The End is Near?

It is 12:30 on October 4th. In 35 minutes the Tigers start their last regular season game of the year. Last night they lost to the White Sox and the Twins beat the Royals, so there is a tie between the Twins and Tigers for 1st place in the AL Central. The magic number is still 2. It hasn't moved all week. It was 2 after the Tigers and Twins split their four game series.

Going into the month of September the wisdom was that if the Tigers played .500 baseball they would win, unless the Twins played incredible baseball. Well, in the month of September the Twins have played solid baseball (16- 11) .591 and the Tigers played .571 baseball (16-12). Part of the problem is that the Twins have not had a losing streak of more than 3 games. The Tigers were very streaky at the beginning of September (6 W's followed by 5 L's). During that time the Twins went 4-7. Since then the Twins have played 15-5 (.750). The Tigers have played 8-10.

The point at the end of this proverbial stick is that we are not seeing a collapse on the part of the Tigers, this is the baseball they have played all year (actually September was their 2nd best month of the year). The Twins are playing way above their previous ability. I don't know if it's their manager or their system or the closing of the Dome. Regardless of the reason, the whole season comes down to today (and possibly Tuesday, but let's hope it doesn't get to that).

I am now going to get ready to watch The Game. Justin Verlander goes for his 19th win today, and a chance to win the pennant. Remember, nothing has changed all week- if the Tigers win and the Twins lose the Tigers clinch the AL Central crown.

Today is The Day!

The proverbial "wire"...

157 down, 5 to go.

What an awesome year this has been to be a Tigers' fan! According to my handy, dandy calendar the Tigers have been in first place since the end of April and have owned it all by themselves since May.

This is not a "blow your doors off" type of team. As we sit mid-way through the "most important series since 1987" I want to look at what we have in front of us.

Pitching: according to baseball-reference.com the team ERA for the Tigers is 4.27. They give up an average of 4.54 runs per game according to my numbers. I have mentioned this on a couple of the BYB game threads, but the Tigers have allowed 2 runs or less in 26% (41) of their games so far this year! In fact, so far this year they have allowed only 713 runs. The only team in the American League who is better is the Boston Red Sox (709). The Tigers hold their opponents to few runs consistently (with 9 shutouts so far).

The other piece of that puzzle is the defense. Again the Tigers have made huge improvements this year. Looking at Fangraphs you can see that in 2009 the Tigers are rated 3rd best team in Major League Baseball. In 2008 they were 26th! This was the drum I was beating last year: the pitchers couldn't trust the defense to make outs, so the starters had to make extra outs too often. This gave more and more opportunities to the opponents to score runs. This year that is not true at all. It simply makes the great starting pitchers and relievers more effective.

I give all of the credit on this to Dave Dombrowski. In 2008 he tried to win with another "murderers row". He traded off defense for runs. It didn't work at all. The Tigers scores lots of runs, but allowed so many more that they finished last in the AL Central. DD took his lumps and fixed it. He dumped Renteria and got Adam Everett. He got Gerald Laird, who is simply amazing on defense. He put Inge back at 3rd. Add that to the always awesome Placido Polanco and the ever improving Miguel Cabrera at 1st and we have a very solid infield making tons of amazing plays all year. The outfield is a little more porous. Magglio is not a fast as he used to be, so Clete Thomas has had lots of defensive playing time in RF. Guillen has settled in at LH now that he is no longer hurt. Granderson is not as purely awesome as he has been, but he is still an outstanding CF.

As far as scoring... well, as I said above- Dombrowski has now set up a lower scoring but better fielding team. So the Tigers have scored 722 runs this season so far. This is definitely worse than anyone expected from them, but it has been consistent. We can look at injuries and off years and age and all sorts of issues that effect hitting a baseball to the right spot consistently, but after 157 games we know what we have. The Tigers have scored 2 runs or less in 45 games (29%). This puts them right in the middle of the pack for runs (15th). Compare this to last year when they scored 821 (4th).

The important thing is that right now, as I wrap up my lunch break, they are in 1st place on September 30th. They have a 2 game lead over the Twins with 5 games left to play. They are a good team in a very weak division. They have every reason to be confident that they will win the AL Central, the pitching is there and the defense is there. They need to score some more runs, just one run more than their opponents for the last 5 games.

Ernie Harwell's good bye

I originally had this at the end of Week 24's update, but it deserves it's own spot.

Here is a wrap up of some of the tributes for Mr. Harwell as well as what he said in his own words.

Ernie said his farewell this past Wednesday. He knows that he won't be able to say good-bye later, so he did it now. There have been many tributes from all over baseball- Detroit News, Freep, USA Today. Major League Baseball will name one of their production studios after him.

Here is his speech to the fans at Comerica Wednesday night.
Here is his talk to the media that night.
Here he is on the Huge Show.

Here is how he ended his final regular broadcast in 2002. (thanks to USA Today)

"And rather than good-bye, please allow me to say thank you. Thank you for letting me be part of your family. Thank you for taking me with you to that cottage up north, to the beach, the picnic, your work place and your backyard.

"Thank you for sneaking your transistor under the pillow as you grew up loving the Tigers. Now I might have been a small part of your life. But you have been a very large part of mine. And it's my privilege and honor to share with you the greatest game of all."

Mr. Harwell you have certainly been a very big part of many of our lives. We thank you.

Week 24: How badly do they want this?

The Tigers have just completed their 2 worst weeks of the season after completing two of their best weeks before that. I guess that is just how this team plays the game. In this last week they did do one thing differently though: 3 of the 4 aspects of the game sucked for Detroit instead of only 1 or 2 areas lacking.

Starting Pitching: how about an ERA of 6.69? That is 27 earned runs in 36 1/3 innings pitched for the starting rotation this week. Believe it or not, the starter with the best game was Nate "Gum Time" Robertson! Nate returned from his injury with a 5 hit, 2 run performance over 5 innings on Sunday to salvage one game from the Twins in the H.H. Dome. Other than that it was: Verlander getting hung with 5 runs twice (although I think Leyland left him in too long on Saturday and he was tired). Washburn didn't make it into the 2nd inning giving up 4 runs from his injured knee. Jackson gave up 5 runs in 5 innings. Porcello pitched well with only 3 runs allowed in 6 innings, but the Tigers couldn't give him any run support in a 3-0 loss.

Bullpen: if a 6.69 ERA wasn't bad enough, how about adding 4.21 on top of it? 12 runs in 12 2/3 innings this week. That was certainly not stopping the leaks left by the starters. Casey Fien, Bonderman and Galarraga gave up the runs in batches (4,3,3 respectively). Certainly it was an improvement over Week 23's ERA of 9.35 but it still came out to an average of 2 runs per game. Add that to the 4.5 runs/ game the starters dished out and your are in a hole and need LOTS of run support to have a hope of winning. Which brings us to...

Lineup: I'm not sure "lineup" is the correct term for this week's performance. Perhaps "rollover" or "lay down" is more appropriate. The batters (whatever name you wish to give them) came into Sunday's game against the Twins scoring only 2.5 runs per game for the week. This was the 2nd weakest week of the season for runs scored (Sunday's game brought it up to 3/game for the week). In fact after this week the Tigers have been OUTSCORED for the season! Yup. The Tigers have scored 678 runs and allowed 681. To let you understand how completely the Tigers have given up the concept of scoring runs in the last two weeks, compare that stat to where they were just 2 weeks ago. On 9/13 they had scored 630 and allowed 607. In the last two weeks they have scored a total of 48 runs while allowing 74! Don't forget the teams they have played in the last 2 weeks- KC 6 games, Toronto 4 and Minnesota 3. KC! Really? KC? Yes. Detroit allowed KC to pull their own winning % up from .375 to .409.

The one area where the Tigers continued to excel was defense. This past week had zero errors charged to Detroit. The improvements made on defense this season have been amazing. Polanco is playing an amazing 2nd base (he is a free agent this year). Inge even makes great plays on foul balls, just because he can and we like to see it. Laird has been rock solid behind the plate and throws out more baserunners than anyone else. He cut down 2 men in Saturday's game like the sheriff in an old western- bang! bam! Go sit down! There were some miscues (like Kelly's losing a flyball in the Dome Saturday) but who hasn't done that in the Dome?

So where does that leave us? Well, for me personally it leaves me depressed that they have allowed this to become a race when it never should have been. But with 13 games left to play in this season the Tigers are 3 games ahead of the Twins and 6.5 over the White Sox. They are still in 1st place and other teams have to catch them. However the Twins have caught the Tigers at the last minute before (remember 2006 anyone?) and the Wildcard is not coming from the AL Central this year, so I'm pretending not to be nervous here.**

Here are your end of week standings with 13 games to play:

Week 24		Games back	Elimination #
	Tigers	--	--
	Twins	3	11
	W. Sox	6.5	7
	Indians	18	E
	Royals	18	E

Next up is a road series starting in Cleveland and then to Chicago. The last 7 games are in Detroit against, yup- the Twins and White Sox. I'm hoping that the Twins' series is simply prep for the ALDS against the Yankees.

(**note, when I first posted this I had 9 games remaining. It's like that test in grade school where you had the correct answer but second guessed yourself and then put the wrong answer. Regardless, there are indeed 13 games left to play as of 9/21).

Other things of interest from this past week:

Rookies have no right to dignity. (Bless You Boys)

We learned what some Tigers enjoy off of the field. (Roar of the Tigers)

We were exhorted to keep perspective by Kurt at Mack Ave Tigers

The wrap up of the "8th Inning" of 2009 from Detroit Tigers Weblog (this is a very cool analysis)

2010 Tigers' schedule

MLB has released next season's schedule. The Tigers open up on April 5 in KC. The Home Opener is April 9 versus Cleveland.

Here is the link.

Week 23: is it a late August?

I guess this is called "regressing to the mean". The Tigers started the month of September by going 6-0, their longest winning streak of the year. They continued the month by falling back to earth and losing 5 straight (regression can be tough). This team impressed me by being able to play through August without sliding disastrously toward irrelevance. Maybe they forgot that August was over (or maybe the calendar was turned back in the clubhouse.) Fortunately neither the Twins or the White Sox were able to take advantage of the slide.

The culprits of this slide are not the hitters. They actually batted .305 for the week (the 2nd best week of the season) and scored 4.5 runs/game. There have been many weeks where that would be enough to win most of their games for the week. But in those weeks the our pitchers didn't allow 5.8 runs per game as they did this week.

The starters had an ERA of 4.54 this week on 17 runs in 33 2/3 innings. Verlander, Robertson and Porcello each had good starts of less than 3 earned runs. But Washburn, Jackson and Porcello (again) each had starts where they allowed 3 runs or more. Washburn allowed 7 hits plus 3 walks in 5 IP, Jackson allowed 8 hits with 1 walk (but 3 of those hits left the park) in his 7 IP and Porcello allowed 7 hits on 0 walks in his 6 IP during his first game of the week.

The Bullpen had its worst week of the year, by far. They allowed 18 runs (3/ game) for an ERA of 9.35. They allowed 18 hits and 13 walks in only 17 1/3 IP to set the table for the 5 home runs they let go out. Based on my records the only reliever that did not allow a run to score was Ni. Rodney gave up 5 runs in 3 1/3 IP for the week. Galarraga came in to relive Robertson and gave up 3 in 1 1/3 IP. The list goes on and on. If you want to really dissect the rotting corpse that was the Tigers' Bullpen this week then check out Billfer's autopsy at Detroit Tigers' Weblog.

On the positive side of life there was only one official error charged this week.

On the even MORE positive side, as I mentioned above, the White Sox and the Twins each had problems of their own and could not catch up any ground. And there isn't that much ground left for them to make it up on. Going into Monday's game the Tigers have only 20 games left to play in 2009. If the Tigers stay at a .500 pace they will finish with 86 wins and 76 losses for the year. For the Twins for the White Sox to catch them one of those teams would need to start playing at almost an .800 winning pace (far above what they have done so far this year). I don't see this as likely. However all three teams play each other for the rest of the month. Detroit plays 6 more games against Minnesota and 3 more games against the White Sox.

Here are the current standings.

Week 23		Games back	Elimination #
	Tigers	--	--
	W. Sox	5.5	15
	Twins	6	14
	Indians	15	6
	Royals	19	1