Baseball By Paul

The team has now gone plowed through 40% of the season and they are still atop the baseball world with a 41-23 record holding a narrow 1.5 game margin over the Chicago White Sox. At the 20% mark, I took a look at the kind of pace the team was on. Given the small sample, a lot of things were skewed both postively and negatively. Sample size caveats aren’t completely erased at this mark, but players are definitely settling in heading into mid-June. Here is the second look at the hitters:

Most disconcerting right away is, though he has been very good otherwise, Curtis Granderson is striking out WAY too much! You can be an effective leadoff with gobs of strikeouts (see also: Sizemore, Grady), but even Sizemore “only” had 132 last year. I suspect Granderson will end the season somewhere near that figure as opposed to 180, but at least he’s on pace for almost 100 walks as well. Strikeouts are often judged more severely because they are “unproductive” outs, but if he is striking out to lead off a game, it’s the same as if he lines out to second. (Yes, that is called spin!) Chris Shelton‘s paced out numbers predictably came way down, but he is also on pace for over 170 strikeouts. If he works hard at getting back to where he was last year as opposed to swinging out of his shoes in every at-bat, I think he will strikeout less than 150 times. Magglio Ordonez has settled into a comfortable .300-30-100 pace that he is unlikely to deviate too far from. I still don’t buy Brandon Inge as a 30-home run hitter, but that doesn’t mean I wouldn’t be entirely pleased with 33-91. Marcus Thames‘ HR:RBI ratio will balance out as he continues to play everyday. He is more likely to play all of the remaining 99 games than he is to end with just 99 played in all.

Now for the pitching:

Pacing out pitching is much more volatile than hitting for obvious reasons. Roles change much more within bullpens and rotations than they do a team’s lineup. Most obvious is the fact that Mike Maroth‘s innings will be going (for now) to Zach Miner making both of their projections pretty much worthless for this exercise. In terms of my own projection of Miner going forward, I will need at least three more starts before I’m comfortable enough to guess. Bullpen decisions are also skewed this early. If Todd Jones continues to pitch the way he has recently, not only will he not be around for 40+ saves, but certainly won’t be given a chance to lose 10 games. The path the starting rotation is following remains remarkably pleasing. I don’t think they’ll boast four 15-game winners by year’s end, but Joel Zumaya might be in a position to register double-digit wins given his use in high leverage situations. No one is on pace for 200 strikeouts with Jeremy Bonderman coming closest, but the team as a whole is striking out almost twice as many batters as they walk (1.92 K:BB).

There you have it, folks. Just some early numbers to chew on. There is still a ton of baseball to play during which some of these paces will be obliterated, for better or worse. Tonight the Tigers face struggling pitcher Seth McClung (2-8, 6.25 ERA, 0.76 K:BB). Thank God for MLB.tv Mosaic so that I can watch it along with Johan Santana v. Curt Schilling in Minnesota.

Posted on Tuesday: 06.13.2006 at 5:01 pm in Analysis, Detroit Tigers   |  RSS feed |   Reply   |   Trackback URL