Tuesday, March 14, 2006

Sabermetric Review

As part of my preparation for my Tiger season preview which I'll do in a week or so, I went back and reviewed many of the sabermetric analyses I presented this winter. Here is a brief summary:


  • The Tigers finished 71-91 28 games behind the White Sox and 12 games behind the third place Twins.
  • They were 11th in the league in offense with 723 runs scored and 8th in defense allowing 787 runs.
  • They finished 4th in the league in batting average, 7th in isolated power and dead last in isolated walk percentage (or times on base without getting a hit). This should make it fairly obvious why they ranked so low in runs scored.
  • They were 12th in the league in pitching (fielding independent pitching or FIP) and 8th in fielding (Defensive Efficiency Record or DER). So their fielding was a little better than their pitching.

The following individual hitters were most responsible for the team rankings:


  • None of the Tigers who had full seasons finished in the top 20% of the league in any offensive categories.
  • The players most responsible for their high team batting average were Chris Shelton, Rondell White, Placido Polanco, Carlos Guillen and Magglio Ordonez. All finished in the top 20%.
  • The players most responsible for the low isolated walk percentage were Ivan Rodriguez, Omar Infante, White, and Nook Logan all finishing in the bottom 20% of the league. Only Carlos Pena finished in the top 20% and he had only 295 at bats.
  • Shelton was the only regular finishing in the top 20% in slugging while Guillen was in the bottom 20%. Pena also finished in the top 20% in limited playing time.

Now for the pitchers:


  • Jeremy Bonderman was 16th among American League starters in FIP ERA indicating that he pitched better than his actual ERA.
  • No other starters were above average and the fifth starters (Wil Ledezma, Sean Douglass, etc.) raised their FIP significantly.
  • The Tiger relievers pitched worse than their ERAs for the most part. Fernando Rodney, Chris Spurling, Franklin German and Craig Dingman all had FIP ERAs essentially a run or more above their actual ERAs. Only Kyle Farnsworth finished with a FIP ERA in the top 30% of the league.

And the fielders:


  • The fielders contributing most to their DER were Brandon Inge and Nook Logan.
  • The fielders hurting their DER the most were Magglio Ordonez and Craig Monroe.

I guess that was not so brief but I wanted to put this all in one place. I’ll likely be referring to some of these items again when I do the team preview.

2 comments:

  1. The bottom line is, the White Sox had an INCREDIBLE record in one-run/clse games. I don't know HOW many they won in the late innings -- and their extra inning record was amazing, too.

    The Tigers, on the other hand, were awful in close games.

    THAT'S where I hope Jimmy Leyland can help.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Greg, The White Sox were 35-19 in one run games. I doubt they will repeat this year. I'm picking them to win because of their pitching but I think they'll win fewer games this year.

    ReplyDelete

Twitter

Blog Archive

Subscribe

My Sabermetrics Book

My Sabermetrics Book
One of Baseball America's top ten books of 2010

Other Sabermetrics Books

Stat Counter