The Best Tigers Moments of 2013 – #20
For the next several weeks we’ll be rolling out our list of the best The Moment’s of 2013. The list is the product of winnowing down 173 moments from April to October into the best twenty. They vary in their importance but all captivated us in an important way. A few are silly, a few are excellent plays, and a few will travel down in Tigers lore. I hope you enjoy it.
#20: Alex Avila hits a grand slam off Stephen Strasburg
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Beating an under-performing Nationals team doesn’t jump out as one of the more important wins of the 2013 season, but the way in which the Tigers scored the decisive runs earns it a place on our list. Entering the day, Alex Avila was hitting .193/.289/.309 and had struck out 29.6% of the time. The year was looking like a nightmare. He had performed better in July after coming off the DL, but he was still nowhere near where he wanted to be.
That night, he drew a tough assignment – Stephen Strasburg. Now Strasburg wasn’t getting the kind of national attention some other young stars were but his season was extremely impressive once you got beyond the ridiculous standard he set for himself. To date, Avila had 6 HR and all were against fastballs between 89-94 mph.
Then came his 6th inning at bat against one of the best arms in baseball. Strasburg got ahead 0-1 before putting two inside and leaving the count at 2-1. The bases were loaded. The score was tied. Strasburg came down and in at 96 mph. To date, Avila had exactly one hit against a pitch 96 mph or higher which got through a hole on the ground against Fernando Rodney.
On this night, he turned on it and sent it flying deep into the Michigan summer. 5-1, Tigers lead. Here comes Avila. You know the rest. From that day forward he hit .299/.377/.514 and looked a whole lot like the Alex Avila who took the league by storm in 2011. He led the Tigers staff through one of the best pitching seasons of all time and punctuated it with a couple more appearances further down this list.
The season didn’t start very well for Avila, but as the summer wore on his luck started to turn. It’s not often than a .190 hitter makes the great Strasburg hang his head in shame, but on July 30, 2013 that’s exactly what we saw.
In a season of great moments, this one trailed only 19 others. Watch the video and enjoy. Only 156 days until Opening Day.
How Was The Game (July 30, 2013)
The Tigers Claim The Central
Being a fan isn’t a rational endeavor. As much as we apply analytic thinking to sports, we can’t engage that kind of clear-headed thinking about our favorite team. We can think about individual players and games rationally, but we can’t experience the season dispassionately. That’s not a bad thing. When we do analysis here, we do it rationally. When we watch baseball, when we watch our favorite team, it’s about experiencing a cavalcade of emotions. From April to October, it’s about joy, sadness, excitement, amazement, heartbreak, and even, love.
So much can be said about the practice of being a baseball fan, but I think the best way to describe being a fan throughout the season is to liken it to falling in love. You go through stages, you’re tested, and you grow together. That might be a stupid way to look at it, but I don’t care, this isn’t about being rational. It’s about being a fan and being a fan is about falling in love.
We can extend this metaphor as much as we want, but I’ll keep it short. That first moment of infatuation was the April 17th game in Seattle in which Scherzer dueled Felix and the game ended with Brayan Pena absorbing a tackle from Justin Smoak. I think that game ended around 3am. It was my birthday. My wife had gone to bed. Twitter activity was dying down. It felt like it was just me and the team staying up late.
There was Sanchez striking out 17 and Sanchez flirting with a no-hitter. An otherworldly 3-HR night from Miguel Cabrera on a Sunday evening in Arlington. Despite early struggles, both Avila and Martinez came on strong down the stretch. Verlander tried to avoid the Handshake by running away from Leyland.
Big hit after big hit. Excellent start after excellent start. Max Scherzer made the leap from above average to elite and Porcello made the leap from serviceable to above average. Even when Verlander struggled, he was still pretty darn good. The staff was better than any in Tigers history and made a very serious run at being the best all-time, period.
Miguel Cabrera spent most of the summer playing on Easy as he compiled one of the top offensive seasons in baseball history despite fighting injuries for the final two months. Infante and Hunter and Fister and Benoit all had great and under-appreciated seasons. We lost Peralta for mistakes made last Spring but gained the preposterous wizardry of Jose Iglesias.
Hunter walked off to avoid the sweep against the A’s. Avila and Cabrera hit huge homeruns in Cleveland. The amazing rally on the final Saturday night at Comerica Park.
Day after day, week after week, month after month, they’ve gotten a little closer. The big winning streak in August effectively put the race to bed and a series win against the Tribe later in the month put the final nail in the coffin. 2013 was not about winning another division – a third straight – which they finally did tonight with a 1-0 win over the Twins in game 159. 2013 was about winning four more games. The last four. That’s the goal. The mission. And they’ve taken the first step.
I said at the beginning of the season that I thought this was the year. Rationally, they’re the best team in the league. Objectively, they’ve got the best pitching and the best offense. But I felt it too. An irrational feeling, but it was there. This was how the long road back would end, with the team spraying champagne.
Ten years ago, they lost 119 games. Only Santiago and Infante remain from that team, and they both went away and came back. Only Verlander and Santiago were around when it all changed in 2006. This team isn’t really connected to those two teams. There’s virtually no overlap. But it feels like one single thread. One narrative. One story.
As fans, it is. We’ve been in since then. In 2006, it came from nowhere. We tasted what it was like to cheer for a winner. They came close in 2007 and loaded up for 2008 with Cabrera and Renteria and were supposed to score 1,000 runs. That was our lesson in hubris. They were going to run away and hide and instead lost the first seven games and never really made it close. 2009 was even worse. They fell apart down the stretch and lost the most heartbreaking game I’ve ever seen. I’ve still never watched the highlights. I haven’t talked about it. I honestly haven’t even looked at the box score. I can’t. Not yet.
2010 was a transition season. Mediocre, but a shift with Jackson and Scherzer coming on board. The final push started in 2011. A tight race for most of the summer turned into a laugher when they picked up Fister and rattled off 12 straight wins to take the division by more than a dozen games. A narrow win against the Yankees in the ALDS and then a good series against the Rangers who were just better.
Last year was about learning to come back. They made a final push over the final two weeks to overtake the White Sox and held off the A’s before annihilating the Yankees. But the World Series, much like in 2006, was a disaster. After such a strong run, it was all over so quickly.
This year was about unfinished business. There is nothing else to prove. They’ve shown the ability to endure an entire season. They’ve shown they can win in the playoffs. It’s about the final four games.
The roster has turned over, but the institutional memory remains. Partly from the front office and the coaching staff, but partly all of us watching every day and living and dying with this team with one last, little thing to prove. Those other teams are special to me. 2006 was about being relevant again. 2011 and 2012 about overcoming the ills the befell the team and the city in 2008 and 2009. This year is about victory.
The funerals ended long ago. No one feels sorry for Tigers fans anymore. The city isn’t the jewel it was fifty years ago, but it’s coming back. This is the last step. It’s not rational to place so much importance on the success of a baseball team, but what are we doing in life if not experiencing things that move us?
I don’t think I’m alone in thinking that this is the Tigers team I’ll tell my kids about. I think there’s a rational and irrational case to be made about that. Every single year, I fall in love with that particular team for a variety of different reasons. I fall in love if they suck and I fall in love if they collapse. It doesn’t really matter. I love baseball. I love the Tigers. And in some strange and indirect way, they love me back.
They don’t have to win the World Series for me to have enjoyed this team more than any that have come before. There have been moments of anger and moments of sadness, but it’s been so much fun every step of the way. Perhaps there’s a connection between this site and all of that. Maybe I’ve had more fun watching this team because I’ve enjoyed writing about them so much. It’s possible, certainly.
For whatever reason – Pena’s tag, Sanchez and Scherzer’s brilliance, Cabrera’s magic, or the rest of the team’s moments big and small – I’ve enjoyed this season more than any other. Part of it is about them and part of it is about me. It’s a partnership. Almost like a marriage. It’s not supposed to be a rational endeavor. We can analyze the sport, but we love it because of what it makes us feel.
Today, I feel pride. And determination. Four more wins. Go Tigers.
Was My Favorite Player Any Good?
It’s no secret that younger baseball fans are less discriminating that older fans. You pretty much just pick a player you think is pretty good and that’s it. It’s a very simple and very elegant system. I’m not knocking it, merely pointing out that when we were kids, we didn’t think very deeply about these things.
So today, I thought I’d go back in time and see what the younger version of me was thinking. 16 or 17 years ago, I didn’t know anything about wOBA or FIP. They didn’t even exist. Baseball analysis has come a long way since then. I’m not even sure if my house had an internet connection when I first started watching baseball. I’m pretty sure we didn’t.
The other day I realized that I had never really gone back and evaluated the advanced stats on some of the players I watched growing up. I wouldn’t regret cheering for bad players. In fact, I openly cheer for below average players all the time. That’s not the point. The point is that I wanted to see if my favorite players back in the day when I though AVG, HR, and RBI were the only thing that mattered were any good.
My favorite player as a kid was Tigers OF Bobby Higginson. That’s a blast from the past, right? I modeled by little league number (and every one thereafter) after Higgy’s #4. I went with 44 as an homage. Heck, it’s still in my Twitter handle.
Higginson played from 1995-2005, right in the midst of the steroid era, but still caught on as my favorite player because he was one of very few Tigers who were any good. I remember loving his strong throwing arm from the corner, but he was also a middle of the order bat for my team.
Looking back I am actually a bit shocked to discover that Higginson was a pretty good player! Nice job, young Neil!
Higginson had a career walk rate of 11.5% and K rate of 14.1%, both were better than league average during his era. His approach was good and his career wRC+ was 11% above league average at 111. Bobby Higginson was a solid hitter. His career slash line was .272/.358/.455 and he accumulated more than 17 wins above replacement (WAR) despite a negative defensive rating.
His best season by rate was his 1996 campaign when he posted a 141 wRC+ and he posted his highest WAR in 2000 at 4.3. During his career from 1995-2005 Higginson ranks as the 52nd best outfielder by WAR and 62nd by wRC+. Among Tigers, he was the best position player, leading Damion Easley by more than two wins and had far more games and plate appearances than anyone else in the organization.
So congratulations, young self, you picked a player whom you enjoyed watching and who was a pretty solid player. You didn’t know anything about plate discipline or linear weights, but you still managed to pick a player who was pretty well rated by both measures.
I’m not sure how informative this was, but it’s sometimes nice to look back and just reflect on what it’s like to be a baseball fan. Bobby Higginson was my favorite player growing up and now that I have much better tools to evaluate players, I can now see that he was much more than just a really strong arm. I’d encourage you to go back and check up on the guys you cheered for decades ago, it’s a pretty cool experience. I’ll save Tigers fans some time, though. Al Kaline was awesome, you don’t have to worry.
Memorable Moments: The Scott Baker Game
Every once in a while here at STT, I plan to write about personal baseball experiences I’ve had. Memorable games, moments, seasons, etc that have a great deal of personal significance to me will be on display in order to balance out some of the more technical analysis you’ll find on the site.
These come in no particular order other than the given post is the one I chose to write about that day. Please feel free to comment about your own take on the given topic or suggest others you’d like to see, such as “What were you thinking during Game 163 in 2009?”
Full disclosure, I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to write about that. That’s the most crushed I’ve ever been, ever. Bar none. Crushed. Not just about sports, at all.
Today, I want to share with you one of the greatest regular season games I’ve ever attended. It took place at Comerica Park on a warm July night in 2006.
July 1st, 2006 to be precise. It was Sunday Night Baseball on ESPN and my dad, brother, and I were sitting in Section 140B of Comerica Park. That’s The Terrace down the LF line for those of you who don’t have that kind of thing memorized.
It was a clear night and the first pitch was scheduled for 8:09pm to accommodate the national telecast. The Tigers trailed the Tribe by 1.5 games in the standings and another late season pennant chase was coming on after the magic of 2006. Tigers fans packed the house, 41, 708 strong, and were ready to catapult ourselves into prominence.
This was the year we were going to show that 2006 wasn’t luck, it was the beginning of something (it was!). So the park filled quickly and the game got underway.
Jeremy Bonderman took the hill for the hometown team against Twins hurler Scott Baker. Bonderman was having a respectable follow up to his masterful 2006 campaign and was 9-5 with a 3.90 ERA entering the night. Baker wasn’t much at this point in his career with a 5-2 record to match his 5.77 ERA through a few starts in 2007.
This figured to be a fair match, but what unfolded was one of the more magical nights in my baseball life to date.
The two men who had league average or worse ERAs twirled a collected gem unmatched by anything I’d seen before or since. I’ve been to brilliantly pitched games, but most of that came from one side of the other. I’ve been to Verlander near no-hitters and gems by individual pitchers, but as far as mastery on both sides is concerned, this is the gold standard.
Bonderman gave up five hits, but no runs through three innings. He was doing fine, but he wasn’t dominating. Then it clicked and he blew through the next five innings, allowing just one more hit, which came as a double in the sixth. His final line would read 8IP, 6H, 0R, 1BB, 7K. It took 110 pitches.
That’s a really good night for anyone, even if your name is Verlander. But his counterpart didn’t disappoint either. Scott Baker retired the first nine Tigers in order ahead of a leadoff triple by Curtis Granderson in the 4th. He erased a leadoff walk in the 5th on a double play and allowed a two out single to Magglio Ordonez in the 7th that wouldn’t lead to anything.
Baker was in control. After 7 ½ innings, Bonderman had thrown 110 pitches and kept the Twins of the board. Baker had countered with his own 7 innings of shutout ball. He took the hill in the bottom of the eighth in great shape and looked to give his team a shot to win it against the Tigers bullpen in the 9th.
Baker missed on the first pitch of the inning to Pudge Rodriguez and got him to pop up to RF on pitch number two. Craig Monroe came to the plate next and ripped a line drive right to the left fielder’s glove.
Bottom of the 8th. Two outs. Tied at 0. Baker cruising.
Marcus Thames strode to the plate. He was 0-2 and had made two outs on four pitches so far. The Tigers DH had entered the day hitting .232 on the season with 7 HR. His prodigious power wasn’t enough to keep him behind everyone in the lineup except Brandon Inge.
But then something awesome happened. Thames crushed the first pitch. It sailed high and deep to left field. Jason Kubel was tracking it, but before long, he started to run out of room. The ball passed above our heads and it cleared the fence into a pile of screaming Tigers fans.
Homerun. 1-0 Tigers.
Baker got Inge to flyout on the second pitch to deep center field and the inning was over, but not before the damage was done. His final line was 8IP, 3H, 1R, 1BB, 3K. It took 79 pitches.
Both starters had gone 8 innings and the only blemish was a towering fly ball into the LF seats from Thames.
Todd Jones, who was famous for tightrope saves, set the Twins down in order in the 9th inning on seven pitches. The crowd went crazy. Tigers win 1-0.
The punch line of this game? It took 2 hours and 7 minutes. It was a masterpiece in every way.
Both starters threw 8 brilliant innings and Baker only needed 79 pitches for a complete game loss than included one bad pitch. Jones shut the door.
A game that started at 8pm because of the national broadcast was over before most 7pm starts during the season. At 10:17pm, we were already heading for our car.
Pitching duels are my favorite games to watch and everyone loves late inning homeruns. It was textbook efficiency by both starters and it turned on a long fly ball in the 8th inning.
This wasn’t the best baseball game I ever attended, but it was certainly close. In the Weinberg household, we refer to this as the Scott Baker Game after the starting pitcher who managed to average fewer than ten pitches an inning and still lose.
I think we all have certain moments in our lives as fans that stand out in our minds, and this is one of them. Bonderman-Baker-Thames sounds like a law firm or a John le Carre novel, but for me, it will always be the story of one of the best baseball games I ever attended.
New English D 