A full baseball season can be broken into Nine 18-game segments. I have termed these 18-game segments as an “inning” of a season. In the past I have provided analysis of each “inning” at www.detroittigersweblog.com. For 2009, I am going to post the analysis on my own blog www.samhoff.com.

Let’s compare the first five innings of 2009:

                                                                      Starters:         Bullpen:

       W-L  RS –RA     HR-SB-AVG/OBA/SLG    W-L- IP-  ERA     W-L-S-ERA

1st:  10-8  102-84     21-12-276/349/432    7-6-103.1-4.62    3-2-4-3.96

2nd:  10-8   99-86     20- 6-265/342/436    8-5-104.0-3.63    2-3-3-5.68

3rd:   9-9   67-65     14-13-252/317/370    9-8-114.1-3.23    0-1-5-4.23

4th:  12-6   85-84     29- 8-259/335/459    6-5- 97.2-4.98    6-1-6-4.08

5th:   7-11  70-76     23- 7-234/307/403    5-7-108.1-3.90    2-4-3-3.66

 

The fifth inning was the first losing inning by the Tigers in 2009. The inning featured an anemic offense that scored only 70 runs. It ruined the first inning in 2009 that both the starting and relief pitching had sub 4.00 eras. The Tigers went 3-7 in one and two run games after going 8-2 in previous inning. Interestingly, assuming the Tigers split those type of games, they would have been 9-9 for each of the innings.

 

The Tigers were 4-8 in road games in the 5th inning. The Tigers are now 21-29 on the road and 27-13 at home. The fact that 42 of the remaining 72 games left are at home is good news in this regard. The Home/Road splits are pretty staggering, especially the offense. The Tigers hitters average 5.6 runs per game at home, but under 4.0 per game on the road. The Tigers pitchers give up less than 4.0 runs per game at home, but 4.8 per game in the road.

 

Starting Pitching: With the all-star break, Verlander and Jackson started half of the 18 games in the 5th inning. They both pitched well, but the team was only 4-5 in those starts, scoring a grand total of 12 runs in the five loses. Galarraga and French also both pitched well. Procello was rocked in two starts before the team decided to give him a 17 days of rest before his next start.

 

 

Name G IP W L S K ERA WHIP
Edwin Jackson 4 27 1/3 1 1   22 2.96 1.13
Justin Verlander 5 31 1/3 2 2   37 3.45 1.31
A Galarraga 3 19 1/3 1 1   15 2.79 1.29
Lucas French 3 16    1 0   8 2.25 1.44
Rick Porcello 2 8 1/3 0 2   3 9.72 2.40
Alfredo Figaro 1 6    0 1   5 10.50 2.00

 

 

Bullpen: The bullpen was very good with the exception of two pitchers. Zach Miner was awful in mostly mop-up duty while Joel Zumaya was put on the DL after walking 9 and giving up 10 hits in 6.2 innings. Three times he surrendered the lead late when the Tigers were ahead. At this point, I don’t think the Tigers can count on getting anything from him the rest of the year. Rodney, Ni, Lyon, Seay, and Dolsi had a 1.83 ERA and a 1.14 WHIP combined!

Name G IP W L S K ERA WHIP
Bobby Seay 8 6    1 0   6 0.00 0.83
Fu-Te Ni 8 9    0 0   9 2.00 1.00
Freddy Dolsi 5 9 1/3 1 0   2 0.96 1.18
F Rodney 7 8    0 1   7 3.38 1.25
Brandon Lyon 6 7    0 1   5 2.57 1.43
Zach Miner 6 5 2/3 0 0   4 9.53 2.29
Joel Zumaya 7 6 2/3 0 2   5 9.45 2.85
Nate Robertson 1 0    0 0   0 - INF

   

Offense: The offense continues to struggle. Are they swinging for the fences too much? In the first 36 games of the season, the offense averaged 5.58 runs per game using 1.14 HRs/game. In the last 54 games, the offense has averaged 4.11 runs per game, but increased their home runs to 1.22/game. Comparing the same period, the batting average is 20 points lower, and the on base percentage is 25 points lower. Miguel Cabrera, Marcus Thames, Gerald Laird were the only regulars with acceptable 5th inning performances. Clete Thomas and Ryan Raburn performed well in limited duty. The shortstop platoon was horrible and Magglio Ordonez would rather forget the first three and half months of 2009.

 

 

Name G AB HR RBI SB BA OBP SLG
Marcus Thames 17 62 5 11 0 .290 .371 .548
Miguel Cabrera 18 73 3 5 0 .288 .342 .452
Gerald Laird 16 53 1 6 0 .283 .339 .415
Brandon Inge 17 60 4 9 1 .217 .329 .417
Placido Polanco 17 70 3 14 0 .229 .299 .400
C Granderson 18 67 2 2 3 .224 .333 .373
Clete Thomas 6 19 2 7 0 .421 .476 .895
Ryan Raburn 14 38 1 5 0 .263 .300 .474
Josh Anderson 14 27 0 4 2 .185 .267 .296
Adam Everett 14 39 0 0 0 .205 .262 .308
Magglio Ordonez 13 43 1 4 1 .186 .239 .302
Ramon Santiago 9 24 1 2 0 .125 .154 .250
Don Kelly 8 18 0 0 0 .111 .111 .167
Dusty Ryan 3 8 0 0 0 .000 .200 .000
Alfredo Figaro 1 2 0 0 0 .000 .000 .000
Edwin Jackson 4 2 0 0 0 .000 .000 .000
Justin Verlander 5 1 0 0 0 .000 .000 .000

 

The Tigers still maintain a lead in the American League Central as they have since May 9th.  The lead has shunk to less than 2 games over Minnesota and Chicago. Performance against their own division is going to critical as over 50% of the remaining games (38) are within the Division. 14 out of 20 games against Minnesota and Chicago are at Comerica including all seven games scheduled for the last week of the season.  Will the Tigers be able to avoid the late season collapses that they have had under Leyland? Only time will tell.