The league’s getting faster. Not the time of game — fastball velocity. And throwing some of the fastest fastballs in a league of fast have been the Cardinals, whose 92.6 mph average as a staff was good for third overall this year. The Red Sox did fine against a Tigers team that was only .3 mph short of that average, but going into this World Series, it’s still fair to say they will see some fastballs that are over 94 mph. And it’s fair to wonder how they’ll do against that added oomph.

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The Detroit Tigers were really good in 2011, making it to the ALCS one year after finishing at just .500. Then 2012 went even better, where despite winning fewer regular season games they made it to the World Series, and 2013 was successful as well, going back to the ALCS. That’s a pretty excellent run of success, and they’re likely to be right back in the mix in 2014, since they return the majority of their core. But they still haven’t turned any of those seasons into a champion, and for a city that will next year be three decades past celebrating their last Tigers World Series winner, close isn’t good enough — and you start to wonder when this iteration runs out of chances.

That’s especially true for owner Mike Ilitch, who turned 84 this summer and has made it clear that he wants to see a winner in his hometown, for the first time since he purchased the club in 1992, while he’s still around to enjoy it. As if getting back to the ALCS (or beyond) for a fourth year in a row wasn’t going to be difficult enough, the Tigers find themselves contending with forces that make 2014 possibly their last best chance to get a championship out of this group. Read the rest of this entry »

In Game 2 of the ALCS, Max Scherzer was utterly dominating, striking out 13 of the 25 Red Sox batters he faced. Despite all the strikeouts, he managed to get through seven innings on just 108 pitches, mixing in some efficiency with his ability to avoid contact. The Tigers held a 5-1 lead when Scherzer was replaced to start the top of the 8th inning; by the time the inning was over, the game was tied, and the Red Sox won in the bottom of the 9th to tie the series at 1-1.

On Saturday night, Scherzer was again very good, but not quite as dominating as his first outing. He struck out 8 of the 27 batters he faced, but struggled with his command at times, issuing five walks in the process. His last walk was the last batter he would face in 2013, as a free pass to Xander Bogaerts put runners at 1st and 2nd with only one out, and clinging to a 2-1 lead, Jim Leyland opted to replace Scherzer with Drew Smyly to go after the left-handed hitting Jacoby Ellsbury. Ellsbury would reach on an error, and then Shane Victorino hit the grand slam, and the ALCS was over.

Twice, Max Scherzer was removed from the game with the Tigers having the lead. Twice, Tigers relievers coughed up the lead by giving up a grand slam. Had the Tigers bullpen protected those leads, they very likely would be playing St. Louis for the World Series title, but instead, they have to sit at home and wonder what could have been. And it’s easy to wonder whether Scherzer could have done better than his bullpen had he been entrusted to pitch just a little bit longer.

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Astute readers with the internet access necessary to read this article are probably aware that the Boston Red Sox will be meeting the St. Louis Cardinals in the 2013 World Series. They are also probably aware that it was Shane Victorino who played hero for Boston, delivering a game winning grand slam in the seventh inning. Before Victorino’s home run, it was a bit touch and go for the Sox.

The Tigers threatened a monster of a rally in the top of the sixth. With no outs, two runs already plated and runners on first and third, Jhonny Peralta grounded out into an…interesting…double play. Dustin Pedroia tagged Victor Martinez on his way to second before throwing home. Prince Fielder – caught in a rundown – desperately tried to make it back to third. He fell short.

Still, the Tigers did take a 2-1 lead in the inning. Between Max Scherzer and a strong bullpen, the Tigers must have felt good about their roughly 80 percent chance to win.

The Sox weaseled their way out of a second potential rally in the seventh. Austin Jackson singled with one out but was promptly picked off. Jose Iglesias followed with a hit and Torii Hunter reached base on an error. Unfortunately for the Tigers, the shell of Miguel Cabrera grounded out to end the inning. With the Tigers out of it, we’ll be left to wonder if things would have been different with a healthy Cabrera. And there’s no doubt that plenty of analysts will second guess Jim Leyland’s decision to continue to play Cabrera through injury for most of the season.

Having handled two potential rallies while keeping the game within reach, Boston’s offense got to work in the home half of the seventh. Scherzer was lifted after recording one out and allowing two base runners to reach. Drew Smyly was brought in to face Jacoby Ellsbury, but a costly error by Iglesias allowed the Sox to load the bases. With Victorino coming to the plate, Leyland brought in former Astros closer Jose Veras to limit the damage. Let’s just say that some moves work out better than others. After Victorino’s home run, the Tigers went quietly into the night.

But slightly different circumstances could have led to a very different outcome (that’s always the case in baseball, but bear with me). Prior to Game 5, Victorino made the decision to begin switch hitting again. Ostensibly, he wanted to counter Detroit’s difficult all-right-handed rotation.

Victorino has switch hit for his entire major league career, but gave up batting left-handed in early August due to injuries. Batting lefty against Anibal Sanchez, his first two at bats produced weak results – a strike out and a fielder’s choice. Victorino reverted to batting right-handed for his third at bat. Coincidentally, that resulted in a strikeout against Veras.

Since giving up batting left-handed, Victorino has had one of the most productive stretches of his career. August saw him post a .419 wOBA and seven home runs. Between August 4th and the end of the season, six of his 10 home runs came batting righty against right-handed pitching. He posted a .395 wOBA in 115 plate appearances against same-handed pitchers.

Victorino has always featured better power from the right side. His career numbers bear that out – a .204 ISO batting right-handed versus a .132 ISO batting left-handed. His power batting left-handed has been even worse over the past two seasons, although the sample size involved limits our ability to draw strong conclusions.

Given the numbers discussed thus far, it’s fair to wonder why Victorino bats left-handed at all. After all, he performed well in the regular season and provided postseason heroics without batting lefty. While it’s possible that Victorino may be better as a purely right-handed batter, it appears to be a trade off between power and plate discipline. He struck out over 21 percent of the time against same handed pitching compared with a rate around 12 percent against opposite handed pitching. His walk rate also halved against same handed pitching, falling from a little over five percent to 2.6 percent.

Over a small sample, that poor plate discipline didn’t adversely affect his numbers, but it’s quite possible that major league pitchers would find ways to further exploit Victorino by discovering where he’s weakest. Alternatively, it’s not hard to imagine that Victorino could improve those rates with practice, although it does seem a bit late in his career to work that out.

Had Victorino stuck with his plan from prior to Game 5, he would have come to the plate against Veras batting left-handed with the bases loaded. He probably would not have hit a grand slam. The Sox did have a 56 percent chance to win the game at that point and our hypothetical lefty batting Victorino may have added to those odds. But it probably would not have the 37 percent leap that his home run provided.

In a playoff atmosphere, everything gets magnified a bit. Situations are always more tense, every little thing seems to carry more weight. It seems that, if you ask enough people, almost every play could be labeled as a “game-changer” by someone. That’s because there are only so many plays to go around. Outs are finite. In the playoffs, they seem astronomically finite. So when a home run is hit, or a great defensive play is made, it seems to matter more. An approving eyebrow raise in the regular season turns into a full-on shout in the postseason. A minimal eye roll on a random Wednesday in June morphs into an audible “UGH” sound in October.

Nothing can produce an audible reaction faster than a double play. The double play seems to be the only situation where both sides react in an equal and opposite way. Home runs are one-sided. Run-scoring singles are one-sided. Double plays raise sounds out of both sides. Someone is quite happy and someone is quite upset. This is because the twin killing is seen as such a momentum changer — it’s two outs for the price of one. The idea of momentum is something some in the statistical community scoff at a bit. They scoff because they scoff at things they can’t measure, at least accurately. But I’ll come right out and say it, I believe in momentum. I believe that when I’m in a good mood, I do better work. I pay more attention, I get things done quicker, and the overall product is of higher quality. I don’t know how to measure this on a baseball field, but I believe it exists there, too. To think that everything on a baseball field is static and has no affect on anything else in the entire game seems shortsighted. Double plays take wind out of sails, so to speak. They bother people.

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Spend enough time around the Detroit Tigers and you’re certain to see Alex Avila take an absolute beating. He took a beating in Thursday’s Game 5 against the Boston Red Sox, and was removed during the game in favor of Brayan Pena. The main issue? Avila got run over at the plate by fellow catcher David Ross and wound up with a knee injury. Shortly thereafter, Avila took a foul tip right off the chin, with Ross this time standing in the batter’s box. Ross, of course, didn’t intend to knock Avila out. Surely, catchers are more sympathetic when they inflict pain on other catchers. But talk to the Tigers and they’ll tell you this is a pattern. They’ll tell you Avila get knocked around more than any catcher they’ve seen.

For example:

After struggling through a season of more foul tips than coaches and teammates have seen any other catcher endure, Detroit Tigers starter Alex Avila is out of commission with delayed concussion symptoms.

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Once the second inning rolled around Wednesday, Game 4 of the ALCS felt like a blowout. The Tigers put together a five-run inning, then shortly thereafter they added two more, and though the Red Sox did what they could to chip away, the Tigers at no point felt threatened as they coasted to a series-evening victory. But there is one interesting quirk: while the Tigers wound up winning by four, between their hits and walks and hit batters they racked up 17 offensive bases. Between the Red Sox’s hits and walks they racked up 17 offensive bases, too. In a sense, Wednesday’s was a game about sequencing, with the Tigers putting more bases together.

Which isn’t to suggest it was all a matter of luck, because of course it wasn’t. It was the sequencing in the second inning that did the Red Sox in, as six Tigers reached base and five Tigers scored. Jake Peavy walked three of 17 batters in his start, but they all came in the span of four batters, following a single. The first run the Tigers scored was on a bases-loaded walk by Austin Jackson, and Jackson walked on four pitches. All of the rest of the damage followed. What happened between Peavy and Jackson got me wondering about some things.

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Speaking literally, Miguel Cabrera is still the same guy. He still responds to the same name, he still has the same identification. He still drives the same car, or cars. He’s still got the same family, he still eats the same breakfast, he still has the same genetic makeup, and while he might have an extra new scrape or three, scrapes are experience and experience is wisdom. Cabrera’s even basically himself in the ballpark. He’s got the same inside jokes, he’s got the same uniform and locker, he’s got the same glove and he’s got the same stance. If someone were to point at Miguel Cabrera, and ask you “is that Miguel Cabrera?” there would be only one reasonable answer, and that answer would be “yes, yes of course, this is a very dumb question.”

But it’s plain as day Miguel Cabrera is not still the same player. Which isn’t to suggest he’s in the throes of decline — he’s in the throes of short-term physical agony. Come next season, Cabrera should resemble himself, but right now, he’s playing hurt, meaning he’s playing less effectively, and people know. It’s kind of been talked about. Never was this more apparent than Tuesday, when, in a big spot in a one-run game, the best hitter in baseball was made to look helpless by a good Red Sox reliever Red Sox fans still don’t trust. With runners on the corners and one out, Junichi Tazawa blew Cabrera away with outside heat, and the Tigers felt just about finished. It was a dark moment for Cabrera, and it was a moment in which he also tried something different.

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The Cardinals felt like they were in a good position, handing the ball for Game 3 to Adam Wainwright. The Cardinals lost, not because of Wainwright, but because they couldn’t score. The Tigers felt like they were in a good position, handing the ball for Game 3 to Justin Verlander. The Tigers lost, not because of Verlander, but because they couldn’t score. Verlander, on Tuesday, turned in one of the better postseason starts all-time, I’d say. Over eight innings he struck out ten and was made to pay for one mistake. But John Lackey and the Red Sox bullpen kept the Tigers shut out, with Koji Uehara slamming the door. And Uehara’s outing was not without its moment of interest.

It was bad for the Tigers when Miguel Cabrera struck out with two on in the eighth. It was bad for the Tigers when Prince Fielder struck out right after. But according to the play log, the worst play all game for the Tigers was Jhonny Peralta‘s ninth-inning double play. After Victor Martinez‘s leadoff single, the Tigers’ win expectancy was an estimated 35%. After the double play, it dropped to 5%. Hope was torn down as quickly as it was built up, and Alex Avila’s closing at-bat felt like a formality. The game effectively ended on Peralta’s grounder, and that grounder came on a pitch that followed a 1-and-1 fastball.

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When constructing his current roster, Dave Dombrowski (and Mike Ilitch) chose to prioritize offensive production, and were willing to sacrifice defense in several positions in order to get more thump into the line-up. Miguel Cabrera, despite being hobbled with injuries that leave him unable to run, is playing third base. He moved to third to accommodate Prince Fielder, who told the Tigers he didn’t want to DH when he signed a $214 million contract to play first base for them. And the Tigers weren’t overly interested in creating a long term logjam at the DH position, since they were already paying Victor Martinez a lot of money to serve as their DH once he returned from injury. The plan was always to fit these three guys into the same line-up, and in 2013, that’s what the Tigers have done.

In some ways, it’s not that hard to say that the plan worked. The Tigers won the AL Central again, and they’re now three wins away from reaching their second consecutive World Series. They finished second in the majors in runs scored, so the decision to give up defense in search of more offense was successful, at least in terms of maximizing run scoring.

But trade-offs work both ways, and while the Tigers reap the benefits of playing three designated hitters on offense, they also suffer the consequences of punting defense at the infield corners. For instance, I present the 9th inning of last night’s game.

After watching their bullpen blow a four run lead, Rick Porcello was trying to keep the game tied and push it into extra innings. Rick Porcello is a ground ball pitcher, and he started the inning facing Jonny Gomes. He got Gomes to hit a ground ball, but then, it all went really wrong.

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