m guessing the move is 2-fold. First, Rogers struggled a little in his last start against the M’s. He allowed 8 hits, 3 walks, and 4 runs in 5.1 innings on May 21st. Second, Rogers is a Cy Young pitcher in Oakland. In 45 career starts he is 25-4 with a 3.46 ERA.

Supposedly there is another move coming with the pitching staff.

Rodney and Zumaya news

The news out of Lakeland is encouraging for Joel Zumaya and Fernando Rodney. Both will be embarking on rehab assignments soon. Rodney is likely heading to Toledo while Zumaya will stay in Lakeland to start.

I’d guess that Rodney is probably a week or two away if he is heading to the Mud Hens. But given his problems last year and this year, I’d still be surprised if he made it through the rest of the season.

Regardless, barring setbacks both would be joining the Tigers within a month or so because a rehab assignment can only last 30 days.

2008 Season, Pitching

Bonderman stays away

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Jeremy Bonderman turned in another disappointing performance in his latest start against the Yankees. It seemed to follow a pattern than Bonderman has established and has led to the worst set of peripherals in his career. Let’s go batter by batter through the first inning to see what went wrong:

Bonderman against Damon:
Bonderman against Damon
Things started out well for Bonderman. He got a first pitch strike on a fastball in the lower outside quadrant. Damon fouled off two borderline pitches on the outside corner before fanning on a slider that bounced up.
Continue reading Bonderman stays away →

2008 Season, Pitching, Research

Pitch f/x: Bonderman 4-3-08

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From time to time this year (as time permits), I’ll delve in to MLB.com’s pitch f/x data to analyze a starters outing. Tonight we look at Jeremy Bonderman’s start against the Kansas City Royals on April 3rd.

Pitch Mix

This season MLB.com started classifying pitches. This seems pretty convenient, but from what I’ve seen so far the classifications don’t quite match. In the case of Jeremy Bonderman we know he throws both a 2 seam (sinker) and 4 seam fastball, a slider, and an occasional change. The data had Bonderman throwing a splitter, which looks to be a misclassification of his slider. Because of this, I did my own pitch classifications using K-means clustering and some judgment.

The table below shows his pitch mix and average velocity for the 87 pitches tracked by the system today.

	    n     mph
2seam       39   92.0 
4seam       25   92.6   
change       4   83.8  
slider      19   85.6

Continue reading Pitch f/x: Bonderman 4-3-08 →

2008 Season, Game Post

Game 3: Royals at Tigers

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PREGAME: Talking sweep coming into the 3rd game of the series doesn’t really surprise. Talking Tigers avoiding a sweep does.

It’s a pretty good pitching match-up with Jeremy Bonderman taking on Zach Grienke. The Tigers face Grienke 3 times last year, lighting him up twice(.2 innings, 4 runs and 4 innings 6 runs) and being stymied the third and most recent time (4 innings, no runs, no walks, 5 K’s). In 15 at-bats Grienke has limited Magglio Ordonez to 2 singles.

Jeremy Bonderman is trying to capture his early season form from a year ago. He did well against the Royals in 2007 allowing 4 runs and fanning 17 in 20 innings of work.

Did you know that KC leads the all time series 257-243?

Game Time 1:05

KCR @ DET, Thursday, April 3, 2008 Game Preview – Baseball-Reference.com

POSTGAME: Where I try and make the best out of a crappy situation:

  • At least it was Sheffield who tore a ligament in his finger today. If it had been Zumaya the finger would have become detached, kicked into the outfield, and have been carried away by a seagull.
  • Jeremy Bonderman conquered his first inning issues.
  • Brandon Inge is bolstering his trade value by hitting well.
  • Jacque Jones had a strike out free day.
  • The Royals are a first place team. It’s not like the Tigers got swept by a bunch of scrubs.
Injuries, Interviews

Talking injuries with Will Carroll

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Will Carroll is a sports injury guru. He’s been writing the Under The Knife column for Baseball Prospectus for many years, and also compiles the annual Team Health Reports for BP as well. Carroll also authored Saving the Pitcher, a detailed look at pitching injuries, the primary factors for injuries, and strategies to prevent them.

Carroll was kind enough to answer a few questions over email.

DTW: Jeremy Bonderman has experienced elbow pain in two of the last three years. Is this a product of the high proportion of sliders he throws, or is it simply a matter of a young pitcher with quite a few innings on his arm? Could an increased reliance on the change up help him from an injury standpoint?
WC: I think it’s more the latter, which is the more disappointing result. Bonderman has been handled very carefully and smartly, but he’s young and used heavily. (Not abused, just used.) If it’s just inevitable that a heavily used youngster who’s not a freak will break down, well, at least we’ll know.

As for the changeup, no, not really. Glenn Fleisig is the expert here and his research has shown that all pitches thrown well have a smaller than expected difference in force.

DTW: Fernando Rodney has had TJ surgery in his past, and now several bouts of tendinitis. Last year he was basically an every-other-month pitcher and things aren’t starting off well in 2008. Do you see him ever throwing a complete season again?
WC: No, the wear and tear is simply too much. I don’t think he’s ever really been healthy, which is pretty amazing considering how effective he’s been in spurts.
DTW: If you were in charge of pitching in the Tigers farm system, how would you set Rick Porcello’s workload limit?
WC: I wouldn’t limit him.

Ok, that’s a bit dramatic. I did an article at BP a couple years ago which I think is one of the most important I’ve done. (That’s not setting the bar very high.)
I think some type of logical, progressive approach is the future. Some organization is going to do it — and I’m not saying my idea is right, though I think it’s close — and they’re going to be way, way ahead of the game because not only will they know what their pitchers can do, they’ll know how they can use them best.

DTW: When making the decision to go the rest/rehab route or go right to surgery, do different teams have different tendencies? If so how much is dictated by the front office versus the team medical staff versus the specialist (Andrews/Yokum types)?
WC:
No, not really. Almost all teams will try to avoid surgery, which is smart. Sometimes you can, sometimes you can’t. I think some are starting to take a look at the times when surgery is probably the best possible result, but it’s all about the timing. The Curt Schilling situation is one of the toughest ones, where disagreement and varying timing and biases all end up with the player’s career caught in the middle.
DTW: Have you seen any teams make a concerted effort to focus on the mental aspect of the game by bringing psychologists on to the medical staff?
WC:
Several. Not only teams, but agencies. I think the Indians are at the forefront, but there’s a lot of teams that have been doing this quietly.
DTW: I know we’re working with little comparative data here, but give me your odds on Joel Zumaya ever being able to throw 100mph again?
WC: You know, I actually talked to Brian Griese who had similar surgery about this and he thinks it will take Zumaya a full year, but if his mechanics stay sound, Griese thought he could get back to full strength. Take that for what it’s worth.

Thanks to Will for taking the time chat with us. You can find the Tigers Team Health Report at BP.

Pitching, Players, Research, Uncategorized

Do Bonderman’s pitches fool umpires?

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An article at the Wall Street Journal delved into Jeremy Bonderman’s first inning struggles. Former pitching coach Bob Cluck wondered whether or not Bonderman’s struggles are attributable to umpires needing an inning to adjust to the movement on Bonderman’s pitches.

The stats seem to support this theory. The last seven times Mr. Bonderman faced an ump for a second or third time in a season, he allowed first-inning runs only once. On opening day last season — when the first three batters he faced all scored — the umpire behind the plate was Rick Reed, who hadn’t seen him in nearly a year.

Looking on a results basis probably isn’t the best way to determine this. But being able to check Bonderman’s called strike/ball rates in the first inning versus other innings, as well as factoring the first time an umpire sees him versus the second time, may be worth some effort. And then even expanding it beyond Bonderman to look for other pitchers who have similar movement on their pitches and if they have similar issues. The latter could be done with pitch f/x data and the former with retrosheet data. I’ll focus on the retrosheet piece for now.

Big View

The first thing I did was to look at Bonderman’s first inning ball and called strike rates compared to all other innings. I looked at all Bonderman data going back to 2003.
bondo1.JPG
The differences are pretty minimal, especially the ratio of balls to called strikes. In fact the ratio indicates that Bonderman gets more calls earlier in the game – if at all.

First Timers

Next, I took at all the times that an umpire was behind the plate for the first time against Bonderman. If the theory holds true, there should be a bigger disparity.

bondo2.jpg
We can see that a higher percentage of balls are called. We also see fewer called strikes in relation to the number of balls.

Return visits

Finally, a look at those who have called Bonderman games before.
bondo3.JPG
A somewhat interesting dynamic with this group. The ratio is more favorable in the first inning, but a higher a percentage of balls are called as well.

On another note, Brian Gorman is the umpire who has called the most of Bonderman’s starts with six. Larry Vanover has done 5 Bonderman games.

Taking familiarity one step further, I also pulled out the times when an umpire was seeing Bonderman multiple times in the same season. This isn’t a common phenomenon with it only happening 23 times in Bonderman’s 5 seasons. So it’s a situation that will present itself a handful of times a year.

bondo4.JPG
Things are certainly more favorable in the first inning for this situation. But that only seems to help in the first innings.

Conclusions

So is there anything to take from this data, does the specualtion hold up? I’d say that it is possible there is an effect for umpires seeing Bonderman for the first time ever. The rate of called balls, and overall rate of calling balls is highest for first timers in the first inning against Bonderman. The fact that the numbers in subsequent innings of that first start are in line with overall numbers does seem to indicate that the umpires do make an adjustment.

But otherwise the numbers are largely inconclusive. Given the in game variation for those seeing Bonderman repeatedly in a season seems to indicate that Bonderman has much more influence over these numbers than the umpires do – which really isn’t a shocker at all.

With pitch f/x data one could look for the frequency that pitches are called correctly by inning. But with only a partial season of data there isn’t enough to work with for the time being.

2007 Season, Pitching, Research

Scouting Bonderman with pitch f/x

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Jim Leyland has come out on several occasions and said that Jeremy Bonderman is one of the keys to any success the Tigers might enjoy in 2008. Bonderman’s second half swoon, which I attribute largely to his elbow pain that he finally fessed up to, clouded what was starting out to be a phenomenal season. An ERA of 8.50 over his last 9 starts, combined with the arm troubles meant that Bonderman finished with the highest ERA and lowest innings total since his rookie season. Like with Dontrelle Willis, we’ll delve into the pitch f/x data and see what we can find out about the veteran 25 year old pitcher.
Continue reading Scouting Bonderman with pitch f/x →

Statistics

Bill James Handbook fun

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Last week one of my favorite publications showed up on my doorstep – The Bill James Handbook. This year’s version doesn’t disappoint. I’ve already dropped references to +/- fielding metrics which are an important reference point for evaluating defense. The usual assortment of win shares, park factors, player stats, and projections are also available. There is also a section on baserunning (the Tigers ranked 6th overall and had the highest percentage of their baserunners score). But my favorite part of the book are the leader boards which feature the top 10 in a number of obscure categories.

I won’t hit everything on the leaderboards, a lot of it is obvious (like Granderson and Ordonez being really good). Plus I don’t want to publish too much content because you should still have some incentive to buy the book. But as a teaser:

Hitting Stats

  • Magglio Ordonez slugged .713 against southpaws which far and away led the league (Frank Thomas was second at .613). Meanwhile Granderson and Ordonez placed 4th and 5th in slugging against righties.
  • Hard to believe it, but Brandon Inge had the 9th best batting average against lefties and the 10th best OBP at .419.
  • Granderson had the highest stolen base success rate and Carlos Guillen had the second lowest. But Guillen had the 8th most steals of 3rd base with 5.
  • Brandon Inge ranked 8th in pitches per plate appearance, and was 5th worst when putting pitches outside of the strikezone in play.
  • The Tigers had 3 of the 6 best first halves in terms of OPS with Ordonez, Gary Sheffield, and Carlos Guillen raking early in the season.
  • Ordonez swung at the first pitch 39.6% of the time which was 5th highest last year. Guillen ranked 9th. Curtis Granderson swung at the first pitch 13.6% which was the 5th lowest rate and Sheffield ranked 9th.

Pitching

  • Justin Verlander ranked 10th in terms of percentage of pitches in the strike zone. He ranked 2nd in terms of pitches thrown faster than 95mph and his 94.8 average fastball was 3rd fastest. But he also threw change ups at the 5th highest rate and curve balls at the 9th highest rate.
  • Jeremy Bonderman threw sliders 34.5% of the time which ranked first. Nate Robertson was 2nd at 22.6%.
  • Even with Joel Zumaya’s injuries and decreased velocity when he came back, he still led the league in 100mph fastballs with 30 and Verlander ranked 2nd with 17.
  • Hitters only posted a .502 OPS against Chad Durbin’s slider, the 3rd best rate in the AL.
  • Only 14.3% of the baserunners that Bobby Seay inherited scored, which was also 3rd best.
  • Nate Robertson sported the 5th slowest average fastball.
2007 Season, Pitching, Research

A different look at the Bonderman-Halladay Duel

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Taking advantage of the enhanced gameday data once again, I’ll take a look at Jeremy Bonderman’s and Roy Halladay’s awesome performances last night.

We’ll start with Jeremy Bonderman. The table below shows the mix of pitches and results for Bonderman:

It was a little surprising to see that Jeremy Bonderman didn’t miss that many bats last night, and none with his fastball. But what he did was induce a ton of weak contact. This was probably one of the biggest factors in keeping his pitch count so low.
Continue reading A different look at the Bonderman-Halladay Duel →