Tag Archives: oakland

Bay of Cigs: Playoff Prelude

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The Tigers look to get their train back on the tracks in Oakland tonight in game one of their American League divisional series. Detroit will send twenty-game-winner, Cy Young frontrunner, and probable ocular unicorn Max Scherzer to the mound in a pitching matchup against [all the overweight and PED jokes] Bartolo Colon. The Tigers and A’s played each other pretty evenly this season, and Detroit had to face Oakland in last year’s playoffs. What I remember from that series is that Coco Crisp is ruthless. Oakland may not be a top-tier team, but they are a frightening playoff foe. Detroit’s strength right now is its starting pitching, and the team will need to rely heavily on its defense– keep an eye on Jhonny Peralta in left field, and recall that Atlanta’s decision to start a catcher in left field hurt them last night— until it can get its bats going again.

Tonight’s game starts at 9:37. Stay tuned here for details about a possible live blog for the game, and, as always, follow us @ALDLANDia for the latest and unfiltered greatest hot sports takes.

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Previously
Playoff Time – 9/30
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

ALDLAND Podcast

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The ALDLAND podcast finally gets around to some non-college football topics. MLB playoffs and NFL are both on the menu this week, as we make our picks for the World Series and recap the first quarter of the NFL season. But don’t worry if college football is your thing, since we obviously can’t go a week without discussing that either.

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Download the ALDLAND podcast at our Podcasts Page or stream it right here:

Bay of Cigs: Playoff Time

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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

Tuesday Afternoon Inside Linebacker

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tail3ALDLAND’s weekly football review returns after an infamous fall wedding weekend. Bear with us as we attempt to piece together the happenings of the last few days.

College Football

Pregame:

  • After the Game of the Century of the Season of the Week last week in College Station, everybody predicted a scheduling letdown this week. Sports predictions have become (always were?) completely useless and devoid of meaning, but once in a while, the wisdom of the crowd gets it right. Throwing out expired food? No, actually. A soft slate of week-four matchups? For the most part, yes.

The games — That 70s Show:

  • Clemson opened the week of play by getting punchy on Thursday night in a closer-than-it-should-have-been win over North Carolina State. So far as I can tell, the Tigers have played only fellow Carolinians to this point in the season. A check of their schedule confirms this, and the trend will continue this weekend. (EDIT: Except for that little game against UGA in week one.) Clemson 26, North Carolina State 14.
  • A number of teams posted gaudy scores and spreads. Since they already had their fun, they’re all getting grouped in this one paragraph. Ohio State 76, FAMU 0. Louisville 72, FIU 0. Miami 77, Savannah State 7. Washington 56, Idaho State 0. Baylor 70, Louisiana-Monroe 7 (that one’s actually a little surprising). Florida State 54, Bethune-Cook 6. Wisconsin 41, Purdue 10. UCLA 59, New Mexico State 13. Texas A&M 42, SMU 13. And others.

UPDATE: The on-field Notre Dame football hoax you didn’t know about

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evil on the internet - attack of the machinesNo, not that one, although there is a loose connection. One of the names that came up from time to time in the media’s coverage of Manti Te’o this season was that of Tim Brown. As Te’o became an increasingly serious (or unserious, depending on what you believe right now) Heisman contender, Brown’s name got kicked around because Brown was the last Notre Dame player to win the Heisman trophy, which he did during the 1987 season.

Te’o didn’t win though, and amidst the post-national championship game kerfuffle that has surrounded Te’o and Notre Dame, and in the leadup to Super Bowl XLVII, Brown thought it was a good time to reassert himself in the national sports discussion.

Now, he’s front-and-center, with a thinly veiled accusation that the Oakland Raiders threw Super Bowl XXXVII. Brown said that the Raiders’ coach, Bill Callahan, “sabotage[d]” his team by changing their offensive scheme two days before the game. Why? Callahan “had a big problem with the Raiders, . . . hated the Raiders.” That’s nothing new. Why else? Callahan wanted his “good friend[]”– opposing coach John Gruden– a Super Bowl win.

Well. Rather than make a Jon Gruden joke, I’ll just ask why nobody’s checking to see whether Les Miles is on the Bill Callahan coaching tree.

UPDATE: This isn’t just a Notre Dame thing. Brown’s teammate on that Raiders team, Jerry Rice, also spoke out in support of Brown’s assertion, and, if anything, he was less equivocal than Brown.   Continue reading →

The DET Offensive: Playoffs?!? Playoffs.

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Playoffs? Well yes, actually. The Tigers clinched the AL Central championship in game 160 of the season, thereby securing their position in the playoffs. Their first series opens tonight in Detroit. At the beginning of the season, everyone expected the Tigers to take this division and to take it handily. In the end (indeed, a few days before the end), they took it, but they certainly didn’t take it handily. In fact, as anyone tracking this feature (or, you know, watching the games) knows, this team has been down more than it’s been up this year, and it certainly has underachieved. Fortunately for Detroit, the White Sox, who led the division most of the year, were even worse down the stretch and allowed the Tigers to slip into the postseason.

The playoffs are a brand new season, though, and they start tonight, when the Tigers host the red-hot Oakland Athletics. (The ghost of Brandon Inge undoubtedly haunts this series.) There are some good points and some bad points for the Tigers as they enter the postseason. The regular season pretty well illuminated the bad parts. As for the good parts, the abbreviated nature of postseason series should allow Detroit to hide most of its weaknesses, which generally relate to depth. Pitching rotations and rhythms take on a whole new feel in the playoffs, which is a good thing for this Tiger team, which as a bullpen that is unreliable, to say the least. Local talk radio has been critical of manager Jim Leyland’s lineup decisions, but he seems very focused on putting his best offensive lineup on the field for the playoffs, and no longer appears interested in jockeying the batting order.

The first pitch of the A’s-Tigers series– a five-gamer– is just under an hour away, and Justin Verlander will be on the mound for the home team.

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Previously
You forgot about J(ustin Verlander) – 10/1
Get perspective – 9/12
Everybody knows this is nowhere – 8/31
Now it’s just offensive – 8/29
Explode! – 7/23
Halfway at the Half-way – 7/9
Interleague Play – 6/26
Call the Experts! – 5/26
Recipe for a Slumpbuster – 5/2
Delmon Young Swings and Misses – 4/30
Brennan Boesch’s Birthday – 4/12
Tigers open 2012 season with Sawks sweep – 4/9

Silent Film Series: Baron Davis (Oakland, CA 2007)

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The writers and readers of this site tend to be employed or otherwise disposed during the day such that watching video clips on full volume usually doesn’t happen. If there’s something I really want to hear, I save it for lunch or the end of the day, and I suspect a lot of people do the same thing. This means that there are a lot of us watching a lot of videos– the general tenor of the internet being what it is– on mute. Conventional wisdom suggests that this practice detracts from our experience of these videos. Conventional wisdom also suggests that you never get involved in a land war in Asia, but is Afghanistan even in Asia and anyway that’s not what we’re talking about because the fact is that conventional wisdom can be wrong about videos and about wars (but not about videos of wars), which is why we’re introducing the ALDLAND Silent Film Series.

The concept is simple: some videos are better without sound. Whether they’re made that way or are seen that way for some variation on the modern reality alluded to above, this addition-by-subtraction effect is very real.

The Series’ inaugural feature comes from Oakland, California in 2007. Yesterday afternoon, Amos Barshad included the clip in his possibly prescient (given the Knicks’ loss in Miami last night) contingency plan for the end of Linsanity. It stars a somewhat (i.e., five-years) younger Baron Davis in his role as point guard for the Golden State Warriors, and it comes in the final minutes of a 20+ point win over the visiting Utah Jazz.

I neither am nor aspire to be Chuck Klosterman: a second-by-second analysis of this video hardly seems necessary. Instead, as you watch it (sans audio!, of course), appreciate the silent cinemagic of every shot of Davis, his teammates, Andrei Kirilenko, the fans, and the referee. Sound can improve these visuals in zero ways.

Why I’m not going to see Moneyball

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If you’ve set eyes upon an operating television, magazine, or newspaper in the last month, you probably are aware that the big-screen adaptation of Michael Lewis’ 2003 book Moneyball is coming out tonight, and I won’t be there to see it.

More than anything, I’m surprised this movie was a) even made, and b) made as a major picture featuring a star of the notoriety of Brad Pitt. The book, a work of nonfiction, is eight years old. It describes a way of thinking that has become uncontroversial, if not widely accepted, and that, as applied in the story told in the book, did not come to lasting fruition (i.e., Oakland is bad).

The celebrated nerd motif can work as general interest film for grownups if it adds an element of widely recognized and desired glamour. For example, 21 worked because it put the nerds in Vegas. Vegas unquestionably represents glamour, allure, desire, risk, and danger to all Americans, even those who’ve never been and never want to go, for whom it’s the forbidden other. Vegas attracts your attention, even if not your urge for physical presence, and seeing it through the eyes of sheltered nerds taking on the Vegas establishment allows the audience to feel the thrills and chills of the story. You didn’t need to understand specifically how they were cheating (or whatever), you just needed to understand that they were cheating, and you were along for the ride. Kevin Spacey and a major-marketed release were justified.

Baseball can’t carry nerd protagonists the way Las Vegas can, not even Major League Baseball, and especially not a team without household-name superstars, and really especially not a team without household-name superstars doing something like juicing or gambling. The players aren’t even the focus– it’s the administrative folks, and they aren’t Jerry Jones or Al Davis. Heck, even Marge Schott would make this more compelling. It isn’t a comedy baseball movie, and it isn’t a heartfelt tale of athletic achievement. It’s Titanic without the love story: great new idea gets carried out, and, albeit less dramatically, the boat sinks. And you know all of this before setting foot inside the theater.

It isn’t that I don’t like going to the movies– I’m looking forward to a few upcoming ones in particular (The Rum Diary, the Coen brothers’ Dave Van Ronk project, and J. Edgar)– but even thinking about sitting through a screening of Moneyball makes me tired. (Although if they promised to reveal the history of the Athletics’ elephant logo, I might change my tune.)

Abstinence education in Oakland

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No, this has nothing to do with this video. Lost in the general, blind excitement over the NFL’s season starting on time, more or less as it would have without the dispute between the players and owners, was the approach taken by the Oakland Raiders’ management during the final, critical vote to approve the new deal with the players that would allow the league to resume operations.

Rather than vote to approve the plan, or even to vote against it, the Raiders decided to abstain. As covered in the exclusive report by Comcast SportsNet, Amy Trask, CEO of the Raiders, “explained the abstention thusly”:

We have profound philosophical differences on a number of issues — both of a football and economic nature. We have consistently expressed our views on these matters to the league.

Even though I am disappointed that it was Trask, and not owner Al Davis, who provided the explanation of the team’s position, I like the Raiders taking a principled stance here for no other reason that they’re the Raiders. (It also reminded me of two-time Oakland head coach Art Shell’s principled stance against any form of clock management.) Along with the rest of the league, and whether they want it or not, or if they even know what they want anymore, Da Raidas are back.