Tiger Tales off-season plans

Tigers Tales reached its second anniversary today. I never thought I'd keep it going for this long but it has now gotten to the the point where it would be pretty hard to give it up. The regular season is a challenge as this is a sabermetric blog more than anything else and it's hard to find time to watch games and do analysis during the summer. Plus, this season was not quite as exciting as last. Thanks to all readers who kept reading my blog all season even when it when it became apparent that the Tigers were not going to make it to post-season.

I have been watching the playoffs but haven't been talking about it because bloggers who cover their teams every day can do a better job of informing people about the playoffs than I can this year. However, the off-season is my favorite time for blogging because that's when I do the bulk of my statistical analyses and that is where I feel I can contribute most to the Tigers blogosphere.

Although this is an analytical blog, it is also a Tigers blog and my audience is not necessarily the same as that of the Baseball Prospectus or The Hardball Times or any of the other hardcore sabermetric sites. I try to gear my blog towards intelligent baseball fans who are interested in statistical analysis but may not have the time or the inclination to keep up with all the latest sabermetric trends. Or even the old ones for that matter. Although I sometimes try to develop new statistics and methods, I generally leave that up to the pure sabermetric sites. Instead, my main goal is to help readers get more engaged in statistical analysis of baseball.

With that in mind, I plan do many of the same analyses as I have in past years as well as some new ones. I will also do my best to keep up with the day to day news. This will include the following:

• My usual sabermetric 101 type articles and analyses which I do in the fall in early winter. I've already started the runs created stuff.

• The annual defensive rankings.
  

• Re-visiting the base running data again this year.

• I will continue playing around with the retrosheet pitch by pitch database again this year and hopefully find something new of interest.

• An article or two on Tigers history.
  

• updates on rumors, transactions, injuries and anything else that happens to the Tigers this off-season.