Every year, each division seems to have a trendy pick. A few offseason additions can suddenly make last year's 88 win-team this year's World Series favorite. In 2005, the Mets added Carlos Beltran and Pedro Martinez and seemed to have positioned themselves as a team to beat. They ended up with 83 wins, good for 3rd in the NL East.
In 2006, there was a buzz around the Red Sox in the AL East following the additions of Josh Beckett and Mike Lowell from the Florida firesale. While Lowell produced, Beckett responded with an ERA+ of 95 and the Sox finished 3rd in the AL East, well shy of the playoffs.
Just last year, the Brewers stormed out of the gate looking like the NL's answer to the previous year's Tigers, who shocked a lot of people by winning their division and making a deep playoff run. Milwaukee ended up an 83 win team, 2 games behind the Cubs.
The point being, lots of teams look great on paper in March and wind up on the couch in October. Is there a team that fits this bill for 2008? I humbly submit that the Detroit Tigers just might.
Let's recap the Tigers' offseason. First, they traded Jair Jurrjens to Atlanta for Edgar Renteria, allowing them to shift Carlos Guillen to 1B, making them offensively and defensively better at both positions. Two weeks later, they acquired Jacque Jones from the Cubs for Omar Infante. Jones effectively replaced Marcus Thames in left field, giving Detroit an outfield of Jones, Curtis Granderson, and Magglio Ordonez.
Next came the biggest transaction of the offseason, the one that firmly cemented the Tigers as the Central's team to beat in 2008 - they acquired Miguel Cabrera and Dontrelle Willis from the Marlins for prospects Andrew Miller, Cameron Maybin, Mike Rabelo, Dallas Trahern, Eulogio De La Cruz and Burke Badenhop. Unofficially, their 2008 lineup should look something like this:
CF Curtis Granderson
2B Placido Polanco
RF Magglio Ordonez
DH Gary Sheffield
3B Miguel Cabrera
1B Carlos Guillen
SS Edgar Renteria
C Ivan Rodriguez
LF Jacque Jones
Fiddle with the lineup any way you like (and I might like to, because the middle of that lineup is awfully right-handed) and you still have a team that looks like it has a decent shot at scoring 1000 runs. Now their projected 2008 rotation:
RHP Justin Verlander
LHP Kenny Rogers
RHP Jeremy Bonderman
LHP Dontrelle Willis
LHP Nate Robertson
Looking superficially at the improvements the Tigers have made to their team, it's perfectly reasonable to assume that they'll catapult over the Indians as Central favorites, and failing that, still have a great shot at claiming the Wild Card from the Yankees.
Not so fast.
Something wasn't sitting right with me about the 2008 Tigers. Certainly they appeared to have the makings of a formidable offense and a reasonably deep rotation, especially if you think like I do that Verlander and Bonderman haven't yet reached the apex of their abilities. But I wasn't at all excited about Dontrelle Willis moving to the American League after 2 consecutive down years, not sold on Kenny Rogers or Bonderman's ability to stay healthy or effective, and not a big Nate Robertson fan. I wasn't convinced that the breakout season Granderson had in 2007 was entirely for real, not confident in Ordonez's ability to repeat his MVP-caliber year, pretty sure Renteria would regress to the mean, and positive that Gary Sheffield would injure himself at some point.
Most of my concerns were echoed by Bill James' projections in his 2008 handbook, then confirmed by the folks at Baseball Prospectus in their new annual.
The BP tome has a bunch of great little statistical tables thrown in as an appendix this season. One that caught my eye off the bat was entitled "VORP (Value Over Replacement Player) Decrease from 2007", which compares a player's 2007 VORP with their PECOTA (BP's awesome projection system) projected 2008 VORP. There are 15 players listed and 3 of them are Detroit Tigers. First on the list is Magglio Ordonez, projected to fall from a VORP of 87.8 to 31.1. Last year, Ordonez hit .363/.434/.595 - PECOTA is pegging him this year at .306/.376/.485. This is obviously a line that 98% of all MLB players would love to hit; however it has to be noted that he could lose 50 points of average, 60 points of OBP. and 110 points of SLG. This would not put him in the running for an MVP award in 2008.
Number 3 on BP's list is Curtis Granderson, projected to fall from a VORP of 67.3 to 26.2. They see a precipitous drop-off from his 2007 line of .302/.361/.552 to a 2008 line of .267/.339/.467. That's a nose-dive. It makes Granderson's OBP below-average for a leadoff hitter and cuts his SLG by nearly 100 points. It turns him from a fringe MVP candidate to a good complementary hitter. Part of Granderson's problem is his total inability to touch left-handed pitching; he hit .160/.225/.269 against lefties and in his career has struck out 30% of the time when facing them. Seeing that line, it's amazing to think he managed to hit .302, and it'd be foolish to think he'd be able to do so again without seriously altering his approach against lefties. At 27 he definitely isn't too old to change his ways, but 2 1/2 seasons have showed him to be an atrocious hitter against southpaws and last season he even regressed against them, having a career 202/.265/.366 against lefties.
Tied for 12th on the VORP loss list is new SS Edgar Renteria. BP thinks he'll shed 29.4 points of VORP, dropping from 47.5 to 18.1. Last season, Renteria hit an improbable .332/.390/.470. This year, he's projected by BP to hit .279/.343/.393. The former line from a SS is another fringe MVP candidate; the latter line is acceptable, above-average, but far from spectacular. It's conventional wisdom that Renteria's glove is a vast improvement over Guillen's, but in reality he's projected to be -4 Fielding Runs Above Average in 2008 while Guillen is projected to be -3 FRAA as a SS.
Not included in this table is 2B Placido Polanco, but his projected VORP loss of 26.7 should be noted as well, as it narrowly misses making the cut. Ditto Gary Sheffield, whose days as an impact hitter seem to be coming to a close. In his age 39 season, he's pegged at .274/.374/.462 and BP has him down for only 414 total plate appearances, probably due to his age and increased risk of injury. The above line would actually be welcome from Sheffield; it's how many at-bats he does it in that makes the difference, because his replacement is likely to be well below average. Detroit's system lacks an impact bat that's big-league ready and their bench doesn't provide anyone capable of replicating that kind of production.
Without going into more detail than anyone cares to read and having the wonderful people at Baseball Prospectus sue me for giving away too many of their secrets for free, I'll conclude with this: every member of the Detroit starting 9 is predicted to lose VORP off their 2007 scores, with Jacque Jones the worst of the bunch, managing a meager .9 score. This doesn't mean their offense will be bad - what it means is that it won't be as good as everyone thinks it will be, which is 1000 runs good. It's a lineup with a lot of potential for greatness, but also a lot of potential for regression and injury. So let's not crown them the second coming of the '27 Yankees just yet.
We haven't even gotten to their pitching. Briefly, we'll run through their rotation again, with their projected ERA, VORP, and VORP gain/loss:
Verlander - 3.93 / 34.7 / -11.2
Rogers - 4.66 / 7.4 / +1.8
Bonderman - 3.83 / 30.5 / +20.4
LHP Dontrelle Willis - 4.55 / /+19.3 / 18.6
LHP Nate Robertson - 4.42 / +20.3 / .7
So that's a positive, right? Four of the five are projected to gain VORP, and even Verlander's PECOTA stats seem a bit on the pessimistic side for me. I think he's a potential ace, whether he gets there this year or next. But a few things do stand out. Number one, the Tigers nominal 5th starter, Nate Robertson, could have a higher VORP rating and better ERA than Dontrelle Willis, for whom the Tigers just mortgaged their long-term future. Baseball Prospectus thinks that Willis has room for improvement, even in switching leagues, because the defense in Florida was so awful - and while I do agree, he'll still have the same bad third baseman he had last year and his defensive gains have to be mitigated by the fact that he's in a beast of a division and he's moving from a pitcher's park to a neutral park.
Number two, Kenny Rogers being relied upon in any capacity is a dicey proposition. While I respect most of what Rogers has accomplished in his career with fringe-average stuff, he'll be 43 and spent the vast majority of last year on the DL. When he wasn't on the DL, he was bad. Will any of this change? Does Rogers really have an upside at this point? What value does a league average innings eater have when he's no longer league average or able to eat any innings? With Andrew Miller off to Florida and Jair Jurrjens off to Atlanta, the Tigers don't have many in-house starting pitching options to turn to should anybody suffer an injury. This means they'll go back to relying on the Jason Grillis and Chad (or was it JD?) Durbins of the world, and we saw how well that worked out for Detroit last year.
Speaking of Andrew Miller, what does it say when the 23 year-old left-handed starting pitcher you traded has nearly as good a shot at being league average as 3 of your 5 starting pitchers, only with more upside? Miller was handled lousily by Detroit anyway, so he's probably better off with another team, but are the Tigers better off without him? For as much positive press as the superdeal with the Marlins got, you have to wonder whether the Tigers might have been better off stashing Miller in AAA waiting for the next Kenny Rogers injury, sticking Jair Jurrjens in their rotation, and signing a 3rd baseman or sticking with Brandon Inge. This is without considering the upside of Cameron Maybin or any of the other prospects the Marlins got.
Also, Todd Jones is still the closer. I don't think I need to go any further here.
All this said, am I being pessimistic? Absolutely. I think Verlander and Bonderman could take big leaps forward and become a dominant 1-2. I think Miguel Cabrera could be a monster in a good lineup. But I also see a team with some players clearly on the downside of their career that could either miss time or be ineffective. I see some ridiculous expectations being placed upon players who haven't won anything yet. And I see a great team in Cleveland that was a win away from the World Series, as well as improving teams in Kansas City and Chicago. Those teams won't be giving away W's to their division rivals anymore. The Tigers have as good a shot as anyone at winning 95 games and the World Series. But as every lazy writer in America will tell you, teams don't win games on paper. So here's another one: teams don't win games on paper. Don't crown the Tigers just yet.
Sunday, March 9, 2008
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