Tigers Keep Jeff Jones, Everyone Looks Good
News broke today that Brad Ausmus and the Tigers will be keeping pitching coach Jeff Jones on board for the 2014 season. This wasn’t surprising and it was an easy decision, but it’s still reflects well on everyone involved.
I spent a lot of the 2013 season chronicling different improvements among the Tigers starting rotation – a rotation that rivaled the best couple of rotations in baseball history using Fielding Independent Pitching (FIP). You can read all of those different posts by clicking the “Tigers Breakdown” tab above but I want to call your attention to a post I wrote early last summer about the Tigers’ use of the changeup. In this post, I pointed out that all of the Tigers starters were throwing more changeups than they had ever thrown before. I didn’t know the cause, but I knew that one of the possible explanations was Jeff Jones.
During the 2013 season we saw three of the Tigers pitchers have career years, while Fister and Verlander only finished 7th and 12th in baseball in WAR. The rotation collectively posted a FIP- that was second best all time and they struck out something like 97% of batters they faced in the postseason (exaggeration added). There are a variety of possible explanations. This could be organizational and coming from the front office. It could be the pitchers figuring it out on their own. It could be Alex Avila. It could be Jeff Jones.
In reality, it’s probably a mix of all four. I assume that the Front Office provides Jones with information that he uses in conjunction with Avila and the starter to formulate a gameplan. Whatever the process is, it’s working. The Tigers starting pitchers ran away and hid.
I’m not going to take the time right now to recap the specific changes each pitcher made this year (I’ll do that throughout the offseason), but I will point out that Porcello took another big step forward with his strikeout rate. Fister added more ground balls. Scherzer did everything. Sanchez added strikeouts and cut homeruns. Verlander had issues, but Verlander also fixed those issues and was amazing over his last nine starts.
Without being in the pitchers’ meetings, I can’t guarantee that Jones is responsible, but when five pitchers on the same team all appear to have gotten better at the same time despite completely different styles and a bad defense, you tend to look for a connection. Some is Avila and some is Jones, why risk losing that?
So take a step back and think about what this says. First, it suggests that the organization values Jones as they should. Check. It shows that Gene Lamont values Jones. Check. It says that Brad Ausmus, who doesn’t know Jones as well as everyone else both listened to the right people and saw the value Jones brings when he talked with him. It means he read his players correctly, who love Jones. Check.
The Tigers don’t always make great decisions, but they do a decent job most of the time. Bringing Jones on as the pitching coach from the bullpen in 2011 was a smashing success and recognizing his value enough to keep him around in a new regime reflects well on everyone.
They need a new hitting coach and have to decide how they want to handle first base and infield coaching duties, but by having Ausmus in place and Jones in his old seat, they’re ready to figure out how to piece together the players that will finally help them win the last game of the season.
Brad Ausmus Meets The Press
Last night, news broke that Brad Ausmus would be the Tigers’ next manager and Dombrowski and Ausmus met the media to announce the 3 year deal this afternoon. My general thoughts can be found here and the basic takeaway is that it looks like a good move, but there is so much we don’t know about how he will fill the role.
In answering questions, Ausmus made a few comments that really encouraged me. When asked about sabermetrics, he discussed the need to take that information and boil it down into something he can give to players who are resistant to a lot of information. This is a really good mindset in that Ausmus knows it’s his job to pay attention to the advanced numbers and use that to craft his instruction and decision making. It doesn’t matter if Miguel Cabrera knows what his wOBA is, but it does matter that Ausmus knows why wOBA is something to focus on instead of batting average. I think that he does.
Ausmus also talked about leaning on Alex Avila and Gene Lamont during the transition which is a sign of wisdom. Ausmus doesn’t have all the answers, but he knows what he doesn’t know and knows who in the organization can help him. Lamont has been at the wheel before and Avila has marshaled this pitching staff for several years. I study political leadership and decision making in my other life and one characteristic that stands out is knowing who to rely on for assistance.
That said, he hasn’t made up his mind about the rest of the staff. The only thing that matters is Jeff Jones and he said Jeff Jones is a candidate for the job. Hopefully when he takes the time to sit down with Jones and talk with Avila and Lamont about a pitching coach, he’ll see the value Jones brings.
Finally, Ausmus spoke about thinking ahead and communicating, especially as it relates to taking pitchers out and having the bullpen ready. I’m not sure how far down the road he wants to take this, but it sure sounds like he’s going to use his communication skills to deploy a more flexible bullpen strategy. I don’t know if he’ll totally reinvent the wheel, but I would bet he won’t be afraid to use his set up men in much less rigid roles than his predecessor. It’s hard to say how the whole closer thing will go until we actually know who he’ll have in his bullpen, but it sounds like the Tigers are moving in the right direction.
As I said yesterday, we won’t know how Ausmus will do until we see him take the reins but the signs are pointing in the right direction. He gave good answers, even if the press asked predominantly routine questions. Ausmus seems to be a mix of good old boy credibility with some modern sensibilities. That’s the kind of change the Tigers needed. Now the only question is if the perception we have of Ausmus today will match the reality we find in April.
Tigers Hire Brad Ausmus
We’ll know more in the days and weeks to follow, but news broke late Saturday that the Tigers will finalize a deal with former catcher Brad Ausmus that will make him their next manager. I normally don’t give a lot of credit to people who “break news” like this in sports, but I will tonight because ESPN annoyingly referred to him as a “media report.”
On the face of it, I really like the move. I loved Brad Ausmus as a player and always thought highly of his baseball IQ. That said, he’s never managed at this level before and we just don’t know anything about his philosophical leanings or his ability to lead from the manager’s office. I’m not saying you have to hire a tried and true skipper, but I’m saying the untested are difficult to judge. Newsflash, I know.
Mike Matheny comes from the Ausmus tradition in that they’re about the same age and both filled similar roles in the big leagues before becoming first time managers. I don’t think that highly of Matheny as an on field manager, but that also tells me nothing about what Ausmus will do.
This is going to get repetitive quickly, but I just don’t know. Anyone who thinks they know is lying unless they’re Brad Ausmus or Dave Dombrowski. I’ll analyze his every move for you, but I won’t speculate. That’s not what we do here. I liked Ausmus as a player and think highly of him. For now, that’s all I’ll say. When he starts saying and doing things, I’ll write more about him.
I’ll leave you with a final thought. The best thing Ausmus can do at the beginning of this is to keep Jeff Jones. Jeff Jones makes a difference and knowing your personnel and how to get them to perform their best is critical. I normally harp on tactical stuff because that’s the stuff we can see, but when it comes down to it, making sure Anibal Sanchez and Rick Porcello maintain their improvements is way more important than calling on the right middle reliever at the right time.
And just in case you forgot, Brad Ausmus made the All-Star Game as a Tiger in 1999 courtesy of a .365 OBP and the team being awful. Even if Ausmus doesn’t work out as a manager, you’ve got to appreciate how much nicer it is to be a Tigers fan this time around.
Quick Notes on the #Tigers Moves
The Tigers made three minor moves today, but since it’s November and there’s nothing worth doing in November, they feel like big moves. The Tigers let Darin Downs and Matt Tuiasosopo go on waivers to Houston and Arizona and they declined Jose Veras’ team option valued at $3.25 million.
Tuiasosopo played very well during the first half of the season but struggled mightily down the stretch. He may have had a chance to win a bench spot again in 2014, but he won’t have the same chance to platoon and likely won’t ever perform like he did this year again. If the Dbacks want him, you’re happy to take the roster spot.
Downs is actually a bit of a disappointment for me because I think Downs is tremendously underrated. He stuck out more than a batter an inning and walked fewer than 3 per 9 across 35.1 innings. The ERA looks bad because of a couple of rough outings (one right before he went on the DL), but the FIP and xFIP are solid and he’s left-handed. I realize the Tigers don’t see him as part of the long term plan, but this is the kind of guy you’d like to have around for depth.
The Veras option is extremely surprising given that the Tigers gave up a reasonably good prospect to get him and that they gave him the ball with the entire season on the line just a week and a half ago. He was going to cost them less than $4 million next year and could easily fill a variety of roles. It’s not so much that you’ll miss Veras, it’s that he was a cheap option for a bullpen with very little set in stone. Smyly will be back unless he’s in the rotation due to an injury and you’ll have Rondon and Alburquerque, health willing. Benoit is a free agent and everyone else is kind of on the brink. Having Veras around, even if you don’t think he’s a high leverage guy, makes sense.
The meat of the offseason is still coming and there will be much more to discuss, but on the first day of action, the Tigers have made one obvious move, one iffy move, and one seemingly crazy one. Not exactly a great start, but also not exactly critical either.
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