Actor and cultural icon Leonard Nimoy died at the age of 83 on Friday. So in small celebration of the man and in keeping with our stated mission, let’s devote a few moments to the pitch Nimoy’s Dr. Spock inspired: the Vulcan changeup. … Read More
(via CBS Sports)
As the aftershocks of the David Price trade continue to ripple across the baseball landscape, Tigers fans still are trying to understand the meaning and implications of the move. My immediate reaction was mixed, generally because starting pitching seemed like the least of Detroit’s postseason needs, one of the most glaring of which remains a shallow, untrustworthy bullpen with nothing to speak of from the lefthanded side.
While I do think the Tigers should move Justin Verlander to the ‘pen in October, Price may be able to address the team’s relief-pitching deficiencies in his role as a starter. In 2014, Price has pitched more innings and more innings per start than any other Detroit pitcher (numbers from Baseball-Reference):
Price has been going deeper into games this year than any member of the Tigers rotation. If he can continue to pitch into the seventh or eighth inning on a regular basis, that could reduce the number of relievers needed in that game and preserve bullpen options in other games.
The measure of this impact is likely to be small, but like Victor Martinez’s extended plate appearances, these could be the sorts of small advantages that, in the aggregate, push one team past another.
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Previously
Trade Deadline Explosion – 7/31
Where are the Bats? – 7/31
Detroit finds relief, but at what price? – 7/24
Closing Time? – 6/4
Closing the Book on 2013 – 6/2
Victor Martinez, Professional Hitter – 5/7
Actually Mad Max – 4/29
Waiting for Takeoff – 4/28
In developments that can only be described as shocking, the Tigers executed a last-minute trade for pitcher David Price, sending Austin Jackson to Seattle and Drew Smyly to Tampa. (Seattle also sent Nick Franklin to Tampa.) The trade was finalized while Detroit was in the middle of a game both Smyly and Jackson had started, and Jackson had to be pulled off the field when the deal was done. Continue reading
The Los Angeles Dodgers and Clayton Kershaw have agreed on a seven-year, $215 million deal, sources with knowledge of the situation said.
Kershaw has an out clause after five years.
It is the richest deal for a pitcher in Major League Baseball history, eclipsing the seven-year, $180 million contract Detroit gave Justin Verlander last winter, and his average annual salary of $30.7 million is the highest ever for any baseball player.
The 25-year-old Kershaw has won two of the last three National League Cy Young Awards, as well as a Roberto Clemente award for his charitable work.
One of the things I’ve noticed is most eye-opening to casual sports fans is the size of athletes’ contracts, especially when presented in a more understandable context than “$D over Y years.” In continuing service to this site’s prime audience, the casual sports fan, here are two graphics that place Kershaw’s record-setting contract in context:
Now imagine being the person writing the checks for Kershaw and his teammates.
The regular season is (basically) over. October begins tomorrow. The Tigers are in the playoffs. All of this is good news, and the AL Central-clinching game– Jim Leyland’s emotional 700th win with the Tigers– was worth celebrating.
These Tigers are built to contend for and win a World Series championship, so, for Detroit, the real action begins in Oakland on Friday.
Unlike the A’s, the Tigers are entering the playoffs cold and disjointed. First and foremost, Miguel Cabrera’s abdomen/groin injury/ies appear anything but resolved. There’s no question that he’ll be in the lineup for every game this month, but I have plenty of questions about how productive he can be. Without his consistent hitting power, together with a serviceable level of capability on the basepaths and on defense, it’s difficult to see how Detroit can defend its American League championship and make a return to the World Series. Little is publicly known about Cabrera’s current health aside from what can be gleaned from watching him play, but I’m worried about the signals the visuals and the team’s silence are sending.
Second, the bullpen continues to be a serious weakness for Detroit. This has been an issue since day one of this season, and while it seems like there’s been some progress on that front, I don’t feel a lot more confident in the middle relief after 162 games than I did in March. There’s help here, though. Because the playoff schedule is such that a team only needs, at most, four starting pitchers, the Tigers can move Rick Porcello into the bullpen. Kid Rick is pitching very well right now, and he should be able to fill most of the middle relief gaps.
Third is the issue of late-game run support. I first raised this issue early in the season, and when I checked in after 100 games, the numbers looked even worse. I’ll do one more check of these numbers, but my sense is that this is an area where the Tigers have improved a little bit. If this remains a problem, the pressures of the playoffs may exacerbate it, however.
Fourth, as more of a note, Justin Verlander probably should be the team’s fourth starter in the playoffs. The question I have about him is not about the number of “smart,” “rational” Tigers fans you can whip into a rage by talking about Verlander’s struggles, but about whether Leyland really will use Verlander as the third or fourth starter in the playoffs. I believe he will. Max Scherzer and, increasingly, Anibal Sanchez have separated themselves as Detroit’s clear top two starters, and if the Tigers are to succeed this month, it will be on the strength of their arms.
Fifth, Jhonny Peralta’s back with the team, and not a moment too soon. It looks like Peralta will be taking over a weak left field for the Tigers in the playoffs. Detroit needed his bat in the lineup, and there isn’t anywhere else to put him. He rejoined the team for their last regular season series, and he had a double and an RBI in his first game back. He had two hits in the second game of the series, and none in three at bats in the third game. Being a shortstop, his fielding abilities in left, backing up Cabrera’s limited range at third, raises some concerns, particularly with starting shortstop Jose Iglesias’ recent case of bilateral shin splints, but, as stated, there aren’t any viable alternatives here.
As a final note, I think it’s the case that you know your own team, and therefore your own team’s weaknesses, better than you know anything about your team’s opponent. These Tigers are very good, and have been historically good at times this season. Starting Friday, we’ll find out whether they will be at their best when there’s no other option.
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Related
Full postseason schedule
Tigers-Athletics preview
Previously
Heeeeeere’s Jhonny? – 9/12
Crime & Punishment – 8/7
Trader Jose(s) – 7/31
100 days of summer run distribution – 7/25
Are the Tigers the unluckiest team in baseball? – 6/28
Forget what you know – 6/25
History and Revision – 6/12
Tigers beat Braves 7-4 as part of series sweep of visiting Atlanta – 5/7
April in the D – 4/26
Jet Set (Sigh?) – 4/23
Run distribution, science, and the likelihood of a Detroit comeback – 4/15
WSJ throws a wet newspaper on the Tigers’ 2013 chances – 4/3
A Tiger is a Tiger is a Tiger – 3/29
The Departed – 3/14
When it comes to baseball pitchers, most fans focus on pitch speed. This makes sense. The 100-mph-fastball is a pop culture/athletic touchstone, and who hasn’t been to a carnival in central Ontario and tried to throw three hard pitches at the same velocity while your ten-year-old brain realizes the km/h readings on the gun have little meaning to your life? But in general, if you throw the ball faster, it’s harder to hit, right?
One of the biggest baseball stories through the first half of the season is the noticeable (and noticed, obviously) drop in pitch velocity for flamethrower Justin Verlander. Coupled with middling success (when compared with recent, historic-level years), falling pitch speed is the ready response for writers attempting diagnoses of Verlander’s struggles. (C.C. Sabathia has fallen under similarly themed scrutiny.)
While the real reason for Verlander’s struggles likely exists within a more complex mix of factors, the popular focus on pitch speed provides a good entry point for introducing two other pitching components that probably are more important than velocity alone and that are easy for casual fans to understand and track. (That’s the whole point of this series of posts, after all.)
A very special edition of the ALDLAND podcast this week as blog founder AD joins us to talk NBA free agency and the MLB all-star game. Marcus and I revisit some of our MLB picks from the start of the season and AD makes his own.
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Download the ALDLAND podcast at our Podcasts Page or stream it right here:
As briefly mentioned at the end of the last post, ALDLAND will have a presence in Detroit this weekend, where the Tigers will host the Atlanta Braves for three games, beginning tonight.
After twenty games, the Tigers can’t seem to get themselves above .500, and the early ride has been bumpy.
Yesterday afternoon’s game was particularly rough. After allowing just one earned run, starter Justin Verlander left the game with a lead on the scoreboard and a sore throwing-hand thumb. Rookie reliever Bruce Rondon, making his first major-league appearance, promptly gave up that lead, and then the ball. Phil Coke entered and, through a series of walks of varying intentionalities, put Detroit behind. Darin Downs relieved Coke and immediately gave up a grand slam. The supposedly hard-hitting Tigers, who have a way of not scoring late, plated no runs from the fifth inning on through the tenth, when they lost.
As anyone reading Upton Abbey knows, the Braves are red-hot. The consensus best team in baseball, Atlanta is off to a 15-6 start, and they’re hitting home runs like crazy. I haven’t taken a close look at their runs/inning distribution, but it sure seems like they can hit for power both early and late. Keep reading…
In my quest to bring you more columns on teams you could not care less about, I am starting a semi-regular column on the Seattle Mariners. The Mariners have been my favorite team since I got into baseball, largely due to a fondness for Ken Griffey Jr. Presents Major League Baseball on SNES. I still maintain that it is one of the best games of all time, although it is obviously not on the level of Game of Thrones or my personal favorite game of all time, Mass Effect 2. This column was really also just an excuse to make another Game of Thrones pun, which I’m super good at. Like yesterday I posted this recipe for direwolf shaped scones on Facebook and called it Game of Scones. How great is that?
Anyway, the Mariners just wrapped up a series against AD’s second favorite team, the Detroit Tigers. The Tigers won 2 out of 3, although all three games were fairly competitive with Wednesday’s game going to 14 innings. The one win the Mariners got was against Justin Verlander. Go figure. Although there is a fairly large talent gap between the two teams (a 150+ million dollar payroll can do that), the Mariners have had a lot of success against the Tigers in recent years so this was kind of a disappointing result for Seattle. Still, you can never be too disappointed beating Verlander and I was doubly happy because he is on one of my fantasy teams and he turned in a solid start despite losing the game. Woof, this is reading like a Live Journal post, huh? Or at least what I imagine a Live Journal post would read like.
Coming into the season I thought that the Mariners could be a surprise team a la the 2012 Orioles or Athletics given the acquisition of some offensive firepower in Mike Morse and Kendrys Morales. This of course assumed that their young core of Dustin Ackley, Justin Smoak and Jesus Montero would make a leap, which has not happened yet. The Mariners have also been bit by the injury bug, having several regular players go on the disabled list. Things could still turn around, and the fact that Seattle gets a good number of games against the Houston Astros could be the difference if they want to snag a wild card over an AL Central or East team. Still, their league worst offense over the past several seasons must make strides, and that is no given.
A Mariners post wouldn’t be complete without a mention of the King in the North(west), Felix Hernandez. Felix is off to a stellar start to the 2013 season, and continues to prove that he is one of the top pitchers in the major league. Is another Cy Young in his future? If I could see into the future I would tell you, but I can’t, so I won’t.
That’s it for my first Mariners column. I don’t blame you for skipping over it, because I doubt it interests you very much. But if you read through the whole thing, here is a stellar gif of Khal Drogo as a reward. Who do you guys think would win in a fight between Khal Drogo and the Mountain? Let me know in the comments.
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