This is the fourth post in a series where I look at each of the positions where the Tigers are getting less than league average production on the offensive side of things. After evaluating who’s responsible for the position not pulling its weight, I look to the minors to see if help is on the way in the short and long term. The previous posts have been the introduction and looks at catchers and second basemen.

Now I’m basing the series on less than league average production at the plate but that doesn’t mean players can’t earn their keep with the glove. Adam Everett, for example, would have been out of the league a long time ago if he hadn’t been an elite shortstop over the course of his career. I’m not saying he’s a good enough shortstop to make up for the fact that he’s hitting .197/.217/.258. He has been so good that teams have been willing to put up with him hitting for a career line of .243/.295/.349. So how good has he been this season? Dewan’s Defensive Runs Saved (DRS) metric says he’s saved three runs above the average shortstop and Ultimate Zone Rating (UZR) has him at 2.1 runs saved. That’s good for the pitchers, but it doesn’t even come close to making up for being the worst hitting shortstop in the league among those with more than 50 plate appearances.

Now we can’t just say that he’s always been a light hitter and this is what we should expect. It’s true he’s always swung a balsa bat as he has 40 career homers in about five season’s worth of plate appearances, a career high ISO of just .117. But if he’s unable to pull himself out of his current offensive tailspin this would be far and away the worst season of his major league career. What’s been the problem?

His batted ball distribution jumps out at me, for sure. Only 11.3 percent of them have been line drives and a stunning 60.4 percent of them have been fly balls. That would usually lead you to believe a guy has a long upper cut swing made for trying for the fences. That’s not Everett, though, as he has yet to hit a homer and one out of five of those fly balls doesn’t clear the infield. Those numbers are way out of line with his career averages - 18.7 LD%, 42.1 FB% and 16.9 IFFB% - and in a bad way. One way Everett used to help himself out is laying down the occasional bunt and legging out a single, but he’s yet to get on with a bunt single this season.

It’s just been a terrible season for him at the plate. He’s swinging at pitches out of the strike zone too much, so that even though he’s a good contact hitter, he’s making contact on pitcher’s pitches. That’s probably a big part of why he’s only had four doubles and a BABIP of .241 when his career average is .275. The good news with Everett is he's likely to get better than he's been. The problem arises when you realize he's probably only going to hit as well as he has in the past when he does.

Moving on from Everett, something that might surprise some people about the Tigers at shortstop is Ramon Santiago has actually played more innings there than Everett. As of May 25 (before the game), Everett had played 187 innings there and Santiago had logged 201. There is some disagreement between the metrics as to who’s been the more effective defender. Dewan’s metric prefers Santiago, putting him at 5 DRS. UZR puts him at just 0.7 runs better than average. We’re talking about a miniscule sample, though, and the difference is going to pale in comparison to the difference between their run production.

Santiago, after all, is hitting .260/.366/.313 on the season for a level of production that is just a hair shy of league average. Most of the jump has come from the fact that he’s drawn 14 walks in just 113 plate appearances. This is a pretty shocking development for a player whose career walk rate is 6.8 percent. We saw a glimpse of this kind of patience in 2008, when he walked more than he struck out, but it’s a welcome improvement from 2009. It would just be nice if he could mix in a little bit of the power he found back in 2008 when he had 12 extra base hits in 156 plate appearances and an ISO of .177. This season, there’s been just three extra base hits.

One reason for the dip could be the fact that he’s hitting a lot of ground balls. Over his career, just under half of his balls in play were grounders and this season it’s sitting at 54.5. That’s one thing eating up his power and like Everett, infield flies are another. The ground ball swing has limited him to 20 fly balls on the season and four of those fell harmlessly in an infielder’s glove. That’s already more than halfway to his 2009 total. Shortcomings aside, Santiago has been far and away the more valuable player this season. It’s put the Tigers in the tough spot of trying to let Everett break a slump while they also work to limit the damage it does to the team’s offense.

That completes a pretty thorough look at the Tigers’ two shortstops in 2010, but what if Everett keeps up a pace that no team can be willing to accept even from a half-time starter? What are their immediate options if Everett wears through their patience? Right now, it’s easy to look to Danny Worth. I talked a bit about him in the post about second basemen. As easy as it is to look at him as an option right now, it’s just as easy to overvalue his current big league numbers. A bit of luck has found him hitting .412 in his brief time in the majors, but .412 is also his on-base percentage and slugging percentage. If you think he’s going to continue hitting .412, I’d like to invite you into my fantasy baseball league.

While the Tigers like the improvements he made after an awful 2009 season, he was still hitting just .274/.310/.356 in Toledo when he was called up. That would be acceptable if he could play plus defense as a shortstop and translate those numbers to the majors. That’s generally not how it works, though, when players jump from Triple A to the bigs. I’m really not even sure about the plus defense. After all, the Tigers have allowed him to be pushed off shortstop for both Brent Dlugach and Cale Iorg the last two years. If he were a slick enough fielder to make up for his bat, I’m not sure that would have happened.

That serves as a nice lead-in, however, to the next players to consider. That would be Brent Dlugach in Toledo and Cale Iorg in Erie. Both are reputed to be very solid defenders as both have received endorsements from Tiger personnel as being big league shortstops on defense right now. The problem is neither is hitting a lick at the moment and have struggled long enough to allow for doubt as to whether they ever will. Dlugach hit .294/.349/.446 in Toledo last year, but required a high BABIP to do it and struck out 137 times against just 39 walks. This year, he’d kill for any of those numbers as he’s now hitting just .261/.307/.367 and has already struck out 62 times (and walked just 9) in 192 plate appearances. That’s an absurd amount and that combined with his nine errors this season are probably why Worth was called up when they wanted an infielder with a good glove.

Cale Iorg is kind of like Dlugach without the good 2009 numbers. His 2009 season was a major disappointment (.222/.274/.336 with 149 strikeouts) and things have only been worse in 2010. He’s hitting .195/.241/.295 and his 53 strikeouts put him on pace to beat last year’s total. That’s particularly disappointing when you consider he’s repeating the level. The positive difference between Iorg and Dlugach is Iorg has a level of talent that could allow for a jaw-dropping breakthrough if he ever figured out plate discipline and/or pitch recognition. That’s why he was given that big bonus and it’s why Dave Dombrowski said he was going to be an All Star. Unfortunately, every time he flashes something resembling promise it gets extinguished by a prolonged, ugly slump.

During the most recent offseason, you could say Iorg was replaced as the organization’s shortstop of the future. Before the 2009 season, Dombrowski had stated that Iorg was going to be a star and sooner than you think. After the disappointing 2009, Dombrowski said Gustavo Nunez was a player Dombrowski brought up when asked about exciting prospects in the system. After having heard a similar pronouncement the year before, many Tiger fans were understandably skeptical.

Yes, Nunez had just hit .315 in the pitcher’s paradise of the Midwest League, stealing 45 bases and showing some serious leather as the team’s shortstop. There were holes in the game, though. He only drew 25 walks to go with that flashy batting average and it took him 70 attempts to get those stolen bases. There wasn’t a lot of power, either, as only 31 of his 146 hits went for extra bases. His game was all about his speed and he seemed to need to refine how he put even that to use.

These were certainly red flags coming into 2010, but it was also pretty easy to see how he could grow into a likable prospect. The Florida State League hasn’t been kind to him. He’s hitting .223/.271/.279 with more than five times as many strikeouts (36) as walks (7). He’s been caught stealing five of the 15 times he’s run and he’s still struggling to find the gaps (8 XBH), much less clear the fences. He’s supposed to be a wiz on the field, but we’ll never get to see it if he keeps hitting like this. Beware the shortstop of the future.

Coming into the season, I wondered if Hernan Perez might have been the better choice for that now dubious title. He was just 18 last year and the Tigers decided to challenge him with assignments in West Michigan and Lakeland. He didn’t exactly run with the chance at the plate, but I viewed the assignments as confidence in his abilities. That confidence seemed to be affirmed by his assignment this year as the West Michigan Whitecaps’ starting shortstop. That’s a tough gig for a 19-year old and Perez seems to be finding out just how tough.

He’s hitting .259/.280/.304 with five walks and 35 strikeouts. He has only five extra base hits in 165 plate appearances and he’s made ten errors at this early stage of the season. You can’t write a kid this young at this level off because of bad numbers, but I feel pretty safe in saying the Tigers probably hoped for a little more than these early returns.

Can we turn to last year’s draft picks? Their 20th round pick, Jimmy Gulliver, struggled mightily in Oneonta and their fourth round pick, Eddie Gomez, sounds like an unlikely bet to stay at shortstop. The highest profile shortstop from the draft was Daniel Fields and he’s already moved to center field. At this point, we may have to hope for growth from some of the newly signed Latino players.

Conclusion

At catcher and second base, the Tigers at least had Alex Avila and Scott Sizemore, who are decent bets to make the system’s teaspoon deep talent at their positions seem less dire. At shortstop, there just doesn’t seem to be anybody we can latch such hopes onto. Everett is almost certainly gone after the season, if he makes it that long. Santiago is already 30 and the Tigers’ thoughts on his optimal role seem clear.

Boring down into the system, it’s looking like the best they can hope for from their current crop is a player like Everett who serves a purpose but is deeply, perhaps prohibitively, flawed. We may have found the Tigers’ number one priority when they’re using the money from all those expiring contracts to build their 2011 squad.

*Note: Some of the numbers given are going to be from before the games on May 25 and some are from after. I don’t think the lack of absolute accuracy is relevant to the discussion, though, so I’m letting it go.

This is the third post in a series where we will look at the positions where the Tigers are performing at less than the league average. The first post was the introduction and the second one looked at the catching situation. Today, we’ll be looking at second base. My scouts tell me we’re good at first for a little while.

The Tigers’ second base situation has taken an interesting and peculiar turn this season. After the Tigers let Placido Polanco go because they trusted Scott Sizemore to handle the keystone corner, he didn’t exactly run with it. They knew he wouldn’t replace Polanco in the field, but he had a number of miscues defensively. His normally average range was likely limited further by his Arizona Fall League ankle injury. The Tigers expected to need patience with his defense and probably could have found it had he hit like they expected.

However, after thirty games played, he was hitting just .206/.297/.289. He was striking out a good deal more than he ever had in the minors, and while that alone could have been compensated by his impressive walk rate (11.3%), he simply wasn’t hitting. Too many of his fly balls didn’t leave the infield. Too many of his hits just weren’t falling despite nearly a quarter of the balls he put in play (23.9%) being line drives. When they did fall, too many of them were singles. On the bases, he didn’t have on attempted steal.

In other words, a player who was supposed to get by because he did everything pretty well wasn’t really doing anything well. He got the dreaded assessment that he was pressing. Now he’s being allowed to work on things down in Toledo.

The unfortunate thing is his path back to the majors won’t exactly be easy. The Tigers want to make sure they can insert Carlos Guillen’s bat back in the lineup once he’s returned from the disabled list. With Damon, Jackson and Ordonez all manning their outfield spots capably and Brennan Boesch peppering the outfield walls while serving as a fourth outfielder and designated hitter, the Tigers decided to get creative. They’re going to put him back in the infield where he wants to be, but at second base.

Putting aside my disappointment on behalf of Sizemore, I think it’s actually a pretty crafty move. He’s probably not going to provide defense much better than what they saw from Sizemore, but if he hits like he had been before pulling his hamstring (.311/.391/.443) he’ll still be a net asset at the position. One of the things I find most intriguing about the move is what looks like the Tigers deciding they can’t baby his health. It’s like they decided his aches, pains and pulls are going to find him and they may as well plug him in where they need him most. Where they need him most is in the batter’s box and they’re surprising us by the lengths they will go to get him there.

Of course, some people would be perfectly happy if neither Sizemore nor Guillen were manning second base every day. Some people wonder why Ramon Santiago will seemingly never be given a chance to win an everyday job at second base or shortstop. To be honest, I have no idea how to determine whether the Tigers are correct that his production would suffer in that role. The last time he filled an everyday role in the majors was 2003 and he’s clearly a better hitter than he was back then. What I can tell you, however, is in 1539 career plate appearances he’s hit .245/.316/.336 and he’s 30 years old. That speaks louder to me than the fact that he’s occasionally hit for power, occasionally shown a good approach at the plate and shown himself to be a solid infielder.

He’s never shown himself to be a good hitter at any level and the best you could reasonably expect from him would likely only be something you could live with. I can’t say I blame the Tigers for continuing their search. Now, if we were talking about shortstop I’d take this a little further but we can compare him to Adam Everett in the next installment of this series.

Other challengers for the second base job are Ryan Raburn and Danny Worth. I don’t think anybody who’s watched Raburn on the infield views him as anything more than a suitable sub for a game or two. His bat is an asset, though, and that’s why the Tigers get him starts wherever it’s somewhat bearable. Danny Worth has the opposite problem. He has a slick glove and has put it on display in his short time with the Tigers. Don’t be fooled by the fact that he’s hitting over .400 in his brief audition. They’ve all been singles and he’s yet to draw a walk. If given more time, his numbers would almost certainly droop back down closer to his career minor league numbers - .249/.314/.346. I view him as the likely roster casualty when Guillen is activated.

Once he’s back in Toledo, he’ll probably go back to shifting around the infield as the Hens make sure they get at bats for him, Sizemore, Brent Dlugach and Will Rhymes. Dlugach and Rhymes are too more players who could conceivably be explored as possibilities for second base duties either this year or in the future. I think either would be seriously stretched in a starting role, though. Rhymes’ production is too dependent on maintaining a good batting average. While he does a good job of controlling the strike zone, it comes more from being a good contact hitter than taking free passes.

Dlugach would probably have to give plus defense at shortstop in order to overcome his weaknesses at the plate. That’s a severe susceptibility to striking out. This year has been as bad as any for him, as he’s struck out in a third of his plate appearances and it’s led to a line of .260/.303/.367. In his career, he’s struck out 553 times in just over 2000 plate appearances. He’s hit well enough in the past, though, to where it’s easy to see him in a utility role.

Moving further down in the organization, I don’t think Justin Henry will ever hit enough to get a serious look. I’d be curious to hear what the Tigers’ thoughts were on Alden Carrithers and Brandon Douglas, though. Both are old for the levels where they’ve played, but both have shown they can hit. Carrithers is hitting .368/.466/.412 in Lakeland, but he’s 25 years old, hasn’t hit a home run since 2008 and is using a BABIP of .417 to carry that average. A major league career seems like a longshot to me,  but I’d still like to hear the Tigers’ thoughts on his future. Douglas is a similar case to Carrithers, as he’s 24, hasn’t played above West Michigan and looks to have comparable skills. He just needs to get on the field, though. He’s yet to play an inning in 2010 and he can’t really afford to miss long chunks of playing time to injury. When he is healthy, I’ll look forward to seeing how the Tigers handle the second base jobs in Lakeland and Erie.

Further down, it’s much more difficult to project potential second basemen. If anybody lower in the system is a future second baseman at the big league level, they’re probably just as likely to be playing shortstop right now. Call me lazy if you like, but I’m not running down every middle infielder in the system who’s yet to take a grounder in the full season leagues. I will, however, point out Alexander Nunez as a player to watch at the position. He was the starting second baseman for the GCL Tigers last year at 19 and put up some numbers that could catch your eye.

Conclusion

The Tigers have a ton of options at the high levels of the system, but I remain unwavering in my belief that the best option for a starting second baseman in the short term is Sizemore. Guillen will hit when he’s healthy, but we’ve come to expect that status to last for only about two months at a time - when we’re lucky. If and when he goes down or injuries to other players open a spot elsewhere, I think the other options besides Sizemore just give them warm bodies. Where Sizemore should eventually give them adequate defense and potential for a plus bat, the other options require a lot of squinting, rationalizing and hoping they outplay their past.

In the long term, you can’t really say Douglas or Carrithers are longer term options than Sizemore. They’re all about the same age, after all. Therefore they really only come into play if Sizemore doesn’t pan out and they prove they can hit at the higher levels. Beyond those two, you have to look for young players like Nunez or guys currently at shortstop who might be available in three to five years. This may not seem like a rosy assessment of the position, but don’t lose faith in Sizemore too quickly. I think he’ll still prove to be a player the Tigers will be happy to have around.

Toledo Mud Hens

Overall Record: 24-19
Week of 5/16 - 5/22: 5-1

5/16: Indianapolis, Won, 6-5, WP: Robbie Weinhardt
5/17: Indianapolis, Won, 3-0, WP: Enrique Gonzalez
5/18: Durham, Won, 5-3, WP: Lauren Gagnier
5/19: Durham, Won, 5-2, WP: Ryan Ketchner, SV: Casey Fien
5/20: Durham, Won, 4-0, WP: Max Scherzer
5/21: Durham, Cancelled due to rain
5/22: @Syracuse, Lost, 2-3, LP: Scot Drucker

The Tigers have made enough to moves lately to warrant an update, especially since some of them would be considered pretty important. Since we last did a transaction post, if we go chronologically the first move was Clete Thomas being moved to the disabled list on Monday. He still hasn’t been able to shake his knee problem and went to Colorado to have an MRI. When I think of how quickly Clete has become something of an afterthought with all the Tigers’ new young outfielders, I can’t help but wonder if this could be a pivotal year for him. Not all pivotal years are good, either. Let’s hope his struggles at the plate so far this season can be addressed by taking care of his knee.

This is the second post in a series where I will look at the positions where the Tigers are struggling with offensive production. By look at the position, I mean look at the players who are struggling in the majors as well as possible short and long term answers in the minor leagues.

Ask any Tiger fan about the catching position right now and you are pretty likely to get responses that include a groan, an eye roll or maybe some muttering about it being an "automatic out". Probably all three if Laird or Avila just finished another hitless night. Gerald Laird and Alex Avila are both languishing beneath the Mendoza line and after Laird's struggles last year, it's pretty safe to say Tiger fans are tired of getting so little production out of the position.

Struggles at the position are not a new development, either. The Tigers' catchers the last few years have included an aging, free-swinging, malcontent Pudge Rodriguez, a reluctant Brandon Inge, the barely there Matt Treanor and brief stints from minor leaguers like Dane Sardinha and Dusty Ryan. In fact, the scarcity of talent at the position has caused certain Tiger minor league bloggers to get up-in-arms over the release of players like Ryan and James Skelton. Both of whom were viewed skeptically by the Tiger front office and have gone elsewhere to show Dombrowski and company probably knew what they were talking about.

This season is a little more frustrating for a couple reasons, though. First, it was hoped that Gerald Laird would be bouncing back from an off year in 2009 that saw him bat just .225/.306/.320 while logging 135 games and 1090 innings behind the plate. Many Tiger fans, including myself, hoped that having the promising young Alex Avila on the roster would convince the Tigers to play Laird less and allow his bat to catch its breath. Well, he is playing far less than he did last year but he's hitting even worse to this point.

His line of .157/.250/.247 is, frankly, unacceptable. The Tigers can’t have a player starting sixty percent of their games hitting like a pitcher. Last season, his abysmal offensive numbers were mostly compensated by the fact that he was one of the best defensive catchers in the American League, throwing out 42% of attempted basestealers. This season, his ability to cut down runners seems to be bouncing back after a slow start (currently thrown out 8 of 25 runners) but it will never make up for the numbers shown above.

There’s good news and bad news with those numbers. The good is his BABIP of .194 is unlikely to stay that low. His career rate is .288 and last year it was .258. The bad news is even if hits were falling in at his career average, he’d only be hitting marginally better than last year. One of the problems Laird is facing is the fact that he’s missing more pitches (80.8% contact v. 84.6% in 2009) despite swinging less (40.4% of pitches v. 45.6% in 2009). This is particularly troublesome considering he’s swinging at more pitches out of the zone and less inside it. That sounds like somebody who’s a bit lost at the plate, and if that’s the case I’m dubious as to whether BABIP normalizing is going to save him.

The Tigers faced this problem to an extent last year and fans hoped the solution might be Alex Avila. He put up some promising numbers in a short stint in the majors and was awarded the backup job coming out of spring training. There was some question as to what his assignment would be because some thought he should play a starter’s innings in Toledo, while others believed the Tigers needed his left-handed bat to compensate for Laird’s light hitting.

I don’t think anybody anticipated what he’s done in Detroit. We’re ecstatic about the fact that he’s cut down 6 of 14 (42.9%) of opponents running on him. It’s just a bit baffling that he’s only hitting .156/.270/.297. Part of his problem is similar to Laird’s. He’s only getting a BABIP of .190 despite a batted ball breakdown that isn’t too far from average. His batted ball distribution is actually similar to Laird’s in terms of line drive, grounder, fly ball, but where 15 percent of Laird’s fly balls are infield popups Avila has yet to hit one. The other part of Laird’s problem, however, is his strikeouts. He has 20 in 74 plate appearances and it’s sapping the value from his 12.2% walk rate. It looks like the Ks are owed mostly to what he does with pitches out of the strike zone. He chases them at about the league average rate, but only makes contact 52.4% of the time, compared with the league average of 65.4%. He does okay with pitches in the zone, swinging more often than average but with precisely average contact rates. Maybe I'm being optimistic, but that seems like a problem that could be dealt with through maturation and work.

As I mentioned before, this level of production from these two is unacceptable. It’ll be interesting to see how patient the Tigers are with it. They could wait around for the law of averages to bail them out a bit or they could look outside the organization to try to fix the problem. The Rockies don’t seem too anxious to play Chris Iannetta, for example, as he’s in Colorado Springs for some reason. But there are a lot of teams looking for catchers and not a lot of catchers to capably fill those spots. That means anybody the Tigers got would either be flawed in his own way or very costly to get. Probably both.

But wait a second. Isn’t the purpose of this series to look at what the Tigers have within the system? I was afraid somebody would point that out. Let’s just begin by revisiting the three catchers I had listed as the Tigers’ top prospects at the position. They were Avila, Jordan Newton and John Murrian. Newton was cut coming out of spring training and Murrian went down with a knee injury after starting the season in Lakeland hitting .170/.204/.277. Suffice it to say, neither of those two will be the cavalry we want charging in anytime soon.

So who’s left in Toledo and Erie? I wonder if the Tigers’ brass changes the subject when that question is raised.

“Mr. Dombrowski, who can you call up if Avila or Laird are unable to shake this slump?”

“You know what I heard today? They might film part of Transformers 3 in Michigan!”

Seriously, though, there’s not much in the way of help at the higher levels of the farm. The Mud Hens opened the season with Robinzon Diaz and Mike Rabelo. Diaz is hitting .213/.245/.255 in Toledo with a Randall Simonesque three walks in 99 plate appearances. Rabelo went down with knee problems, but was hitting just .143/.167/.286 before he did. Who’s replaced Rabelo in Toledo? Max St. Pierre. St. Pierre had been hitting pretty well in Erie, but the 30-year old is now 3 for 18 as he splits time with Diaz.

Since he’s the one they pulled up from Erie, you can probably guess there aren’t easy solutions down there either. The SeaWolves’ catching duties are falling to Jeff Kunkel and Andy Bouchie. Bouchie was in the independent Golden Baseball League in 2009 and Kunkel is a defensive specialist who’s 27 with a career line of .225/.281/.300. He’s hitting .236/.338/.382 this season, but he’s not a really a viable answer to the question we’re asking.

Now you know why I discussed trades for a short term solution at the catching position. What about long term solutions further down in the system?

“Transformers 3! In Michigan! Isn’t that cool?”

Frankly, Avila likely stands as the only catcher in the system with much of a big league future. There are a couple guys who I will be keeping a close eye on this season, but I’ve never seen any of their other current catching prospects on a top prospect list and Tigstown’s list goes 50 players deep. Just to be thorough, though, let’s take a look at who else is in the system.

In Lakeland, you have Angel Flores and Julio Rodriguez. Flores is certainly an organizational solider, filling in where needed since signing as a non-drafted free agent out of Puerto Rico in 2004. Rodriguez joined the team at the beginning of the month when Murrian went down. He was the starter for the GCL squad last year, but I’ve never heard his name come up as an up-and-comer.

In West Michigan, there’s Billy Alvino and Eric Roof. Alvino was a non-drafted free agent signing last season and Roof was taken in the 18th round of the draft and is hitting .198/.310/.244 as the Caps’ primary catcher. You may like that on-base percentage, but all the walks seem to come with a lot of strikeouts (30 in about 100 PA).

The rest of the system's catching depth is comprised of young Latino catchers (and one Australian) who are either in the DSL, the VSL or extended spring training. I’ve heard very little, if anything, about most of them but if I had to pick one to watch, I’d go back to the guy I mentioned when I was looking at the top catching prospects during the offseason - Gabriel Purroy. He had a good season in the VSL last year, his first as a pro, and is now conspicuously absent from that team’s roster. That leads me to believe he's been brought to the states at 18. Combine those facts with his being signed near the International signing day in 2008, and he at least has the profile of a prospect. He’ll probably need to fill out to be taken seriously as a catching prospect, though. He’s listed at 5’9” and 160 pounds. Please don’t put us through the small catcher arguments again, Gabe. Perhaps you could work out a deal with a Five Guys in Florida.

Conclusion

I regret having to paint such a grim picture of the catching situation, but there it is and if you don’t believe in Avila it’s pretty grim. Fortunately, I have some faith in the young catcher out of the University of Alabama and hope he’ll allow the Tigers to focus on a relatively unimportant backup catcher this offseason. I know crossing your fingers and hoping your current guys get better may not seem like a fantastic strategy, but I think it’s a sound one for now and I’m not sure what other choices the Tigers have. Anybody know if Chris Iannetta's on Twitter? I could start letting him know how great a baseball town Detroit is.

It's always good to know your team's strengths and weaknesses. I watch the Tigers as much as I can and have a pretty good idea in my head of who I think is good at what. When I see the Tigers' lineups or defensive assignments, I either applaud or groan with confidence. However, I'm not one to check the team's stats every day. I try to trust what I believe to be guys' true talent rather than how they've done in the recent past. I think I usually have a decent feel for who's hot and who's not, but our minds can play tricks on us. It sometimes doesn't process all we've seen very well, and this can lead to some surprises when I finally do sit down to look at the numbers.

Curtis Granderson was always a pretty good example of this for me. I never made any bones about saying how much I liked Granderson as a player, but there would be stretches where I'd watch him and it seemed like strikeouts were piling up or there were just a few too many grounders to second. Out of curiosity, I'd look up his recent performance and find out he was in the middle of a 3 for 32 slump or something. "Good lord, I didn't realize he had been that bad!" It goes the other way, too. There will be a player who's getting playing time against my wishes and he'll drop a soft line drive into left and right about the time I'm thinking he seems to be piling up the hits, the TV will flash that he's hitting .450 over the past couple weeks. "I see you, Johnny Grubb!*"

*This is a joke of layers. First, it's an imitation of Rod Allen's common call when a player is hot and does something great. Second, it's an homage to the former Tiger who - at least in my mind - seemed to get on remarkable hot streaks for a couple weeks at a time. This aside itself is an homage to my favorite sportswriter, Joe Posnanski, who will do what he calls Pozterisks. These are parenthetical threads within a thread that are sometimes several hundred words themselves. If you don't already read Posnanski, you can thank me later for introducing him to you. He's a prodigious and fantastic writer.

Well, today I sat down to try to balance the ledger in terms of my mental assessment of players and where they stood according to the numbers, focusing on the position players. After I finished doing that (wow, Inge has been terrible since hitting three homers on April 26-28 - .172/.222/.250) I was curious as to where everybody stood compared to league average. To figure this out, I took the league average numbers at each position from Baseball Prospectus's stats page. Then I went over to Fangraphs and looked at the production the Tigers were getting at each position. There were fewer surprises here, but let's look at what we have so far:

Catcher, Lg Avg: .250/.324/.388    Tigers: .164/.263/.281

First Base, Lg Avg: .251/.346/.440   Tigers: .340/.428/.603

Second Base, Lg Avg: .253/.327/.377   Tigers: .213/.316/.305

Third Base, Lg Avg: .259/.317/.413 Tigers: .219/.277/.388

Shortstop, Lg Avg: .254/.314/.353 Tigers: .234/.293/.291

Left Field, Lg Avg: .264/.331/.421 Tigers: .318/.390/.497

Center Field, Lg Avg: .264/.329/.410  Tigers: .331/.387/.438

Right Field, Lg Avg: .282/.363/.442 Tigers: .303/.375/.455

Designated Hitter, Lg Avg: .243/.322/.404 Tigers: .273/.357/.435

Most of the surprises for me looking at this chart were in the league average numbers. I was surprised how close the center fielders have come to left fielders in terms of production. I was surprised catchers are hitting better than second basemen (thank you, Joe Mauer and Chone Figgins). I think I was most surprised, however, at how terrible designated hitters have been. We saw over the offseason that teams weren't putting a whole lot of value on the DH types. I'd have to take a closer look to see if the DH numbers vindicate their assessment of those players or suggest teams should put a little more effort in filling that spot on the team.

Getting back to the Tigers, I am going to use this comparison as a means of tying the Tigers' performance to this point back to the minor leagues and this site's usual focus. What does the farm have to offer at the positions where the Tigers are lacking in production? Those are obviously catcher, second base, third base and shortstop. At each position, I'll look at who's responsible for the lagging numbers, whether they're making up for it on defense and what the farm might have to offer in terms of short term and long term solutions.

When you like the Tigers as much as I do, enough to write a blog about them for the fifth year, people find out. People find out and they commonly go with the easy conversation topic when they see you. “How ‘bout them Tigers?” That’s fine by me. What’s funny to me, though, is that while they will ask me what I think about this player or that move, they are generally just looking for me to agree with what they think.

I don’t always agree, and I can sometimes cite a study I read or a statistic I remember to back up my opinion. Honestly, it rarely matters. There is a person at my work who never wavered - and will never waver - from his belief that Inge needs to cut down his swing, that Sean Casey was a good clutch hitter and that Leyland needs to yank the starters faster when they get in trouble. I gave my opinions, my thoughts on the various situations and sometimes my refutations of these or similar ideas. Still, that player’s name would come up and every time out came that idea.

As you know, these ideas can turn into common knowledge over time. Baseball is almost built on these kinds of ideas. Hell, didn’t Bill James make a career out of tearing this stuff down? Most of the time they are harmless enough. People believe them and trying to swim upstream against the flow generally requires revealing your inner baseball nerd.

You have to be choose your spots wisely when you’re going to do that. I mean, you have to warn the person. Then you have to ask them if they’re sure they want to hear the real reason for whatever you’re about to lie down before them. It’s actually not a bad idea to get them to sign a waiver stating that they are not allowed to disown you or decrease the level of your relationship as a response to the diatribe you are about to unleash. Even after all this, I don’t recommend pulling the curtain all the way back.

Toledo Mud Hens
Overall Record: 19-18
Week of 5/9 - 5/15: 3-4

5/9: @Norfolk, Lost, 1-4, LP: Ryan Ketchner
5/10: @Durham, Won, 6-2 , WP: Phil Dumatrait
5/11: @Durham, Won, 5-4, WP: Armando Galarraga, SV: Jay Sborz
5/12: @Durham, Lost, 2-5, LP: Enrique Gonzalez
5/13: @Durham, Lost, 1-6, LP: L.J. Gagnier
5/14: Indianapolis, Lost, 1-8, LP: Ryan Ketchner
5/15: Indianapolis, Won, 7-3, WP: Phil Dumatrait

Runs scored: 23
Runs allowed: 32

The Hens suffered from a feast for famine offense that left the team hungry more often than satisfied. The good news for the Hens is in the short term, they seem likely to get a lot of offense from their visitors from Detroit, Scott Sizemore and Ryan Raburn. That should prove a big help because while the pitchers lead the league in ERA, the hitters are lagging behind.

Of course, if their pitching is going to keep that pace they may need better efforts from their starters. The group went just 38.2 innings in their seven starts and allowed a combined 4.89 ERA. They were helped out quite a bit by a solid bullpen, though. That group threw 21.1 innings and gave up just seven runs, walking six and striking out 18. It’s interesting that despite that strong performance from the pen, the group didn’t have any decisions.

The Tigers announced a few shockers after their stirring win on Saturday. Max Scherzer and Scott Sizemore are headed for Toledo, while Armando Galarraga and Danny Worth will pass them on I-75 as they make the trip up to Detroit. Perhaps the most surprising development, though, is the announcement that Carlos Guillen will (eventually) return from the disabled list to be the Tigers’ second baseman.

I know that seems like a lot to comment on, but I don’t really have a lot to say about the moves. Scherzer and Sizemore have been pretty bad the last couple weeks. Scherzer’s velocity is down and he seems to have struggled with both his command and control in these recent outings where he’s been drubbed. Sizemore is in a pretty bad slump, including an 0 for 14 stretch that led to Leyland pinch-hitting for him with Ramon Santiago. Hopefully, the lower stress situation of Toledo and the International League will allow both players to figure things out what’s been ailing them.

If those two are able to get right, I don’t expect their temporary replacements to make the necessary roster moves all that difficult. Galarraga started the season out well, but has been hittable recently, giving up 21 hits and 9 walks in his last 17 innings (spanning three starts). For now, the Tigers should just hope he gives them six innings on Sunday so they can rest a bullpen that’s been taxed again the last couple days.

Recent roster moves at the major league level necessitated some moves down on the farm. The activity isn’t limited, however, to just filling in for Alfredo Figaro. Mike Rabelo hurt his knee and his immediate replacement was Angel Flores. He’s a bit over his head at the Triple A level, however, so the Tigers seem to have opted for somebody who will be a little more comfortable in Toledo, Max St. Pierre. Flores won’t just be going down to Erie, either. Andy Bouchie is being called up from Lakeland to fill the SeaWolves’ other catching spot and Flores will head back down to Lakeland.

In the linked article, Mark Anderson opines the shifting may indicate Rabelo will be out for a while. With the Hens going with Flores and then shifting this way, it seems like it will be longer than they originally expected. I’d usually be a bit dismissive of what looks like the shifting around of minor league backups, but St. Pierre has been hitting well for the SeaWolves. Considering the production the Hens had been getting from Robinzon Diaz and Mike Rabelo (i.e. awful), he could easily give them the best production from behind the plate they’ve had all season.