How Was The Game? (April 10, 2015)
Smooth sailing.
Tigers 8, Indians 4
The Tigers are getting a great jump on the AL Central race, winning their first four divisional games including one today against their main competition, the Cleveland Indians. The Tigers pushed across a run in the 2nd, two in the 4th, and then Castellanos laced one over the wall to make it 5-0 after 5. Alfredo Simon (1 GS, 5.1 IP, 5.06 ERA, 2.73 FIP) didn’t have trouble early, but the lineup turned over the third time and those steady Tribe bats started to get to him, grabbing three runs on him in the 6th before chasing him for Alburquerque who quelled the rally. Hardy got two innings of work, allowing a run, and Joba got the 9th inning and allowed a couple of runners so it was Soria’s game to finish. They’ll go for the series win tomorrow with David Price (1 GS, 8.2 IP, 0.00 ERA, 1.57 FIP) on the hill against Corey Kluber.
The Moment: Nick Castellanos goes the other way for his first homer of the year.
How Was The Game? (April 9, 2015)
Clean.
Tigers 7, Twins 1
You never want to put too much stock in the first three games of the season because it’s only three games, but that being said, you couldn’t have asked for a better opening series. You can’t put too much stock in it, but there was nothing but good things this week in Detroit. The offense got rolling early and often again in this one, scoring two in the 1st, one in the second, three in the 4th, and another in the 5th. JD Martinez and Anthony Gose led the offense and Shane Greene (1 GS, 8 IP, 0.00 ERA, 1.95 FIP) dazzled in his debut. The Twins didn’t do a lot to challenge him, but he cruised through 8 innings in 85 pitches and allowed his only run due to a defensive blunder up the left field gap. The rain delay didn’t bother the Tigers and they’ll leave town with three wins in hand. We’ll see what Alfredo Simon (2015 Debut) can do with the Indians on Friday.
The Moment: JD Martinez crushes one to deep right field.
How Was The Game? (April 8, 2015)
A domination.
Tigers 11, Twins 0
So, hey. Maybe we can play the Twins another 160 times? There wasn’t much happening through two innings, and then the lineup turned over and the Tigers unloaded a lot of their unresolved anger issues. They got three in the 3rd, four in the 4th, two in the 5th, and one each in the 7th and 8th. Gose, Kinsler, Cabrera, Avila, and Iglesias had huge days and Anibal Sanchez (1 GS, 6.2 IP, 0.00 ERA, 1.97 FIP) carved up the Twins until he started to tire in the 7th. The bullpen came in and managed to avoid any sort of “bullpen-ness.” The club will look to sweep tomorrow with newcomer Shane Greene (2015 Debut) on the bump.
The Moment: Gose triples to break it wide open in the 4th.
How Phil Hughes Walked Nick Castellanos, In Real Life
Normally, you can’t do a lot of detailed analysis early in the season because the small sample size monster is everywhere. We can’t say things like, “Jose Iglesias is going to steal a ton of bases” because he stole two today. We don’t have enough information to say that, but we can look into how certain interesting things happened. And boy did an interesting thing happen today.
In the 4th inning of today’s game, Nick Castellanos came to the plate with one out and no one on base. The Tigers were already up 3-0 and Price was cruising. The Tigers had an 84% win probability, so it wasn’t the most important plate appearance in the world, but man did it turn out to be a doozy.
Of the 146 batters who qualified in 2014, Castellanos had the 44th lowest walk rate (6.2%), which puts him in the bottom 30% of hitters or so. He swung way more than average and made far less contact than the average hitter. In other words, he’s a hard guy to walk and went through stretches where it was darn near impossible to walk him.
Of the 88 pitches who qualified in 2014, Phil Hughes had the lowest walk rate (1.9%). In fact, he had a lower walk rate than anyone who threw 10 innings. In other words, he filled up the zone and never walked anyone.
So you can see where this is going. Castellanos rarely walked and Hughes never walked anyone, so it would be pretty unlikely that Hughes would walk Castellanos! But it actually gets worse because Castellanos only walked 4.5% of the time against righties and Hughes only walked a righty 1.2% of the time. There are a couple of matchups that might lead you to predict a lower walk rate, but this is right up there, even factoring in the obvious regression to the mean.
But would you look at that?
Suzuki sets up low and away for the first pitch and Hughes misses over the plate, leading Nick to foul it off. Hughes misses with the second pitch and then comes back right over the plate for pitch three. Nick fouled it off.
Right here, it’s a 1-2 count and Castellanos hasn’t been able to handle two pretty hittable pitches. In other words, advantage Hughes in a big way. This should be cake if the two players are anything like there normal selves. Nick had a .179 wOBA after a 1-2 count last year.
Naturally, Hughes and Suzuki try to get Castellanos to chase away, but the pitch drifts far enough outside to allow him to layoff. It’s 2-2 now, but it’s still advantage Hughes.
Suzuki sets up down and in, and Hughes basically hits the spot. Castellanos laid off. So now it’s 3-2 and he’s got a shot to take the at bat back. The 3-2 pitch is the interesting one because Suzuki set up down and in and Hughes missed low, and towards the outside corner. If you watch the tape Suzuki did a horrible job receiving it. If Lucroy was catching, he might have been able to steal it back, but the point stands: Hughes missed in a big way.
Now this could all be nonsense because it’s one at bat in one game, but it’s might be a nice sign for Castellanos and a sign that Hughes probably isn’t the superhuman control guy we saw last year (duh!). But I think what we saw in this at bat is Suzuki and Hughes employing a strategy that definitely would have worked against the 2014 version of Castellanos. On pitches #4 and #5 they tried to get him to chase outside and then low. I think he probably goes after both of those more often than not last year, but when he laid off, it shifted to put the pressure back on Hughes. No margin of error and he threw a bad pitch.
Again, it could be a random event, or it could be a sign of a maturing hitter. Let’s hope for the latter.
How Was The Game? (April 6, 2015)
Picture perfect.
Tigers 4, Twins 0
After the 2014 season ended in disappointing fashion for everyone involved, the Tigers roared into 2015 intending to take no prisoners. The club got rolling early with a couple of big second inning swings. J.D. Martinez crushed the second pitch he saw over the right center field scoreboard and then Alex Avila launched an opposite field two-run bomb to score Cespedes later in the inning. David Price (1 GS, 8.2 IP, 0.00 ERA, 1.90 FIP) took it from there. He retired the first 13 men he faced and was efficient all day, finishing with 8.2 innings of shutout ball. Castellanos scored Cespedes in the 6th on a sac-line drive to add on a run. From start to finish, it was all Tigers and we almost didn’t even have to see a reliever, until Ausmus trolled us all with a last ditch Joe Nathan effort who only had to get one out without allowing four runs. If you’re been waiting all winter for baseball, you were rewarded with a dandy. It’ll be Anibal Sanchez (2015 Debut) getting the ball Wednesday after an off day.
The Moment: J.D. Martinez homers in his first at bat of the season.
Ernie Harwell Welcomes You To Baseball
Every year, Ernie used to read this quotation from the Song of Solomon on Opening Day. Last year, I heard a priest recite this in Ernie’s name in reference to the rebirth of baseball, Spring, and Easter.
For, lo, the winter is past,
The rain is over and gone;
The flowers appear on the earth;
The time of the singing of birds is come,
And the voice of the turtle is heard in our land.
Go Tigers.
Check back after the game for the season’s first edition of How Was the Game?
Screw It: Why The Tigers Will Win The 2015 World Series
I pride myself on my ability to be both a die-hard fan who roots for a team no matter what while also having the ability to take off my fan hat and be objective. Here, and at the various sites to which I contribute, I’ve pegged the Tigers as an 86-87 win team who will take a wild card and fall short of a championship. If you asked me to tell you what I really think is going to happen, that’s the honest truth. But we’re just talking about the most likely scenario. You have to predict the scenario you think is most likely, but lots of other scenarios are plausible. And there’s a plausible scenario in which the Tigers win the series. This is that scenario.
The most important cog in this entire machine is a healthy and successful season from Justin Verlander. He doesn’t have to be superstar Verlander, but the Tigers are an 86 win team (let’s say) with the Verlander I’m expecting. If he is a 4-5 win pitcher instead, that’s a 2-3 win bump right there. It’s probably enough to win the division.
Victor and JD Martinez are also likely to be worse than they were last year, but maybe they did both figure out how to hit like Miguel Cabrera last season. They’re both good hitters, but maybe they’re elite hitters. Another season like that and they Tigers should coast to a division win. Or it could be The Big Year from Cespedes in place of one of these. If Gose and Iglesias hit a little bit and really flash the leather we know they can flash, or Nick breaks out with the bat or learns how to use his glove, this all falls into place.
The Tigers’ main flaw is a lack of depth, so if the critical pieces stay healthy, it’s certainly a team that can win the division. In other words, there isn’t much that has to go right to move them from a borderline playoff team to a sure fire playoff team given the parity in the AL. This is a good team, it’s just a team that could crumble quickly if their base pieces falter. If they don’t, there’s another AL Central crown coming. They only need one significant pitcher and hitter to buck the projections, and as long as no one else takes a dive, October is a safe bet. This isn’t an “if everything breaks right” situation, it’s an “if two things break right” situation, and those are pretty common.
And when they get to October, there isn’t an AL team that can match Price-Sanchez-Good Verlander in terms of 1-2-3 punch unless the White Sox meet them there. The bullpen isn’t very good, but they have lots of guys who throw hard and those guys can have a good two week stretch at any given moment. The defense is better and they should be a little more fundamentally sound, avoiding some silly mistakes of years past. And the middle of the Tigers order can provide some thunder, making them a dangerous postseason team if the bullpen holds up.
So it’s kind of that simple. They need a couple of key over-performances during the regular season and then they need the pen to not melt down in October. They don’t have to be good, they just can’t be a disaster. If those things happen, the Tigers could easily be a World Series team.
Now I recognize the silliness of this exercise. At least 25 teams have a non-laughable path to a title and saying “if some guys play well, the Tigers will be good” is not very insightful. The Tigers’ strength is that they have some high end players and when October comes you can shorten the rotation and the bullpen and the bench. You need your depth at certain moments, sure, but you don’t need the same kinds of contributions. If the Tigers have a major pitching injury, they don’t have much to fill the gap. But if you only need four starters for three weeks, I really like where they stand.
They don’t have a good bullpen, but bullpens are really fickle and they have plenty of guys with enough talent to contribute. I wouldn’t bet on many of them being consistently valuable pieces, but that isn’t what October is about. And as much as people say otherwise, winning in baseball is largely about your ability to get on base and hit dingers. The Tigers can do that really well.
They don’t need everything to go right, they just need a couple of things to go right and they could easily be real title contender. If they get to the ALDS and if there pen isn’t a disaster, it’s a championship capable club.
The Guide To The 2015 Tigers: Thoughts On The Winter in Detroit
You’re very likely reading this in the days or hours leading up to the first regular season Tigers game of 2015. The club will take on the Twins with David Price on the hill around 1pm on Monday, and the part of our lives that’s been missing for these winter months will return. In every possible way, it’s a happy occasion. There isn’t a baseball season that’s bad, just seasons that are better than others. Offseasons don’t follow the same rules.
I wouldn’t say the Tigers had a bad offseason, but I do think they missed an opportunity to substantially improve their odds of winning in 2015. They made good moves and they made bad ones and they’re entering play this week in a pretty even race with the Cleveland Indians.
This winter, the Tigers extended Victor Martinez. They probably paid him a little too much money, but he’s a good player who would have been hard to replace for the 2015 season, so call it an inefficient win. And then cringe when you hear “meniscus tear” and pray for a full recovery.
They traded away New English D’s beloved Rick Porcello for Yoenis Cespedes. On balance, it was a pretty fair deal in which the teams swapped players who are about as costly and valuable as each other in 2015. The positional swap made sense and if the Tigers didn’t want to extend Porcello, then it made some sense. Call it a push which followed a failure.
The Tigers swapped Robbie Ray and Domingo Leyba for Shane Greene, c/o Did Gregorius. For me, this was an unmitigated slam dunk and one of Dombrowski’s classic starting pitcher finds. And then he went and traded for Alfredo Simon, losing Eugenio Suarez and Jonathan Crawford, forcing us to wonder if he was having a Jekyll and Hyde moment.
Then came Anthony Gose, who cost Devon Travis. I’m a little less bullish on Travis that some people, so I didn’t see this as a terrible move, but unless Gose has really reinvented his ability to hit this winter, he’s just not a terribly valuable addition. A fine trade, but not one that moved the needed.
They’re getting Iglesias and Rondon back. There’s no Torii Hunter defense and it’s a full year of Soria and Price. But there’s no Scherzer and the Verlander-Cabrera dynasty is another year older.
It was an underwhelming winter, punctuated by the return of Joba, who no one wanted, and the addition of Tom Gorzelanny, who is fine. Outside of the Simon deal, all of the moves they made were pretty defensible. The problem wasn’t the moves they made, but the ones they didn’t.
The Tigers poor bullpen and criminal lack of depth were on display all season last year and then ended their season in October. The Tigers did nothing to address either. They let guys like Gregerson, Neshek, Frasor, Cotts, and Duke go elsewhere for the sum total of about $17 million a year. You could have signed five relievers for what it costs to pay VMart, and that’s if you didn’t want Robertson or Miller. The Tigers also did nothing to improve their bench, and actually made it worse. Their four reserves will be McCann (good but a catcher!), whichever of Davis or Gose isn’t playing (and that means the wrong side of a platoon), and then Hernan Perez and Andrew Romine. Basically, if you need a catcher you’re good. The Tigers are also totally set on players who can pinch run. But there’s no offense there at all.
You never know exactly how every negotiation went, so it’s not any one move. It’s the sum total of a team willing to spend $170 million on a baseball team but not willing to drop a couple extra million to actually have some relievers and bench players. It’s frustrating, especially when the manager hasn’t shown any ability to properly leverage the assets he does have.
The Tigers aren’t doomed by any means. If I had to put money on it, I’d take the Indians by a game in the Central and put the Tigers in the coin flip game, but it’s plenty close and they could definitely win. This isn’t a great team anymore, it’s just a good one. We knew this day would come, I think we just all expected to have a little longer before it did.
There’s plenty to look forward to. The Tigers still have a couple of great starting pitchers and whatever’s left in Verlander’s tank. Cabrera-Martinez-Martinez-Cespedes are going to sock plenty of dingers. Kinsler, Iglesias, and Gose should play some fun defense. Rondon might throw 103.
It’s going to be an uphill battle, but we’re going to have fun trying to get to the top.
The Guide To The 2015 Tigers: Over Unders
People enjoy sports. People enjoy arguing. People enjoy wagering. Those are pretty easy statements to get behind. Maybe you don’t personally enjoy all three, but a big portion of the population certainly does. With that in mind, let’s consider the 2015Tigers and a whole host of random predictions we can make about the team. These are the 2015 Over/Unders. Some are serious, some are silly.
The idea here is that I’ll be setting the value at what I expect to be the mean value. So I’m setting the over/under at 86.5 wins, meaning I think it’s equally likely that they win more games as it is that they win fewer games. Feel free to suggest others in the comments section and weigh in on where you stand on some of the more interesting ones.
- Wins (86.5)
- Miguel Cabrera home runs (32.5)
- Anibal Sanchez 13+K starts (2.5)
- Ridiculous catches by Anthony Gose (5.5)
- Hilariously unfair throws by Yoenis Cespedes (4.5)
- Times I comment about a play Torii Hunter would not have made (30.5)
- Times FSD plays the footage of Rod Allen charging the mound in Japan (0.5)
- Number of games it takes for me to figure out Hook Slide’s radio delay thing to get the radio broadcast instead of the TV audio (3.5)
- Times Verlander will be “tinkering” (4.5)
- Tigers All-Stars (2.5)
- Latest time a game ends (Eastern Time) (2:17am)
- Insane double plays by Iglesias and Kinsler (4.5)
- Victor Martinez’s wRC+ (135.5)
- J.D. Martinez’s wRC+ (125.5)
- Most strikeouts in one game by a starter (15.5)
- Date of first fair-weather panic (May 2)
- Times I pine for Porcello (∞)
- Borderline suggestive tweets from @PAWSDetroit (2.5)
- Games I attend (6.5)
- No hit bids – 6+ innings (4.5)
- Ian Kinsler DRS/UZR average (+9.5)
- Alex Avila’s framing metric average (+2.5 runs)
- Walk off wins (3.5)
- Joe Nathan meltdowns (5.5)
- Joakim Soria milk-carton moments (7.5)
- David Price’s fWAR (5.0)
- Nick Castellanos contact rate (75.0%)
- Nick Castellanos’ DRS/UZR average (-12)
- Games that will be fun (157.5)
- Net games won or lost by Ausmus (-3)
The Guide To The 2015 Tigers: Considering The Indians
I wish it wasn’t such a trendy pick, but I think the Indians are going to be a very good team this year. Their pitching looks pretty good and their lineup lacks any significant holes outside of too many ABs for Nick Swisher. It’s a balanced roster that doesn’t have the name recognition the Tigers do, but they’re going to give the Tigers a very hard time in 2015.
Yan Gomes and Michael Brantley might be the Indians position players most capable of huge seasons, but if you look around the roster, it’s hard to find a spot that’s obviously below average. Certainly, injuries will happen, but there looks to be league average productions or better everywhere else. If anyone like Santana, Kipnis, Bourn, Moss, etc has a stand out year, everything leans forward.
The big concern might be the defense, as there are only a couple of players on the club who projected to be above average at their positions. Unfortunately for the Tigers, we know you can win with a bad defense. The Tribe also has some interesting depth options like David Murphy, Ryan Raburn, and Zach Walters, all of whom are capable of making serious contributions off the bench. And Lindor is lurking some time around midseason.
You wonder a little about the bullpen, which is anchored by Allen and Shaw. There isn’t a ton of depth, but they do have a number of starters who could shift to the pen if they need reserves.
Then there’s the rotation. Corey Kluber is an ace. Carlos Carrasco broke out in 2014. Trevor Bauer, Zach McAllister, and T.J. House fill in pretty well at the back end. But there’s also Josh Tomlin and Danny Salazar. If one of the Indians pitchers other than Kluber goes down, there’s a decent plug to fill the hole.
The Tigers are a stars and scrubs team and the Indians are more about balance. I think they’re going to be incredibly close the entire way, but as I’ll explain further later in the week, I’m going to give the edge to the Indians for the 2015 regular season. It’s neck and neck, but if any one of the good Indians players has a great season, they line up well against the Tigers for me.
- Hitter to Watch: Carlos Santana
- Pitcher to Watch: Corey Kluber
- NED Projected Record: 89-73, 1st in the AL Central
- Big Moment: Lindor shines immediately after his July callup
- Piece of Data: Indians pitchers tied for AL lead with 19.7 fWAR in 2014
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