Verlander Bobblehead Shenanigans

I didn't see yesterday's game, so let's discuss something interesting that happened when my wife opened her Verlander mini-bobblehead from the game on Wednesday. It didn't really look like Verlander. Observe. 

When I showed the exhibit to a friend at work, I said, "This doesn't really look like Verlander. Who does it remind you of?" His answer: "Fernando Vina." 

I'd say he nailed it. It's tempting to think that the company responsible for making this bobblehead re-used a mold they did for Vina. There's only one problem with that theory. Fernando Vina would've had to have had a bobblehead night. What would the theme have been there? Unlikely PED users? 

"Tonight, Vina! Friday, Alex Sanchez!" 

Firsthand Account of Valverde's Return

Well, I've said all along bringing Valverde back was the smart thing to do. I'm kidding, of course. I was at the game last night, though, and I know it's been said but it really was like he was never gone.

Before the eighth inning, I realized the 7-5 score meant we'd see Valverde if nothing changed. I told my wife neither team was going to score because of course we were going to see Valverde's first appearance in our first trip to Comerica of the season. Once the Royals came up to bat, I looked out to the bullpen and yup, there was Valverde starting his warmups.

It created a strange internal debate. Do you want the Tigers to score a couple runs to have the bigger, safer lead? Or do you want them to keep it a save situation because of Valverde's weird brand of save situation mojo? Well, if they score a couple runs they might not bring in Valverde at all, right? Nope, nobody else is warming up. Valverde is coming in for sure. It was basically the Valverde debate from the past month wrapped up in one bullpen session.

Once both teams predictably failed to score in the eighth - nice four out appearance by Benoit, by the way - the buzz started. More and more people started to realize this was going to happen. Once people heard the murmur, more started looking to the bullpen. I wondered to myself what percentage of the crowd didn't even realize anything was notable. "What's the big deal? It's Valverde in the ninth, just like always."

After Valverde threw his last bullpen pitch and started walking to the gate, the cheering started. The crowd was pretty scant by that point because of the long game and the biting cold, but people had crowded around the bullpen and were cheering avidly. When Valverde walked through the gate, it was the most excitement the crowd showed the entire game. And yes, the vast majority of the crowd was cheering. I only heard one dude booing and as wise as his trepidation may prove to be, it made him seem like a douche.

As I clapped my gloved hands, I turned to my wife and said, "I don't like it, but he is a Tiger." The Tigers tried to ease our fears by putting together a Valverde montage for the scoreboard, but as soon as the excitement died down and he was just warming up the mood turned to "Oh God, what's going to happen?" A lot of the jokes I imagine were on Twitter ran through my mind. "What's everybody so worried about? This guy hasn't even given up a baserunner and it's almost the end of April!"

Alex Gordon came to the plate and the first pitch was a ball. As Ernie would say, the paying umpires thought it was a strike... and booed. A guy behind me, perhaps misreading the reason for the boos wondered twice, "How quick are they going to turn on him?" When Gordon finally put the ball in play, off the bat it looked like the answer might be "very quickly". My eyes quickly went to Dirks to judge the damage, and I was relieved to see him preparing for a catch. Who knows? Maybe this will all work out after all. I keep saying it. Bullpens will make you crazy.

Tigers Call Up Rondon....and Valverde

They always say it's who you know. In the Tigers' case, it's good to know the guy with the Marlboros. Jose Valverde can vouch for that. After a few innings against Canadian teenagers and 20-year olds, he gets to skip not only Toledo but any type of major league audition. Flying Tiger one day, Tiger closer the next. Literally. The Tigers signed Papa Grande to a one-year contract and made room by sending Brayan Villarreal down to Toledo.

The pitcher who, less than six months ago, nuked his chances at meaningful innings in the playoffs is once again the Tigers' closer. I truly can't believe I just typed that. Any other pitcher in camp could've walked on water to get to the ninth inning and the Tigers would've pointed out he wasn't a proven closer. Valverde has a good week in Lakeland against kids who can't celebrate a home run with a beer and it's "Here's the keys." It's bizarre.

Bruce Rondon may scratch his head at it, but he can't complain about his road to the majors too much. After less than eight innings in Toledo, an injury to Octavio Dotel has landed him in Detroit as well. He's gone four apperances without a walk, has lights out stuff, and hasn't given up a run yet this season. But again, just 7 2/3 innings.

Bullpens will make you crazy, no? I'm actually very excited about Rondon. I was more excited when I thought he could earn his way into high leverage situations. Now I'm afraid we're about to find out what Valverde has to do to lose the closing job.

Tigers' Top 4 Hitters Playing Out of Their Minds

I sacrificed sleep to stay up and watch the Tigers' 6-2 win over the Mariners. The top of the order providing most of the offense again. Austin Jackson led off the game with a fabulous at bat where he fell behind 0-2, worked the count back to full after a couple foul balls and ended it with a triple to right center. Miguel Cabrera knocked him in a couple batters later. Three innings later, Cabrera knocked in Torii Hunter with a long blast to center field. The rest of the team's runs came from another Cabrera single (again scoring Jackson) and bases loaded walks from Jackson and Hunter (his first of the season, incidentally). If you're tracking at home, that's the top three hitters knocking (or walking) in each of the six runs.

In this game, the magic was coming from the top three hitters as Prince Fielder was 0 for 5 with four strikeouts. On the season, though, you can certainly add Fielder as part of the offensive engine. In fact, he's been the lineup's most productive hitter in the early going. He leads the team in both on-base percentage (thanks to a team high ten walks) and slugging percentage. On a team that's getting by with pounding out hits in bunches, Fielder is the only Tiger whose had his true power stroke. That's evident from half his hits going for extra bases.

This isn't a profile of Fielder, though. He's been the offensive leader, but a lot of his value has been cashing in the chips the three hitters ahead of him are setting up. Let's take a look at how good the top four hitters in the Tigers' lineup have been.

Here is the combined line for Jackson-Hunter-Cabrera-Fielder:

.385/.446/.584, 14 2B, 3 3B, 8 HR, 51 RBI, 52 R, 23 BB, 32 K

Here is the combined line for the rest of the team:

.241/.300/.307, 6 2B, 1 3B, 3 HR, 22 RBI, 22 R, 23 BB, 50 K

I know many teams are likely to have big splits if you compared their best four hitters with the rest of the team. Without checking, though, I'm going to bet the Tigers are taking it to extremes. After all, the Tigers' top four are all Top 20 in the league in wRC+ and wOBA, so obviously they're going to excel on that end of the spectrum. On the other side of things, though, the early struggles of players like Andy Dirks, Alex Avila and Victor Martinez are also dragging down the production from the bottom of the order. I'd bet the chasm between the two group's production you see above is therefore among the tops in the league.

There is good news and bad news here. One of the advantages is a great way to get optimal production from your offense is to have your best four hitters at the top of the lineup. I know that probably sounds ridiculously simplistic, but it generally doesn't work out this way. Think of the Tigers last year and their struggles to find an appropriate hitter for the two spot. Or teams who slap a speedy runner who can't get on base in the leadoff spot. The Tigers' top four, on the other hand, are producing just like you'd draw it up and then taking it several notches higher.

More good news is I don't believe the rest of the lineup is going to continue hitting this poorly. On a typical day, you have Martinez, Dirks, Peralta, Avila and Infante rounding out the order. Peralta has been good, but none of the others have carried their weight yet. Perhaps we saw Martinez start to shake out of his slump yesterday (3 for 4, 2B), but it's hard to imagine the other three not improving on their production to date.

We'd better hope so, because the bad news here is the top four cannot continue to hit like this. Aside from Cabrera, it would be almost impossible for the Tigers' top four hitters to continue hitting as well as they have been. Jackson and Hunter can't continue to flirt with .400 and considering Hunter has one walk in 60 trips to the plate, a correction for him could be precipitous. Fielder? Well, I'm going to go ahead and assume he's not going to set career highs across the board.

For now, we can enjoy the ride the Tigers are getting by hitching their wagons to their top four hitters. It's certainly fun to watch. We just have to realize it's a ride that can't last all season - not to this degree anyway. Those bottom five hitters are going to have to get that production evened out a little bit. As Tiger fans, our concern will be what sort of equilibrium the offense can find and where the overall production falls out when it comes.

Tigers Offense Surprising, or Surprisingly Familiar?

I think if you ask a typical Tiger fan whether the Tigers were going to score a lot of runs in 2013, they would've given an emphatic yes. After all, they're putting Torii Hunter in front of Miggy and Prince and Victor behind them! Add those guys to one of the American League's top five offenses from 2012 and of course you're going to score a lot of runs.

I think that assessment is pretty accurate, but I'm not sure we as Tiger fans have a perception of the offense that lines up with reality. Looking at the 2012 team, we see they hardly ever stole bases and our assumption is they must have beaten teams to death. Would you be surprised to find out the Tigers were tenth in the American League in both home runs and isolated power (SLG% - AVG) last season? I was.

They were sixth in the league in runs, but more advanced metrics like wOBA and wRC+ peg the Tigers' offense from last year as in the top handful of the league's best. How did they do it? Well, they were third in the American League in batting average and thanks to a healthy number of walks, second in the league in on-base percentage. People saw Miggy and Prince and thought, "This team is going to bludgeon us to death", but it turned out the offense was more machine gun than megabomb.

Why am I bringing all this up about last year? Because this season's offense is doing very similar things. When I tried to summarize how the Tigers got to the point where they had scored the fourth most runs with only five homers and the league's worst isolated power, I was surprised at what I found. The league's top batting average at .313. A healthy portion of walks also gives them the highest on-base percentage at .375. Good approaches at the plate have them striking out at a lower rate than any other club and more of their hits falling in (.353 BABIP) than almost any other club.

When I first discovered all this, I assumed the cold weather was suppressing their power and they were just scratching out runs any way they could get them. This column was originally going to be in the "Tigers succeeding in a surprising way" kind of thing. What I found was that while the Tigers have moved a little further to the extremes this season, the way their offense is functioning should feel familiar.

They're not going to continue being the lightest hitting team in the league. Just like they're not going to continue to hit .313 with 35% of the balls in play falling for hits. But even when the weather normalizes and this team remains among the top three or four offenses in the league, there's a good chance they'll be doing it in a way that's different from how they're portrayed nationally.

Tigers Lose Ugly, But Let's Look Closer

The Tigers' 8-6 loss to the Blue Jays on Wednesday was ugly. After building a 6-1 lead after the fifth inning, the Tigers defied the odds (97.5% win expectancy) and gave up three in the sixth and four more in the seventh. Appropriately, a lof of the blame for the loss will fall to the bullpen since Rick Porcello came out of the game with a 6-2 lead. A closer look, though, shows the easy story isn't always complete.

Sometimes the story hides in unexpected places. Look at the Tigers' fifth inning, when they scored four runs
and appeared to ice this one. After the Jays intentionally walked Prince Fielder to load the bases, it appeared the wheels came off when they proceeded to walk in two runs. A bloop single to center by Jhonny Peralta scored the fourth run of the inning.

At this point, the Tigers could've really opened this one up, but with still just one out, Alex Avila struck out and Omar Infante fouled out to the catcher to end the inning. Yes, the Tigers scored four runs, but they blew an opportunity to put up a lot more.

Contrast that with the Jays' seventh. After Villarreal came into the game with a runner on first, he walked the first three batters he face to pull the Jays within one. Leyland had seen enough at that point and put in Octavio Dotel to face J.P. Arencibia. Arencibia doubled deep into center field and scored all three baserunners. That's how you take advantage of such a generous pitching staff.

As it turned out, it all went downhill for the Tigers after Peralta's well placed popup in the fifth. After the Tigers squandered the rest of that opportunity, Porcello came out for the sixth and quickly proceeded to give up two singles and a double to left. That may sound like trying to coax one too many innings out of your starter, but Porcello had only thrown 81 pitches after five innings. Can you imagine the outrage if Leyland would have pulled Porcello after that many pitches only to have the bullpen blow the lead?

Tigers Sign Valverde, Blogger in Toledo Swears a Lot

The Tigers signed Jose Valverde. I can't believe I'm typing that and it's not part of some lame April Fool's joke. I've taken a pretty laid back approach to the Tigers' handling of their bullpen situation. I was excited they were considering giving Bruce Rondon a chance. When Rondon was sent down, I was excited that Leyland might use the opportunity of having no set closer to just use the best reliever for the situation. I was skeptical he'd do that, but it's April and that is the time to hope.

Well, two games into the season, despite all the talk of closer by committee, it was pretty clear Leyland was sticking to his preference of fairly well set roles for his relievers. The best illustration of this I've seen was the fact that in the ninth inning of the second game, Coke was the only reliever warming up. Leyland sent Benoit out to face the first right-handed batter, and after that the game was hitched to Phil Coke.

I shouldn't have been surprised. The Tigers are not known for thinking outside the box on most things, and I should've known they wouldn't break the mold for the bullpen. Leyland has made it very clear that he prefers for the guys in his bullpen to know when they should be expected to be called upon.

Similarly, I shouldn't be surprised that the Tigers are willing to take a look at Valverde. Actually, I'm not surprised. I'm disappointed. I'm disappointed the Tigers have bought into the idea of a CLOSER so much that they're willing to hand the job to a guy who was their fourth or fifth best reliever the last time he had the job. A guy they were literally happy to be rid of at the end of the season and a guy who didn't get a sniff from another team when the cost was a major league deal.

That's the harm in the Valverde signing in my opinion. I don't think they're going to be looking at him objectively. I think they see an answer to their closer problem and will be willing to squint and look at him just so until the idea of him in the bullpen makes sense. Why do I not trust the Tigers to evaluate Valverde the proven closer objectively? Well, after blowing a game to Oakland, and after giving up a two-run homer to Ichiro in the ALCS, they still allowed him to put himself in a situation where Raul Ibanez could tie the game with yet another two-run homer. That is what it took for them to finally give up on the idea of a set closer. They had to be convinced so thoroughly that the pitcher who convinced them could not be trusted at all after losing the job.

Now, not even ten games that matter have passed and they're already latching onto the idea again.  Not only that, when he gets to Detroit, I bet it will be like he never left. He'll give up a walk and a base hit to start an inning where the Tigers have a one run lead, and we'll look to the bullpen to see the only activity is an empty bag of sunflower seeds blowing around. This is how crazy the idea of a proven closer has made us.

I will close by answering one question I keep asking myself. Why does this upset me so much? If I think the importance of having a shutdown closer is overblown, isn't it illogical to get so upset about the prospect of having a slightly below average closer? Here's why. For most of the spring, and certainly after Rondon was demoted, we were supposed to prepare for the concept of the closer by committee. Leyland said a couple days before the season that any one of his seven bullpen pitchers might be called on to close a game.

In reality, the roles in the pen hardly changed and closer by committee turned out to be an inexplicable confidence in Phil Coke. The experiment was scrapped before they had even used Octavio Dotel. I'm just frustrated that the team would spend the entire preseason preparing us for an idea they never really considered viable. If they had considered it viable, they wouldn't have signed Jose Valverde on April 4th.

In my estimation, they're taking a situation that's not as big a problem as it's being made out to be and likely making it worse. They'll make it worse by bringing in a pitcher who we have to talk ourselves into believing in by turning to the worst stat in baseball.