The Detroit Tiger Weblog

Category: Statistics

  • Tigers-Oakland Series Wrap

    Baseball is a funny sport. We have all kinds of statistics to look at how things have gone in the past, and what to expect in the future. And then you have a series like this one between the Tigers and the A’s. The Tigers are notorious for not walking, and at least this year for hitting home runs. Meanwhile the A’s have had books (or at least a book) that looks at their plate discipline. The Tigers have been labeled this year as a team that can’t score without a home run, and they are typically solo shots. In fact, coming into the series, the last Tiger runs (over two games) had all come on solo shots. So what happens when the Tigers go to Oakland to face a team they have typically struggled with?

    Tigers Athletics
    Wins 2 1
    Offense
    Runs 18 11
    BA .288 .172
    OBP .377 .245
    SLG .384 .354
    HR 0 4
    SB/CS 0/1 0/0
    Pitching
    BB/9 3.1 4.3
    K/9 4.5 4.3
    ERA 3.46 5.00

    Detroit takes two of three without slugging the ball at all. They post a .377 team on base percentage that was largely fueled by walks and 3 hit-by-pitches. They score 18 runs in the series while only slugging .384 and not hitting a home run.

    On the pitching side, the Tigers pretty much kept the A’s off balance and off base. While it should be noted that the A’s had been struggling coming into the series, mustered only a .599 OPS.
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  • Tigers stumble, but win

    Okay, the title is somewhat facetious. I know they didn’t actually stumble. They did find themselves trailing for the first time this season. It was an uncomfortable half inning.

    Also, Mike Maroth allowed a walk. The “incident” occured with one out in the 5th inning. It broke a string of 22 1/3 innings by Tigers starters without a free pass.

    So the Tigers sit at 4-0 with two games to remain in the series. I think everybody would have been satisfied with a 4-2 roadtrip. The Tigers have at least assured themselves of that record. The next two games will be a test with Justin Verlander going today, and Sunday appears to be veteran rest day with Vance Wilson and Ramon Santiago set to get the starts over Pudge Rodriguez and Placido Polanco. On a side note, we’ve seen Santiago as a defensive replacement several times, and yet no Omar Infante at all.

    Chris Shelton continued to do what Chris Shelton Ted Williams did. Maybe Gary Gillette needs to rethink his list of the top 10 young sluggers to make room for Big Red. Shelton’s major league leading 5th home run may just further validate Buc’s Dugouts assumption that the Pirates leaving Shelton unprotected was the worst move of the last 5 years in baseball.
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  • Pick your pleasant surprise

    Excuse my enthusiasm, but winning is fun. I certainly thought that 3-0 was possible, but the manner in which the Tigers are doing it has certainly left surprised. Some pleasant Tiger surprises after a thumping of the Rangers:

    • Tiger starters have yet to walk a batter. While Nate Robertson wasn’t dominating like Kenny Rogers and Jeremy Bonderman were, he did extend the starter’s walkless streak to 17 2/3 innings. In the meantime the starters have racked up 17 strikeouts.
    • Pudge Rodriguez already has two walks.
    • I’m not really surprised that Chris Shelton can hit, but 4 homers in 3 games to lead the managers is a little more than I expected.
    • The Tigers homers are prime. The first game they hit 3 home runs. The second game they hit 5 home runs. Against Texas in the third game they hit 7 home runs. Now the next prime number is 11. Do you think they have a shot? In case you were wondering last year it took them 17 games before they hit their 15th homer. And the 15 homers in the first 3 games is a major league record.
    • Every decision that Jim Leyland has made has worked out. Curtis Granderson coming off a 3 for 6 day doesn’t get the start in favor of Marcus Thames – who homers. Brandon Inge takes Granderson’s leadoff spot – and homers. Later in the game Granderson comes in as a defensive replacement, and makes a diving catch. It’s absolutely uncanny.

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  • Tracking WPA on Opening Day

    Yesterday you got my emotional and giddy breakdown of Opening Day. Today I’ll take a look at the game, but from a much more analytical perspective.

    For those that read the Hardball Times on a regular basis last season, you may recall Dave Studemund writing about Win Probability Added. That preceding link has a very nice explanation that if you are intrigued I highly recommend reading. If you want the cliff-note version I’ll give it a shot here.
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  • The young and the retired

    Feeling sick, need sleep, short post…

    • While there has been plenty of talk about prospect rankings, what about the players who broke in last year. Who are the sophomores to watch? Bryan Smith at Baseball Analysts has compiled the top 20 sophomores. Detroit Tiger Curtis Granderson checks in at #12.

      Do the Tigers really appreciate what they have in Granderson? Are they really considering starting Nook Logan at centerfield this season? In 2004, Granderson broke out at one of the minors easiest stadiums to hit a home run in. His numbers were helped by an August that was disproportionate to the rest of his career. He was an anomaly, but this year, showed that his breakout was for real. Granderson might not be the next great Tiger, or even a consistent All-Star. But for a team like Detroit, that has been “rebuilding” for so long, he’s the long-term answer at one position. PECOTA loves him, but I don’t see enough power developing for a superstar to shine through.

    • Does speed kill or does it annoy? I found some research from Cyril Morong about the impacts of base stealing. He used Scott Podsednik as his case study. He found that the value from Podsednik’s stolen base was outweighed by his below average offensive showing. Now there are other elements to speed, such as scoring from first on a wild pitch, but…you guys all know where I’m going with this.
    • It’s old news now, but Troy Percival has retired – sort of. He’s retired in the sense that he’s not playing anymore, but not in the sense that he still isn’t under contract and earning $6 million this year. Fortunately the Tigers will get some insurance relief (I want to say I read $3 million somewhere but I can’t find it now). Brian and Sam have wrapped up Percival’s career pretty thoroughly. I was pretty positive about the Percival signing at the time, as the idiocy in the following paragraph will show:

      The other reason I

  • The Optimal Tiger Lineup

    On Friday, Lee aggregated various projections for Tiger players to find the average projection. On Saturday, David Pinto web enabled a script written by Ken Arneson based on work by Cyril Morong that optimizes lineups. On Sunday, I do the easiest part of all and stick Lee’s numbers into David’s tool.

    First some lineups, and then some explanation. I first put in what would probably be the most common assortment of players the Tigers would use. I’m guessing this would be Rodriguez/Inge/Guillen/Polanco/Shelton/Monroe/Granderson/Ordonez/Young. Various combinations of those players would average 5.330 runs per game. Here are the best and worst variations on that lineup
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  • Park Factor Central

    Thumbing through the The Bill James Handbook 2006(aff link), I came across the section on park factors, and compiled the following table for the American League Central.

                          AVG          R      2B       3B      HR
Comerica Park          102         96      82      176      95
Jacobs Field            96         83     103       46      83
Kauffman Stadium       103        101     116      113      73
Metrodome               98        102      93       85     110
US Cellular            101        104      96       82     139

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  • Playing with PECOTA part 2

    I’ve already scanned the PECOTA projections for Tiger pitchers and highlighted what I thought was most interesting. Now we’ll do the hitters.

    Curtis Granderson

    Lee has already done the comparison of who PECOTA thinks should be starting in centerfield for Detroit. And it has been enough of a theme here that I think I’ve beat the horse to death. But PECOTA is a fan of Granderson. Some of his more modern day comps are Luis Gonzalez, Reggie Sanders, Mel Hall, Greg Briley, Leon Durham, and Bobby Abreu. PECOTA sees him peaking in 2008 with minimal fall off in subsequent years. While his value is probably slightly inflated by his small sample defensive stardom, the kid looks like he’s for real.

    Nook Logan

    I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention that PECOTA has Logan’s breakout rate at 41% and his improve rate at 63%. So the system does project that Nook will very likely be better next year.
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  • Playing with PECOTA

    Baseball Prospectus has released their PECOTA player cards, and a half hour of clicking through all of the Detroit Tigers there are definitely some interesting highlights. But before we get into the neat stuff, a little bit about PECOTA. PECOTA is a projection system based on finding comparable players. Similarity is calculated based on performance, usage (playing time), and body similarities (handedness, body type). The system then uses the pool of comparable players (which could be as many as 100) to project what the player in question will do. One of the data points available is the similarity index. The higher the score, the better the pool of players matches the player in question. A score over 50 is pretty good, and less than 20 is pretty bad.

    Now PECOTA is for BP subscribers only, so I won’t be laying out all the stats provided. I will just be hitting some highlights. (if you want to see what the cards look like, the White Sox are offered for free.

    Jeremy Bonderman

    PECOTA is pretty high on Bonderman, and a quick glance at his comparables shows why. Some of the pitchers on his list include Joe Coleman, John Smoltz, Jake Peavy, Tom Seaver, and Catfish Hunter. His improve rate for next year is 77%, with no discernible decline until 2010.

    Franklyn German

    PECOTA isn’t so enamored with the other pitcher in the Jeff Weaver deal. His attrition rate is as high as his improvement rate, and his collapse rate is higher than his breakout rate.
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  • Quick Hits

    Some brief notes an links as I prepare to have 14 preschoolers over for a birthday party tomorrow…

    Monroe Re-ups

    The Detroit Tigers avoided arbitration hearings completely this year with Craig Monroe now under contract. He signed for one year and $2.8 million. A fair deal all around, and the two sides essentially split the difference from their initial offers.

    Defensive Wrap-Ups

    I’ve been doing quite a bit of defensive comparisons lately, and using a bunch of metrics. Coincidentally there were a couple of articles today summarizing the various measures. Jon Weisman of Dodger Thoughts did a piece for SI outlining the quest for the perfect defensive measure.

    In the same vein, David Gassko of the Hardball Times compared the various metrics in articles located here and here. (via Baseball Musings)

    Granderson goes home

    A nice article about Curtis Granderson visiting his middle school alma mater.

    Tiger Stadium rotting and rocking

    With Tiger Stadium playing host to Bud Bowl (a big party/concert) over Super Bowl weekend there have been a couple articles about it’s current state. ESPN had a long piece about the Stadium, and the lack of events held since the final game.

    The Bud Bowl is one proposal that the city did approve. Rottach said Detroit is charging Anheuser-Busch $40,000 to rent the stadium. More important than the money, though, was the thoroughness of Anheuser-Busch’s proposal, which included a commitment to return the stadium to the exact specifications it had before.

    Earlier in the week the Free Press ran a story, complete with pictures, about how run down the stadium had become. It included a picture of a tree growing in the stands, and part of a wall crumbling.

    detroit, detroit tigers, baseball, tiger stadium

  • Shelton Game

    Remember when it seemed like Chris Shelton didn’t have a position? In fact one local columnist didn’t include Shelton in last year’s Top 10 Tiger prospects because:

    Shelton does not have a position and is unathletic. Last season, when he did get to play in the major leagues and rehab assignment at Toledo, he did not sting the ball. He hit well in arizona, but the caliber of competition was down this year.

    Well it turns out that Shelton can play first base. According to PMR, he was a pretty average fielder last year, and given his offensive production, average defense is quite sufficient. (While he made more outs than expected, he fell in the middle of the pack). What’s more is that he was a superior defender compared to Carlos Pena.

    Player InPlay Actual Outs Predicted Outs DER Predicted DER Difference
    Chris B Shelton 2337 152 146.52 0.065 0.063 0.00234
    Carlos Pena 1363 98 105.67 0.072 0.078 -0.00563

    Similar to what I did in the Granderson/Logan comparison post, the numbers were interesting enough that I wanted to compare range stats between the two.

    Category Pena Shelton
    Innings 429.1 738.1
    Zone Rating .798 .857
    Range Factor 9.50 10.21
    FRAA -2 0

    Shelton comes out on top is every category. I’m not sure if everyone was just flat wrong in Shelton’s ability, or if he improved his game through a ton of hard work, but the results are encouraging. Now what isn’t included in first basemen range is the footwork around the bag. I’m not sure how it could even be quantified, but just from watching that seems to be an area where Pena excels.

    While I still want to see Pena get at-bats, it is becoming more and more difficult to find reasons to take Shelton out of the lineup.
    detroit tigers, chris shelton, carlos pena, baseball

  • Defending Center

    A couple weeks ago I wrote a post making the case why Curtis Granderson should be the starting centerfielder for the Tigers over Nook Logan. The the bulk of the agrument was based on Granderson’s offensive superiority. I intentionally didn’t delve into defense for a couple reasons. First, defensive metrics are tricky. It’s rare that you can get all the metrics to agree on any given player. Second, that problem becomes magnified when you’re dealing with small sample sizes as is the case with Curtis Granderson. However, there are enough metrics out there that we can take a look, as long as we take a grain of salt along with it.

    Baseball Musings has posted the PMR for centerfielders. I lifted the following table, and included some of the prominent centerfielders in the game. Please note, this isn’t a leaderboard, but a sampling of some who ranked near the top.

    Player InPlay Actual Outs Predicted Outs DER Predicted DER Difference
    Curtis Granderson 1044 119 110.91 0.114 0.106 0.00775
    Andruw Jones 4309 365 337.56 0.085 0.078 0.00637
    Jim Edmonds 3538 319 297.13 0.090 0.084 0.00618
    Aaron Rowand 4128 388 362.99 0.094 0.088 0.00606
    Nook P Logan 2730 282 270.92 0.103 0.099 0.00406

    Baseball Musings: Probabilistic Model of Range, 2005, Centerfielders
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