One reason I like Dave Dombrowski is how quickly he gets to work in the off-season to fill any holes in the ball club. ESPN’s Buster Onley takes note of this as well, though giving credit to Jim Leyland’s decisiveness, in a recent blog entry:
If you’re around Jim Leyland for 10 seconds, you quickly ascertain that he is among the most decisive people in the game. He knows what he wants, communicates what he wants, and even if his choices don’t work out, well, he’ll live with that. He has opinions and he is sure of them — such as his request to open the 2006 season with Justin Verlander and Joel Zumaya in the big leagues.
So it’s not surprising that the Tigers have addressed their off-season questions more rapidly than any team in the game.
This is a trait that can be very helpful in the competitive free agent market since you can sometimes avoid drawn out bidding wars that end up costing the organization more money or losing out on opportunities that won’t be available later in the off-season. But for me I enjoy having known players to look at or complain about, so here we are in mid-November and we pretty much have a complete Tiger lineup:
- Curtis Granderson
- Placido Polanco
- Gary Sheffield
- Magglio Ordonez
- Carlos Guillen
- Edgar Rentaria
- Ivan Rodriguez
- Jacque Jones / Marcus Thames
- Brandon Inge
Last year Billfer put the Tiger’s offensive projections between 5.342 and 5.042 runs per game (or 5.404 runs per game factoring in Thames and Chris Shelton) based on the ZiPS projections. The Tigers clearly overachieved with the team averaging 5.475 runs per game in 2007.
While the 2008 ZiPS projections for the Detroit Tigers haven’t been posted, at least that I saw, using the same lineup analysis using Bill James projections puts the Tiger offense earning between 5.578 and 5.224 runs per game with Jacque Jones and between 5.710 and 5.307 runs per game with Marcus Thames.
No matter how you cut it, that is a nice improvement for the Tiger offense and likely as equally as nice an improvement on defense.
D-Town Baseball
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Heck of a line-up. I do hope Renteria bats 9th though. Last year, the Tigers’ barely capitalized on Granderson’s RBI potential. Renteria got on base at a 390 clip last year. How many times would he have scored on an extra base hit by Granderson or a single by Polly.
Putting renteria in the 9 hole is a terrible idea – your higher OBP guys should get more – not fewer – at bats. Your lowest OBPs should always go at the bottom, that way you waste fewer at bats by giving them fewer opportunities to make outs. High OBPs, likewise, go at the top so you give them more opportunities to get on base. If you want to increase granderson’s RBI total, you move him lower and put renteria at leadoff.
I don’t think it is a terrible idea to move a hitter like Renteria to the 9th position though not something I’d do.
Following the links above, the top lineup’s all end with either Polanco or Renteria batting 9th. Then again they have Sheffield batting 1st due to his high OBP.
When you go to the game next year you get to see Magglio Ordoñez playing in the United State and making millions of dollars. It is ironic that yesterday (Nov. 28) he appeared on stage in Caracas with Hugo Chavez, who is a self proclaimed enemy of the United States. Chavez is pushing changes to that country’s constitution that will give him dictatorial powers.
It seems that Ordoñez owns construction companies in his home country, and has recently received several large contracts for structures from Chavez.
Maybe he should stay in Venezuela and play in their league.
3 Trackbacks/Pingbacks
[...] D-Town Baseball – A Detroit Tigers Blog » Sneak Peak at the Tigers 2008 Lineup Optimizing the Tigers lineup using Bill James projections [...]
[...] The bet in adding Rogers and calling it quits is that last year was an injury-plagued fluke. The reality is next year already has a key injury, and the Tigers are bringing back a starting pitcher with a sore elbow (Jeremy Bonderman) already and could possibly resign a player with a sore elbow after major shoulder surgery (Rogers). This goes with an unknown fifth starter (Andrew Miller? Somebody else?) and a bullpen that didn’t get the job done last year. Sure, the Tigers can score runs (5.2+ according to a lineup projection done by D-Town using Bill James’ stats), but have they done enough to prevent the other team from scoring, too? I don’t think so. [...]
[...] couple weeks ago D-Town Baseball took the Bill James projections for 2008 and crammed them into the Baseball Musings lineup [...]
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