Perspective After a Tough Series
With a Sergio Romo fastball down the middle and with the bat in Miguel Cabrera’s hands, the 2012 MLB season came to a close last night, ending 29 teams’ hopes at a championship and making the San Francisco Giants and their fans very happy.
First off, congratulations to the Giants. They had a great year and played well in October. Well-earned title for a city that loves its team.
For Tigers fans like myself, hold your heads up high. You might have a bad taste in your mouths after a rough series, but allow me to remind you the Tigers had a successful season. I’ve heard a lot of negative talk about the team in the last day or so from national and local personalities, but they are wrong. The Tigers should be proud, but not satisfied.
It’s easy to put too much focus of the World Series because it’s the biggest stage, but any team can slump. The offense only scored six runs in four games, but the pitching (short of Verlander) was great.
The Tigers swept the AL’s best team (by record) in the ALCS and beat the AL’s best story in the ALDS. This was a good season. Big changes are not necessary. The World Series is a small sample. Victor Martinez is coming back. Young players will improve. Other could bounce back. Relax and look back with fondness.
So some parting thoughts on the 2012 Tigers (full 2012 recaps of all 30 teams to come).
The Tigers have a starting rotation worthy of envy. Verlander is the game’s best. Fister is quietly becoming a top 25 starter. Scherzer is somewhat inconsistent but showed some serious improvement this season and has always had take-over-a-game stuff. I’m still a huge believer in Rick Porcello as well. He’s a groundballer with a poor defense so some of his numbers are inflated, but the guy has never been hurt and has four major league seasons under his belt at 23 (23!!!). He’s still three or four years south of his peak. Smyly showed he can easily be a #5 starter in the show this year and could maybe even be more. All of these guys are under team control for at least two more seasons. Not bad, even if they don’t resign Anibal Sanchez, the Tigers will return baseball’s best staff by WAR.
Cabrera and Fielder are a great middle of the order and will be for years to come. Next year, they’ll get backup from Victor Martinez. Jackson took a big step forward this season. Dirks looks like a fourth outfielder or better. Infante can certainly hold down 2B.
Avila, despite what you might think, is actually a very good catcher. He’s a gold glove finalist this year and his OBP was great even if his batting average wasn’t. (Hint: Walks count as much as singles!) The power was down a little, but he had some injuries and still has a year or two til his peak age.
Peralta is also a pretty solid MLB SS. He’s solid on defense (advanced metrics love him), even if he’s unremarkable. At the plate he’s been up and down but is certainly capable of getting hits at the bottom of your lineup.
That only leaves a corner outfield spot and some bullpen spots open for next year. A lot of teams would kill to be in this position.
Refine the bullpen. Sign Torii Hunter. Get back to the playoffs. That’s my simple recommendation if you’re looking toward the next step.
This is a well-built team if you don’t care about defense. But if Dirks and (hopefully) Hunter are manning the corners next season, things get a lot better.
Don’t let anyone get you down. The Tigers have a wide open window toward a title in the near future. In fact, in the first round of World Series odds out today, the Tigers are the favorite to win in 2013.
2012 is over and I’m sad to see it go, but 2013 could be just as bright or brighter. 154 days until Opening Day.
Let’s start counting.
The Odds: Can the Tigers Come Back?
After a rough outing by Justin Verlander in Game 1 and a poor offensive showing in Game 2, the Tigers are down 2-0 in the best of seven World Series. This much we know. We also know that Doug Fister is invincible.
But what we want to know at this point is if the Tigers can come back and win the series despite the deficit. Let’s take three different approaches.
First, let’s use math. The Tigers need to win four of the remaining five games in any order. If we assume for a moment that each game is essentially a coin flip and have no impact on one another, the Tigers have an 18.75% chance of winning the series. This covers all of the possible ways the Tigers could win 4 games in the next 5 (plus the abstract possibility they would win 5 of the next 5) divided by the total number of ways the next five games could play out.
Let’s make ourselves feel a little better though! Each game isn’t a coin flip in the sense that the odds are truly 50/50. Most people believe the Tigers are a slightly better team and they get to play three of the next five at home, which most people believe gives you some advantage. Add in any other reasons you could imagine that point in the Tigers favor and ignore the ones that support the Giants.
If we do this, and say the Tigers are 55/45 favorites in all of the remaining games, we can create a 25.62% probability that the Tigers will win the series using them same methodology. If we go the other way and make them a 45/55 underdog, we find a 13.13% chance of a series win.
Is this a depressing finding or a happy one? The Tigers have somewhere between a 13% and 25% chance of winning this series. We’re factoring out certain complexities like how the probability of winning each game varies slightly, but those should always be within 45-55%, so I’m comfortable being a little bit oversimplified on this.
What this tells us is that if these five games were played over and over again, the Tigers would win somewhere between 1 out of every 4 to 1 out of every 7.
That makes me feel pretty good. Those are not terrible odds at all. But what if we win Game 3? Everything changes.
If the Tigers win Game 3 on Saturday, the odds now shift to 24.15% to 39.10%. That’s substantially different. Now it’s 1 in 4 to 2 in 5 odds. If they win Games 3 and 4 it’s back to even.
Now I feel a lot better. Don’t think about winning four games out of five, think about winning one game. Or two games. And then think about 2 out of 3. The Tigers are in a hole, but it’s not that deep.
Approach two is precedent. So this one is tough, because I couldn’t get the data by the time of publication, so I’m trusting a rough source. The weak source tells me a team has come back 14 times from 2-0. I want that to mean “in the World Series,” but it could include other rounds. I also don’t have good numbers on how often a team has gone up 2-0. I’m going to assume it’s half the time. (I’ll update this section if I can get my hands on it)
This is a very rough estimate given the limitations, but I’ll be wildly conservative with my guesses also. My estimate is 11% of the time when a team is down 0-2, they come back to win the series. That’s probably fair if judge that against our 13-25% guess because some of those series could have been 5 or 9 games depending on what rounds and when they happened in history. Series can also be more mismatched than this one. There’s also some psychological affect if the series gets to 0-3. I buy this as an approximate value.
Approach three is the narrative. Basically, this is a guess based on observational data that is selected in a biased manner in order to construct an argument we agree with. Allow me…
“The Tigers have had their backs against the wall all year and have come back. They’re going back to Comerica where the crowd will be rocking. They hit better at home and Verlander is the only guy who really pitched poorly in SF. He’ll be fine in Game 5. We could totally win at least 2 in Detroit, maybe 3! Yeah, then we only need one in SF, but we could probably get two if we had to! They want it more!”
So that’s less scientific, but it’s an approach. Every series is a unique event that doesn’t follow any specific rules. The first two approaches draw on previous data, but this is series has no connection to that data. It’s one single event, so anything can happen.
Here’s a test case. 2004 ALCS. Boston down 3-0 to New York. Approach 1: 4.1% to 9.15%. Approach 2: 0% chance. Approach 3: Red Sox win the series and win the World Series. A very unlikely thing happened. Unlikely things happen all the time.
So while you might be discouraged that the Tigers are down 0-2, all is not yet lost. A win in Game 3 changes everything. A win in Game 4 is even better. It’s not an ideal situation, but there’s a chance.
I predicted Tigers in 6. Tigers in 6 or 7 isn’t bad either.
My Complicated Relationship with Jose Valverde
I have a complicate relationship with Jose Valverde.
It comes in three parts. First, I hate his dancing. I think it’s immature, obnoxious, and has no place in baseball. Second, until this season, he was vastly overrated by fellow Tigers fans who mistakenly believe saves are a relevant statistic for measuring performance. Third, he epitomizes part two – how managers use their bullpens to maximize saves instead of wins.
But he’s also a Tiger and I’m a fiercely loyal fan. I’m rooting for him to do well. But I also want him to stop dancing and celebrating like he’s some overcompensating, testosterone enhanced NFL linebacker. This is his fault. I want him to succeed, but he I know he won’t a lot of the time. This is not his fault.
It’s not his fault Leyland uses him when he shouldn’t and doesn’t pull him when he should. Valverde can’t take himself out of the game, so I don’t get mad at him, but I do get angry. It shouldn’t be like this.
Valverde shouldn’t be such a tool, but he also shouldn’t be put in situations where he is likely to fail because he simply is not a terribly good reliever. Especially not anymore.
So I’m not happy that he’s crumbling into nothingness, but I’m also not surprised. We’ve created this fake ideal world where closers are special people who have this innate ability to pitch in the 9th inning. We’ve created this world that says your best reliever has to get the final three outs because they are inherently the most difficult to get in all situations. Logically, at the very least, the second of those two statements is false.
Valverde is not the Tigers’ best reliever. He should not pitch in the closest games and he should not pitch instead of better arms, especially during the postseason when you don’t have to think about saving guys for later in the season.
I don’t need to chronicle his postseason meltdowns for you, except to say that he’s performed terribly in his last three outings to the point where you simply cannot use him. The results are bad, the process is bad, and it has certainly become a mental issue on top of whatever caused it in the first place. Valverde has never been that good in my opinion, but he’s also not this bad either.
During his Diamondbacks and Astros days, he walked plenty of hitters, but he also struck out more than 10.00 per 9. You can be wild if you’re also striking batters out. Since joining the Tigers in 2010, the walks are still high, but the strikeouts are crashing. He struckout just 6.26 per 9 in 2012. You can’t get away with those kinds of numbers.
His FIP, and most notably his xFIP (which is controlling for park effects/homerun rates) have gone the other direction, all the way up to 5.01 this season. He’s had a bad year that’s gotten worse in the playoffs.
In his best years, 2005 and 2008 in my book, he was a very useful reliever. Not elite, but good. But as a Tiger, he’s been bad or dangerously close. Last year, which everyone calls his “perfect season” because he saved all 49 save chances, he actually posted a strand rate of 82.9%. Essentially, that tells us he let a lot of guys on base but managed to not let them score.
That’s a really bad formula for someone if they can no longer strike guys out, which is exactly what happened this season.
It’s simple. Valverde is wild and hittable, so he lets a lot of guys on base. But he can strike hitters out, so they don’t score. If you lose your ability to get those Ks, you’ve lost everything and that’s what we’re seeing. This is the inevitable regression that’s been coming for three years and it’s happening at a really bad time.
If you delete the saves column in your stat sheet, he looks ordinary to bad over his Tigers career. Saves don’t measure a relievers skill because the definition is arbitrary and it is a function of how you are used, not how you pitch.
All of this adds up to Valverde being overvalued. He’s just not that good. But until this week, he was being used like he was. That part is not his fault. Leyland put him in a position to fail and wouldn’t take him out when he was failing because he’s “the closer.” I’ll talk in the offseason about why we shouldn’t have closers, but it’s safe to say that if Alburquerque pitched like Valverde had in New York, the hook from Leyland would have been faster, thus saving him the embarrassment and perhaps the game (luckily Smyly is awesome and allowed the Tigers to come back).
So my relationship with Papa Grande is complicated. Cockiness aside, he isn’t good, but it’s not his fault he is used and valued improperly. Hell, if Leyland called and told me to pitch the 9th for the Tigers I’d do it too. And I’d get lit up. If he didn’t dance, I’d be very sympathetic. I was with Todd Jones.
Jones did his best, but he wasn’t great, so he was stressful to watch. Valverde is the same, but there is this cockiness that complicates it.
I’m pulling for everyone on the team when they struggle. Inge, Raburn, Santiago, Kelly, Boesch, and others. They’re my team and I love them even when they suck. It’s the right way to be a fan. My love is not conditional on success, it’s conditional on effort.
So how should I feel about Valverde? I hate the attitude he displays on the mound and I sometimes think he only really tries when he’s got a shot at a “save.” But I don’t have evidence for the second part. All I know is that he’s not that good and gets put in bad situations. But the dancing gives me an out. It lets me direct my anger at him. Which I never would do to Inge or Raburn.
You can’t hate them because they failed. They don’t make out the lineups. But I can hate Valverde because he’s disrespectful to the game. Or shouldn’t I? Is this just providing me cover?
I’m not really sure. It’s complicated. But I know that despite all my problems with him during the last three seasons, it was really heartbreaking to watch him walk off the mound last night in San Francisco knowing his three year career in Detroit ended in such an awful fashion.
So many fans loved him, and he’s walking off into a stunned dugout. Fister and Verlander were there to greet him, but no one knew what to say. He had crumbled into a shell of himself at the worst time. I felt bad.
I had been so annoyed by him for so long, but I genuinely felt sorry for him as he slowly walked off the mound and out of Detroit.
I didn’t want it to end like this at all. I wanted it to end with him getting the final out and not dancing, but now I’ll get neither.
After three seasons, my relationship – our relationship – with Jose Valverde has ended, and it was a very sad ending to a very complicated affair.
2012 World Series Storylines
With the Fall Classic upon us let’s take a look at the top storylines for the series and end with a completely subjective prediction that should only be used for entertainment purposes.
1) The Tigers Rotation: The Tigers’ starters have rolled through the postseason with a 1.02 ERA. Small sample size and struggling offenses? Sure, but 1.02 is hard to do no matter what. Led by reigning Cy Young and MVP, Justin Verlander, the rotation is stacked. Fister, Sanchez, and Scherzer all range from above average to fringe-elite starters and are all pitching extremely well right now. If the Tigers get the same kind of pitching they got in the ALDS and ALCS in the World Series, the Tigers will coast to a title.
2) The Bullpens: So the Tigers bullpen, not pitching very well right now. Not pitching very well at all. Maybe that’s harsh. Benoit and Valverde aren’t pitching well right now. Coke, Dotel, Alburquerque, Smyly, and Porcello have been solid in the postseason. After two meltdowns, Leyland has unofficially removed Valverde from the closer role and gone with a Phil Coke-by-committee approach that has worked out well. I’m an advocate for closer-by-committee for all teams and at all times of the season, so I think this approach will work for them, but they still have to execute when they are called upon. The Giants on the other hand, have a strong pen with Lopez, Casilla, and Romo in the late innings and Lincecum available as a super reliever. Bottom line? Score on the Tigers pen and the Giants starters if you want to win.
3) Delmon Young: It’s weird just writing that. But Young has hit in a big way during this postseason and last. There’s a good deal of disagreement about whether or not postseason performance is a skill set, but whether it’s luck or ability, Delmon is delivering for the Tigers. If he continues to hit well behind Jackson, Cabrera, and Fielder, it will be hard for San Francisco to limit the Tigers to the two runs they need to if they are going to face those Tigers’ starters. The other Delmon angle is that he has to play LF in Games 1, 2, 6*, and 7*(*if necessary). Since coming to Detroit, Young has been a terrible OF. No one who played more than 150 innings in LF this year posted a worse UZR/150. Granted, Delmon wasn’t asked to play the field very much and was a full time DH, but he’s about to man the position for at least two of the most critical games of the season against a team that puts the ball in play. Hopefully, the Tigers’ arms can punch out enough hitters to limit the Delmon liability.
4) The Fans: Both cities have high energy fans that create a rowdy atmosphere. Both cities have great parks. I don’t know that it will affect the outcome, but it will be cool to watch on TV.
5) The Managers: Bruce Bochy and Jim Leyland are different managers, but also heavily criticized in different ways. Bochy thinks walks are outs in disguise (not my joke, but I can’t remember who told it) and Leyland thinks RBIs are baseball’s more critical stat. That said, both managers have good to excellent reputations as leaders of men, which will certainly be on display with a championship on the line. Most critically, how Leyland has handled the situation with Valverde could result in a giant meltdown or a champagne celebration. Certainly something to watch. Additionally, Leyland will be faced with the tough call on when to pinch hit for his frontline starters, and how he responds will dictate a lot that happens in this series.
6) The Tigers Defense: It wasn’t good this season. It was pretty strong in the ALCS. If it’s solid, that’s a huge swing in the Tigers’ favor.
7) Marco Scutaro: The dude is on fire. If that Marco Scutaro shows up, the Giants might just break through on the Tigers. If he doesn’t, it will be tough for them.
I’m expecting a good series and these teams haven’t seen very much of each other in the last several years and have never met in the World Series. Both clubs will be relying a lot on scouting reports instead of experience with each other, and I think that will make for a very close and unpredictable series. (As a side note, Verlander has said in the past he relies heavily on past at bats versus hitters as opposed to video)
I think this is an objective pick, but I obviously have a strong rooting interest.
Tigers in 6. Austin Jackson WS MVP.
A Long Year Coming to a Head
We covered how unpredictable baseball is yesterday. Then the Giants won Game 7 easily and celebrated in the pouring rain.
The World Series won’t be any less unpredictable, but I can tell you the Tigers and Giants will open the Fall Classic Wednesday night in San Francisco.
It’s been a long season. It’s been a long year since the Tigers lost Game 6 of the ALCS in Arlington. It’s been a long six years since they lost Game 5 of the World Series in St. Louis.
It’s been a very long 28 years since Kirk Gibson hitting the put away homerun in Game 5 of the 1984 World Series.
Seventeen other franchises have won since then. Tigers Stadium was demolished since then. Ernie Harwell is gone. So is Sparky. The city is different. Everything kind of is.
But the Tigers are four wins away from delivering a championship to a fan base that is craving one in the worst way. You can’t ask for a whole lot more.
I needed this. It was a very long, crazy, hectic year. The Tigers, like they are every year, were where I went for distraction, comfort, joy, and relaxation. They’re where I went to feel heartbreak, triumph, and community.
Even though I was suddenly a lot farther away from them, they kept me close to home. When my life was changing in big ways, the Tigers weren’t. They were on TV at 7pm, waiting for me.
2012 was a big year in my life, and I’ll always connect it to this team. A team that got off to a hot start, stumbled, and clawed their way back. Pulling away at the very end and hitting the gas when it counted most.
Cabrera’s Triple Crown. Verlander being Verlander. Scherzer staring personal tragedy in the face and finding a way to get better in its midst (I almost lost it when Dombrowski talked about his family after the clincher last week).
Saying goodbye to Inge. Kelly being baseball’s most baseball-ish dude. Quintin Berry having exactly as much fun as you should if you’re playing big league ball.
Prince Fielder not knowing how to slide. Avila getting hit with baseballs.
Avila getting hit with Prince Fielder.
Austin Jackson emerging.
It was a fun season. It was a tough season, but here we are.
I’m really hoping for four more wins. One more champagne celebration and a parade down Woodward.
One more “Mario Impemba quietly interviewing Leyland” moment. One more round of tweets from grown men pretending not to cry. One more “Justin Verlander arms raised clincher.”
I’m hoping for all of that. I think they’ll make it happen.
But I’ll be okay if they don’t. Sports are beautiful, but often cruel.
I’m proud either way.
Tigers Have Fun, Punch Their Ticket to the Fall Classic
I’m thinking about two images tonight. One happened two months ago. One a few hours ago.
On August 3, Don Kelly stood in front of his locker trying to cheer up the melancholy reporters who had to ask him how he felt after getting designated for assignment to make room on the roster for the returning Andy Dirks.
You read that right, he was cheering them up. Everyone was sad to see Kelly go. He’s one of the nicest guys in baseball. But Kelly, while disappointed to be leaving Detroit for the minors, said, “Guys, this isn’t a funeral.”
You’re damn right it wasn’t. Not for Kelly, not for the Tigers. Two months later Kelly was driving in the winning run of a topsy turvy ALDS Game 2 and literally lifting Prince Fielder off the ground.
Don Kelly was having fun.
Earlier today, Miguel Cabrera launched a two run homerun into the left field seats at Comerica Park in the fourth inning to all but punch the Tigers’ ticket to the Fall Classic. TBS showed a replay from the perspective of the LF seats. That angle had a view of the Tigers’ bullpen.
Drew Smyly, the Tigers’ fifth starter until late July and reliever since, was jumping up and down with the most genuine smile on his face. The 23 year old lefty was so excited. He’s been dreaming his whole life about pitching in the World Series. He’s going to.
Drew Smyly was having fun.
There are a lot of little moments like that. Prince Fielder and Quintin Berry have both had a lot of fun in their first seasons with the club. Walkoff wins, near no-hitters.
This team, even when a lot of fans were worrying, was having a blast. I remember Avila’s walkoff during that first weekend set at Comerica. The unbridled joy.
So 6 years after I first tasted playoff baseball, the Tigers are going to the World Series. They came close last year, but fell short. I think a lot of players grew up from that near miss. It showed this year.
They played hard, but damn it, they had fun. Baseball is fun. And it’s about to get even better.
Four more wins.
Tigers One Win from World Series: Fans Excited…and Surprised?
As I write this, the Tigers are one game away from their first World Series trip in six years and just their third in the last 43. With another superb outing from Justin Verlander last night, the Tigers have a 3-0 series lead on the struggling Yankees and send Max Scherzer to the hill tonight to try and punch their ticket to the Fall Classic.
But things haven’t always seemed so sunny in Detroit. For much of the summer, there was serious malaise hanging over Tigers fans everywhere. Maybe even downright panic? You couldn’t take to Twitter with the #tigers hashtag without seeing hundreds of people complaining about the team and preparing for next year.
Then a funny thing happened. The Tigers ended up here. Let’s see how that transpired.
The first thing to know is a cliché piled on top of an axiom. It’s a long season. Over a 162 game season, there is variation in how well a team plays that almost always balances out in the end. Basically, the Tigers played their “bad” baseball from late April to June and their good baseball from July to the present while the White Sox did the opposite. At the end of the season, the Tigers had been a better team, but for most of the season, it seemed like that wasn’t the case because of the order in which things happened.
That’s a pretty philosophical argument for the average sports fan, but it’s true. That being said, we should also consider our preseason expectations. Every single expert prediction put the Tigers atop the AL Central. All of them. That uniformity was based on a team that won the division by 15 games in 2011 and added Prince Fielder and a full season of Doug Fister to a team that only lost Victor Martinez. In addition, the White Sox shipped a couple of pieces out of town and appeared like they were headed for a rebuilding year (I picked the Sox to finish dead last).
All that makes us think this division should have been a runaway. Yet baseball happened. The White Sox played over their heads thanks to bounce back years from Adam Dunn and Alex Rios and a career year from AJ Pierzynski. Then there was Jake Peavy staying healthy and Chris Sale having a breakout year, while somehow avoiding Tommy John surgery despite a throwing motion that makes my elbow hurt just by watching.
I contend that we didn’t miss on the Tigers projection; we missed on the White Sox. On The Guy Show in March I predicted a Tigers division title with about 92 wins. They won the division with 88 wins. That’s 96% of the wins I thought they’d have. The most I heard anyone predict was ESPN’s Mark Simon, who said 98. I think it’s fair to say, the overall win total was only slightly below what we thought would happen. It was the White Sox we missed on, not the Tigers.
I think the other reason we saw so much fan angst in the D is because a lot of fans don’t watch much baseball other than Tigers games. People were often frustrated by things the team did, even though they were actually performing a lot better than most teams in baseball.
Let’s explore this a little further. Take a guess, where would you rank the Tigers pitching staff as a whole this season? Just base it on performance, not potential.
Using Fangraph’s Wins Above Replacement (WAR), the Tigers had the best pitching in baseball with 24.8 WAR. Here’s how the rest of the top five looks:
2. Rangers, 23.9 WAR
3. Rays, 23.2 WAR
4. Nationals 21.4 WAR
5. Reds 21.0 WAR
Now WAR is just shorthand for total contribution, so if you aren’t yet convinced, we can break it down a little further, but those WAR numbers line up with the eye test. The Tigers were 4th in strikeouts per 9 (K/9) with 8.29 and 6th in walks per 9 (BB/9) with 2.76. They were 4th in FIP and 5th in xFIP, and trailed only the Rays among AL teams. FIP stands for Fielding Independent Pitching, so it factors out defense, which is out of the pitchers control. xFIP normalizes that number for ballpark factors and expected homerun rates (which tend to fluctuate widely). Basically, this paints a picture of the Tigers as one of the top teams in the league on the mound.
Switching to the batter’s box, the Tigers also stack up nicely. Sorting by wRC+, the Tigers come in 4th in baseball at 105. The top five looks like this:
1. Yankees 113
2. Angels 112
3. Cards 107
4. Tigers 105
5. Rangers 105
If you’re wondering, wRC+ is a metric that compares a team’s offensive output to the rest of the league in runs (100 is average) and controlling for park factors. If we look at wOBA, which is OPS on steroids, the Tigers come in 7th, but that doesn’t control for park factors, so teams like the Rockies are ahead of them. wOBA essentially breaks each action down to its actual run value, so unlike OBP, not every hit is the same and unlike SLG, a double is not twice as valuable as a single. For a complete explanation, see this.
If you’re still weary of some of these sabermetric tools, let’s look at a more conventional measure. The Tigers were 3rd in baseball in OBP and first in the league in OBP with men in scoring position. I bet you didn’t know that. Seems like they got on base and had timely hits.
The Tigers were a top pitching staff and a top offense in 2012. They only did one thing poorly, played defense.
By Ultimate Zone Rating (UZR), only three teams had a worse UZR than the Tigers’ mark of -28.1 in 2012. In simple terms, that amounts to about three wins worse than average on defense. Another metric, DRS, puts them at -31, which is good for 6th worst. This passes the eye test as well, the Tigers played poor defense in 2012.
So with that recap of the pitching, offense, and defense of the 2012 Tigers, we get the image of a pretty good team. Yet not everyone felt great about them for most of the year. I think that’s because the White Sox over-performed and most fans aren’t really aware of how other teams play. They look at a team that is inconsistent and think, “Man, other teams aren’t like this.” Actually, they are.
The Tigers had a good season and they are built for success in October. The starting pitching is clicking and the Tigers’ key weakness, defense, is performing really well. Mostly because Jhonny Peralta decided to become an all-world shortstop last week.
Things look pretty good right now, even if they didn’t in June. The Tigers are one win from the Fall Classic and five from a championship. The 2011 club lost the ALCS 4-2 to the Rangers. The 2012 club has already guaranteed a better finish.
I wrote a column for The Eastern Echo in April saying, “THIS COULD BE THE YEAR,” and I’ve said it again and again on Twitter (@NeilWeinberg44). I believe it. This is a good team built to win in the postseason with elite starting pitching and a strong lineup with an elite core.
So I apologize if this post was rather long, but I thought it best for us to get caught up and answer the question of how we went from the ledge of a tall building to the brink of ecstasy.
Tune in tonight and put the champagne on ice. Five more wins.
New English D 