[Ed. note: This preview was split between two of our resident Tigers fans, AD and Mark Sands. Enjoy!] A song to play while reading about the Tigers: “Rich Kid Blues” by the Raconteurs. Led by… Read more »
Posts by AD
Writing about the dark winter of baseball’s offseason, Bob Dylan explained: Too much of nothing can make a man feel ill at ease. One man’s temper might rise while another man’s temper might freeze. In… Read more »
Via @DanHirsch: Of the 107 players to play 21+ years, 11 never had a negative-WAR season (Hank Aaron, Cap Anson, Beltre, Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, Ty Cobb, Walter Johnson, Stat Musial, Jim O'Rourke, Frank… Read more »
Do you remember the face book? Not TheFacebook.com. We’re talking about its localized analog predecessor: an actual book schools printed and circulated to incoming students to help them get to know their new classmates. After… Read more »
For reasons having nothing to do with baseball and everything to do with local politics in a county adjacent to the one in which I reside, this annual feature is appearing far too late to… Read more »
CC Sabathia, now 37, is having a great postseason. Across three starts (15.2 IP), he’s allowed just 11 hits, 7 walks, and four earned runs. In his most recent start, in game three of the… Read more »
Last month, our JJ Keller asked whether new Seattle Mariner Jean Segura is “for real”. It was a question worth asking, because Segura was coming off a 5.0-fWAR season, by far the best of his… Read more »
AD and Mark Sands collaborated on this preview. Despite extended absences from the team’s two young sluggers, J.D. Martinez and Nick Nicholas Castellanos, deciding to allow Mike Pelfrey to pitch 119 innings, using Mike Aviles… Read more »
For some teams, spring is a time of excited, hopeful anticipation, heralding the beginning of a new baseball season, in which they might place into motion the culmination of their work in order to contend… Read more »
The Society for American Baseball Research (“SABR”) recently announced the finalists for its 2017 Analytics Conference Research Awards, which “recognize baseball researchers who have completed the best work of original analysis or commentary during the… Read more »
This week, members of the Electoral College cast the votes that actually and ultimately determined the next American president. As a result of deep dissatisfaction with the putative president-elect, Donald Trump, and allegations of foreign… Read more »
Alec Denton joins Ryan Sullivan to look at the division winners and remaining contenders as the regular season comes to a close. Darius Austin joins in later as the group briefly dicusses Jose Fernandez. … Read more »
Scott Kushner and Alec Denton join Ryan Sullivan to talk about Scott’s past season coaching Centenary University baseball, Alec’s recent post on the shift and switch-hitters, and The Only Rule Is It Has to Work.
Like the heat after a truck full of stolen Lucky Strikes in Detroit in 1984, the shift is on in Major League Baseball in 2016. Defensive shifts range from mild to heavy, but there’s no… Read more »
Mark Sands and AD are back to preview the upcoming Detroit Tigers season. While the Bob Seger lead-in to our 2015 season preview still feels on-point, we missed pretty badly on our prediction that Detroit… Read more »
First things first: Bull Durham, the motion picture, requires no defense. I’ve already written that the 1988 feature film, “along with 1984’s The Natural, establishes the archetypal standard for the splurge of popular baseball movies that would… Read more »
At the beginning of the 2016 MLB season, the Atlanta Braves find themselves in the midst of a very public rebuilding process that is both literal and metaphorical. As they reconstruct their home, this time… Read more »
Alec Denton and Nick Koss join Ryan Sullivan to talk about the nominees for the SABR Analytics Conference Research Awards, and the Red Sox and Braves.
The Society for American Baseball Research (“SABR”) recently announced the finalists for its 2016 Analytics Conference Research Awards, which “recognize baseball researchers who have completed the best work of original analysis or commentary during the… Read more »
The 2015 MLB playoffs are continuing their scheduled march toward the World Series summit in the usual fashion, but the excitement surrounding playoff baseball has not ascended in quite such a steady fashion. Unless you… Read more »
In this series, Banished to the Pen turns the clock back to a particular year in baseball from the ’80s and ’90s. Our first entry starts with 1988, the year of one of the most… Read more »
Writers Alec Denton and Alex Hume join Ryan Sullivan to talk about the Tigers and Blue Jays, then discuss Alec’s recent piece at TechGraphs about netting and fan safety.
The notion of a “platoon split” refers to the fact that, on average, batters have more success against opposite-handed pitchers than they do against same-handed pitchers. Thus, right-handed batters generally fare better against left-handed pitching,… Read more »
Mike Carlucci, Brandon Lee, and AD turn a triple play with mini-reviews for LAD, SD, and Detroit.
Advanced baseball statistical analysis offers fans the opportunity to better understand their favorite teams and players, highlight drivers of success, suss out underlying problem areas, and generally illuminate the mechanics of the game. Sometimes, though,… Read more »
Ain’t no change in the weather, ain‘t no changes in me. And I ain’t hiding from nobody, nobody’s hiding from me. Detroit Tigers fans weren’t sure what to expect out of their new starting pitcher… Read more »
Oh darling! Please believe me! I’ll never do you no harm. In 2013, Chris Johnson came to the Braves as an afterthought in the Justin Upton trade, but he soon drew plenty of attention to… Read more »
Like a steam locomotive, rolling down the track, he’s gone, gone, nothing’s going to bring him back. As of this writing, the Detroit Tigers are the best base-stealing team in the American League and second… Read more »
After the long winter of no-baseball, this week returned us to the spring of sports: the opening of a new MLB season. It is time again to escalate, in earnest, our discussion of the game… Read more »
The Tigers featured the 2nd best offense in baseball in 2014, scoring 757 runs and accumulating an MLB-best 1557 hits.
The Tigers had the 2nd most extra-base hits in the majors in 2014 (506), were 4th in isolated power (.150), and 7th in home runs (155). The offense was led by superstar Miguel Cabrera, who was 10th in MLB in wOBA (.384) and wRC+ (147) and 16th in ISO (.211) despite a pedestrian (for him) 25 HRs.
