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Transaction Oracle — A Timely Look at Transactions as They Happen Saturday, December 08, 20072008 ZiPS Projections - Detroit TigersPretty clearly, the Tigers are one of the AL’s Big 5, but I think they’re probably still 5th, for the simple reason that they’re ill-suited to handle injuries and various other unfortunate happenstances that can arise during the season. After the Renteria and Cabrera trades, the minor league system becomes quite a bit thinner and they simply don’t have many player now, other than Porcello, that could expect to fetch much during the season. Obviously, it’s a sacrifice you can make for Cabrera and Willis, but I think that’s kind of a stretch for Renteria, an average SS who’s still living off a defensive reputation earned years ago.
Now, if the starters stay healthy, this looks a lot like a 95-win team to me, but if Bonderman or Rogers go down, there’s nobody you’d really want to plug into the rotation for a contending team - Jurrjens and Miller are gone and Durbin would be hard-pressed to put in an ERA under 5 again. There’s still a whole winter to address this issue, however, so these concerns could be premature.
Projections Projections Projections Projections Projections Projections Projections Projections Projections Projections Projections Projections Projections Projections Projections Projections Projections Projections Projections Projections Dan Szymborski
Posted: December 08, 2007 at 02:48 PM | 65 comment(s)
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1. Enrico Pallazzo Posted: December 08, 2007 at 05:22 PM (#2638923)Probably won't hold up over time, but I found that interesting.
5 guys in the rotation above average is alot of question marks? I think their pitching looks pretty good.
No, 5 guys in the rotation above average is a pipe dream, especially if Cabrera is playing third base. Detroit's projected '08 rotation had a combined ERA of 4.62 in '07.
Granderson's projection seems pretty accurate to me. I think his power was for real, but his BABIP forecasts a drop in average, thus in OBP.
Detroit's projected '08 rotation had a combined ERA of 4.62 in '07.
Two of them, maybe three, had years derailed by injuries. Seriously, how many other rotations project with 5 above average starters? How many rotations don't worry about people getting hurt? Zero. I share Dan's concerns about depth, but the frontline talent projects as well as anyone in baseball. Those same five starters put up great 06 numbers too... pitching fluctuates from year to year, but having five starters with the proven ability to throw lots of high quality innings, in a pitcher's park, with an above average defence behind them, backed by what looks to be a scary offence? That's a quandary almost any team would love to be in.
That's a lot of question marks on the pitching staff for a 95-win team, and not much on the farm to help, any more. Poor, poor Tigers.
Porcello is the definition of elite prospect. And as long as teams go along with Bud's idiotic slotting, DD will restock it with more high quality talent soon. Seriously, isn't this why you get high prospects? Either to get good cheap performance or acquire elite players? Should they have held onto them until they molder? We're talking about dealing for a 24 year-old on a HOF trajectory, and a 35 yr old with significant success, not Raul Mondesi or Andy Ashby.
The 06 Marlins had a pretty good pitching staff with Cabrera at 3B, didn't they? I'd rather have Inge there and Miggy in LF, but there is a good argument about accommodating your HOF bat, especially when you want to sign him long-term. He won't be Inge there, but I doubt his D is going to derail the whole season.
I have noticed a lot more Tigers sniping since the Miguel trade... not surprising, but it is kinda fun.
(BTW, I would project DET as the 2nd best team in the AL... and I have a feeling there will be a couple more parts to come).
Rogers, Bonderman, and Robertson were 3/4ths of the postseason rotation that carried the Tigers to the World Series. Scary? Maybe not. Sufficient? Definately.
Or defiantly sufficient?
.304/.381/.523 for PECOTA, as opposed to .318/.407/.559 here.
By that logic, David Eckstein is a championship-caliber shortstop twice over, right?
The difference in AVG shows up in SLG and in OBP so the majority of the difference in those lines is PECOTA doesn't like him hitting as high. If you adjust the PECOTA line to a .318 AVG those are pretty even projections.
No, he was 1/9th of that offense, so you're distorting the argument. It's not even close to the same thing as saying that Robertson, Rogers, and Bonderman aren't good enough to be the 2-3-4 or 3-4-5 starters on a team when those exact guys, compromising 75% of the postseason rotation and 60% of the regular season rotation, got the job done in 2006.
I'm not saying the Tigers will have the best rotation in baseball, I'm just saying they have a rotation that's more than good enough to compete. You don't have to scare people to win, you just need togive your team a chance to win.
i really don't think anyone is disagreeing with you or walewander here. i think the question that's being asked (and i hope i don't misrepresent anyone) is whether you'd prefer have those five guys and basically no backup options are better than having one, two, or three guys at or near that quality and a lot of options in the minors or elsewhere within the organization, as other teams do. i think the crux of the argument against the tigers' rotation is that those guys, although all solid to very good, aren't great enough that it's worth taking over the depth other pitching staffs offer.
Sure, they've traded away Miller and Jurrjens (and Ledezma), but that's trading from depth. They still have Bazardo and Jordan Tata. They've just developed a lot of young starting pitchers all at once.
Angels, yes. Probably Toronto. (But the Tigers' offense looks a lot better than Anaheim's or Toronto's.) Boston, too.
But New York?
This was more or less what I was getting at. The last two seasons the Tigers really haven't had a fifth starter and now that they've added Willis, they do. Their old fifth starters move to the pen or AAA and serve as emergency starters.
I just don't see how they have *less* depth than they have had the last two years pitching-wise. I can see the argument that they aren't particularly deep, but not the argument that they're any less so than in '06 or '07.
The Tigers organization isn't deep in prospects, but the last few years they've shown they're deep in "AAAA" type replacements, which as often as not perform as well as legitimate prospects who are still a few years away from being ready for the big leagues.
But I suppose it is a little odd that, based on the same number of AB, ZIPS has docked Granderson 15 hits with 19 of those 15 hits being xbh. :-)
Now here's a factoid -- Granderson has more career triples than steals. That's got to be extremely rare (for anybody who hits a reasonable number of triples at least).
I'm smellin' dynasty, baby.
I'm smellin' dynasty, baby.
Wait until you get a taste of what Willis and Bonderman will be serving up this year. Gotta hope that offense can carry the load.
It doesn't, actually. I'm not sure if any really do that - it's kinda frustrating because generic platoon splits predict future platoon splits far better than actual platoon splits do. So I just assume past usage and work from there.
5 guys in the rotation above average is alot of question marks? I think their pitching looks pretty good.
The rotation does, but I think their bullpen has question marks, especially with Zumaya out.
9.69 ERA for Sleeth? I had no idea ZIPs went that high.
The projections seem pretty reasonable to me. I would never bet against Granderson being for real though. He has exceeded his expectations all the way up the ladder. I do expect drop offs for Ordonez and Polanco so that is no surprise. If the Tigers can match the ERAs and innings pitched totals of the projections, they should be in good shape.
However, now that Rock Band's out, he can sing & not risk exacerbating his injury while on rehab. Just keep him away from the drums.
Of course he was. I don't see what you're getting at. Eckstein has been a damn good player.
AS for championship team SS in recent memory, he's better than Lugo, Uribe, Cabrera (at least better in 2002/2005 than Cabrera was in 2004), Sea Bass, and Womack.
Last championship shortstop better than the Eck was Derek Jeter.
Unfortunately, Bonderman and Willis are already hurt, and the Tigers are apparently going to throw them out there anyways. This could have a huge negative impact on both of their careers.
Did you do a ZiPs for Jason Neighborgall this year? I want to see quadruple-digit walks.
Let's not get too carried away with this rotation just yet.
Three year trends for Willis.
Hits allowed......213, 234, 241
Home runs allowed.....11, 21, 29
BB allowed......55, 83, 87
K's......170, 160, 146
The cause of all this. He was overworked at too young an age.
197 IP at age 22, 236 IP at age 23, 224 IP at age 24.....this is sick.
Even worse than the abuse Mulder, Hudson, and Zito endured.
And then there is the Bonderman situation
Bonderman threw 234 innings (including post-season) in 2006 at age 23.
This is far too many for somebody at that age, especially for a guy
who's previous high was 189 IP.
The negative impact of this was very apparent in 07. His K-rate
dropped by 12%, and his HR-rate increased by 57%. His ERA trend from
May to Sept in 07 is as follows - 2.66, 4.99, 5.31, 6.05, 12.15. Not
too promising.
And Rogers is 43. Nuff said.
The Tigers have a great offense, but the rotation could be very
disappointing.
Ken
Of course Willis declined in '06, who *wouldn't* decline fron that '05? His '06 was perfectly fine and better than his '04, I feel like you shouldn't penalize a guy for having a great year.
I'm not saying he'll be above average net year, I'm just saying the notion that "well he's declined two years straight" is a litle unfair.
Of course Willis declined in '06, who *wouldn't* decline fron that '05? His '06 was perfectly fine and better than his '04, I feel like you shouldn't penalize a guy for having a great year.
I'm not saying he'll be above average net year, I'm just saying the notion that "well he's declined two years straight" is a litle unfair.
Of course it's cherry picking. When you want to make a point you tend to use evidence that illustrates it. However any evidence to suggest that Willis is fine, and will have a successful 08 season is skimpy at best. Don't forget that he is moving to a much tougher league. Take a look at Beckett's, Pavano's, Clement's, Vazquez's, Batista's, Horacio RAmirez's, Chan Ho Park's first AL seasons. Not pretty.
Based on his performance as a pro there was really no reason, other then workload abuse, to think that he couldn't maintain the 05 level. Until he was over-worked he was consistently superb at all levels and in every season. Just to refresh your memory his minor league ERA(s) were 2.98, 1.83, 1.80, and 1.49. And this was at 19-21 years of age. He had/has the stuff to be a Jake Peavy. To say that he "had to" decline after his 05 season, is actually pretty ridiculous. The best pitchers do maintain that level, and Willis was one great pitcher at that point. There was no real reason to expect any kind of a decline. Were you predicting one? If so, why? At least part of the reason he declined in 06 was workload related. And his 07 season was an absolute disaster, where his skill level would not even have been good for AAA.
If you don't think that he'll be above average next season, you are basically agreeing with me, while saying that you disagree. You say my method is "unfair", and yet you draw the same conclusion. Interesting.
But when you want to make a good point, you present all the evidence, and then you explain what it means.
OK - here is all the evidence that indicates that Willis in not "damaged goods" and that he will pitch well in 08.
- he managed to finish the season on the active roster (probably a strategic decision by the Marlins to make him more tradeable)
- he is only 25
- he has good intangibles
- the Marlins screwed around with his mechanics. the Tigers will let him pitch the way he wants.
- he will be more motivated in a pennant race
- Sheffield & Magglio will get him on the "cream" to build up his strength
- AL hitters will not be comfortable facing his unorthodox delivery
- Pudge (who also knows a bit about PED) knows how to handle pitchers better than Olivio
- Granderson will be in centre field
- Leyland is better at handling pitchers than his Florida counterparts
- less hot weather to deal with in Detroit
There you have it. The opposing viewpoint. Willis will likely get his ERA back to 3.50.
Whew. I'm glad that is decided; I was getting worried there for a while.
Go Tigers!
Point I was making is that when a team wins it tells us very little about any given player on that team, beyong the fact that they're at least serviceable, like Eckstein.
It seems lately the Tigers have had a way of producing adequate fill-in pitching out of nowhere. I am more worried about their not coming up with any dominant relief pitching.
While I buy that for the majority of players generic platoon splits predict best, I would bet that for a subset of left-handed hitters actual platoon splits, appropriately regressed to the mean, would predict better. It'd be interesting to see some research on that.
I'm smellin' dynasty, baby.
The fifth best team in the AL? Good luck with that.
i'd posit the system for that might need a touch of retuning.
unless Fr means Freaking Terrible.
i'd posit the system for that might need a touch of retuning.
My cutoff for guys who I have solid stats for is -12 runs.
I have Cabrera projected at -11. Chone has him at -10. The last 2 years, I have him at -11. The last 2 years, Pinto had him at a total of 24 plays below average, which is less than 24 runs.
He's on the cusp, but he's clearly not quite at PR yet.
You forgot the bit about the Marlins having a horrible, horrible infield defense.
That's per, not total.
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