Tigers' 2014 Game 128: Miguel Cabrera's Double Plays

Miguel Cabrera hit into two double plays on Saturday night, the first of which killed off a rally, and the second of which possibly cost the Tigers an additional insurance run. In this case it appears that Cabrera made the right choice but got a bad result. Those pitches were in the general area where he has enjoyed the best success. Offered in evidence, a heat map taken from BrooksBaseball.net On this I have done my own 'eyeball Mark One' plot of where the balls would have been. I also include the two plots, again taken from BrooksBaseball.net, of the two plate appearances using PitchFX to show the balls relationship to the strike zone so you can decide if my locations are about right.

Summer of Discontent

Yesterday's ugly game between the Tigers and the Twins is, one hopes, that moment when the Tigers hit rock bottom. I'm thankful that it is the Royals who have chased down the Tigers this season, because they are the only AL Central team that I don't feel some Tigers-inspired animosity towards.

When one looks at the season overall, the Tigers have not been what we would be led to believe they were since the All-Star break. The last time they put together a winning streak of more than three games was one of five games 8-12 July (which included beating the Royals a couple of times). Since the All-Star game, the Tigers have only the one three-game winning streak, the beating up of the poor Colorado Rockies at home in the beginning of August. By contrast, the Tigers have suffered three four-game losing streaks in that time, if one includes the pre-break loss on 13 July against the Royals.

After last night, it is easy to blame the bullpen for the woes, but I don't see it like that. In 34 games starting 18 July, the Tigers have scored four or fewer runs 22 times. That is two-thirds of their games. Their record in those games is 5-17. They scored 119 runs and allowed 251, for a Pythagorean winning percentage of .207 against an actual one of .227. By contrast, in the 91 games before the break, the Tigers scored four or fewer runs 50 times, or just over half of their games. Their record in those games was 16-34. They scored 171 runs in those games, and allowed 300. That's an actual .320 winning percentage against a Pythagorean .265 winning percentage.

The Tigers are still beating their Pythagorean winning percentage in these low-scoring games. The big problem is a greater proportion of their games fall into this category, which is a fault of the hitting, not the pitching. (Don't forget, this excludes yesterday's game, because the Tigers scored six.

This picture, created using Bill Petti's spray chart tool sums up a serious problem for the Tigers, one that I think needs to be addressed in constructing the lineup. It compares Miguel Cabrera's batted-ball hits and outs for 2014 (right) versus 2013 (left). Note how this season the batted balls don't seem to fly as far, and how many fall just short of the seats. This power outage is killing the Tigers. The Big Man needs to adjust his approach, and maybe needs to be protection for Victor Martinez. Something must be done, because time is running out.

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