I’ve been busy with some Tigers analysis this all-star break. Just none of it was actually for my own site. So here’s a few things to read.

• Blake’s Tigers blogger roundtable
• My first-half recap for Life in the Cell
• Lee of Tiger Tales also wrote a first-half recap for them

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Thoughts while I ignore the hideous spectacle that is the home-run derby …

• But before I get to the grading thing, “saves” is an overrated stat. I know I’m not exactly breaking new ground with that view, but thought I’d like to say again anyway. A good starting pitcher should have a pretty decent number of quality starts. To achieve this, all he needs to do is pitch the first six innings of a ballgame with an ERA better than 4.50; that is, six innings, three runs. To get a save, and three-run saves are treated the same as one-run saves in the stat book, the closer just need avoid an ERA of 18, or two runs in one inning. So when we start to talk about a closer’s success rate, I start to feel like there should be a better stat than saves.
• Maybe weighting them based on run differential would tell us more. (Or, you could use Baseball Prospectus’ stat WXRL, or relievers expected wins added. That’s a nice stat because wins added is probably something a reliever should be used for, and the results it spits out are so intuitively correct: Joe Nathan, Brad Lidge, Frankie Rodriguez, Mariano Rivera are the top four.  Todd Jones is ranked 55th.
• Big Al, like Jon Paul Morosi, gave out his midseason grades. I like giving out midseason grades for, say, a basketball team. It seems like a lot of work for a baseball team. So I’ll give out midseason grades not to players, but to aspects of the game.
• Batting:  B. The Tigers are fifth in scoring in the A.L. So that’s better than average. So that’s a B. If we were grading on the curve compared to expectations, I’d say D. The offense was never going to score 1,000 runs. That was some made-up crap from the start and I think most smart baseball people called it for what it is. But Detroit’s offense was far too inconsistent to start the season and racked up the shutouts. Since then, it’s settled in. Matt Joyce has been a terrific surprise. But the Tigers have seemed to stock several hitters of his ilk in Toledo and they’ve performed admirably when given the chance. Miguel Cabrera appears to be settling into the American League after a poor start. I think he’ll return to his superstar numbers next season. Going forward, I expect  a B+ from the team if it can avoid further injuries and get Gary Sheffield either started or a cushion on the bench.
• Starting pitching: C. Again, this is a bit mixed. for one, pitching is related to defense, and as you’ll soon see, defense was awful. The Tigers’ starters have n ERA of 4.48 and sit in the middle of the A.L. The C pretty much sums it up, too. For the most part, the starters were either great or crap, except Nate Robertson, who was consistently a bit below average. In the end, it adds up to average. Justin Verlander struggled, then got awesome. Armando Galarraga has been terrific. Kenny Rogers put last year’s injuries and poor showing out of his mind and has been a pleasure to watch. Too bad about Jeremy Bonderman’s injury and Dontrelle Willis’…whatever is wrong with him. In the end, it’s not really good or bad, it just is. Going forward I expect closer to a B.
• Relief pitching: C+. The relievers have an ERA of 4.19 and sit near the bottom. The relief was not really surprising or a disappointment because everyone knew it would struggle until Fernando Rodney and Joel Zumaya got back. And frankly, I think a few guys (Freddy Dolsi, Aquilino Lopez, Clay Rapada, Denny Bautista kinda) did a nice job keeping things together until the “big boys” got back. The Tigers’ relief hasn’t been strong, but I don’t look at it as nearly the problem the inconsistent offense was. Going forward, I expect another B really. Man I’m really noncommital. Or the Tigers are really “above average but not great.” You decide!
• Defense: B-. Oy vaye, the errors they make!  I’m a bit confused about the Tigers’ defense, to be honest with you. I think really you have to divide the season into quarters. The first quarter was awful. I mean, awful. Well, you saw it. But once Curtis Granderson got back (and this isn’t a knock on Clete Thomas, who is definitely above average, but he’s no Granderson), Carlos Guillen settled in at third and Miguel Cabrera at first, it really picked up in the second quarter. For the season, the Tigers’ defensive efficiency (percentage of batted battles in play they turn into outs) is .704, or about .003 from being Top 10 in baseball. That’s maybe a play here or play there they didn’t make over the course of the year. So i’d say that’s pretty good. It’s not terrific. The shortstop’s defense is probably hardly better this year than last. I like what I’ve seen in recent weeks. And Jim Leyland seems to have sorted out his outfield. If he can find a way to get Magglio Ordonez to DH more, I’d say the Tigers get a B+/A- expectation from me going forward. They won’t be great but they’ll be capable.
• Coaching:  C-. OK. Let’s be honest here. I have no idea how to grade coaching. But on a gut level, it feels like it hasn’t done a great job. The hitters’ slumps lasted too long. The pitching was obviously not prepared to start the year. But it feels like the defensive coaching has been great givn the changing personnel, changing positions, and lack of talent they were working with. I think Guillen and Cabrera adapted to their new positions fast.
• Managing: C+. At one point this season, I thought Jim Leyland lost the team and had maybe lost himself. It was a tough stretch in May. He rebounded from it. He yelled at the team. He saved the season. He never stopped trying things out. We like to think the manager is the ship’s captain, the final say, the great decision maker. But in reality, some of Leyland’s decisions have been made for him. It’s not like he can just get rid of Sheffield, right?  As for in-game decisions, I think we can all agree it’s a crapshoot. It’s hard to measure anyway. Sometimes he does by-the-book stuff that works and sometimes it doesn’t. Sometimes he makes tuff up and it works and sometimes it doesn’t. His bullpen, again, a situation a bit outside his hands, management was awful. But his bullpen was not exactly condusive to managing either.
• General managing: C. I feel like Leyland was given a softball team. Yeah, it’s not slugging as good as it could be and I’m not a big believer in “pesky” offenses. But I’d like there to have been a bit more flexibility, a bit younger of a club by choice, not by injury. I’d also have liked to see more emphasis on defense. For those reasons, when the Tigers aren’t slugging, they aren’t winning.
• The team overall: C. It’s been average. A month of crap. A month of great. A month of average. And it’s .500 at the break. Too bad. It shouldn’t have been, but for the reasons above, it is. Going forward, I expect above average. Not greatly above average. But I feel like the team has settled in. It’ll give the fans some enjoyable, memorable moments. So probably a B or B+. Unfortunately I feel like they’d need an A or maybe even A+ to be considered truly in the division hunt.
• Bonus point: Second half prediction!
• Whether it’s a postseason team is entirely upon the shoulders of the Chicago White Sox at this point. The division is theirs to win, because Detroit simply isn’t good enough to go on an extended stretch of .700 baseball. It’ll take a skid from the White Sox. As for the Twins, yes, they have been kickers of Detroit heiny. They are built perfectly to run circles around their elders. And that gives us the interesting record of 42-37 for the Tigers in non-Minnesota games, and the Twins 43-37 in non-Detroit games. The teams only play each other three more times this year. (And Lee Panas has pointed out, they aren’t particularly good at anything other than beating the Tigers.) They are also playing above their expect W-L. So I find it hard to believe they’ll continue winning at the same rate. The final standings seldom seem to be the same as the halftime standings, anyway. So:
• Final order of finish:  Chicago, Detroit, Minnesota, Cleveland, Kansas City. Only Chicago makes the playoffs.
• Final side note: Earlimart’s Hymn and Her is a pretty good album to blog to!

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(Detroit News photo)

OK, one wasn’t enough. I had to do another. Addicting.

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Well, this weekend has stunk, hasn’t it? The Tigers lost a third straight one-run game to the Twins. We all deal with it in our own ways. My way was to play with Photoshop Elements and give my version of the Need4Sheed treatment to a Tigers photo.

That is all!

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Twins 7
Tigers 6

Recap:

• BOO
• YAY
• BOO
• BOO
• BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
• OH GOD NO
• BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!
• meh.

Actual recap:

• Tigers scored five runs in the third inning to take a commanding lead.
• Kenny Rogers itched a good game and left with a 6-3 lead.
• Fernando Rodney gave up one, then Todd Jones tried to blow up and destroy the game in regulation. Instead he just let the Twins tie it.
• The Tigers had a chance to win in regulation when the leadoff batter walked and stole second. His name would be Carlos Guillen. And he’s a good baseball player. He ended up on third after a wild pitch with one out. And two strikeouts later, the Tigers blew their best shot at winning the game.
• In Freddy Dolsi’s third inning on the mound, he gave up a home run to Justin Morneau that turned out to be the game winner.

Analysis:

• OK. show of hands. Who didn’t see the Tigers losing after they blew a four-run lead and didn’t score after the third?  Anyone? anyone?  Yeah. That ninth inning almost turned out OK after Todd Jones stunk again. But it didn’t.
• and after they didn’t score in the ninth, you — well I — knew there was no shot the Tigers could win.
• Jones is really doing his best to make sure the Tigers fail during a crucial stretch in their season. Not literally. It only feels like it. You had to figure he would have a tough stretch at some point. it’s just unfortunate it’s now. It really hurts the Tigers’ chances.
• And as far as that goes, they pretty much have to win the next three games. A split is hardly acceptable. It’s not like it’s MUST win. But it’s not exactly a good time to be splitting series with division rivals who own you in their own stadium.

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Tigers 8
Indians 6

Recap:

• Well, that’s why you watch baseball if you’re a Tigers fan. If you’re an Indians fan you probably don’t want to see it for awhile.
• Detroit rallied from a 6-0 deficit to win 8-6 on a walk-off home run by Miguel Cabrera.
• A five-run seventh inning, highlighted by a home run by Matt Joyce, helped Detroit claw back into it and tie the game at 6-6.
• Joyce had three hits.
• Eddie Bonine gave up five runs on nine hits and didn’t make it out of the fourth inning.
• Casey Fossum struck out six and did pretty good in relief.
• Todd Jones did his “oh crap we’re all gonna dieeeee!” impersonation in the ninth but a couple key defensive plays by Carlos Guillen bailed him out nicely.

Anaylsis:

• The Tigers desperately needed that win. They can’t rely on the White Sox ever losing apparently. They’ve just come back again. So Detroit avoided falling 8 games out. The Twins got their butts kicked in Boston, fortunately. So that’s another game closer heading into a big four game series in Comerica Park.
• Bonine stunk but the Tigers just fight-fight-fight and that’s why they’ve been so fun to watch for the past month-plus.
• Miguel Cabrera!!! I said it in the past and I stuck with it all the way through. We are going to be so spoiled as fans who get to watch several years of him in our team’s uniform. That hip flexor injury must have woke him up. He’s been phenomenal lately.

Other stuff:

• FSN reports Dane Sardinha has been optioned back to Toledo. Bonine is headed all the way down to Erie.
• Brandon Inge is on his way back up. And Jeff Larish did they say?
• I presume they’ll need to find a starting pitcher by four days from now. *I just realized, with a little help from Dave Dombrowski, four days from now is the all-star break.
• And what’s up with a 1 p.m. game on a Thursday that’s not a getaway game?

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Tigers 9
Indians 2

Recap:

• Justin Verlander got the first batters out, let the next two batters score, then shut down the Indians for pretty much innings 2 through 7.
• The Tigers brought their power shoes, especially Miguel Cabrera. He had two homers Marcus Thames one and Pudge one. Thames also chipped in an RBI double, and Curtis Granderson singled in a run.
• Did I mention Cabera went 4-for-4?  Well, he did!
• This scoring outburst from the team came with Maggs on the DL and Carlos Guillen gone for the birth of his daughter.
• Not to be lost, Aquilino Lopez pitched two fantastic innings of relief for Detroit.

Analysis:

• The Twins thankfully lost. There might be 2 and a half months left in the season, but it is starting to get closer to make-or-break territory. Of course we’ve been on the other side of things, where the Tigers have been great at the all-star break only to have things go wrong in August. So, you know, if the baseball gods would like to bring the White Sox and Twins back to earth soon, that would be good, ya know?
• But if the Tigers keep getting good starts from pitchers and Cabrera is able to hit a little more consistently — a little more Thames-ian if you will– I have hopes September will still feature meaningful games. The next week is really a big one for Detroit, as they face the Twins four times. While normally you might like to face the pushover teams to collect some W’s, I think the only way the Tigers get back into a true division race is playing and beating the Twins and White Sox themselves. If they can’t do that, they don’t deserve the division title anyway.

Other stuff:

• It appears it’s tendinitis in Dontrelle Willis’ knee. I guess that’s better than a torn ACL or something, though it’s not exaclty confidence-giving for me. It’s just something he’ll have to rehab and work his way through.
• Michael Hollimon has gone back to Toledo. Ramon Santiago is headed back to Detroit.
  
• And Brandon Inge is rehabbing in Toledo.

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Carlos Guillen is the Tigers’ lone representative at the all star game, a far cry from last year’s five Tigers. Truth be told, it’s hard to make an argument for anyone else being on the team. Armando Gallaraga has pitched great but that was always going to be a long shot. Placido Polanco had to compete with some pretty decent second baseman, too. On the bright side, the players will get to rest and try to make up some of that distance in the A.L. Central.

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Tigers 2
Mariners 1
(15 innings)

Recap:

• As they say, no one saw that one coming!
• The Tigers won in the 15th inning after the Mariners trotted out their backup catcher to the mound. He only allowed one run. But that’s all it took.
• Miguel Cabrera doubled off him, then pinch-runner Michael Hollimon went to third on an awful throw before scoring on a sac. And then, somehow, the backup catcher (or is that backup backup?) got out of the inning without allowing any more hits.
• But that’s not all that was weird.
• Nate Robertson pitched what would have been a complete game had it ended in nine innings. He did so in 100 pitches and allowed just the one run.
• In 15 inning the teams combined for 14 hits and left 23 on base.
• The Tigers bullpen only gave up two hits in six innings of work.
• Of the Tigers’ 8 hits, Pudge had four.

Analysis

• I’m sure I wasn’t the only one awaiting a devastating loss at some point! Thankfully the Tigers survived the runner getting to second a few times in extras.
• A wins’ a win, but it wasn’t what I’d call the kind of successful road trip the Tigers needed. They ended up losing ground on both teams above them.
• I think we’re seeing how much Detroit misses Magglio Ordonez and a healthy Miguel Cabrera. Three games in Seattle the Tigers scored 2 or less runs. That’s definitely not a good sign.
• Thankfully Detroit gets a day off and then faces a struggling Indians team that apparently just traded CC Sabathia.

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Mariners 3
Tigers 2

recap:

• MEH
• Rodney gave up a late 2-run home run to blow the game. But the Tigers offense was stymed by R.A. Dickey’s knuckle ball anyway, so it’s not entirely his fault.

Analysis:

• What a kick in the bricks that was. The Tigers really had to have a better showing on the road than they have, or else they risk giving up all the hard-earned gains of the 18-4 streak.

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