The Detroit Tiger Weblog

Author: billfer

  • World Series Game 3: Tigers at Cardinals

    PREGAME: The series shifts to St. Louis and the new Busch stadium. Busch has played as slightly more of a pitchers park than Comerica Park has. The pitching match-up will be Nate Robertson against Chris Carpenter.

    The Tigers faced Carpenter once this year and jumped on him for 9 hits, 6 for extra bases, and scored 7 runs over 7 innings. It was an interesting line for Carpenter in that he also fanned 9 Tigers hitters and walked none.

    In terms of individual match-ups, most of the Tigers have decent career numbers against Carpenter. Pudge Rodriguez has a 970 OPS over 26 at-bats against Carpenter. Given that Pudge is 0-fer a long time, this help get him on track.

    Carpenter has been much better at home this year with a 1.82 ERA and only 7 homers allowed over 124 innings. He is brutal on right handers with a 571 OPS against. Left handers do substantially better, but still not good, with a 727 OPS but that’s kind of what makes Carpenter the staff ace.

    Nate Robertson has limited experience against the Cardinals lineup. Ronnie Belliard has a pretty good track record and is 8 for 25. Preston Wilson though has 5 at-bats, and 5 hits off of Robertson. And with Wilson slotted right in front of Albert Pujols, there’s not pitching around him.

    Detroit Lineup

    CF- Granderson
    LF – Monroe
    2B – Polanco
    RF – Ordonez
    SS – Guillen
    C – Rodriguez
    1B- Casey
    3B – Inge
    P- Robertson

    Carlos Guillen’s efforts are largely going to waste with Rodriguez failing to generate any offense. If he doesn’t do something this game, against a pitcher he’s had success against, he’s got to be moved down in the order.

    St. Louis Lineup

    SS- Eckstein
    LF – Wilson
    1B- Pujols
    3B- Rolen
    2B- Belliard
    CF- Edmonds
    C- Molina
    RF – Taguchi
    P – Carpenter

    I give credit to La Russa for sandwiching Pujols with the 2 hitters who have had a solid track record against Robertson.

    Game Time 8:30ish, or about 10 minutes after you think you can’t possibly take any more Zelasko.

  • Links that aren’t sticky

    A pine tar free delivery of miscellaneous links:

  • The one about the gunk

    There’s really no getting around the Kenny Rogers and the yellow thumb of crud. I was hoping this would go away as a non-story, especially with all of the principles involved saying it is a non-story. Despite that, everybody and their brother has become an expert on pine tar and it’s physical properties and they can spot it instantly. We’ve also all become very well versed on section 8.02 of the rule book.

    Here’s what I think and don’t think about the situation:

    • Yes, the media is making a big deal out of this. This is what the media does. I don’t think there is any sort of McCarver-pro-Cardinals conspiracy going on. It was actually one of the more astute observations made by McCarver. It was definitely something worth noting and pointing out. McCarver also mentioned it was common for pitchers to do this in cold weather.
    • I think the sequence of events is critical to understanding the situation – or for at least assigning blame. Fox did their best to make this confusing and I haven’t really seen it clarified. If in fact Kenny Rogers finished the first inning, and then somebody told each bench what was happening, Rogers could very well have gone down and washed off the stuff all on his own. This is probably the same time that Steve Palermo notified the umpiring crew of what was going on. If Rogers comes out for the 2nd with a clean hand, what could La Russa or the umpires do at that point? There was nothing to find.

      It doesn’t change the fact that Rogers pitched with stuff on his hand in the 1st inning, but if he was in fact cheating he’d gotten away with it – at least in baseball terms.

    • If in fact La Russa could have made something about it but didn’t, I’m willing to bet it has nothing to do with his relationship with Leyland. That doesn’t even seem like a realistic possibility. I’d be more inclined to believe it had to do with La Russa understanding the context, and that this appears to be a pretty common practice.
    • If you’re in the camp of “how do you explain how a guy who was awful in the postseason can suddenly be dominating?” I’d just respond with sample size. Rogers was bad in the playoffs – 7 & 10 years ago – in a small sample size. Maybe he’s learned a thing or two, or maybe he’s cheating. I just don’t think that argument is very damning.
    • Don’t look for any suspensions. It has passed. If they had caught Rogers, and by “they” I mean the umpires, he should have been ejected and suspended. That window closed when Rogers washed his hand.
    • This is really a different subject but Fox is impacting on field game play. It happened when the start time of Game 3 of the ALCS was moved up to accomodate the New York Mets game. It happened again last night when it prompted Steve Palermo to talk to the umpires during a game. Where should the line be drawn.
    • Finally, I understand being pissed off if your a Cardinals fan. But I’m not sure what emailing me will hope to accomplish. I don’t want to paint Cardinals fans with a broad brush, and I know this isn’t indicative of the majority. But if you are a Cardinals fan, and you’re thinking of sending me something like:

      Hey Pine Tar, or I mean Detroit,
      Did you ever try cheat yourself to a world series victory. Your baseball team
      sucks and so does your filthy city. I guess you need to do whatever it takes
      to try and make the big time. Fat chance that will ever happen. Do the good
      guys a favor, quit wasting our time trying to cheat and get the f&%# out of
      baseball.

      you can probably just keep it to yourself. I’ve gotten several of this ilk today. My only question for these people is, “is this just your internet personality or are you actually an idiot?” And in a similar vein, please no more butt-wiping jokes.

    Finally, there were some actual articles of interest related to this saga. Via Baseball Musings, Uniwatch details that Kenny Rogers wears the batting practice hat instead of the standard issue 5950 during games. It’s a different material and the underside of the brim is black as opposed to gray.

    Also, Nate Silver took a look at Rogers home and road splits to see if Rogers is cheating at home and not ont he road. The stats don’t clear him, nor do they convict him.

    Finally, someone having some fun with the situation.

  • World Series Game 2: Aftermath

    And we have ourselves a best of 5 series. It was very comforting to see the team come out and shake off a bad game.

    The Tigers seemed to get their hitting timing back, even if they couldn’t get timely hits. They knocked out 10 hits and put runners in scoring position in each of the first 6 innings. They should have had more than 3 runs to show for their efforts, but getting the guys on in the first place was an important part of the equation. Weaver was constantly having to work under pressure.

    On the other side, Kenny Rogers allowed only 2 walks in the 2nd through 7th innings. He made it through 8 innings on only 97 pitches (by my count, certainly not unofficial). Kenny’s pitches/strikes by inning:

          1        2        3        4        5        6        7        8
   19/13     14/9      10/6     8/5      11/8     13/6    16/10    6/4

    As for the Tigers approach, they were a little more patient and worked four 3-ball counts off of Weaver which was 3 more than the night before off of Reyes.

    Keeping score at home, I made some notes throughout the game:

    • It was great to see the Tigers score again in the first inning. It was even better to see Kenny Rogers protect the lead with an easy 1-2-3 inning in the top of the 2nd.
    • I was actually a little worried that the Tigers were reverting to their impatient ways in the 2nd inning. They managed a couple hits and a hard hit double play ball from Curtis Granderson. But Weaver threw only 8 pitches in the inning. Fortunately the longer at-bats returned in the subsequent innings.
    • Kenny Rogers was awesome again, but he also benefitted a couple times from luck. In 5th inning he allowed a walk to Jim Edmonds. Preston Wilson hit a ball well to center where Curtis Granderson made a diving play out near triple-ville to save a run. In the 6th a walk to Scott Spiezio was followed by a rocket to Craig Monroe off the bat of Albert Pujols.
    • Todd Jones will get skewered tomorrow morning. But like the tricky Oakland save, it’s not like he pitched bad. He got Pujols to hit a weak grounder and was 1 strike away from a 1-2-3 inning. A bloop hit, an error, and another blooper and next thing you know the game is in doubt. I would love to see Jones spend a little time improving his defense. Anything through the box is an adventure with Jones.

    Now there will be quite a bit made of the gunk on Rogers hand. He had it there in the other playoff games as well. I don’t know what to make of it, and when I say that I don’t know what Rogers gains from it. He certainly didn’t struggle after it was removed. He also didn’t seem to be trying to hide it. But if the Caridnals had a chance to get Rogers out of the game, and perhaps the series, I’m not sure why they wouldn’t have tried to do it.

    I’ll have the commentary round up appended here early in the morning.

    What others are saying

    (more…)

  • World Series Game 2: Cardinals at Tigers

    PREGAME: The Tigers played poorly for the first time this postseason last night and they find themselves in a 1-0 hole. They also find themselves in what is probably the biggest pressure game of the postseason. When they were down 1-0 to the Yankees, they were supposed to lose. This time they are the favorites looking to even the series. Whether or not it is the team that is feeling the pressure, or just the fan base, remains to be seen.

    The Tigers will turn to Kenny Rogers who has been absolutely dominating in 2 post season starts not allowing a run. He faced the Cardinals once this year and the results weren’t that impressive with 10 baserunners and 6 runs in 5 1/3 innings. Scott Spezio is the Cardinal with the most success against Rogers posting a 395/439/605 line over 38 at-bats which helps explain why he was added to the Cardinals lineup DH’ing from the 2 hole.

    The Cardinals will trot out former Tiger Jeff Weaver. Weaver made 1 start in Comerica this year and took a loss despite allowing only 2 runs over 7 1/3 innings. Lefties posted a 1.004 OPS against him as opposed to a .743 OPS for right handers. Here’s hoping that Sean Casey looks better than he did last night.

    Pudge Rodriguez, Placido Polanco, and Craig Monroe are a combined 2 for 19 off of Weaver while Magglio Ordonez and Carlos Guillen have had moderate success.

    In the postseason Weaver has posted a 2.16 ERA over 3 starts and 16 innings. The small run total is a little surprising considering the 7 walks and only 5 strikeouts over that span.

    St. Louis Lineup

    SS – Eckstein
    DH – Spezio
    1B – Pujols
    3B – Rolen
    RF – Encarnacion
    CF – Edmonds
    LF – Wilson
    C – Molina
    2B – Miles

    Scott Rolen has been moved up as right hander to try and keep Albert Pujols from being pitched around. Also, Ronnie Belliard and his 2 for 22 lifetime record against Rogers has been swapped out for Aaron Miles.

    Detroit Lineup

    CF – Granderson
    LF – Monroe
    2B – Polanco
    RF – Ordonez
    1B – Guillen
    C – Rodriguez
    DH – Casey
    3B – Inge
    SS – Santiago

    Same lineup as last night. I’m not a big fan of Sean Casey DH’ing, but it is a lot more palatable tonight given Weaver’s left/right splits.

    Game Time 8:00ish

  • World Series Game 1 Aftermath

    Did any of us really think the Tigers would win 11 straight playoff games? Probably not. But did any of us think that the Tigers would be so completely shut down by Anthony Reyes, the weakest link in the Cardinal rotation who was pitching in game 1 more due to circumstances than performance? Definitely not.

    I don’t know whether or not the week long layoff impacted the hitting. What I did see was a team that was very aggressive early in the count against a pitcher that didn’t have a put away pitch. It’s one thing to attack Danny Haren early who has the great split finger when he gets ahead in the count. Reyes didn’t have that pitch. What he did have was a fastball that Tiger hitters said had a lot of movement.

    The Tigers didn’t have an answer for Reyes, nor an answer for the Cardinals. In both other rounds the Tigers offense seemed to “answer” when the other team scored. After the Cardinals scored 3 in the 3rd, the Tigers answered with 3 outs on 13 pitches. After the Cardinals scored 3 runs in the 6th, the Tigers answered with an 8 pitch inning.

    The Tigers offensive woes were enough to keep me from getting too upset about an error filled 6th inning. Hopefully they got that out of their system in a game that was for the most part out of reach. And as for Verlander, while I didn’t want him starting game 1 for a host of reasons, this was still a match-up that favored the Tigers. He wasn’t the reason the Tigers lost because 4 hits isn’t going to win you many games. Leyland said he was too tentative and not attacking the strike zone like the Tigers pitchers have done consistently in the series. That may have been true, but 100 pitches in 5 innings has been the M.O. for Verlander as of late. This time he actually allowed fewer baserunners and fanned more batters and generally looked better than he has – at least up until the messy 6th inning.

    Losing game 1 isn’t the end of the world for the Tigers. What it does is do is put all the pressure on the Tigers to win tonight. The Cardinals were hoping for a split, and they’ve been assured of at least that. The Tigers now have the pressure to make sure the series is all even come game 3.

    What others are saying

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  • World Series Game 1: Cardinals at Tigers

    PREGAME: In case you hadn’t heard, there are 2 rookies hooking up today. It will be Justin Verlander for Detroit and Anthony Reyes for the Cardinals.

    First, we look at Reyes. This will be the first time the Tigers have seen Reyes, and anectdotally they seem to struggle with pitchers they face for the first time. In this case they’ve had plenty of time to prepare, but will it help?

    Reyes is a predominantly fastball/change-up pitcher. He’s a flyball pitcher, with only 35% of balls in play on the ground. Because of this he’s prone to the long ball with 17 homers in 85 1/3 innings.


    Righthanders hit for a lower average     (249 vs 278), but post the same OBP(338) and a higher slugging percentage(525 vs 493) than their left hand counterparts. This would seem to be a favorable match-up for Marcus Thames, but Sean Casey looks to get the nod at DH.

    Reyes is typically hit hardest early in the game (944 OPS in innings 1-3) so it will be important for the Tigers to shake off the rust of a week long layoff early.

    On the other side will be Justin Verlander. I think I’m the only one who doesn’t think Verlander has pitched that well in the off season. He hasn’t been bad, but he also hasn’t made it out of the 6th inning in either game and it’s taken him 106 pitches to get that far each time. That said he’s been good enough as the Tigers posted wins in both his starts.

    He’s been allowing baserunners, but he did that all season. Like he did all season, he’s done a good job stranding them with a 78% LOB rate because his OPS against with runners on drops to 684.

    When he faced the Cardinals earlier this year, Yadier Molina had 2 doubles and Albert Pujols reached base twice. He had Scott Spezio tied up to the tune of 3 K’s.

    Game Time 7:30pm

    POSTGAME: Was it rust or was it Reyes? In any case the Tigers turned in their worst performance of the playoffs despite Justin Verlander seemingly having a solid command of his curve ball.

    I’ll have a full aftermath post tomorrow morning, but some quick thoughts on tonights game first:

    • Reyes baffled the Tigers. Most of those non-groundballs were simply pop-ups or soft liners to Belliard. It’s not like the Tigers were hitting at-em balls. They just weren’t hitting the ball hard and the only “Oh man” moment was Pudge’s flyball to the warning track.
    • The patience the Tigers displayed in the past rounds was gone. Magglio Ordonez was the only Tiger to walk, and the only Tiger to reach a 3 ball count off of Reyes. Reyes deserves some of the credit, but the Tigers didn’t make him work and enabled the Cardinal bullpen a night off.
    • You can question the decision to pitch to Pujols and you can lament the error filled 6th inning, but the Tigers hitters inability to get anything off of Reyes was the difference in the game.

  • World Series Prediction Center

    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.

  • World Series Preview: Tigers-Cardinals Season Series

    A look back at what went down when these teams met up for a 3 game set in Comerica Park this season… (more…)

  • World Series Rotation

    As reported in the comments here, and on Kurt’s blog, Jim Leyland has set his playoff rotation. It will be Justin Verlander, Kenny Rogers, Nate Robertson, and Jeremy Bonderman.

    I like that Rogers is set up to pitch twice in Comerica Park. I like Nate Robertson taking the first start on the road.

    I’m not a big fan of Bonderman being the guy to pitch just once in the series. He’s been second only to Kenny Rogers in the postseason while Justin Verlander has struggled in his 2 starts. He has allowed 19 baserunners and 3 homers in 10 2/3 innings. He survived against the Yankees and the offense picked him up against the A’s. As for his success against the Cardinals lineup, over 29 at-bats they have an OPS of 911 against them.

    This also makes it very likely that Verlander will pitch twice in this series. That’s fine if it is a matter of circumstance, like if your team was pushed to 7 games and you have to go with who is most rested. The Tigers had the luxury of avoiding that and chose not to.

    Now as I’ve said before each series, I don’t think the rotation will matter a great deal because it is quite balanced. I just don’t understand why Leyland would put the struggling rookie in this situation. Perhaps he thinks that the Cardinals will be just so fatigued it won’t matter. Or perhaps the advance scouts – who seem to have done an excellent job in the postseason – have seen something that indicates that Verlander would have the most success.

    Any rotation would cause second guessing. And to a large extent Jim Leyland has earned the benefit of the doubt. Starting with Verlander just seems like a strange choice to this blogger.

    UPDATE: The Cardinals named their rotation. It will be Anthony Reyes-Jeff Weaver-Chris Carpenter-Jeff Suppan

  • The Pitching Mechanics of Verlander and Zumaya

    There is a fascinating post over at Baseball Analysts that has slow motion video breaking down the deliveries of Justin Verlander and Joel Zumaya. It is a detailed look comparing and contrasting their mechanics with the 2 pitchers synched in the same video.

    The Baseball Analysts: Zoomlander: Starting, Relieving and Throwing Hard

  • Bring on the Birds: Tigers and Cardinals in the World Series

    For the 3rd time the Tigers and Cardinals will meet in the World Series. Both previous tilts went the full 7 games. In 1934 the Cardinals “edged” the Tigers out with an 11-0 victory at Navin Field. But the Tigers turned the tables in 1968 when Series MVP Mickey Lolich out-dueled Bob Gibson in the deciding game.

    But that’s all ancient history. This year the 2 teams struggled mightily down the stretch with the Tigers blowing a 10 game lead over the last 7 weeks of the season. Meanwhile the Caridnals nearly blew a 10 game lead in the last 2 weeks of the season. But look where they are now.

    Here’s your first piece of exclusive information: Jim Leyland and Tony La Russa are long time friends.

    I’ll be back with more in depth previews tomorrow. In the meantime, congratulations to the St. Louis Cardinals. If you’re looking ot hear from some happy fans, you can probably find them here:
    Deadspin
    Viva El Birdos
    CardNilly
    Cardinal Diaspora