Stranding Inherited Runners 2014: Highlighting Tigers

Matt Snyder at CBS' Eye on Baseball (the Home for All Baseball Fans, as I think Dayn Perry puts it) has once again generated a list using Baseball Reference's Play Index of relievers performance in 2014 at stranding runners on base. Because the Tigers' relief corps has been a matter of some controversy this season, I thought I'd highlight their performance. These are drawn from a list of 110 relievers who over the season added up to having at least twenty-five runners on base when they came into the game.

Player        IRS%     Rank
Hardy         27.6      62
Alburquerque  27.7      63
Coke          36.5      92
Krol          42.1     103

The Tigers' relievers were not particularly good at keeping runners from scoring. None of them are in the top half of the ranking, let alone in an elite zone like the top third or quarter. This isn't really a surprise to those who followed the games. We can surmise from this that Brad Ausmus' main options in a jam during the season were Phil Coke and Al Alburquerque, although Blaine Hardy seems to have taken over from Coke after he arrived to stay.

It does raise the question of why Ausmus changed his bullpen set-up in the playoffs, though. Alburquerque had the second-best percentage by not very much. But, then again, the 2013 table shows he was a much riskier proposition the year before, with a IRS% of 35%.

Even more astonishingly, that 2013 performance was still good enough for second-best on the team. (Phil Coke's 33.3% was the best.) The Tigers may have come in for a lot of criticism for their bullpen this season, but last season was worse. Dombrowski's efforts to improve that sector show he achieved something.

Tigers 2014 Games 76, 77, 78: non satis cursus

The Tigers deserved to lose the Sunday game, as Drew Smyly had terrible outing, but the previous games featured pitching performances that, while not dominant, were theoretically good enough to win when given average run support. Now, in the 2014 American League, that means four or five runs. Rather logically enough, the Tigers split the games. In Max Scherzer's start, the Tigers, just, scored four and won. For Justin Verlander, however, the Tigers could only score three, and lost. What's more is that there were few chances for the Tigers to add a run or two more. Their bats were shut down pretty completely by throughout the game by the Astros' Brad Peacock. The best chance came in the third inning, when both Torii Hunter and Miguel Cabrera failed with runners on first and second. Both are among the worst performers with the bat as far as LI Win Values tell us. All of this is a roundabout way of saying that the defeat was not entirely Blaine Hardy's fault.

QMAX ratings:   (4,3) for Verlander (Success Square)
                (4,2) for scherzer (Succcess Square)
                (7,5) for Smyly (Hit Hard)

Bullpen Awards: Goat's Head for Hardy

Batters' Aggregate LI Win Values: 
Suarez        0.637
Kinsler       0.506
Castellanos   0.276
Holaday       0.102
Romine        0.080
Avila        -0.004
JD Mart      -0.031
V-Mart       -0.259
Cabrera      -0.340
Jackson      -0.419
Hunter       -0.447
Rajai        -0.685