Archive for the '2007 Tigers' Category

Today, the four full season minor league affiliates for the Tigers all have their opening day.  Be sure to stop by Tigers Minors tonight as he’ll have details on all four of the games.

It’s snowing pretty good at least up where I’m at.  I wonder if they’re going to get today’s game in.

***UPDATE***

The game is postponed. Looks like they’ll play it September 10th.  So Justin Verlander will get his first start in Kansas City tomorrow.  Sounds like it’s going to be just as cold there.

Nothing like a 10-9, three and a half hour game on a day where the wind was gusting up to 30 mph and the wind chill was below freezing.  Honestly, I thought this one was over in the early innings.  Curtis Granderon capped off an eight run third inning with his first career grand slam and the Tigers added another run in the fourth.  It was 10-2 when the proverbial poop hit the fan in the Blue Jays seventh.

In that seventh, the wind just became flat out crazy and Magglio Ordonez had a particularly tough time.  He never got charged with an error, but he looked like I do when thrown out in right field on a tough day out on the softball field, and that’s not a good thing.  To his credit, he made a great catch to finish up the inning on a ball that wouldn’t stand pat in that wind.

Nate Robertson picked up the win and he left in the sixth inning after he gave up two runs.  Jason Grilli bore the brunt of that big Blue Jays inning and he gave up five while Fernando Rodney was tagged for two runs.  At the plate, Ivan Rodriguez had four hits and Granderson drove in five.  The Tigers also showed some patience at the plate and they drew nine walks with Ordonez drawing three himself.  All nine Tiger starters reached base at least once.

The weather isn’t supposed to be much better tomorrow but it’s something Justin Verlander will have to cope with.  He’ll face Gustavio Chacin in a get away day game.

***UPDATE***

Here’s the WPA graph for today’s game.  You see it go up close to 100% when the Tigers scored all of those runs in the third but then things get hairy in the eighth inning.  And even though Curtis Granderon hit the grand slam, it just made a 4-0 lead an 8-0 lead so at the time, that didn’t add as much as you’d probably think.  In fact Placido Polanco led the hitters and he drove in only one run.  Todd Jones led the entire team with the troublesome ninth but he got out of his own jam so he gets the credit.

If you’ve never checked out the pregame Press Pass for the Tigers game at MLB.com, there’s a ton of interesting information.  In today’s Press Pass, I learned that Sean Casey has the highest batting average among active players with at least 20 at bats.  He’s a solid 12 for 20 (.600) against Burnett so hopefully he’ll get it done today.  Also, Casey has been known for his decent starts.  He’s a .334 hitter in 308 at bats in the month of April since the 2003 season.  He’s also hit safely in all eight of opening day starts and that .334 average is fourth amongst active major league players.

Four years ago, I started this blog.  I was going to have a contest to have some fun to celebrate but I think I’m going to hold off until May.  It’d be fitting if the Tigers would win this afternoon though.

And thanks for all of you for stopping by over the years.  I usually tell people I do this for myself but I highly doubt that I would have kept it up this long if all of you didn’t stop by now and then.

Alright, since it’s an off day, I wanted to do some announcement type stuff.  For those of you who haven’t been following it, I’ve been putting together a network of major league baseball sites that, while they all cover the current happenings of their particular team, they’ll also provide some very interesting historical baseball coverage.  One of the projects I’ve been working on is the 1967 AL Pennant Race site which will track, day by day in a diary format, what when down in what’s considered the greatest pennant race of all time.  In addition, it’s giving me a good preview of what I’ll be working on next year when I do the 1968 Tigers diary.  And if you like diaries, then Yankees History would be a nice site to check on once in a while.  Yankees blogger Nick Smith will be providing us with day by day coverage of four different Yankees championship teams (1927, 1937, 1947 and 1977).  Wrigley Field Curse will be taking a look at 1907 Cubs and Braves Baseball Blog will commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Milwaukee Braves World Series win that season.  And while the site hasn’t been active recently, the All Star Game Blog is going to let you take a look at All Star Games past and the provide you with up to date information on the 2007 All Star Game in San Francisco.

So there’s a ton to check out and to make it easier, I set up a central site called Baseball Historians which picks up all of the feeds.  So if you make that a daily stop, you’ll get coverage of all 30 teams and a whole lot more.  Some sites will be updating daily while others will be doing series recaps and then there’s the historical information.  I’m just glad this is finally coming together.

Similarly, with the help of Mike Cassidy at Tigers Minors, I’m doing something similar to provide minor league baseball coverage.  Right now, I have nine sites on line with a central site at Minor League Blogs which picks up all of the feeds for the nine sites.  There you’ll get daily minor league news and game recaps and the nice thing is, each minor league player will have his own category so if you want to see when a specific minor league player is mentioned, the sites are indexed nicely to accomodate that.  Most of these blogs have some content right now but they really kick things off on Thursday when the minor league season starts.

For those of you not famliar with Win Probablity Added (WPA), it’s basically a measure of how much a particular player added to his team’s chance of winning based on not only what he did, but when he did it.  One thing I don’t like about it is that it gives more credit to a late homerun then it does to an early homerun which may end up being just as important.  The cool thing is though, you can then map out at any particular point in time what each team’s historical chances of winning are at any point in the game, which is what Fangraphs did here for yesterday’s Tiger game.

So you’ll see the Tigers chance go way down after that rough first inning but then they slowly creep back into the game.  Joel Zumaya ended up leading the team in WPA with those two scoreless innings he threw late in the game and Placido Polanco led all hitters with his three hits.  It looks like the Tigers best chance of winning was in the bottom of the ninth.  Fenando Rodney had the worst WPA amongst the pitchers because of his horrible tenth and then Carlos Guillen was at the bottom of the hitting chart with his 0 for 5 game.

And if the chart is too hard to read, you can also check out the play log.  This is a really fun site and you can go back to the games in 2002 if you want too.

The Tigers lost their home opener today in ten innings to the Blue Jays.  Jeremy Bonderman got into some major trouble in the first inning and gave up three runs before calming down.  He then went on to throw five shutout innings to get the Tigers back into the game.  Gary Sheffield hit two sac. flies and the other run scored on one of Placido Polanco’s three singles.

The game went into extra frames tied 3-3 until Fernando Rodney got into trouble.  He got Reed Johnson to ground out but then the trouble began.  He gave up a single then he walked Vernon Wells before he hit Frank Thomas to load the bases up.  A single and a squeeze play later and the Jays had a 5-3 lead, which would stand.

Curtis Granderson also had a decent day at the plate.  He went two for five with a run and only one strikeout.  Joel Zumaya walked two but he didn’t give up a hit in two scoreless frames while Todd Jones pitched a scoreless ninth.

It’ll be Nate Robertson on Wednesday.  I was thinking about trying to make it down on Thursday but it’s not going to happen.  On top of that, it’s supposed to really cool down and not even get up to 40.

Curtis Granderson has moved his blog over to ESPN.  Here’s his first post.

It’s 1:01, the first pitch is coming up, and oh yeah, the Tigers are the defending AL Champs.  As a Tiger fan, have you ever been more excited about an upcoming season?

I picked this up from the Tigers Press Pass, but Ivan Rodriguez is particularly good against the Blue Jays.  In his career, he’s 142 for 447 (.318) with 17 homeruns, 68 runs scored and 74 RBIs in 115.  He’s also doubled 33 times, which is more doubles then any other active player has against the Blue Jays.  He’s also ten of eighteen with two homeruns against Blue Jays’ ace Roy Halladay.  Unfortunately, Pudge is the only Tiger starter today who’s hit more then .250 against Halladay.

Tigers Minors finished up his series on the top ten Tigers prospects yesterday.  No surprise as to number one.  It was interesting reading the profiles especially when I saw the players’ names pop this spring, like Gorkys Hernandez.  The Tigers minor league affiliates have their opening day on Thursday.

Here’s a pretty complete analysis of Kenny Rogers DL stint at the Baseball Injury Report.

Here’s a look at the Tigers new backup catcher, Mike Rabelo.  It’s another great column by Jason Beck.

Alright, here’s where I get to make a fool out of myself.  Predicting what will happen in a 162 game season and then three series of playoffs is just about impossible.  I’m up for the challenge though, so here are my thoughts on the upcoming season.

AL East – New York Yankees – I just think they’re better then the Red Sox.  They’re deeper and I think A-Rod is going to have one of those years.  I also think the Rocket ends up in New York, and that will give them the boost they need.

AL Central – Chicago White Sox – This is probably my most contrarian pick since a lot of people have the White Sox third or fourth.  I see the rotation bouncing back and I also don’t think the Indians are as good as people think they’ll be.  The Tigers will give them a run, but fall just short this year.

AL West – LA Angels of Anaheim – You have one of the best pitching staffs and they have some punch to go with it all.  The A’s and even the Rangers should make this an interesting race but the Angels come out on top in the end.

AL Wild Card – Boston Red Sox – You’ve got two of the best hitters in the game, some great support and a top notch pitching staff.  The pen is suspect but the offense will see them through more games then the bullpen will blow.

NL East – Philadelphia Phillies – This was a tough one.  The Phillies have the pitching though, so I give them the edge.  The Mets will be right there and should make this a fun division race.

NL Central – St. Louis Cardinals – You’ve got the best hitter and one of the best pitchers in the league playing with the Cardinals and they have some other guys who can more then hold their weight.  This is close and I like the Brewers, but I think they’re the team of the future in this division.  The Cardinals will take one more this year though.

NL West – LA Dodgers – The offense is suspect but they have one of the deepest pitching staffs.  Chad Billingsley, who would start for several teams in the majors right now, is coming out of the pen and you have Jason Schmidt ancoring a solid rotation.  They’ll score enough runs to win the division, but just enough.

NL Wild Card – New York Mets – If they come in second to the Phillies, they may still be the second best team in the NL.  I know that goes out the window come playoffs so just getting there will go a long way.

World Series – Yankees over the Dodgers – A classic matchup but the Yankees hitting is just too much even for the Dodgers pitching staff.  Yankees in six games.

American League MVP – Alex Rodriguez – I think he’ll come close to hitting 50 homeruns this year, with the RBIs that go with them.

American League Cy Young – Johan Santana – Duh

American League ROY – Alex Gordon, just because Dice K won’t get some votes from the people who don’t believe he’s a rookie despite the rules.

National League MVP – Albert Pujols – Duh

National League Cy Young – Jake Peavy – Comes close to 300 strikeouts this year in a season where he puts it all together.

National League ROY – Chris Young – The Diamondbacks centerfielder will have a tough time beating out a solid NL rookie class, but a 20/20 season will garner him the award.

As far as the Tigers, I’m saying 91 wins.  Jeremy Bonderman will be the best pitcher and Gary Sheffield the best hitter.  I know I don’t have them making the playoffs but they’ll be playing meaningful ball into September and they’ll be right back in there in 2008 as the favorites.

So there it is.  The Mets and Cardinals are close to starting up.  Baseball is here folks.  Enjoy.

As far as the Tigers are concerned, the spring season is officially over.  They wrapped things up with a 3-3 tie in which most of the regulars were gone by the third inning and all of the scoring for both sides was done by the fourth.  Mike Maroth had a not so great outing in which he gave up three runs on seven hits in four innings.  The good news was, he walked none and struck out four, but that’s a lot of hits.

Wilking Ramirez provided most of the offense for the Tigers.  He singled and drove in two.  All six Tiger hits were single and nobody had more then one.

Next time the Tigers play, it’s for real.  The home opener is Monday at 1 pm.  I have my fantasy baseball draft tomorrow and that should get me fired up for ESPN’s opening night, which will be the Cardinals against the Mets.  And sometime tomorrow night I’ll work up some predictions for the upcoming season.  Real baseball is here, finally.

I completely missed this yesterday, but Vance Wilson joins Kenny Rogers on the disabled list with a sore right elbow.  Fortunately there’s no structural damage but it hasn’t healed like the backup catcher thought it would so he’ll miss the first couple of weeks of the season.  Mike Rabelo will take his place.  He had decent season in 2006, splitting time between Erie and Toledo and he had a left up on the competition because he was with the team last September.   He’s hardly a top prospect though and he didn’t even make John Sickels Top 30 list.

Man, we take our son to the mall for dinner and some play and all hell breaks loose.  While I was gone, the Tigers inked Carlos Guillen for four more years and for $48 million.  This is about what I expected as Guillen has turned himself into one of the top shortstops in baseball with some very solid seasons since joining the Tigers.  I think the first two years of this deal will be good but the last too might not.  Then again, I never thought Ivan Rodriguez would play out his four year deal, so we’ll wait and see.  And it wouldn’t surprise me if at least one or two of these years are played as a firstbaseman, which tempers the deal a bit.

That blood clot seemed pretty serious.   Kenny Rogers will miss three months but the good news is, it looks like Rogers is okay.  So it looks like the Tigers face one of their toughest challenges of the season before the first pitch is even thrown and it means, the other four guys will have to step up that much more.

In the meantime, the Tigers took it to the Yankees in their next to last game of the spring season.  Justin Verlander threw five shutout frames while Carlos Guillen had two hits and an RBI.  They wrap things up tomorrow against the Yankees in Tampa.

Will Carroll is reporting (based on a Free Press report) that the problem with Kenny Rogers arm is now a blood clot.  There’s still not a lot of details (like whether the clot is actually in his arm or not) so it’s hard to come to a guess as to how soon Rogers will be back.

***UPDATE***

I’m watching the game on ESPN and they said Kenny Rogers had surgery to repair the blood clot and he might not be back for three months.  Ouch.  They also mentioned Andrew Miller as a potential replacement.  My thought is they give Chad Durbin a few starts to see if he can fill in okay.  If not, then they have to cut bait pretty quickly and go with someone else, whether it’s a hot hand in Toledo or pushing Miller up.

Baseball Prospectus recently updated their Postseason Odds report, which is a lot of fun, to reflect their PECOTA projections.  The Tigers come in at third place in the AL Central but they have a great then 31% chance of making the playoffs.  One in three doesn’t sound all that great but it’s better then the less then 5% we’re used to getting.  And then considering I think the Twins are set to take a fall, that should make out chances even better.

The project the Yankees as having the best chance of making the playoffs in the AL with a 54.2% chance.  Over in the National League, no team has a great then 43% chance of making the playoffs.

« Previous Entries | Next Entries »

Powered by
WordPress

Click to advertise

http://every1bets.com