Tiger Tales: A Detroit Tigers Blog

I just received my copy of the Baseball Prospect Book 2006 by John Sickels. Compared to Baseball America, Sickels goes more by performance and less by tools so we get a different perspective here. He gives grades to most of the important prospects on every team, usually 30-35 players per team. At the end of the book, he gives lists of his top 50 position players and top 50 pitching prospects in all of baseball. You’ll have to buy the book (see link above) to get the details but here is a sneak preview of the Tigers with the highest grades:

Table: John Sickels's Tiger Prospect Grades

Player	Grade
Justin Verlander	A
Joel Zumaya	B+
Brent Clevlen	B
Cameron Maybin	B
Jordan Tata	B-
Eulogio De La Cruz	C+
P.J. Finigan	C+
Jeff Frazier	C+
Tony Giarratano	C+
Michael Holliman	C+
Matt Joyce	C+
Jair Jurrjens	C+
Jeff Larish	C+
Chris Robinson	C+
Clete Thomas	C+
Kevin Whelan	C+

The number of Tigers he ranks as C+ or above (Sickels considers this high praise) has increased from 12 in 2005 to 16 this year. He lists 15 other Tigers as grade C. You can see the difference between the Baseball America and John Sickels philosophies. Whereas Baseball America has Wilken Ramirez and Humberto Sanchez (two players with great tools but so so performance last year) in its top 6, Sickels does not even have them in his top 16. Sickels lists 3 Tigers on his top 50 lists. On the pitching list, Verlander was #1 and Zumaya #12. Clevlen was #48 on the position player list.

In my last post, I abstracted the top ten prospect list from the Baseball America site and included a chart of the probable destinations of those players in 2006. Today, I’m going to add to that chart by listing the probable opening day destination of most of the top Tiger prospects. Please note that this list is not in any particular order and is not necessarily a complete list of top prospects. It’s just a list of the prospects that are being talked about the most around the net.

My projected destinations are based on reports from Baseball America (including the Baseball America Prospect Handbook), discussions among the minor league baseball gurus at Motown Sports and a little bit of common sense. I will try to keep this chart updated as April approaches. There are people on here who follow the minors closer than I do so feel free to disagree with me if any of the destinations appear to be off.

Table: Destinations of Tiger prospects in 2006

Player	Pos.	Age*	Expected Opening Day Destination
Justin Verlander	SP	23	Tigers
Joel Zumaya	SP	21	Toledo
Humberto Sanchez	SP	23	Erie
Jordan Tata	SP	24	Erie
Jair Jurrjens	SP	20	Lakeland
Kyle Sleeth	SP	24	Lakeland
Preston Larrison	SP	25	Toledo
Dallas Trahern	SP	20	Lakeland
Josh Rainwater	SP	21	Lakeland
Nate Bumstead	SP	24	Erie
Virgil Vazquez	SP	24	Erie
Sendy Vasquez	SP	23	W. Michigan
Kevin Whelan	RP	22	Lakeland
P.J. Finigan	RP	23	W. Michigan
Eulogio DeLaCruz	RP	22	Erie
Chris Robinson	C	21	Lakeland
Danilo Sanchez	C	25	Erie
Jeff Larish	1B	23	Lakeland
Juan Francia	2B	24	Toledo
Ryan Raburn	2B	25	Toledo
Tony Giarratano	SS	23	Erie
Michael Holliman	SS	24	W. Michigan
Audy Ciriaco	SS	19	Oneonta
Brent Dlugach	SS	23	Lakeland
Wilken Ramirez	3B	20	Lakeland
Kody Kirkland	3B	23	Erie
Donald Kelly	3B	26	Toledo
Cameron Maybin	OF	19	W.Michigan
Brent Clevlen	OF	22	Erie
Clete Thomas	OF	22	Lakeland
Jeff Frazier	OF	23	Lakeland
Matt Joyce	OF	21	W. Michigan
Vincent Blue	OF	23	Erie

* Age on July 1, 2006

Baseball America revealed its top ten Tigers prospect list yesterday and not surprisingly pitchers Justin Verlander and Joel Zumaya top the list. I also expect to see those two near the top of the Top 100 prospects in baseball list coming out in a few more weeks. The complete list and the expected April destinations can be found in the table below.

As many of you know, the Baseball America List is based more on tools than performance. This is not a bad thing but it’s good to keep it in mind when comparing it to other lists that you’ll see. Since I’m not a scout, I like the Baseball America list because it gives me a different perspective than my own performance based thinking.

After filtering out all the hype, my impression is that the Tigers right now have the best collection of prospects they’ve had in at least 20 years. This is not saying a lot, as their player development system has been a disappointment for a long time but the organization definitely appears to be on the upswing.

Table: Baseball America Top Ten Tiger Prospects

Rank	Player	Pos.	Age (7/1/06)	Expected Opening Day Destination
1	Justin Verlander	SP	23	Tigers
2	Joel Zumaya	SP	21	Toledo
3	Cameron Maybin	OF	19	Western Michigan
4	Brent Clevlen	OF	22	Erie
5	Wilken Ramirez	3B	20	Lakeland
6	Humberto Sanchez	SP	23	Erie
7	Jordan Tata	SP	24	Erie
8	Tony Giarratano	SS	23	Erie
9	Jeff Larish	1B	23	Lakeland
10	Kevin Whelan	RP	22	Lakeland

In an earlier post, I discussed the difficulty of measuring range or the ability of fielders to turn batted balls into outs. In that post, I defined range factor and zone rating and gave the limitations of each measure. Here, I’ll talk about David Pinto’s Probabilistic Model of Range.(PMR).

He uses STATS Inc. data to obtain information about each ball put in play – direction, type of hit (ground, fly, line drive, bunt, pop up) and intensity of hit (soft, medium, hard). For each direction/type/intensity combination, he uses something called Maximum Likelihood Estimation to calculate the probability of an out for each of the 9 fielders. Based on these probabilities, he calculates the predicted number of outs for an average defender at each position on each team. He then compares this to the actual number of outs made.

For example, the table below shows that there were 1,233 balls put in play in games when Omar Infante played shortstop. Based on the PMR, the average shortstop should have made 157.18 (or 158) successful plays on the balls that were hit. Infante actually made 171 plays. This was14 (or 8.8%) more than expected. Interestingly, this was the best percentage in baseball for shortstops with 500 or more balls in play when they were in the game. Looking at ground balls only (GB), Infante made 4.7% more plays than expected. Carlos Guillen, made 2.9% fewer plays than expected and 2,7% more plays than expected on ground balls.

At second base, Placido Polanco made 4.2% more plays than expected while Infante made 1.6% fewer than expected. So based on these somewhat small sample sizes, Infante had better range at shortstop than at second base. Orlando Hudson was baseball’s leader with an amazing 18.6% plays more than expected. Pinto has not given ground ball only numbers for second basemen yet.

Pinto has only posted results for middle infielders so far. I’ll add the results for other positions as they become available.

Table: Probabilistic Model of Range

Player	Pos.	Type of Hit	BIP	Outs	Pred. Outs	Diff	% Diff
Infante	SS	Any	1233	171	157.18	13.82	8.79
Infante	SS	GB	567	131	125.07	5.93	4.74
Guillen	SS	Any	1934	240	247.06	-7.06	-2.86
Guillen	SS	GB	950	203	197.69	5.31	2.69
Polanco	2B	Any	3001	336	322.35	13.65	4.23
Infante	2B	Any	1810	190	193.21	-3.21	-1.66
Hudson	2B	Any	3318	490	413.33	76.67	18.55

After spending a lot time poring over box scores and game accounts from the New York Times and Washington Post of August, 1937, I have written a detailed article describing the record breaking month of Rudy York. Hopefully, the article will give you a good feel for what it might have been like to follow York's great month. Since Tiger Tales is not generally a historical site and I wanted to get a wider audience for the article, I contributed it to Detroit Tigers Central which recently celebrated its fifth birthday of covering Detroit Tiger history among other things.

Edit: An edited version of the same article is at Baseball Almanac

In today's post, I'll briefly discuss a couple of articles in the local papers.

Tom Gage of the Detroit News gives an account of an interview with Jim Leyland prior to yesterday's TigerFest. First, Leyland dismisses any notion of a another "five year plan":

"I know what's going on here," Leyland said before Saturday's annual TigerFest at Joe Louis Arena -- his first as manager of the Tigers. "Mr. Ilitch is getting a little impatient. I don't blame him. We don't have a lot of time. I think we have to get something accomplished rather quickly.

"That's why I haven't talked about any plans. Sparky (Anderson) had a five-year plan, but we don't have that long. That's just the way it is. I'm not talking about a World Series, but we have to make some strides and we have to make them rather quickly."

Since I think they are not ready to contend any time soon, it's not good to hear that Illitch is putting pressure on them to win now although it was pretty obvious this was going on with some of the free agent signings they have made. As a fan, I'd rather Illitch let the baseball people determine the time schedule for success. The good news is that so far Dombrowski has not given up top prospects for quick fixes.

The rest of the main part of the article is a motivational speech by Jim Leyland. He said all the right things but anybody who has talked to me on message boards knows I don't put a lot of stock into those things.

At the bottom of the article are a few notes of interest:

Dmitri Young missed TigerFest in order to remain in Arizona, where he's attending a conditioning camp.

As I said before, if Young can get in good enough shape where he can play in the outfield occasionally, that gives them a bit of flexibility on the 25 man roster.

Recovered from the health problems (knee and hernia) that bothered him the last two years, Magglio Ordonez , who'll be 32 next week, said, "I feel like I'm 20 again."

Ordonez's defense and power seemed to be affected by his injuries quite a bit last year so this is good to hear.

Dombrowski ruled out any interest in former Tigers' right-hander Jeff Weaver , who's still available as a free agent.

The Tigers never gave any indication that they were interested but this may put a damper on message board speculation that the Tigers would pull of another late free agent signing similar to Ivan Rodriguez and Ordonez.

Because his days as a closer are over, Troy Percival has suggested to the Tigers that he'd consider starting -- the difference being he'd have substantial rest between appearances.

I think it's a longshot that he'll pitch at all.

Joel Zumaya

Another article by Brian Vanochten of the Grand Rapids Press discusses Joel Zumaya and the possibility of him winning the fifth spot in the rotation. Most of the talk has centered around Justin Verlander but I think Zumaya may be just as ready as Verlander at this point. There has been talk about Zumaya pitching out of the bullpen for the Tigers this year. Some people in the organization feel as if he will ultimately be a reliever but at the age of 20 I'd really like to see him be developed as a starter.

There is not much news to report on the Tigers unless I talk about the caravan and Tigerfest. While I'm sure those are fun events for Michiganders, they are not really geeky enough for Tiger Tales. I also don’t have a lot of time this week to do anything creative so I thought I’d go back to an earlier analysis of isolated power (on November 28, 2005) and do the same run for the National League. The charts below rank National League hitters with 295 or more plate appearances by position.

Catchers

First Basemen

Second Basemen

Shortstops

Third Basemen

Left Fielders

Center Fielders

Right Fielders