Tiger Geist

As it should be, the ’84 team got to stand in front of Tiger fans to celebrate their 25 year anniversary.  Because of the rain-out, the night belonged solely to them. This is the one night I would not have missed if I were anywhere near Detroit.  Not meant to be I guess.

So tomorrow Detroit tries to knock down the Twins in a double header, the magic number standing at 6.  A lot has been said about how games earlier in the season didn’t mean much, and that the Tiger’s playoff chances were going to come down to the last week of the season.  I disagree;  the Tigers are 5-9 against the Twins this year.  Reverse that record and this week would have been meaningless, and Detroit could have readied the starting rotation for the playoffs.

After pissing off their fans over the last week, Detroit takes care of business and guarantees a series win against Cleveland.  Maybe Detroit is starting to get hot?  Or is Cleveland just poop?  Doesn’t matter.  Clete Thomas and Carlos Guillen provided some discussion points going into a (hopeful) playoff run.

I totally agree with Kurt… Raburn has laid claim to left field.  Magglio’s in right.  Granderson in center… Clete Thomas defensive enough and hitting enough Wednesday night to lay claim to outfield position #4.  Guillen homered from both sides of the plate… did he show enough to DH against left handed pitching?  As I mentioned in my last post, the Yankees will probably have a left hander start four of the five games in a division series.  Marcus Thames may have a hard time cracking the playoff roster, considering Raburn is probably done in the infield.

Guillen’s healthy shoulder could give Jim Leyland plenty of playoff options.  He could suddenly keep a third catcher (similar to the Angels — via Buster Olney).  My gut says Leyland keeps the veteran Huff on the roster to pinch-hit (again, mostly left-handed starters in the ALDS).  If Dusty Ryan hasn’t played much in September, he’s not sniffing the field in October.  I’m still not sure what Detroit’s infield options look like… Don Kelly wasn’t on the 40 man roster on Sept 1… but the roster rules confuse me.

Speaking of Thames… both Lynn Henning and Joe @ Motor City Bengals talk about off-season moves (Henning thinks Thames will get non-tendered this off-season).  Lynn Henning goes into the possible issues of Detroit’s impending free agents.  I disagree with his assessment of Placido Polanco, however.  I don’t know what Detroit’s budget will look like, but its quite possible they’d be quite happy signing Polanco to a one-year deal, no matter the cost.  They could offer him arbitration (the offering starting at 80% of his current contract), and get compensation if he signs elsewhere.  But be aware:  arbitration is scary.  Based on his performance, Polanco may look at the economy and decide he’ll take a one-year contract in 2010.  Why?  Because an arbitrator doesn’t care about the economy; they would evaluate Polanco’s value vs other second basemen and his past performance (and NOT on season ticket renewals).  Suddenly, Polanco could be looking at a $5+ million one year deal.  Detroit may be fine with such a situation… but its foolish to think the only option is Polanco declining arbitration and Detroit getting draft picks.  (Two interesting links I found from the sports economist:  About arbitration, and things the arbitration panel will and won’t consider.  Again, financial state of the team isn’t a criteria.).  Polanco would have a decision to make, as he can’t negotiate with other teams unless he turns down arbitration.  Financially, I’m not sure Detroit can take that risk.

I’m very very very confused on someone Henning states the Tigers “can’t afford to lose”:  Adam Everett.  No complaints from me on Everett’s contribution to this team.  But Detroit has two shortstops in its system who have very similar ratings:  Big league glove RIGHT NOW, bat might come around.  Brent Dlugach (who’s bat did come around in 2009 in Toledo), and Cale Iorg (bat pending, scouts aren’t worried).  Everett hit .236 while playing solid yet average defense.  I don’t find it a complete match of the phrases “Detroit can’t afford to lose this player” and “Adam Everett”.

Trying to get my mind off Detroit’s inability to pull away from the pack.  So I took a look at the playoff schedule posted on Tigers.com and its implications on decisions and the playoff roster.  At the moment, it appears the Yankees will have the best AL record; based on wild-card (most likely Boston) being in the same Division, New York would play the next worst playoff team… which is really the worst playoff team by record… the Detroit Tigers.

The Yankees can choose which schedule they get, ALDS ‘A’ or ‘B’, and the breakdown is the best team in the league gets to choose their ‘destiny’.  The choice is in the date for game one:  either Oct 7 or 8.  The dates for the rest of the games are the same (October 9, 11, 12, 14).  Choosing ALDS ‘A’ for the Yankees would mean they’d face Verlander, Jackson, and Porcello all on their normal four day’s rest for each game.  If the series goes long, they’d face Verlander and Jackson twice.  If the Tigers have some trouble, Detroit could come back with Verlander in game 3 on three day’s rest.  Either way, Detroit can ‘protect’ Rick Porcello by pitching him solely in Comerica Park.  With the dates, its a given Detroit goes with a three man rotation.

In ALDS ‘A’, Detroit has two options:  Going well (Verlander, Jackson, Porcello, Verlander, Jackson), or not going well (Verlander, Jackson, Verlander (3 days rest), Porcello, Jackson). I imagine the ability to throw Verlander twice in the first three games would override a desire to have Verlander throw a potential game 5.

ALDS ‘B’ also has two options:  Verlander, Jackson, Porcello, Verlander (3 days rest), Jackson; and of course you could flip Verlander and Jackson in this setup.  Initially, I was positive it was in New York’s best interest to choose ALDS ‘B’ to avoid seeing Verlander in games 1 and 3.

Looking at this article on a possible Yankee rotation, its clear that New York’s rotation has some issues — they probably don’t want to go with four starters either.  Depending on how they feel about their game 1 starter –esp if its Pettitte, a playoff veteran who isn’t a spring chicken– New York might opt for the longer series (again, giving three starters full rest for each start), which, in my opinion, is a pitching matchup that favors Detroit.  I think the Yankees going with Pettitte over Sabathia due to Sabathia’s poor playoff record would be over-managing.  Sabathia has to start game 1.  I think the smart money is on a Sabathia, Burnett, Pettitte, Sabathia, Burnett rotation in an ALDS ‘B’ setup.  This gets New York’s ace and playoff veteran pitching potential games in Detroit.

Note that Detroit may face a left handed pitcher in four games out of five games.  How does Detroit handle this?  Does Aubrey Huff make the ALDS roster just to DH for a game and get a few pinch hits?  Knowing they’re going with only three possible starting pitchers, does Detroit short the bullpen for an extra position player?

Other areas of interest:  Few back to back games in the ALDS.  In other words, Detroit’s Seay / Lyon / Rodney combination will be available for every game.  Even the ALCS is favorable to the bullpen:  Oct 16, 17, 19, 20, 22, 24, 25.  Based on Detroit’s possible fourth starter (Nate Robertson???), I’m not sure Detroit wouldn’t push Verlander out on three day’s rest in the ALCS, sticking with a three man rotation again.

Oh, right, Detroit has to make the playoffs first.  Step one:  Make the playoffs.  Step three:  World Domination.

Still getting back into the swing of things, here are some thoughts:

1) I’m assuming Detroit wins the Central.  It’ll be interesting to see the playoff roster.  They still only have three starting pitchers, questionable health of the probable fourth (assuming its Robertson or Galarraga), and the #3 guy is someone I can’t legally buy a beer for.  I’m also feeling a Huff / Thames question is coming; even with Raburn’s defensive issues lately (nice throw last night though), he might be a better DH candidate then Thames.  Never thought I’d think that.

2) Did you know that Lynn Henning thinks Magglio’s contract will be a burden in 2010?  Henning’s becoming white noise with these articles.  Maybe the Detroit News will START WRITING HIS ARTICLES IN ALL CAPS SO HE CAN GET HIS POINT ACROSS.  Its kind of like if I wrote that you have a better chance of getting hit by a car if you jaywalk vs crossing in a designated cross-walk.  I get it.  Magglio contract not good for team.  Dombrowski and Ilitch bad.  Henning smash!

3) I might be in the minority, but I’m not nearly as excited about the Tigers making the playoffs if they can’t compete.  Granted, you just need to get hot for 11 games or so to win the entire world series, but I’d like to feel that Detroit can compete in the first round.  Their performance against the Royals… kind of sucks.  Trying to stay out of mood swings on this.

4) Here’s where I sound like an ass… but I wasn’t entirely thrilled with the Ernie ‘thank you’ celebration.  Just underwhelming.  Don’t know how i’d improve it either.  Ernie Harwell may be the most iconic ‘Tiger’ in the last 50 years.  All the others either left town in their prime (Gibson, Morris, Parrish), stayed but left quietly (Whitaker), or stayed and got canned (Trammell).  Ernie is really the only person who could bridge the gap between generations due to his longevity.  I don’t know if I expected a Lou Gehrig type moment or what.  You could say “thats just not Ernie’s way”, and that’s fine.  Would have been nice to have more fans at the stadium, or maybe have the ceremony last sunday (which had 10k more fans); though the date was probably determined by Ernie’s health.  I don’t know, just watching it on TV, it seemed so short.  Sounds like people at the game enjoyed it, and I enjoyed his speech immensely.  I feel like there could have been… more.  Sorry.  When one of the more touching moments involved Rusty Kuntz, I feel we might look back on this and wish we had done more.

5) Detroit Tigers Weblog has a nice gathering of video data if you’d like to re-live it.

6) If you’re the douchebag in the front row near the tunnel screaming “HEY ERNIE, SIGN MY BALL” before and after the ceremony, shame on you.

Randomly, when I’m in the Detroit area I get less of a chance to write then when I’m at home.  I’m still trying to catch up / get my thoughts around the last few days and the pitching changes, and why Detroit suddenly doesn’t look at awesome as they did after sweeping the Rays.  To recap, I spent four days (friday -> monday evening) in Detroit where I did the following:

• Ran into Lloyd Carr walking around downtown ann arbor (friday)
  
• Attended the Michigan / Notre Dame game (saturday)
  
• Attended the Tigers / Blue Jays game (sunday)
• Ate lunch next to Peter Karmanos at Lafayette’s Coney Island (monday)

Couple of thoughts I had in relation to all of them:

1) Lloyd Carr (always liked Carr — his first year as the head coach was my freshman year at UM) — saw him eating dinner on main street, in the front window of a restaurant.  He had a smile on his face that I’ve never seen.  Similar to the smile I saw on Bo’s face once when I sat next to him at Cottage Inn Pizza… a smile that they seemed only willing to express when they’ve retired.  I bet hanging out with Jim Leyland for a few rounds of drinks would be a great time when he’s not worried about his team, a side fans may not always get to see as he has so many issues to worry about while under contract.  Just would love to sit around ‘shooting the bull’ with Jim when he felt he could let loose.

2) College Football vs Professional Baseball.  Attended both games, had a great time at both.  I think i’ll touch on points later with a full post, but it felt different in so many ways.  Here’s one:  Football was much cheaper overall, but a huge time suck (tailgate + game put me at close to 8 hours commitment).  Baseball was less time but more money.  Actually a decent amount more money due to concession prices and… no beer at most college football games.

3) It seems impossible, but its absolutely true:  There are no coney islands on the west coast.  None.  Zip.  Zero.  So I wanted a coney dog after staying at the RenCen Marriott Sunday night.  Went with my wife & parents to Lafayatte at about 12:30pm; place was nearly empty, and we looked two seats down from us at the main table and noticed karmanos sitting there with another gentleman.  After about 10 minutes, Karmanos gets his bill, looks at the waiter, and pulls out the Chris Rock-esque “hey, you got change for $100?”  Yes, it felt a little weird to have my hands full of chile and cheese fries four feet from a billionaire.  Also really weird to have a very popular lunch spot absolutely empty during the lunch rush.  RenCen was also empty, as was downtown Detroit.  On a Monday.  For Detroit, attendance is down 20% through 71 home games.  Maybe its because the race isn’t as close as expected on their current home stand.  But this doesn’t bode well for the 2010 season ticket renewals / suite purchases.  It might be downright scary.

Random:  Just an FYI, don’t go to ann arbor on a football saturday and expect to use a cell phone on an AT&T network.  Ultimate fail.  I got lucky to get a call through before the network dropped dead, but when you’ve planned a trip two years in advance to have 25 people meet and the plan is that someone will ‘park on the golf course and call to give their location’…

With all the players available to them, I just don’t understand the defensive alignment sometimes.  This is all I’m going to say.

Ok, maybe its not the most glorious weekend in the state of Michigan’s sports history.  But when has a non-championship weekend delivered so much hope & joy to so many Michigan sports fans?  I woke up this morning on a Monday, realized I didn’t have to go to work, it was 65 degrees and sunny (re:  not foggy).  Yes, it was a very good weekend.*

Let’s start with the Tigers.  A road SWEEP of the Tampa Bay Devil Rays?  I was on Leyland and the team about how hard they had to work to beat Cleveland, a poor team that gave up all of its players at the trade deadline.  But a road sweep against a very good team that’s fighting for the playoffs?  Now that’s a series.  And what a fight — three late-inning comebacks.  Great pitching against a very good Tampa lineup.  Who wasn’t excited to see Jeremy Bonderman pitch meaningful innings in a pennant race?  Who wasn’t excited to see Brandon Lyon get back to back saves when Detroit’s closer needed some time to rest?

Yes, it was fantastic.  And Minnesota had a troubling weekend (if, you know, you root for the twins).  It even got me in the mood to start looking into Detroit’s magic number.  Oh yes, there’s a wikipedia page for that.  Its 20.  Twenty.  Any combo of Detroit wins and Minnesota losses gives Detroit the AL Central crown.  (If you’re still worried about Chicago, the magic number vs chicago is 18).

The Tigers are still a flawed team, and they’ve used their extended roster… extensively… to cover these flaws (lack of speed, lack of hitters who can field, etc).  Who cares.  The playoff roster awaits once the team makes the playoffs.

How about the rest of the sports teams?  Michigan State football took a giant step forward by beating… um.. Montana State.  But as a Sparty, you would be excited that MSU carried over their successful 2008 campaign and started a new page in their history with a new QB and without handing the ball off to Javon Ringer 4,785 times per game.  That would make you very excited.

The Wolverines?  It was an important victory.  As a fan, you realize that things may return to normalcy.  Dogs have stopped sleeping with cats.  No more internal fighting over who’s the coach (for a week).  What matters is fans remembered that the team has a chance to win some games again.  In the long off-season, sometimes you forget this.  It’s a new beginning.  For my personal sanity (and probably my marriage), it was a big weekend.  Words cannot describe the darkness I’ve been in for the last year.  The stupid arguments I’ve had to listen to about the coaches (I literally had to listen to another alumni complain about the ‘captain’ status while I was vacationing in Korea over new years.  KOREA.  Some people…).  I thought my college roommate’s heart was going to explode.  These issues have subsided.  They won’t go 12-0, but the concern over 0-12 has gone away.

And the Lions.  Not even the Lions could spoil the festive sports weekend.  How?  They didn’t even play.  God Bless the NFL scheduling folk.  Even better, they named a starting quarterback who isn’t named Culpepper (via twitter via Ian).  Hope springs eternal… or something.  Lions fans have hope that a new quarterback is a new life, a better life.  At least, on this labor day weekend, they can hang their hat on new hope… and the fact that there are no digits in the loss column.  After a ‘historic’ 0-16 season, these are the things that make you happy.

Its an interesting question about what would make a great ‘state’ sports day / week / weekend.  There are probably better ones for Michigan.  But how many weekends have put so much ‘hope’ into fans?  Michigan and Michigan state (rebuilding the program / extending their program), Lions (not losing), and the Tigers.  Back to the Tigers… a strong statement for their playoff chances, and for their chances IN the playoffs.  The teams has continued to improve and just may peak in October.

* Apologies to Western Michigan, Central Michigan, and Eastern Michigan fans.  Because… I lived in Michigan for 23 years and I never met an actual football fan from one of those schools.

Minus Fernando Rodney, a pretty solid all around game by Detroit today… on the road and against a good team.

About that Rodney… the ball tossing incident after the game didn’t make much sense.  Rodney says it was nothing.  Fine.. but really dumb.  About his performance… i’m going to chalk it up to over-use.  Two games in Cleveland, plus another warm-up for a pitcher who needs a lot of time to warm up, followed by a close game in Tampa.  That’s the danger of running your closer out nearly every game in a series against a bad team.  This was probably a decent night to have Lyon close out the game; they’ve probably lost Rodney for the rest of the series.

Back to what I mentioned yesterday… Leyland has to keep his bullpen rested for the stretch run.  The team doesn’t score enough runs to expect that anything but a close game in the playoffs.  The counter obviously is Detroit needs to make the playoffs before they need to worry about the bullpen situation.  But Leyland has to be smarter in his use of Rodney (and Seay) — there are only two off days between now and the last game on October 4th.

Interesting note:  Watching the ninth on the iphone mlb app (which has been updated again and now suddenly has video issues, go figure), i had to listen to the Tampa Bay announcers.  With Pena up to bat, Rodney was ahead 1-2 when he and Avila (recently inserted into the game) couldn’t agree on their signs, and Avila ran out to the mound.  The color commentator mentioned that it was a count that Rodney could throw either pitch… but now that they met on the mound, Pena probably would sit on the fastball so they couldn’t throw it (stating that with so much time to think, Pena wouldn’t be fooled by the fastball, where he might have been lost if they didn’t run into sign problems).  Rodney throws a fastball, and Pean singles in a run.  Smart guy.

Verlander was outstanding.  They brought up some stats during the game about the potential AL Cy-Young candidates.  Here’s my plea:  Please lets not talk about this Cy-Young thing until after the season.  Same goes for rookie of the year, MVP, etc etc.  There’s been some weird jinx’ing going on in Detroit lately.  MVP talk for Miguel Cabrera was quickly met with Cabrera going 0-11 in his next three games (August 28 – 30).  An article describing Ryan Perry’s late inning role and statistics since his re-call was met with Perry giving up three earned runs the next day.  So… you’ve been warned.  Let’s enjoy this month and worry about the awards later.

Fantastic game today;  Nothing like watching a little baseball while staring at spreadsheets.  10am game — no problem.

I found Nate Robertson to be fantastic — even if it was against the Indians.  He didn’t look lost, he didn’t look like the guy who only made the team earlier this year due to his contract.  Again, only the Indians, but even though he didn’t get the win, he earned another start.

Clete Thomas didn’t disappoint either; I was positive those were all the runs necessary.  I do like the flexibility Leyland is going with these days — Left handed lineup, right handed lineup.  You change your reliever?  I’ll change my batter.  Now I have no doubt that Brent Dlugach will see some late inning work — Inge and Cabrera are probably the only two guys Leyland would hesitate to pinch hit for.  He seems to have settled into a bullpen groove as well; run his standard setup men out for two days (Seay / Lyon / Rodney), and on the third day its Perry / Ni / Zach Miner (Rodney was warming up).

This whole Jarrod Washburn injury is troubling.  Obviously Detroit could have (or did or should have or something) done some form of physical on Washburn.  If they really knew the extent of Washburn’s injury, do they make that trade?  Who looked at this guy and signed off?  To quote Washburn himself:

“Any doctor that’s seen it told me there’s probably some cartilage damage in there,” Washburn said, “so it’s probably not going to go away.”

You mean, any doctor that isn’t on Detroit’s medical staff?  Or did they just glide over this one?  Maybe they should have talked with his Seattle teammates.  Maybe they think they can treat knee injuries.  I can’t imagine they brought Washburn in just for fatherly advice from his world series experience; I guess they just found cartlidge damage in a 35 year old as ‘not a big deal’.

Maybe someone should have passed along this advice:  Its not 2002 anymore.  35 year-olds don’t get healthier as the year goes on.

Kurt did an excellent breakdown of the stretch run that faces Detroit and Minnesota.  If Detroit can just beat up on inferior opponents (namely, Cleveland and KC), it will make their job a whole lot easier.  And that’s what Detroit did tonight, beat an inferior team.

Five errors.  FIVE by Cleveland… three by Jhonny Peralta alone.  Not a great night defensively; I kind of wish Detroit had broken it open.  I’m very interested to see how Jim Leyland plans on using the recent call-ups — does he use them to spell other players?  Does he start them?  Does he have a different bullpen strategy in closer games vs blow outs?  I want to get an idea, and so far its business as usual with Leyland’s defensive substitutions and late-inning bullpen work.

Interesting giving Ramirez the start in left, with Raburn (center) and Ordonez (right).  I imagine Rick Porcello (flat out fantastic) is the guy you play your weakest outfield against.  I totally agree that they need to sit Granderson against left handed starters — both for his numbers and for his ‘head’ — but I am concerned about Raburn in center.  Ramirez didn’t looked surprised by his callup — he plays like he knows what he wants.  Hopefully that carries over for him into next spring.

How much does Minnesota’s loss earlier in the day play into Jim Leyland’s bullpen strategy?  I’m not suggesting he roll Casey Fien out to the mound just because he’s available, but Cleveland is the third worst team in the AL.  Detroit’s trotted their Seay-Lyon-Rodney trio out for both games against the Indians.  I imagine the Twins’ loss had little to do with it, but he’ll need to be able to trust some other arms in September.

Hoping Detroit gets a nice lead tomorrow and finishes off the Indians.  Give the bullpen a rest and put more pressure on the Twins.