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.
Blog
-
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.
Ramon Santiago – credit Roger DeWittHR 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.
(more…) -
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
credit Roger DeWittMiller 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.
(more…) -
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.
(more…) -
Tigers paid attendance tops 1.5 million
The Tigers released some updated ticketing numbers today. As of the start of business today, the Tigers have sold 17,830 full season equivalent season tickets. That’s up from 9500 last year. Plus, in the first weekend of individual game sales they sold 86,606 tickets. That pushes the paid attendance to 1,530,836. As a point of reference that surpasses the 1.37 million they drew in all of 2003 and the 1.50 million they drew in 2002.
Winning does wonders.
-
Spring Training Game Thread: Tigers at Yankees
What with the game on TV and everything today, I thought a game thread would be in order. Those lucky (or perhaps unlucky given the current economic condidtions) enough to be not working this afternoon can catch the game on ESPN at 1:15. I’ll be at work and looking forward to catching the DVR version when I get home.
The Tigers send out the “power arms” of Justin Verlander, Andrew Miller, Joel Zumaya, and Fernando Rodney.
POSTGAME: There was some stuff to like, and some stuff to not like today. The final outcome doesn’t really fall into either of those categories. The Tigers did draw a number of walks, including 2 with the bases loaded. Granted that was a product of Yankee wildness, but the Tigers did a good job laying off. They also had a number of hard hit balls, but most were foul.The bad stuff was 3 strikeouts in the first inning with the bases loaded. Considering that was a point of emphasis this spring, it was disappointing to see.
Plus there were a few scares today. Brent Clevlen got beaned by a Yankee pitcher and Carlos Guillen was nearly beaned by Sean Casey.
The relevant pitchers all looked pretty good with the exception of one bad inning from Justin Verlander
Regardless of the outcome it was great to be watching Tiger baseball again.
-
The Guillen Gamble
credit Roger DeWittThe biggest story out of the Tigers camp right now is a possible contract extension for Carlos Guillen. Michael Young’s 5 year $80 million deal certainly helped to stir the pot. I think that gambling on Guillen is something the Tigers need to do.
Drew Sharp says to let Guillen walk if he wants Michael Young money and years. That’s great, but who do you want playing shortstop then? Before spending really boomed, Orlando Cabrera was inked to a 4 year $32 million deal to play shortstop at the age of 30. The same Orlando Cabrera who has Deivi Cruz and Neifi Perez listed as comparables. This past offseason 30 year old Julio Lugo signed a deal that will pay him $9 million per for 4 years. Granted those deals are substantially less than Young’s contract, but it is still far from cheap.
(more…) -
Dombrowski 48th in Forbes GM Rankings
Forbes has ranked all the general managers with at least 3 years experience from the 4 major sports (MLB, NFL, NHL, NBA). Detroit Tigers GM Dave Dombrowski came just about in the middle at 48th. In terms of baseball GMs though he did pretty well.
The highest rated baseball GM was Billy Beane at 26. Dombrowski ranked 9th among MLB general managers behind Beane, Minaya, Epstein, Sabean(?), Gillick, Schuerholz, Beinfest, and Jocketty.
If you’re wondering about the other Detroit general managers, only Joe Dumars garnered a favorable rank (9th). Red Wings GM Ken Holland came in 90th. Amazingly Matt Millen didn’t come in last (which is just one more reason to question the validity of the rankings), placing 96th out of 98 general managers.
Methodology
Hat Tip Baseball Think Factory -
Ticket Experiences – open thread
So, how have everyone’s ticket-getting experiences been today? I got into the “virtual waiting room” and was in there for 40 minutes before my browser crashed. Did anybody else have better luck?
Meanwhile, the cheapest Opening Day tickets on StubHub are up to $138.
3:45PM UPDATE: Things seem to be running along smoother now. The Tigers just issued a release saying that as of 2:15pm both the Saturday, June 9 game against the New York Mets and the Saturday, August 25 game against the New York Yankees were already selling standing room only tickets. At that point nearly 61,000 tickets had been sold today. Combined with the 16,500 full season equivalents that puts 2007’s paid attendance already at nearly 1.4 million. In 2006, individual game sales for the entire first day, which included Opening Day, totaled only 29,000.
-
Statistical Leftovers
Just cleaning out some leftover data from the pitch-by-pitch analysis from the last couple weeks. These are a couple things I calculated along the way, that never made it into a post. These data are from 2006.
Tiger data
While delving into Curtis Granderson’s strikeouts, I calculated many of the same stats for the rest of the team. Here they are:
(more…)