August 08, 2005
Trammell In Trouble?
Rob Parker of the Detroit News lays the blame for the Tigers' season at the feet of Alan Trammell:
When Trammell was hired, he promised that the Tigers would play a better brand of baseball, that they would play sound fundamentals and better defense. It just hasn't been the case.
The Tigers, who led the AL in errors the previous two seasons, are still near the bottom this season.
If the Tigers don't finish strong and get to .500, Trammell will be sent packing. After all, Trammell would have had three years to make this team better. And since the roster has improved dramatically since he first took over, the only place to find blame is with Trammell himself.
Parker, however, overestimates the strength of the Detroit offense by using batting average as the measure. They're fifth in batting average, but tied for 10th in runs per game in the AL. That's not a good offense.
Correction: I forgot the link.
Posted by David Pinto at
08:16 AM
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Link to the article is http://www.detnews.com/2005/tigers/0508/08/D01-272948.htm
Parker also says "Coming into this season, you would have been hard-pressed to find a fan who didn't believe that the Tigers would be much improved." He apparently doesn't know too many Tiger fans, nor has he heard of the Bill James "plexiglass" principle. Teams that make a big movement in the standings in year 1 will two-thirds of the time move in the opposite direction in year 2.
Given the Tigers' record in 2003, there was reason to believe that the Tigers weren't as good as they showed in 2004. Rodriguez, Guillen, Inge, and Infante all had much better than expected seasons in 2004, making one believe that a relapse was possible. The acquisition of Ordonez would just partially offset the expected relapse and the Percival acquisition wasn't very meaningful in terms of expected team performance. The Tigers' season has actually been better than I expected, disappointing in the sense that the hitting declined further than I thought, wasting some better than expected improvement from the pitching staff.
Regarding Trammell, I expect he's got a longer leash than Parker claims. He is of course a fan favorite, so no real reason to fire him unless someone markedly better is available. Pitching staff has shown some surprising improvement, although Bob Cluck is probably more responsible for that then Trammell. He's doing fine given the talent base he has.
Detroit's giving up 4.16 runs per game and scoring 4.57 per game. That leads to a lot of close games. Their record in 1 run games is a poor 12-18. Their slugging is only .327. That's not great but it is better than the Angels and Astros. Still though, it seems they're having a .423 OBA, which is better than a number of teams with better slugging...so it seems they're not driving in runners and at the same time they're making defensive errors...not a good mix.
I would've thought that there were enough people coming into the Spring that said the Tigers were flawed that Parker would've picked up on that, and at least brought up the idea that the team could be flawed, but it's obvious from the tone of the article that he's made up his mind.
What Detroit did this year in the free-agent market is no different than what Baltimore, the Mets, and the Dodgers have been doing for many years -- spending wildly and incorrectly.
