Read the methodology behind the ratings here. Remember that the grading scale is 20-80, with 50 representing league average.

2012 Organizational Rankings

#30 – Baltimore
#29 – Houston
#28 – Oakland
#27 – Pittsburgh
#26 – San Diego
#25 – Minnesota
#24 – Chicago AL
#23 – Seattle
#22 – Kansas City
#21 – Cleveland
#20 – New York Mets
#19 – Los Angeles Dodgers
#18 – Colorado
#17 — Miami
#16 — Diamondbacks
#15 — Cincinnati
#14 — Cubs
#13 — Milwaukee
#12 — San Francisco
#11 — Washington
#10 — Tampa Bay
#9 – Toronto
#8 – Atlanta

Detroit’s 2011 Ranking: 16th

2012 Outlook: 63 (T-4th)

“Custom-fitted, custom-kitted wood grain / Custom everything, what’s that on the seat? / Custom mustard stain” — Detroit-based Rapper Eminem, “Ballin’ Uncontrollably”

It must be nice to be rolling in the dough. Pizza magnate Mike Illitch finances an operation that can see one expensive star go down and yet have the resources to go and get the most expensive free agent on the market.

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The Orioles are reportedly looking to trade “third baseman” Mark Reynolds and reliever Kevin Gregg. You think so, doctor? It would be strange if the team really waited until this late to start shopping these two veterans, who are rather pointless on a team that is at the beginning of what looks to be a long rebuilding process. To be fair, while the rumor is just coming out now, they may have been shopping these guys for a while. Gregg is a pretty generic reliever (other than having that oh-so-valuable “closer experience”), but Reynolds is an interesting case. His problems making contact with both the bat and glove make him a flawed player, but his monstrous power makes him playable in the right situation. But are there any teams on which that situation exists?

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The first four spots of the Tigers’ rotation is pretty well set with Justin Verlander, Doug Fister, Max Scherzer, and Rick Porcello, but the club is holding what amounts to a competition for the fifth spot this spring. Right-hander Jacob Turner — the team’s top prospect and the 18th best prospect in baseball according to our own Marc Hulet — was in the running for the job until the team shut him down with shoulder tendinitis today. George Sipple of The Detroit Free Press has the news…

“Jacob had difficulty getting loose in his game,” (head trainer Kevin) Rand said. “He didn’t feel like he was able to finish pitches. More the second (inning) than the first, but he didn’t feel comfortable from the beginning.

“We’ve shut him down. He’s been examined. We’ve put him on some medication. He’s not going to pick up a baseball this week. We’re going to try and get his range of motion back. See what it takes. He’s got some tendinitis in his shoulder.”

Manager Jim Leyland acknowledged that the injury hurts Turner’s chances of making the club, which is obvious. The 20-year-old has allowed six runs on six hits and six walks in just four innings so far this month, striking out only a pair. He made three generally ineffective starts for Detroit last season (8.53 ERA and 6.03 FIP in 12.2 IP) and had seen his name surface in trade rumors this winter.

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(Special thanks to Tom Tango for working through the conceptual and analytical issues on this article with me)

After seven outstanding seasons as one of the National League’s premier hitters, Prince Fielder signed a nine-year $214 million deal to play first base for the Detroit Tigers. During his years in Milwaukee, Fielder averaged a .391 wOBA, 32 home runs (.0546 HR/PA) and posted a .257 ISO. Certainly, no one could argue about his productivity. But with a change to a new team —and more importantly, a new park — there are questions about whether Fielder’s offense will be impacted.

If Park Factors are to be believed, he should be in for a decline. By just about any model, Detroit is roughly even offensively overall, but a much tougher hitting environment for left-handed hitters than Milwaukee. That means we should expect Fielder’s offensive performance to decline more than basic aging and regression would predict. Since the Park Factor change only impacts half of a player’s games each year, the theoretical ratio between change in factors and change in performance is 2:1. Essentially, we’d expect a wOBA to decrease by 1.5% and home runs to decrease by 15%. There are a number of different Park Factor formulas, but the general pattern looks similar regardless of the factors you look at.

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With disabled list information available going back 10 years, I have decided to examine some league wide and team trends.

League Trends

To begin with, here are the league values for trips, days and average days lost to the DL over the past 10 years.

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It is a simple question.

What is sabermetrics?

Not the history of it, but what is it, right now? What is, in our nerdiest of lingoes, its derivative? Where is it pointing? What does it do?

Last Tuesday I created no little stir when I listed the 2012 saber teams, delineating them according to their perceived embrace of modern sabermetrics.

Today, I recognize I needed to take a step back and first define sabermetrics, because it became obvious quickly I did not have the same definition at heart as some of the readers and protesters who gathered outside my apartment.

I believe, and this is my belief — as researcher and a linguist — that sabermetrics is not statistics. The term itself has come to — or needs to — describe more than just on-base percentage, weighted runs created plus, fielding independent pitching, and wins above replacement.

Sabermetrics is the advanced study of baseball, not the burying of one’s head in numbers.
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Silly monkey, BRAINS ARE FOR ZOMBIES.

Casey Kotchman is in many ways a man without a home — a player equal parts under-appreciated and over-valued, who irks both old and new schools at the same time. Old school analysts say his defense is amazing, but they cannot quantify it, and in 2011, they claimed his cleared vision meant he finally learned how to aim the ball “where they ain’t,” but he’s still a .268 hitter with little power. The new school says he’s worth about 7.6 runs per season defensively, but worth ~1.1 WAR per 600 PAs — not good — and his BABIP was high 2011, so he should not be able to repeat his success.

Despite his inability to build a consistent following of fans in the baseball outsiders communities, Kotchman seems to have some insider communities very much interested in him, as Tom Tango points out:

Kotchman’s last four teams: Redsox, Mariners, Rays, Indians. Can we say that a team that signs Kotchman is saber-leaning?

Indeed, after spending five and a half seasons on the Angels’ and Braves’ rosters, Kotchman has begun to shuffle around with the Nerdz, most recently signing with the Cleveland Indians. It makes sense too — Kotchman’s lack of power keeps him cheap, and his strong defense keeps him amorphous for the old school teams, while the new schools might have different valuations on Kotchman, they can at least quantify his contributions and better know how he fits.

Then, on Monday, the Houston Astros signed Justin Ruggiano, long-time Tampa Bay Rays outfielder who was never good enough to stick on the Rays’ roster, but who possesses strong defensive chops and above average patience. His lack of power and ~.290 batting average, however, must make him a mystery — or at least an undesirable asset — to the old school teams.

Upon Ruggiano signing with the Astros, a once highly old school team, my reaction was all: “Welp, that’s one more team to compete with” — and then it occurred to me! No only have the Astros entered the realm of, so to speak, saber-minded organizations, but so have the long-backward Chicago Cubs.

Suddenly the league looks very different.

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This morning I was scrolling through some of Dan Szymborski’s projections over at Baseball Think Factory, and I noticed that he had run a projection for Matt Stairs. I had not heard any news about the guy we all know now as a pinch-hitter. As I scoured the internets (read: typed “Matt Stairs” into Google) I quickly realized that Stairs had retired, though since he will be a studio analyst for NESN this year, all is not lost. Still, it will be disappointing to not see him on the field any longer.

Few pinch hitters struck fear in my heart the way Matt Stairs did. When Stairs came to the plate against a team for which I was rooting, I always sure that something bad was about to happen. Even still, I couldn’t hate him. A portly slugger with a great sense of humor — I will always remember Will Carroll forwarding the Baseball Prospectus email group an email from Stairs with a picture of his flexed calf muscle and promptly doubling over in laughter — Stairs was exceedingly easy to root for, and in the latter, pinch-hitting days of his career he became somewhat of a nerdy folk hero.

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Episode 132
The Detroit Tigers now have Miguel Cabrera, Prince Fielder, and Delmon Young, and yet still claim to lack a DH. In this episode of FanGraphs Audio, managing editor Dave Cameron explains how that’s possible. Also discussed: Roy Oswalt’s Final Destination, a pair of cheap pitchers, finding the next Michael Pineda.

Don’t hesitate to direct pod-related correspondence to @cistulli on Twitter.

You can subscribe to the podcast via iTunes or other feeder things.

Audio after the jump. (Approximately 32 min. play time.)

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Despite graduating a few gems over the years, the Detroit Tigers organization is not known for focusing resource on developing in-house talent. The organization drafts rather conservatively (outside the couple of rounds, at least) and mostly uses its prospects as trade bait. With that said, this year’s Top 15 list has three players on the top of the list that could develop into above-average contributors in Detroit… if they’re not traded first.

1. Jacob Turner, RHP
BORN: May 21, 1991
EXPERIENCE: 2 seasons
ACQUIRED: 2009 1st round (9th overall), Missouri HS
2010-11 TOP 10 RANKING: 1st

Turner’s name came up a lot this past off-season as team’s understandably coveted the right-hander in trade talks with Detroit. Standing 6’5” he has an impressive pitcher’s frame and should be durable as a big league starter once he fills out a bit more and gets stronger. He commands his fastball well, which can touch 94-95, and works down in the zone with it. His curveball and changeup both have the chance to develop into plus pitches, giving Turner the ceiling of a No. 2 starter. The right-hander may very well open 2012 in Detroit’s big league rotation after pitching much of ’11 in double-A and receiving three late-season starts in the Majors. Often likened to current Tigers pitcher Rick Porcello because they were both fast-moving, high draft picks, they’re really not that similar.

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