The Tigers bullpen has been a running punchline for a while now, and if you were to identify a flaw on their team — besides corner infield defense, anyway — you’d point out their shaky ninth inning options when being asked to hold a lead. Bruce Rondon showed he wasn’t ready for the gig, then Jose Valverde tried and failed once more, so now it’s Joaquin Benoit’s chance to hold down the closer role.

However, the modern singular focus on the closer as representative of a team’s bullpen strength can be misleading, and Detroit is a prime example of why the guy getting the save doesn’t have to be your best relief pitcher. The Tigers might not have a closer, but in Drew Smyly, they have something even better: an old school relief ace.

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In his Major League debut for the Mets, 23-year-old Zack Wheeler struck out seven hitters in his six innings of work. Of those seven strikeouts, six came on fastballs — and of those six, four came on whiffs induced by fastballs.

This got me wondering, what pitchers this year have generated the largest percentage of their strikeouts off of their fastball? And how many generated those strike outs on swings and misses on fastballs*?

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Last year I reintroduced VOL, a custom metric that attempts to measure the relative volatility of a hitter’s day to day performance. It is far from a perfect metric, but at the moment it’s what we have.

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Part of this is the easy part. The Tigers are good and the Astros are bad, and that much you knew. That much you’ve known for weeks, or months, or years I guess depending on things. The Tigers lost on Wednesday, but they lost because of Jose Valverde and James Shields, and they still have a comfortable lead in the American League Central. I’m writing this before there’s a Wednesday Astros result, but by the time you read this they probably will have lost, because they’re bad. Maybe I’m going to come away looking like an idiot, but win or lose, they’ll be in the AL West basement. The Astros were supposed to be terrible, and they’re ahead only of the Marlins, who’ve recently received a healthy new Giancarlo Stanton.

Now, the Tigers don’t have the best record in baseball. That belongs to the Cardinals, and the Tigers are a good distance behind. They’re also behind a bunch of other teams, and tied with the Orioles. Meanwhile, while the Astros have been dreadful, they do have a better record than those Marlins, and they’re theoretically within striking distance of the Cubs. Neither of these teams looks to be extreme. But by one important metric, the Tigers are on pace to be one of the best teams in a very long time. And the Astros are threatening to be one of the worst.

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Table of Contents
Here’s the table of contents for today’s edition of the Daily Notes.

1. Featured Game: Detroit at Baltimore, 13:35pm ET
2. Today’s MLB.TV Free Game
3. Today’s Complete Schedule

Featured Game: Detroit at Baltimore, 13:35pm ET
Regarding This Game, Who’s Starting It for Detroit
Starting this game for Detroit, in terms of a pitcher, is right-hander Rick Porcello.

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Thursday night, the Tigers got yet another great pitching performance from their starting rotation, as Doug Fister struck out 12 over seven shutout innings. But a couple of hours after he came out of the game the Tigers walked off extra-inning losers, and it was basically all manager Jim Leyland’s fault.

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The Detroit Tigers starters currently have a 2.54 FIP, which translates into a FIP- of 62, easily the best in baseball. In fact, it’s easily the best FIP- in baseball history, and as I wrote a month ago, Detroit’s starters have a chance to write themselves into the history books with their 2013 performance. But, instead of just writing a post updating their pace — they’d basically need to post a FIP- of 83 the rest of the way to break the record for best FIP relative to league average — I thought it might be interesting to look at how the best rotations in baseball history dominated.

For instance, the narrative around the Tigers current rotation mostly has to do with their strikeouts. They are on pace to shatter the all time record for strikeouts by a rotation, and the swing-and-miss stuff possessed by guys like Justin Verlander and Max Scherzer makes it easy to credit the strikeout rate as the primary driver of their success. However, once you compare the individual components to the league average, their strikeout rate becomes just a part of the story, and maybe not even the biggest part.

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Sometimes it’s the things you don’t write that make you look smarter. A few weeks ago, I nearly wrote something celebrating Michael Saunders‘ improved plate discipline. I wasn’t quite feeling it, though, so I went and did something else, and then Saunders embarked on a miserable slump. That’s not the first time something like that has happened. Additionally, there were a few times I wanted to re-visit the Rick Porcello narrative, pointing out that his spring-training strikeouts didn’t lead to regular-season strikeouts. I never wrote anything to that effect, and now Porcello is striking guys out. Again, I look smarter by not looking like an idiot. Over the last 30 days, Porcello’s posted baseball’s third-lowest xFIP. Here’s a selection of strikeout rates over the same span:

• Stephen Strasburg, 27.0%
• Matt Harvey, 26.6%
• Shelby Miller, 26.2%
• Rick Porcello, 26.0%
• Tim Lincecum, 23.9%
• James Shields, 23.7%
• Clayton Kershaw, 20.4%

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­Coming off the first batting Triple Crown in 45 years, Miguel Cabrera ­is making a bid to  be the first hitter to do so in consecutive seasons.  He currently leads the American League in batting average (.391), RBI (55) and is one home run off the pace at 14.  In a recent piece here at FanGraphs, Jeff Sullivan commented on Cabrera’s impressive all fields hitting and ability to cover the full strike zone with power.  I have put together some imagery to highlight this ability and show a bit of why Cabrera is such a threat.

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Sunday night, the Rangers hosted the Tigers in a matchup between two of the American League’s better teams. You’d think the big story would be that the Rangers rallied from a deficit to beat the Tigers 11-8. But then, it’s May, and the Rangers are going to win a lot, and the Tigers are going to lose a lot (albeit, presumably, a smaller lot than the first lot). Sure seems to me the big story is that Miguel Cabrera clubbed three dingers. That sort of game for Cabrera shouldn’t come as a surprise, but it’s a bigger surprise than the Rangers beating the Tigers. Cabrera’s individual effort has people re-analyzing his game, in the exact same way everyone did last November.

And Cabrera didn’t just club three ordinary dingers. According to the ESPN Home Run Tracker, there were 22 homers on Sunday. The longest was hit by Miguel Cabrera. The second-longest was hit by Miguel Cabrera. The third-longest was hit by Miguel Cabrera. The fourth-longest wasn’t hit by Miguel Cabrera, but now you’re being greedy. All of the homers were similar, and all of the homers were significantly different.

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