The Detroit Tiger Weblog

Author: billfer

  • Review: Detroit Tigers Vintage Films DVD from A & E

    detroit-tigers-ae-dvd.jpg

    A & E television has been building quite the library of baseball DVDs over the last couple years. Looking to continue this trend and capitalize on the resurgence of the Detroit Tigers, they recently released a DVD featuring footage from the Tigers 3 post WWII World Series victories.

    Now none of the content is actually “new.” This isn’t a comphrehensive look at the Tigers World Series victories. What it is is a compilation of the World Series specials that are produced each year. However, good luck trying to find them anywhere else, and now they are all available on on DVD.
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  • Making their own luck

    In my last post I pointed out that Kenny Rogers, Nate Robertson, and Justin Verlander were the beneficiaries of some combination of good defense and good luck. Basically I was trying to point out that while all 3 had solid seasons, there were some breaks that were beyond their control that went their way. But I as thought a little more, specifically about gold glover Rogers, how much did the pitchers help their own cause?

    Fortunately, Pinto has already published the individual PMR numbers for pitchers. By subtracting the pitcher’s contribution from the total team’s defense when he was on the mound, we can see who was leaning on the guys behind him the most.

    The order of the list gets shuffled. Kenny Rogers accounted for a third of the plays above expected. And Justin Verlander had pretty much neutral defense behind him. Meanwhile, Nate Robertson got the most help.

    In the comments to the other post Brian questioned why some pitchers consistently exceed or lag their fielding independent stats. The pitcher’s ability to help his own cause may – emphasis on may – in some cases be a part of the reason.

  • Luck of the Pitcher

    I think it is pretty common knowledge at this point, that in large part the Tigers pitchers results exceeded their performance last year. If you subscribe to the DiPS theory, that pitchers have limited ability to control whether balls in play turn into hits, then in general the Tigers pitchers got by without striking out a lot of guys because the defense was so good behind them. Part of me wondered it the pitchers still deserved some of the credit. That perhaps they were allowing more “fieldable” balls, thus having better defense behind them.

    Well David Pinto at Baseball Musings has answered the question.
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  • Blog Grandy Blog

    I’m really enjoying Curtis Granderson’s new blog.

    I particularly enjoyed yesterday’s post where after talking about his NCAA bracket, he wrote about the refinements to his swing:

    Even with all the March Madness going on with college hoops we are still working very hard on the field, and I’m still trying to iron out my new swing and approach this spring training. Basically what I’m trying to do is make my swing as simple as possible and eliminate as much wasted movement as possible. Since college I’ve always been different than most hitters in terms of my stance, but it worked for me. Over time I started running into problems when timing issues and consistency from day to day. So working with Lloyd McClendon (new hitting coach), we’ve tried to simplify my swing and make it as normal to a major league swing as possible. The idea behind it is that on good or bad days, if I can keep it simple, it’s easier to correct mistakes. It will hopefully also help my approach with two strikes and hopefully make it easier to not only put the ball in play, but hit the ball hard with two strikes.

    And really, it’s worth clicking through to the post to see the picture alone.

    I didn’t know at first if he was the one actually updating it (not that he isn’t capabable, just that it takes time doing this blogging thing), but after the last few posts it definitely seems to be his voice. With a little more downtime this spring, he’s been updating every few days with rather lengthy posts. The fact that the updates coincide with days he doesn’t travel to away games lends even more credence to the fact that it is his voice.

    Other Stuff

    • If you haven’t seen it mentioned on the other Tigers blogs, Ian of Sweaty Men Endeavors, is the new chief blogger at the Tigers SB Nation site Bless You Boys. Ian is awesomely funny and writes the best news aggregation posts in the business. Stop by and say hi at his new gig.
    • Good luck if you entered into the drawing for Opening Day tickets. You’re one of 158,000 who will be hoping to snag one of the thousand or so tickets (including SRO) being made available. The Tigers season ticket sales are up to 18,300 full season equivalents – from 9500 last year – and they’ve sold out of the 27 game packages. You’ll hear by Friday if you won. Tickets are still available for the second game of the year on April 4th when the ring ceremony will take place. That might not be a bad consolation prize. But if you really want to get to Opening Day, tickets are up to $157.50 on StubHub.

  • Tigers make first cuts

    The Tigers trimmed 8 players from big league camp: righthanded pitchers Jordan Tata and Virgil Vasquez to Triple A Toledo, righthanded pitchers Eulogio De La Cruz and Kyle Sleeth to Double A Erie and lefthanded pitcher Andrew Miller to Single A Lakeland. Additionally, the club assigned righthanded pitcher Jair Jurrjens and catchers Gabe Johnson and Dusty Ryan to minor league camp.

    And as expected, Miller will be starting the year in Lakeland and will likely head to Erie when the weather warms up.

  • Spring stats of note – pitching

    Similar to yesterdays look at interesting offensive stats, now we’ll look at the pitchers. Also like yesterday, I’m not drawing real conclusions or deriving meaning, just making observation.

    Beginning at the end

    The big 3 at the back end of the Tigers bullpen are off to a good start. Joel Zumaya, Fernando Rodney, and Todd Jones have combined to allow one run (a solo homer allowed by Rodney) in 10 2/3 innings. Most impressive is the 13:2 strikeout to walk ratio.
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  • The life and times of Trixie

    There is a lengthy and very interesting interview with Dick Tracewski in the Scranton Time-Tribune. You may remember Tracewski as a coach during on those Tiger teams from the 80’s and early 90’s. He actually spent 25 years coaching in the Tigers organization following a 7 year playing career with the Dodgers and Tigers. Over his 32 years in baseball he earned 4 World Series rings.

  • Rivalry brewing?

    This is a little more drama then you normally see in the spring, but both benches have cleared today in the Red Sox-Tigers tilt. Josh Beckett plunked Gary Sheffield, and later hit Magglio Ordonez in the head with a hanging curve ball. According to Jim Price, there were several more pitches that were up and in. Todd Jones came in a couple innings later. He pitched to Jason Varitek and then buzzed JD Drew with the first pitch. The next pitch was a fastball that went behind Drew. At that point, Jones was tossed. When Leyland came into get Jones and summon Jose Mesa from the bullpen there were words between Leyland and the Red Sox third base coach. Benches cleared and there was a lot of nothing happening.

    Jim Leyland seemed to be the catalyst. This may remain interesting because all the principles involved were regular players.

    The two teams meet for the first time in the regular season on May 14th in Boston. This is the only time they meet in the preseason.

  • Spring stats of note – offense

    Not implying that these stats mean anything, just that they are interesting:

    Grandy’s K’s

    Curtis Granderson’s efforts to cut down on his strikeouts are paying off. After 20 at-bats he’s only fanned once. But is it coming at a cost? He also only has one extrabase hit and only one walk.

    Santiago
    Ramon Santiago – credit Roger DeWitt

    HR Leader Ramon Santiago

    By knocking his second dinger of the spring yesterday, Santiago is now the leader in the clubhouse. Santiago came into camp a little bulked up. Could this be the reason for the power surge? Perhaps. Or maybe it is just the flukiness of baseball. Keep in mind that Santiago has 6 career home runs, and 3 of those came in a 2 game span including one off of Pedro Martinez. Still, if he can sustain some level of production, and Neifi Perez continues to struggle, it will be interesting who Jim Leyland takes North. Will it be the veteran with the big contract or a player who may be more deserving.

    And speaking of Perez, he has 5 walks in 20 plate appearances which leads the team. This position battle so far is more interesting than I would have expected.
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  • AL Central now and in the future

    It’s kind of an American League Centric day. This morning I woke up to be greeted by Baseball Analysts annual Two on Two divisional preview of the Central. The hosts select two bloggers, this time it was Brian from Tigerblog and one of my favorite Twins bloggers (the Twins may have the best group of bloggers in baseball) Seth from Sethspeaks.net. The four couldn’t come up with a consensus, except for the Royals finishing last.

    And over at Baseball Prospectus, Kevin Goldstein takes a walk through the minor league systems of each of the five AL Central clubs. On a Tiger note he thinks Brent Clevlen could be an attractive bargaining chip for a midseason trade – especially if Cameron Maybin continues to impress.

  • One of those link round-up posts

    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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  • Spring pitching to care about

    So far the Tigers spring season is off to a pretty good start, even considering the last 2 losses. Specifically the pitchers seem to have picked up right where they left off (minus the fielding errors) in 2007. Sure, the 5.37 ERA might not look impressive on the surface, but if you look at who’s been roughed up it hasn’t been the guys the Tigers will be counting on this season.
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