The Detroit Tiger Weblog

Blog

  • Tigers Miscellaney

    This, that, and the other…

    • The big news in baseball is the impending exclusive deal for the Extra Innings package with DirecTV. Here is a roundup of what some columnists are saying. Living in Southeast Michigan this isn’t a big deal to me. But with the Tigers surge in popularity I’m sure there are many displaced Tiger fans who will be frustrated. I’ve put up a poll related to this in the sidebar. Let me know what you think.
    • The Tigers signed Joey Eischen to a minor league deal. He’ll get an invite to the big league camp, as will catcher Dusty Ryan.
    • When I mentioned being surprised that the Tigers were positioning Eulogio de la Cruz as a starter, Matt sent info showing how much better de la Cruz performed as a starter last year. Matt also has a blog where he recently did a deep dive of the Tigers drafting of college players and their progressions through the system
    • Jason Beck has a couple of TV notes. Beck notes that the Tigers have 6 televised spring training games. Also, the Tigers have eight 3:55pm Saturday games which is the start time for Fox Saturday Baseball.
    • Cameron Maybin has a webpage. (hat tip The Surge)
    • Carlos Pena is following in the tradition of Greg Norton, Alex Sanchez, and Eric Munson. He’s signing with the Devil Rays.
    • For my feed subscribers, it seems like I just went full feed and now I’m back to partial. But it’s not my fault (entirely). I recently upgraded to the new version of WordPress (2.1) which supports full feeds differently than the old version. I’m hoping this gets corrected in the short term or that a work around is created. In any case I hope to be all the way back to full feed by the end of the weekend, even if it means uninstalling the new version.

  • Plate Appearance Depth for pitchers

    After taking a look at how hitters did as plate appearances grew longer, it seemed easy enough to see how the pitchers fared.

    I decided to take a look at two Tigers with contrasting styles, Jeremy Bonderman and Kenny Rogers
    Bonderman performance by depth of PA
    The MLB 2006 norm was for OBPs to start increasing once the plate appearance went beyond 4 pitches. However, Bonderman’s stayed relatively flat throughout. This could be indicative of Bonderman’s unwillingness to “give in” to an opposing hitter. It was an approach that had pretty good results for Bonderman, but the rise in slugging percentage may indicate he got burned this way on occasion.
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  • Tuesday Linking

    Short and sweet…

  • Chilling at TigerFest

    The Tigers took a big gamble this year by moving TigerFest to Comerica Park. Things were looking up with a generally mild winter, right up until this cold snap. While the event was a smashing success from a ticketing standpoint, most reviews suggest that if you’re going to host 12,000 people in January, an outdoor venue might not be the place to do it.
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  • Quick Links

    We’re over the hump of the offseason and news is flowing now. So these link posts might get to be more frequent.

    On another note, if anybody makes it down to TigerFest and would like to share their experiences drop me a line. I screwed up and waited too long for tickets so the boy and I are missing out.

  • Tigers extend Rodney

    It seems like just a few days ago that the Tigers agreed to a one year contract with Fernando Rodney. Well it was just a few days ago. That contract is gone and has been replaced by a shiny new 2 year contract. I haven’t found terms yet, but I’ll update when I do.

    UPDATE: Jason Beck has the dollars, $2.7 million in total. Not much to complain about there. The contract secures Rodney at an affordable price for 2008 when Todd Jones won’t be around. A quality bullpen arm for two years at a reasonable price.

  • Jim Leyland on Neifi Perez

    Eric picked this up early on, and I saw the comments posted on MotownSports as well. Jim Leyland was interviewed today on the Stoney and Wojo show on WDFN. Mike Stone asked Jim Leyland, “what does Jim Leyland see in Neifi Perez that we as fans and media members don’t?” The response wasn’t the typical fluff you’d expect. Here is the transcribed version of what Leyland said.

    Well that’s a good question because he played terrible. And what had happened was we got reports from our scouts, and I had known him from the past. We were kind of in a panic situation. We had lost Polly and we needed someone who could come in and play second, and play shortstop as well because Carlos needed some time off. And up to this point it looks like we made a mistake.

    So Neifi’s going to have to prove us wrong this spring because has not been a good acquisition up to this point.

    But that was my fault, and the scouts. And I like said we had to have somebody. And I hope Neifi’ll prove us wrong. I think he’ll be much better than what he showed last year because he showed absolutely nothing when he came over.

    Now this reads like he was slamming Neifi something fierce. He was very gruff and matter-of-fact, but it’s a little softer when you actually listen to the interview (available on WDFN podcast page). And in typical Leyland fashion he was more than willing to take responsibility.

    That said I thought this was a little bit much to call out a player like that in the media in January. I love that Leyland didn’t pull punches and was honest, but what did they really expect from Perez in the first place? Perez pretty much performed up to reasonable expectations given his history.

    I’ve definitely done my share of Neifi-bashing in the past, but I tried to direct my frustrations less at Neifi and more at Jim Leyland’s insistence on playing him. Perez didn’t ask to come to Detroit, and it’s really not his fault that teams keep giving him playing time. I actually feel a little sympathetic towards Perez right now. Weird.

    But the good news for Tiger fans is that it looks like the Tigers definitely aren’t committed to keeping Perez on the roster and that Infante will have a pretty good shot at making the team.

  • Tigers Caravan Roundup

    News from the road: (by the way, if you happen to make it out to a caravan stop and would like to comment on the experience, let me know)

  • Pitches per Plate Appearance

    After examining the depth of plate appearances for the Tigers and MLB as a whole, I wanted to take a look by individual Tiger at what happens as a plate appearance grows longer. Of course this would prove to be a massive post because each player would need their own table and or chart.

    Instead, I decided to invest the time in dumping the data into a usable format in Excel so others can look up their favorite players, or teams.

    There are 2 files, one for teams and one for players. There’s a simple front end where you can select teams or players via a drop down and the calculations and graphs will be generated for you. The data is also accessible if you want to play around. One word of caution though, the calculations in the player file aren’t exactly speedy.

    Now because this is a Tiger blog, I did break out a file with just Tiger players.

    If anyone comes across something or someone interesting, please let me know.

    File: padepth.zip (570k) contains all teams and all players
    File: padepth_player_det.zip (30k) contains just Detroit Tigers

  • FSN Replaying Playoff Wins

    Fox Sports Net Detroit is certainly going to warm Tiger fans up as we wait for pitchers and catchers to report to spring training. The station will be airing the Tigers 7 consecutive playoff wins in the ALDS and ALCS. The games will be shown in their entirety along with some of the postgame reactions and press conferences. For someone like myself who watches the Ordonez homer about once a week, this will be a treat.

    The schedule is below so get your DVRs ready.

    Mon. Jan. 29, 7:00 PM – ALDS Game 2 at New York (Tigers 4, Yankees 3 – played 10/5/06)

    Mon. Feb. 5, 7:00 PM – ALDS Game 3 at Detroit (Tigers 6, Yankees 0 – played 10/6/06)

    Mon. Feb. 19, 7:00 PM – ALDS Game 4 at Detroit (Tigers 8, Yankees 3 – played 10/7/06)

    Mon. Feb. 26, 7:00 PM – ALCS Game 1 at Oakland (Tigers 5, Athletics 1 – played 10/10/06)

    Mon. March 12, 7:00 PM – ALCS Game 2 at Oakland (Tigers 8, Athletics 5 – played 10/11/06)

    Mon. March 19, 7:00 PM – ALCS Game 3 at Detroit (Tigers 3, Athletics 0 – played 10/13/06)

    Wed. March 21, 7:00 PM – ALCS Game 4 at Detroit (Tigers 6, Athletics 3 – played 10/14/06)

  • Tigers Ink Robertson, Rodney, Infante, and Monroe

    The Tigers avoided arbitration by signing one year deals with Nate Robertson, Fernando Rodney, Omar Infante, and Craig Monroe today.

    Details and commentary coming later…

    UPDATE: Jon Paul Morosi reports the values of the contracts as:
    Craig Monroe: $4,775,000
    Nate Robertson: $3,260,000
    Omar Infante: $1,300,000
    Fernando Rodney: $1,050,000

    I’ve updated the payroll info to reflect the changes. As it stands now, the Tigers payroll is just a hair under $95 million. That includes 20 members of the projected 25 man roster as well as Andrew Miller. With 5 additional players to be signed to the remaining roster spots, the Tigers are looking at a payroll of $97-98 million.
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  • Examining Depth of Plate Appearances

    Certainly there is more to plate discipline than first pitch swinging. We’ve seen that the Tigers aggressiveness in that regard actually pays dividends. We also know that the Tigers strike out more than any other team in the American League and walk less than only the Cubs and Mariners. One hazard of first pitch swinging is that it short circuits long at-bats, but is there a benefit to working deep into the count?
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