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Although the official start of spring is more then one month away, the more important spring, spring training begins in about a week for most teams.

As an avid Tiger’s fan, this spring, like most in the past, brings hope. The reason I say “like most in the past” is because of last year. You knew the team was going to struggle. I accepted it as part of the rebuilding of the team, but never would I have accepted what happened during the infamous 2003 season.

But, now it’s 2004. We have a clean slate, and in many respects, a new team. But there’s a few things I’m really excited about this year, not just as a Tiger’s fan, but as a baseball fan.

1) Probably the most obvious, the Tigers have fielded a team that, if you go to the ball park, probably has as good of a chance of winning as they do of losing. I’m not saying they’re going to finish .500, but they’ve put together a team where they should be able to compete every day. I went to four games last year. They lost them all, and frankly, that’s what I expected them to do. Although I could be singing a new tune in May, right now, if I go to four games in 2004, I expect them to win probably two of those games, and I’ll be able to walk into the ball park knowing they have a shot in all four.

2) I’m very interested in how the AL East is going to pan out. I’m not a huge fan of the unbalanced schedule, because we don’t get to see the Tigers go up against more of their traditional rivals, like the Yankees and the Blue Jays. But I’m very intrigued to see how the division ends up. Baltimore, which is probably the fourth best team in the East, would be favorites in the Central. And in the Central, the Indians have just as good of a chance to win the division as they do to finish fourth or fifth. It’s that wide open.

Boston is the team I’ll have my eye on the most. With the big names they picked up, on paper, they’re probably better then the Yankees. We’ll just see if they can finally get it done.

3) Having the chance to see history is always exciting. This year we have a chance to see the greatest player of our generation, and arguably the best player ever, come one step closer to topping some seemingly insurmountable records. Barry Bonds, barring some catastrophe, will pass his Godfather, Willie Mays, on the all time home run list this year, and he’s a mere 42 homers away from getting to 700 home runs. Passing Ruth this year would mean putting up some big numbers, but even that’s not out of the question.

4) Along the same lines, we’ll get to see the greatest pitcher of our generation, and like Bonds, possibly the best pitcher ever, come out to the mound for (at least?) one more season. Clemens isn’t chasing any milestones per se, but he came back to play with his good friend and to play close to home. Boston’s pitching staff looks great on paper, but Houston is right there with them.

So, the season, like all seasons, will be fun to watch. You’ll have some new starts develop, and then you’ll have some veterans begin to taper off. Either way, I’ll be at the ballpark, cheering on my team, and hopefully seeing them fight their way back to respectability.

First off, both my wife and I have both our degrees from Michigan State, so when I comment on these things, it’s without the animosity a lot of local people have towards Drew Henson, who has publicly announced he’s giving up baseball to play football.

Let’s flashback to 2000. UM has come off a good, but for them, disappointing season behind their upstart QB and Heisman hopeful, Drew Henson. Later that year, after a controversial trade to get Juan Gonzalez, (the superstar player Mike Ilitch wanted to open Comerica Park with) the Tigers were hovering around the .500 mark, and were actually in contention for a Wild Card spot going into September.

Earlier in the year, when the Tiger’s season was less rosy, and after a multimillion dollar offer to Juan Gon had been snubbed, the Tiger’s were trying to shop Juan. In fact, they had a suitor. The New York Yankees were willing to trade a couple of their top prospects, of which Drew Henson was the top guy, so they could have Juan for the rest of the season.

Of course, Juan then vetoed the deal, and the rest is history. Juan left Detroit for Cleveland the next year. Drew left UM to play baseball full time, and left his football career in the dust.

Had Juan let the deal go through, the Tigers would have had the upstart third basemen. He would have played football, possibly taking UM to the championship, and then Detroit could have evaluated whether Henson was even worth keeping.

So we have two big losers in all of this. George Steinbrenner lost a lot of money on a guy who never developed. UM fans lost their star QB.

So that brings us to two-sport athletes. Rarely do you find a guy who’s a star in both sports. Brian Jordan comes to mind, but we never really had a chance to see how good a football player he could become before he left to play baseball. He then went on to have a decent baseball career. Danny Ainge played for the Blue Jays before having a nice career for the Boston Celtics. Even former Tiger Tony Clark played basketball for the Univesity of Arizona while playing minor league ball for Detroit. And Dave Winfield was drafted in four different leagues for three different sports. Finally, Deion Sanders struggled in baseball before giving it up to become a pro bowl, and potential hall of fame, cornerback.

Probably the best example of a player who succeeded in both sports was Bo Jackson, and even he didn’t have a long career. He started out with Kansas City Royals, and eventually became a dominating, if part time, running back for the Oakland/LA Raiders. Although his batting average was never there, Bo Jackson had a run of four nice seasons, his best of which was 1989, when he hit 32 homeruns, and finished 10th in the MVP voting.

So, maybe Henson, in admitting he’s failed in baseball, is making the right choice. All of these athletes were at least good, or even great, in one of the sports they played. Maybe for Drew, it’s football.

Well, after several weeks of wondering, we finally landed Ivan Rodriguez.

Every year about this time, I begin to get excited. Every team has a clean slate, and there’s hope for everyone. That was until last year. I knew we were going to be pretty bad. I just didn’t think we’d compete with history.

Now, at least on the offensive side, we’re in decent shape. We’ve made upgrades at four positions, three of the those being the highly regarded “Up the Middle” positions. So let’s look at what could happen this year.

Best Case Scenario: 1) No substantial injuries to speak of, including our more injury prone players; 2) Higginson, with better hitters around him, bounces back to .300/20 HR; 3) We get career years out of two of our starters.

So with the planets in perfect alignment, we could probably hover around the .500 mark, maybe trade some of our pitching prospects for one more starter (John Smoltz for Doyle Alexander?), and we’d have an outside shot at winning a weak AL Central. I’d put the odds of this scenario happening at about 1%.

Worst Case Scenario: Essentially this would be the antithesis of the best case scenario. The DL is a revolving door, and our starters take a step back from last year. In this case, the Tigers are set for their third straight 100-loss season. Chance of this happening is somewhere between 5% and 10%.

Likely Scenario: One, maybe two of our guys have substantial injuries. And the pitchers look like they did last year. In this case, the Tigers lose somewhere between 90-95 games, but have a solid foundation on which to improve on.

So back to Pudge. The best way to see how he’ll help the team is to compare his numbers to Brandon Inge, who got the bulk of the time at catcher. And just a note, some of the statistics I’m going to use will be of a more advanced variety. I’m just learning to use these numbers, so if I slip up, please feel free to let me know.

Adjusted OPS+ (100 is the league average, adjusted for ballpark effect)

I-Rod 124
Brandon Inge 62

Basically, I-Rod is 24% better as far as OPS goes compared to the league average. Brandon, on the other hand, is quite a bit below average. Last year Inge had a 63, so you’re talking about a pretty good trend there.

Thanks to Baseball-Reference for the numbers.

Batting Runs Above Replacement at the Same Position

I-Rod 41
Brandon Inge -3

Another very telling number. Over the course of the 2003 season, I-Rod was worth 44 more runs then Brandon Inge. And for Inge’s entire career, he’s been below a replacement hitter. Forty-four runs is quite a bit, so again, we’re looking at a significant improvement.

Field Runs Above Replacement/Fielding Runs Above Average

This number I found a little surprising.

I-Rod 24/2
Brandon Inge 33/14

First off, I was surprised to find that Brandon was that good defensively. I always thought he was good, but a bit overrated. Last year’s Gold Glove catcher was Benji Molina, and he had numbers almost identical to Inge (33/13).

The other number I was surprised by was Pudge was just a touch above average. This decline has been about a 7-year trend.

Thank you to Baseball Prospectus for these numbers.

So Inge might, over the course of the year, win a game with his glove. But needless to say, it’s not like Pudge is a defensive liability that can hit. He’s a formidable prescence behind the plate. As much as I like Inge, his best bet would be to stick around, watch, learn, and maybe take his chance when he gets it.

Finally, a quick apology to those of you asking for links. Like with the blog, I haven’t had a ton of time to post. I am collecting the links to put them up, hopefully sooner rather then later, but I apologize for the delay.

I guess some people could call me a snob, but for several years in the 1990s, I abhorred sports talk radio, despite being a huge sports fan. My friend would make me listen to WDFN in the car, and I thought in most instances, the people running the shows were pretty stupid, and the people who called in even more so.

So my drive home from work was limited to news talk radio, until the news talk station I listened to changed formats to sports talk, which is AM 1270. When this happened, drive home consisted of a show known as the Locker Room. Hosted by Eli Zaret, Gary Danielson (former Lion’s QB), and at the time, Kirk Gibson, the show had a much more local flavor that appealed to me. Over time, I grew to enjoy the show more and more, because the people interviewed were top notch, and the hosts did a great job of interviewing, asking tough questions without being idiotically obnoxious. For three years I listed to this show on the drive home.

And yesterday, as listening to the show, I come to find out that it’s being cancelled. They didn’t go into to much detail, but it sounds like it was a combination of things.

With this, my drive home from work becomes more of a chore. I’m confident that whoever they put on instead won’t be at the same level. But with that, I thank Eli Zaret (who’s book “84, The Last of the Great Tigers – Untold Stories From an Amazing Team” is a must read for Tiger’s fans), Gary Danielson, and Kirk Gibson for for putting a high quality sports radio show. They changed my opinion of sports talk radio, at least for a while.

First off, with tax time upon us, getting a nice chunk of time to write something worthwhile has been few and far between, so I apologize for the lack of content on the site.

With that said, it seems like Pudge and the Tigers are the topics of choice recently. You’d think Maddux would be bigger news, but maybe it’s just because I-Rod is more of local story.

With that said, both Rob Neyer and Aaron Gleeman have made their comments.

Personally, at this point I think he’s not coming. Rumor has it that Seattle will make him a decent offer once the money from Kaz Sasaki is freed up, and that will be that. We can only hope that Brandon Inge gets so upset about the whole thing, that he goes out and hits .230 this year. Or something.

I’m hoping to put on a round robin tournament featuring the Strat-O-Matic dice baseball simulation. If anyone in the area is interested, drop me a line. Basically there will be 8 players, who will have to play a set number of games against each opponent at their leisure (but by a certain time). Then there would a playoffs, and eventually a World Series.

It’s also a good way to meet other people in your area who are baseball fans. I’ll supply the game cards and materials.

Sorry for the lack of posts, but even this, I’m going to defer to two of the better Tiger blogs out there. The Detroit Tigers Weblog wrote a nice piece about Pudge’s visit to Detroit and some of the specifics. And at Tigers Central, there’s a nice piece on the impact Pudge might have on the Tigers. Rather then hastily throwing something up about this, I’m going to defer to them. Make sure you check them both out

A lot has been going on in the baseball world. Between two funerals and getting beat up at work, I haven’t had the time I’d like to report on it all, but let’s touch on a few things.

Whenever one of the best players ever decides to come back and play for one more year, this is definitely a good thing. Roger Clemens signed a deal with Houston that should make the NL Central very interesting. You could well have two of the best rotations in all of baseball going at each other for a division title. I think “Best” rotation has to go to Boston right now, but coming in second to that stacked lineup isn’t an insult.

I have to admit Vlad Guerrero’s signing with Anaheim came out of right field (pun intended). I don’t know if anyone really saw this coming, but the Angels have had a nice winter. Signing proven vet Bartolo Colon and upstart Kelvim Escobar really bolster what will also be a nice rotation. The infield probably needs some work, but having Garrett Anderson protecting Vlad makes any lineup capable of scoring runs.

And finally, rumors are flying about Pudge coming to Detroit. I’d like this move because it would give us the star power that the team has lacked for a while. Yeah, they had Juan Gonzalez for a year, but getting a proven commodity, despite being up there in years, in never a bad thing. And everyone talks about how having a good team up the middle is very important, and this would probably be the last piece for this year. Carlos Guillen/Fernando Vina sounds a whole lot better then Santiago/Morris. Now all they have to do is get Carlos Beltran next year, and I’ll be a happy guy.

Sometimes when in a hurry, and when I haven’t posted in a while, I feel like I have to put “something” up to keep readers interested. In the case of my last post, I wrote about the Pete Rose situation because it was the hot story, and I wrote it based on memory and from headlines.

And this time I failed pretty miserably. I want to thank Lou for leaving the comment and educating me. In fact his comment is probably worth reading more then the entire previous column. For that, I apologize to all of my readers.

With that, the Tigers made a pretty good deal in my opinion. Carlos Guillen comes to Detroit, and we ship off Ramon Santiago, and a minor league shortstop. Rather then making the same mistake, since I’m running short on time, I’ll comment on this deal tonight.

The big story right now isn’t who’s going to get into the Baseball Hall of Fame this year (although everything points to Paul Molitor and Dennis Eckersley, both deserving in my eyes), but who might be on the ballot last year.

It’s interesting to see how the Pete Rose story developed. Of course rumor started last year about secret talks between Bud Selig and Rose, with some veteran players coming to bat for Charlie Hustle.

Then, Baseball Prospectus made the headlines in even mainstream publications and websites by scooping everyone and writing a story saying Rose’s reinstatement was imminent (well, at least by the end of 2004). Prospectus might not get the credit they deserve, but they were right.

Then just a week or so ago, Rob Neyer speculated that things would break with Rose’s book release.

And the rest, as they say is history, as Rose finally admitted that he bet on baseball. He said he never bet on his own team (never proven, but there’s still some speculation), and for that, we should feel sorry for him. And opinions are across the board on whether he should be reinstated. My opinion is, I’m all for giving a guy a second chance. But with some conditions. I don’t think Rose should be able to manage. It’s just way to risky. I also think they should put Rose on probation. Say maybe 3-5 years. Where he can act as a spokesman for the game, attend events, but would not be able to join a team in any capacity, and wouldn’t be allowed to be put on the ballot for the Hall of Fame.

Then, after a period of scrutiny we can make a better decision. Yes, Pete Rose has had to wait, but the risks are just to great to the integrity of the game to just open the door completely and invite him back into the house.

I’m sure most of you have made your New Year’s resolutions, and probably some of you have already broken them by now. With that, the Tigers along with Mike Ilitch and Dave Dombrowski resolved to make the Tigers better.

Just before the New Year, the Tigers made one more addition. A critical spot, they made an addition to their starting rotation. The Tigers signed Jason Johnson to a two year, seven million dollar deal the other day.

Like Vina and White, this is a decent pickup, but not a move I’m doing cartwheels about. Johnson is an average starter, who’s never thrown more then 200 innings in a season, has been plagued by injury problems, but lasted through the entire season in 2003. His strikeouts per nine innings slid last year compared to 2002, which is a little discouraging, but he was less succeptable to the long ball then he was that same season.

On any good team, Johnson would be a fifth starter. On the Tigers, he’ll probably be our most effective starter in 2004 (barring a better signing). Bonderman could sky rocket, but I think he has one more year of growing pains. In that respect, I’d put Johnson slightly ahead of Maroth and Cornejo.

One stat I like to use when measuring pitchers is a stat Baseball Prospectus has termed simply as “Stuff.” Basically, it’s a rough number to determine a pitchers dominance. A level of 10 is rougly average, and a level of 0 is roughly replacement. Jason Johnson’s Stuff went down from 12 in 2002 (slightly above average), to a four this year (below average, but a little above replacement). Jeremy Bonderman had a 2 stuff, Mike Maroth a -4, and Nate Cornejo a -11 (mostly because of his lack of strikeouts).

So Johnson was a little better then all of those guys. This year he’ll be coming to a slightly better pitchers park, so hopefully we’ll be able to see him win some games.

I’ll be taking the next couple of days off, so I wanted to wish all my readers a safe and happy holiday. And for those going out of town and who won’t have internet access, have a Happy New Year as well.

Brian

The Tigers decided not to offer contracts to Andy Van Hekken and Ben Petrick, thus allowing them to become free agents.

Andy got off to a hot start by pitching a shut out in his first major league start in 2002. Unfortunately, he hasn’t pitched above AA since that season. I’m sure the guy in my sim-league regrets burning a first round pick on him.

And the only real deal the Tigers made around the trading deadline was trading Adam Bernero for Ben. At one time (showing how bad the Tigers were at times last year) Tram was batting Petrick in the leadoff spot, and had him playing centerfield. In my mind, Petrick’s value was directly related to how well, and how often, he played catcher. The fact that he only hit .225 didn’t help him either, since it was his bat that was supposed to be his greatest asset.

Of course they’re both expected to be offered minor league contracts, so we’ll see if they decide to come back.

And the rumor mill has quit stirring. Like some of the comments in my previous posts, there’s a very good chance the Tigers could be about $10 million lighter this year as far as payroll goes. The only thing more ironic then that has to be the fact that they’ll still be better.

God, I hope they’re better. Sigh.

And the last major deadline has come and gone. 58 Non-tender free agents were created. Some interesting names (wonder if Gabe Kapler or Randall Simon will find there way back). Scratch Redman off the list, since he signed a nice deal with Oakland. There’s definitely some interesting names, mostly second tier closers, like Mike Lincoln and Cliff Politte.

And the Tigers could always sign Lou Merloni, bringing the Lou chant back to Detroit.

Doesn’t look like the whole A-Rod thing will go through. I’m sure the Yankees are sighing in relief. Now you have two of the Sox best players, Manny Ramirez and Nomar, unhappy with their situations. Does anyone have the feeling that the Blue Jays are going to sneak up and win this division next year?

Tigers signed Al Levine. Not a bad pickup, as he had a decent year last year, and spotted at closer for Troy Percival the year before that. Like Vina and White, I’m not doing cart wheels, but Levine should be able to help us.

Rumors abound that Rich Aurilia wants to stay in the NL. Rich had one really good year, and little else. Of course anyone would be an upgrade over Ramon Santiago and his 29 RBIs in 444 at bats. I think I’d rather see Santiago and Infante square off again to see who plays short, then the Tigers signing Deivi Cruz.

Was Baseball Prospectus correct in predicting Pete Rose would be reinstated by the end of 2004? Things are pointing towards an affirmative. Rob Neyer is the latest to pipe in on this one, but it looks like Pete Rose’s book is coming out two day’s after the next Hall of Fame class will be announced. Rumor has it he’s going to admit he did bad things, and all will be forgiven.

It also looks like we’re going to have one more year of Brandon Inge, as the Tigers signed backup catcher Mike DiFelice. I think we can give Brandon one more chance, but I have a feeling that if he doesn’t show us something this year, he’ll be relegated to a career backup at best.

I’m going to see Return of the King tomorrow night. Very excited. Sandwiched between the two installments of Lord of the Rings was Pirates of the Caribbean, which was a great movie. Definitely Johnny Depp at his best.

One of the reasons I was down on the Vina pickup was his injury problem. Now the Tigers go out and sign another talented, yet injury prone player, to take over in a corner outfield spot.

Like Vina, Rondell White is a good player. Very good at times. When he plays. Only once in his career has he played more then 150 games in a season. He’s average in the field, and he’ll supplant Craig Monroe, who had a pretty good season last year, as the starting left fielder. In right, we’ll have Higgy, making a boat load of money, and platooning with Monroe in right. Unless they plan on moving White into right field.

Two decent pickups so far for Dombrowski, but there’s a ton of risk. Our upside is, these guys play the entire season, and the Tigers win 70 games. Downside is (Lions fan can appreciate this) they both get hurt, which is likely, and we’re as bad, if not worse then last year.

So I’m still not giving Dombrowski a grade yet. We still have to take care of shortstop and center field, and we could use a good pitcher or three as well. Probably won’t fill all of our needs this year, but if we don’t, then in two years, when White and Vina are gone, we’re going to have to do this all over again.

I was happy to see the Tigers picked up Chris Shelton in the Rule 5 draft. He’s put up pretty good numbers, but the problem is, he’s 23, and he just made it to AA last year. That’s not encouraging. And hopefully he doesn’t play catcher like Ben Petrick does, which is rarely. If he makes the team, he could see time spotting Inge, since he’ll have to stay on the 24 man roster.

More good stuff from Baseball Primer. Everything you ever need to know about arbitration.

Details to follow, but here’s some funny stuff from Baseball Primer.

Curt Schilling is very bright guy. And no, that’s not what I was alluding to as what we both have in common. But, in this article, I’m going to say some things that sound like, and are, bragging. But bear with me, because it’s all used to make a point in a round about way.

I graduated with my MBA when I was 23 years old. Not rare, but definitely uncommon. I’ve taken advanced economics classes, advanced accounting classes, and calculus in college, and did well in them all. I passed the CPA at the age of 24. All pretty nice feats.

None of these things are as difficult as one of the things I’ve been undertaking for the last three years. I’m a pretty big war game fan. I have a nice collection of old, out of print, very detailed war games all produced by the game company Avalon Hill, which has it’s license being used, but really no longer exists. If you’ve played the board game Risk, that’s like the pre-school of war games. Axis and Allies would be the elementary school. One game stands above all, and that’s the game I’ve been trying to teach myself for the last three years.

That game is called Advanced Squad Leader. The rule book is huge. And in trying to learn this game, I can honestly say that it’s more difficult then anything I ever did back in school. Calculus is cake compared to this stuff. Accounting was a walk in the park. But trying to teach myself the complexities of this game have been, well, hard.

Now what does Curt Schilling have to do with this? Curt has not only mastered this game, and is a spokesman for them, but he also does historical research for them. He knows how to play the game.

So when I read this by Jayson Stark, I chuckled. I know what Curt is capable of. And that’s possibly a contract that could go down as one of the most masterful, yet controversial, ever. I really hope this holds up, because it’s a masterpiece.

And Curt, if you’re reading this, maybe the next time you’re in Detroit, you can show me how to play this game right.

In previous posts, I’ve said I was against this signing. I still am to a certain extent with one exception. If the Tigers sign at least two more players who are better then Vina, and they make a serious attempt to make a run at an already weak AL Central Division Championship, then I’ll say it was a good signing. If Vina is the best guy we pick up, then it’s a bad move and he does us no good.

Addition by subtraction is the name of the game in the AL Central right now. The Twins have traded away Milton and Pierzinski, and have lost Hawkins and Guardado to free agency. The White Sox lost Colon, and I have a feeling Loaiza is going to have at least some sort of decline next year. Kansas City is relatively intact, but I still have the feeling they won more then was probably warranted. And as far as I know, they’re still trying to shop superstar Carlos Beltran.

So the division is ripe for the picking. I’m not saying the Tigers will compete, but if Ilitch allowed Dombrowski to raise payroll to around $75 million, allowing him to overpay and possibly sign Tejada and a top notch starting pitcher, they could certainly be competitive in the division.

The Angels are on their way to building a pitching staff. Washburn may be gone in a trade soon, but even if he’s gone, you’re going to have a nice rotation, with Colon, Kelvim Escobar, Ramon Ortiz, and John Lackey. If they keep Washburn, you could possibly see Oakland, who has been quiet so far in the market, finish third behind Seattle, who inked Eddie Guardado, and Anaheim.

The Tigers have yet to make a move. And I don’t count signing Dean Palmer to a minor league contract as a move. The other minor league deal they made, picking Cliff Bartosh off of waivers, was undone yesterday when the Indians picked him up off waivers. So to date, we have Dombrowski saying he’s offered Fernando Vina a contract, which I still think is a bad move, and Mike Ilitch making noise about Tejada, which is unrealistic, but would be a great move, assuming they don’t pay TOO much over Tejada’s market value.

As usual, we’ll see if all the talk is just that. Needless to say, this has to be one of the more interesting free agent seasons ever. Not exactly in a good way, but things are pretty dynamic.

And on a parting note, I have to give some credit to Frank Robinson. Talk about a mess in Montreal. The fact that he’s still the manager should garner him immediate recognition as a possible manager of the year candidate. First they trade away their best pitcher, and then they don’t even offer one of the best players in baseball arbitration. Add in the fact they’re still not even sure where the team will play their games at, and you have a travesty. Bud Selig should be ashamed of himself for his handling of the team.

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