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  • Game 153: Tigers at Indians

    PREGAME: Nate Robertson and CC Sabathia today.

    Game Time 12:05
    DET @ CLE, Wednesday, September 19, 2007 Game Preview – Baseball-Reference.com

  • Game 152: Tigers at Indians

    PREGAME: The Tigers get back at if after last night’s tough loss. Fortunately, this team does seem to have a short memory for these types of things. Justin Verlander will do his best to give the team the same kind of chance that Kenny Rogers did last night. Verlander has been awesome his last 4 starts with 3 runs allowed in 28 2/3 innings and a 26:6 K/BB ratio. But in his last 5 starts against the Tribe dating back to last year they’ve hung at least 7 runs on him in 3 of those starts.

    Jake Westbrook takes the ball for Cleveland tonight. In his last start against Detroit he allowed just 7 baserunners and no runs over 8 innings. It was one of the few starts where the Tigers couldn’t get to him.

    Marcus Thames is in the lineup playing left field tonight while Timo is on the bench. Ramon Santiago starts again at shortstop with Carlos Guillen playing first.

    Game Time 7:05
    DET @ CLE, Tuesday, September 18, 2007 Game Preview – Baseball-Reference.com

    POSTGAME: Not much to figure out in this one. Tigers – lots of hits and all but one were singles. There were clutch hits, but with the singles they needed to string together a bunch. The Indians, a few hits and all homers 15 rows back. Justin Verlander was living at the belt all day, he simply couldn’t find the bottom of the zone and the balls got tatoo’d.

  • Game 151: Tigers at Indians

    PREGAME: Here we are, the Cleveland series. The last 3 chances for the Tigers to exert their will on the teams they are chasing. I can’t remember being this nervous for a game, maybe game 2 of the ALDS, but even then I’m not sure. I guess I’m nervous because not so much of what a win would mean – that just keeps the window of hope alive – but what a loss would do to already slim playoff chances. There’s been lots of talk about “if the Yankees win X” or “if the Indians win Y” and none of it matters as much as “if the Tigers win tonight.”

    As for the match-up it’s Kenny Rogers and Paul Byrd. The Tigers have scored some runs off of Byrd in 3 starts this year, but he’s still a good bet to get to the 7th inning while giving his team a chance to win. He won’t walk more than 1 or 2, so pitch count isn’t usually a concern.

    Rogers is making just his second start against the Indians this year, so maybe a slight edge to the Tigers in the “lack of familiarity” department. Rogers should be stretched out after throwing 83 and 94 pitches in his last 2 starts, but it’s more a matter of how his elbow holds up.

    One thing to watch is what happens if the Tigers have a slim lead late in the game. Todd Jones has thrown 3 days in a row, and of course yesterday was especially rocky. I’d be surprised if he was available. And Joel Zumaya has thrown the last 2 days, but he didn’t throw a lot of pitches in either outing so we might still see him.

    Game Time 7:05
    DET @ CLE, Monday, September 17, 2007 Game Preview – Baseball-Reference.com

    POSTGAME: Crushed. Me, the team, the season, the postseason hopes. Crushed.

  • links for 2007-09-17

  • links for 2007-09-16

  • Game 150: Tigers at Twins

    PREGAME: The Tigers look for their first series sweep since…the last time the Tigers were in the Metrodome. It will be Jair Jurrjens taking on Scott Baker.

    Baker has been a tough match-up for the Tigers this year throwing a complete game 1 run 3 hit effort and adding another quality start in his last outing.

    The Tigers will send out Jair Jurrjens who has reclaimed a spot in the rotation coming off the DL. In one respect Jurrjens has been pitching lucky with only 7 strike outs in his 20 innings of work. At the same time opposing hitters haven’t been able to center the ball. And Jurrjens is still capable of inducing some swings and misses with his curve ball.

    Game Time 2:10 p.m.

    POSTGAME    : Did anyone else have flashbacks to Oakland? A chance to gain ground on the Indians. A comfortable early lead for the Tigers. Five innings of no hit baseball from a Tiger starter. Fernando Rodney and Todd Jones melting down.

    Fortunately the Tigers did enough to hang on this time, adding a couple runs late and Jones hanging on to the lead by his fingertips.

    Overshadowed in the bullpen walk-a-thon and adventures in fielding was the fact that Jurrjens was awesome. Clearly it was his best start of the season as he finally started to add some strikeouts taking his season total from 7 to 13 today. Despite entering the 6th with a no hitter, he was never really a threat to pitch a complete game as his pitch count and previous injury just wouldn’t allow it.

    Offensively it was a balanced attack with every starter picking up a hit except Pudge Rodriguez (playing the day game after a night game) and Pudge even contributed a key run with a sacrifice fly.

    In the end though the Tigers have a 5 game win streak, their first streak that long since they won the last 5 going into the All Star Break. They also picked up a series sweep, their first since the last trip to the Metrodome. Yes the Twins are a dead team right now, watching Michael Cuddyer take pitch after pitch right down the middle was, well, pathetic. But the Tigers still took care of business and did what they had to to make the last 2 weeks of the season compelling.
    DET @ MIN, Sunday, September 16, 2007 Game Preview – Baseball-Reference.com

  • Tiger Stadium stuff up for auction

    Sales began at 6:00 a.m. this morning for Tiger Stadium memorabilia, and by 9:00 a.m. the web site was already down. Nice. Even when the city of Detroit contracts with other people stuff gets screwed up.

    Still, you can get Tiger Stadium seats which are available on a first come first serve basis. For $279 including shipping you get a pair of regular seats or you can get Tiger Den seats for $399 a pair. The pairs of seats come as-is (dirty, dusty, rusty), but functional. I’m still really tempted and it comes down to the degree of irritation I want to inflict on Mrs. Billfer.

    Other stuff that I saw up for auction before the site crashed included a bunch of signage, some benches from the dugout, some doors, and the urinal from the Home lockerroom. Bidding on the urinal opened at $100.

    UPDATE: The site is back up, and as a public service here is the direct link to the home dugout urinal. Picture self peeing alongside Hank Greenberg, Al Kaline, Denny McClain and many other greats.
    Welcome to TigerstadiumSale

  • Whitecaps win Midwest League Championship

    Congratulations to the West Michigan Whitecaps on their MWL Championship. The Caps won the rubber game in a best of 5 series 11-6 over the Beloit Snappers.

    It was a night of big innings as West Michigan used an 8 run 5th inning to wipe out the Beloit 5 run 3rd inning.

    Scott Sizemore and Michael Bertram each had 3 hits to lead the offensive attack.

    Charlie Furbush was knocked out in that 3rd inning and Luis Marte came on in relief and threw 5 shutout innings allowing just 2 hits and no walks while fanning 9.

    Congratulations to manager Tom Brookens and the rest of this year’s Whitecaps.

    The Surge – Whitecaps Baseball: West Michigan Whitecaps – 2007 MWL Champions
    Minor League Baseball: Scoreboard: Scoreboard

  • Game 149: Tigers at Twins

    PREGAME: Perennial Cy Young contender against guy making his first start. This is one of those games you hope to steal.

    The Tigers have faced Johan Santana 4 times this year. And while it hasn’t been easy in any start, they haven’t been completely stymied either. His last start against the Tigers he allowed 3 runs on 5 hits while fanning 7 in 8 innings. The Tigers are loading up the lineup with righties as Ryan Raburn leads off and Marcus Thames makes the start at first base with Brent Clevlen getting an outfield start.

    For the Tigers it will be Yorman Bazardo, acquired from the Seattle Mariners for Jeff Frazier. If Bazardo goes on to have success with the Tigers, it will be another instance of Jeff Weaver giving back to the organization. Bazardo was DFA’d to make room for Weaver when the Mariners signed him this offseason. Bazardo’s K rates aren’t particularly impressive with only 4.54/9 for Toledo this year, and 5.36/9 in his minor league career. But he does keep the ball in the park and doesn’t walk a whole lot.

    Game Time 7:10 p.m.
    DET @ MIN, Saturday, September 15, 2007 Game Preview – Baseball-Reference.com

    POSTGAME: The Tigers won! The Yankees lost! The deficit is 2.5 games, which for some reason seems much more palatable than 3.5 did earlier this morning. Of course it could very well be back North of 3 games again tomorrow, but for the time being we’ve got ourselves a race.

    The Tigers jumped out early on Johan Santana taking advantage of Carlos Guillen bloop hit and a Pudge Rodriguez baggie blast. It looked like it might be a relatively short night for Santana as the Tigers forced him to throw 45 pitches in the first 2 innings. That was the good news because Santana only needed 25 pitches to get through the next 3 innings as he clearly settled in.

    The Twins kept things uncomfortable plating a run on a wild pitch, and turning a double, a fly ball, and a ground out into their second run. Bazardo was solid, but came up one out short of qualifying for the win. Actually, it was one strike away as he went up 0-2 on Jason Kubel and after a foul ball Bazardo widely missed the zone with 4 straight pitches.

    The bullpen was mostly solid as Bobby Seay pitched a scoreless inning fanning 2. Joel Zumaya went 1 2/3 getting a double play on his first pitch and having an easy 1-2-3 8th. Todd Jones issued a 2 out walk, but the 9th was otherwise unavailable. The only blemish was Zach Miner’s outing, which would have been fine if not for that PFP stuff. A one out ground ball single by Nick Punto, a steal, and a walk had 2 men on. Miner got the comebacker to the mound, threw high to second pulling Santiago, who threw late to first, meanwhile Punto scored. A double play ball resulted in no outs and a run.

    A win is a win and the Tigers are at the very least keeping the pressure on the Yankees and keeping Detroiters interested. A second straight sweep in the Metrodome is a lot to ask for, but when the rookie beats Cy Young, anything seems possible.

  • Game 148: Tigers at Twins

    PREGAME: Anyone remember the last time that Nate Robertson faced the Twins? Nate went 7 innings and allowed only 3 hits and 2 walks as he handed a shut out over to the bullpen which Macay McBride and Todd Jones protected. It was in the Metrodome and he was opposed by Matt Garza. Of course Robertson had to be that good because Garza was his equal allowing 3 hits in 7 innings with the difference being an unearned run.

    The win was the start of a sweep that had the Tigers with the best record in baseball when they left the Twin Cities. And the rest was crappy history.

    Now Robertson heads back to the dome to take on Matt Garza at the start of a series that they need to cling to slim playoff hopes. Nate’s been a yo-yo in his last 4 starts, but he was down last game so maybe he’ll be up again. Garza has been roughed up a little in his last 2 starts allowing 9 hits in each game and not making it out of the 6th inning.

    Of course the bigger issue than tonight’s game for the Twins is the resignation of GM Terry Ryan. While he’s had a tendency to miss on veteran/cheap free agents the last couple years, and he’s always seemed a little gun shy in trading that wealth of young talent, he’s done a tremendous job given his resources.

    Game Time 8:10pm

    POSTGAME: Nate was definitely up and pitched a very solid game. He had a small bout with control in the 4th inning, but rebounded well. I’m not sure how much of Robertson’s performance was the Twins and how much was Nate.

    But the at-bat of the night had to belong to Pudge Rodriguez who worked a 9 pitch walk with the bases loaded. The number of pitches matched his season total for walks. Regardless, he fouled off strikes and took the balls, and was quite pumped afterwards. I’ve never seen that kind of reaction to a walk.

    Pudge’s walk tied the game and kept the bases loaded for his Timo-ness who of course climbed the latter and lined a single to right field to give the Tigers their final margin of victory. As big as those at-bats were, the key plate appearance was probably Gary Sheffield’s, where he should have been called out looking. But I won’t complain.

    The trouble is, even with the win the Tigers effectively lost ground as the Indians and Yankees both came from behind. The Indians win wasn’t really surprising, but the Yankees win was. The Red Sox blew a 5 run lead in the 8th inning – if only they had gone out and gotten some bullpen help at the trade deadline this would have never happened 🙂

  • links for 2007-09-14

  • Fish Eye on the Tigers

    Dan Fox at Baseball Prospectus recently did a post where he used the enhanced gameday (aka pitch/fx) data to categorize hitters by eye. He broke hitters down into the following groups and subsequently created some pretty slick graphs.

    • Square: This is the new metric, defined as the percentage of pitches in the strike zone swung at and made contact with. A high value here (relative to the average of over 87 percent) indicates that when the batter offers at a strike he usually makes contact. On the contrary, a lower value indicates hitters who, for reasons such as a long swing, are more apt to swing through strikes.
    • Fish: Defined as the percentage of pitches out of the strike zone that the hitter swung at. A higher percentage here indicates that the hitter may have trouble recognizing pitches since he is offering at pitches that would likely be called balls. Average values here are between 32 and 33 percent.
    • Bad Ball: Defined as the percentage of pitches out of the strike zone that were swung at where contact was made. This includes foul balls, although there is an argument to be made that a foul ball is not the intended outcome, and so should be discounted in some way. A higher value in this category indicates that, when swinging at bad pitches, the hitter is at least able to get the bat on the ball. Average values lie around 73 percent.
    • Eye: Defined as the percentage of pitches in the strike zone on non-three and zero counts that were taken for strikes. A smaller value in this metric indicates a player who recognizes strikes and aggressively offers at them. I excluded 3-0 counts, since a hitter is much more likely to let a strike go by in this situation, and we don’t want to penalize them for that behavior. Average values here are in the range of 25 to 27 percent.

    While Detroit Tigers hitters were included in the analysis, it was tough to tease out exactly where they fell. Inspired, I thought I do the same analysis but focus on the Tigers. My numbers didn’t work out exactly the same as Fox’s, but the categorization of the players seemed to be fairly consistent. One reason for the disparity on the Eye metric is that the way I parse the data, I didn’t have the count readily available so I didn’t filter out taking on 3-0. The other discrepancy is probably the width of strike zone used. Fox said he used the 17 inch wide plate. Because only a portion of the ball has to cross the plate for a strike, I included the radius of the ball on either side of the plate as well. I’m also not sure how he included bunts and bunt attempts or being hit by a pitch. Regardless, the points remain the same.

    As for the specifics on how the numbers differed, here are the league averages I calculated for each:

    • Square: 86%
    • Fish: 29%
    • Bad Ball: 70%
    • Eye: 36%

    Fox then graphed Fish value against Eye values which put hitters into one of four categories. The graph of just the Tigers hitters is below:

    Tigers batting eye

    The first things that jump out in these types of graphs are the outliers. I don’t think that anyone is surprised that Pudge Rodriguez swings at more pitches out of the zone than anyone on the team. In fact, he swings at more than anyone in Major League Baseball.

    What may surprise though is Sean Casey being in the lower left quadrant. Casey doesn’t strike out a whole lot, but he tends to swing at the bad pitches and take the good ones. The other surprise, especially given his strikeout rates, is Brandon Inge who is better than many of his peers in swinging at the pitches he should swing at and taking the ones he shouldn’t. Of course check swings where you go to far are still counted as swings so make of that what you will.

    The last thing to notice is pretty much a team wide trend, and that is that the team tends to lean towards to the left, and that they are more likely than a typical team to chase pitches out of the zone. Even those players in the more patient hemisphere still are towards the middle. On a team level it confirms what pretty much everyone suspected based on observations.

    The table below has the numbers for each of the Tigers:

    Player			SQUARE	FISH	BADBALL	EYE
    
Brandon Inge		84%	27%	54%	35%
    
Cameron Maybin		80%	30%	40%	39%
    
Carlos Guillen		86%	32%	73%	20%
    
Curtis Granderson	89%	29%	63%	36%
    
Gary Sheffield		87%	27%	79%	42%
    
Ivan Rodriguez		81%	54%	77%	25%
    
Magglio Ordonez		88%	28%	76%	25%
    
Marcus Thames		73%	41%	63%	25%
    
Mike Hessman		82%	35%	65%	29%
    
Mike Rabelo		83%	34%	74%	17%
    
Omar Infante		84%	38%	79%	38%
    
Placido Polanco		96%	29%	89%	39%
    
Ramon Santiago		86%	43%	73%	26%
    
Ryan Raburn		77%	32%	60%	28%
    
Sean Casey		95%	39%	84%	43%
    
Timo Perez		88%	37%	84%	32%
    
Team			86%	33%	72%	32%

    Baseball Prospectus | Articles | Schrodinger’s Bat: The Return of the Fish Eye