How the Tigers Can Take the Central Crown. Hint: His Name is Cliff Lee

This is the sixth and last part of the WAR-based 2010 retrospective, this time looking at why we wound up behind the Minnesota Twins and Chicago White Sox and what we need to do to retake the top spot in the division. Surprisingly, it’s quite a bit easier to nail down what we lack that the Twins and White Sox have than it is to say what advantages we have over Cleveland and KC. And it isn’t what most of you probably expect.

I’ll make one thing clear right off the bat: The Tigers’ position players weren’t a liability in 2010. The Tigers’ 22.4 offensive WAR was a bit worse than the Twins’ 25.2 but quite a bit better than the White Sox’ 18.0. What’s more, oWAR is only one part of position players’ contribution. On the defensive end the Tigers were far better than the Twins or the White Sox. Our dWAR was 1.9, well above league average, but the Twins and White Sox were an abysmal -3.2 and -3.4 respectively. If we count total WAR contributions of Tigers position players we wind up with 24.3 WAR; compared to the Twins’ 22.0 and the White Sox’ 14.6.

This should give cause for caution to those who advise throwing large sums at players like Adam Dunn and Victor Martinez. Yes, we scored fewer runs than the Twins last year – but a part of that was the conscious decision by Tigers management to give playing time to gloves where bats were scarce. If you count his defense, Ramon Santiago was better than Derek Jeter by a wide margin this year. I wouldn’t mind signing VMart, because catcher has been such a weak spot for the Tigers ever since Ivan Rodriguez‘ suspicious loss of mass – but his glove offsets a big chunk of what he adds with his bat.

If Dunn is allowed to go near a glove, his net contribution to a team is league average at best. As an example: in 2009 Dunn posted a .928 OPS, but only 0.9 total WAR (+3.9 with the bat, -3.0 with the glove) – it takes a special player to hurt his team that much on defense. Even if he could be convinced to DH full time, and he has stated that he is not interested in signing with a team that would use him that way, he would have a lot of competition on the market for that role. Good DHs are not hard to find, there is a reason no-one put much effort into pursuing Jermaine Dye.   David Ortiz’s .899 OPS and 3.3 WAR last year are probably just about Dunn’s ceiling in 2011 as an AL DH. That’s probably better than the Tigers could do with anyone else (except Jim Thome), but it’s probably no more than 1 win better than likely alternatives (Ordonez, etc…), and probably not the best use of the money.

While the Tigers’ relatively strong defense has the effect of making Tigers’ position players look a little weaker than they actually are – based on offensive metrics alone – it has the opposite effect on our perceptions of Tigers pitching.

Though the defenses behind them were the worst in the AL, the pitching staffs of the Twins and Sox were the best in the AL: good for 22.7 and 22.5 WAR respectively. Tigers pitching didn’t come close, at 8.4 total WAR. All three teams had a solid top two in their rotations, with Francisco Liriano and Carl Pavano giving the Twins 9.2 WAR, John Danks and Mark Buehrle giving the Sox 8.4 and Justin Verlander and Max Scherzer giving the Tigers 7.4. I wouldn’t want to argue that Verlander and Scherzer are, in fact, 1.8 wins worse than Liriano and Pavano – and if we’re looking towards next year I would consider it at worst a wash (assuming the Twins actually resign Pavano, which is not a given).

The back end of the rotation is another story entirely. The Twins got 3.6 WAR out of Baker, Blackburn and Slowey, and another 3.7 WAR out of swingman Brian Duensing. The Sox got 8.3 WAR out of Jake Peavy, Edwin Jackson, Gavin Floyd and Freddy Garcia. Compare that to the Tigers’ -1.2 WAR from Rick Porcello, Armando Galarraga, Jeremy Bonderman, Dontrelle Willis and Andrew Oliver and you see a big reason why we only won 81 games.

Replacing Bonderman’s -1.5 WAR with, potentially, 1.0 WAR from Phil Coke makes a difference – but we’re still far behind. Porcello was barely better than replacement level last year… can we expect 2-3 WAR out of him next year? Personally, I’d consider that optimistic. Galarraga’s 0.9 WAR was better than the rest of the lot, and most people I talk to don’t see a role for him on the 2011 squad. If Oliver takes his place… will he be ready to contribute next year (when he clearly wasn’t this year) or do we give him the ball and pray?

The bullpens are, of course, the rest of the story. While the Indians and Royals have top-heavy ‘pens with stud closers, the Twins and Sox are winning with depth. If we count Duensing as a starter, the rest of the Twins’ bullpen was worth 6 WAR, with only 2.4 of that coming from part-time closers Jon Rauch and Matt Capps. The Sox ‘pen was worth 6.3 WAR.

The Tigers, on the other hand, got 2.1 WAR from their bullpen – 1.2 of which was from Jose Valverde. 0.6 of that was Phil Coke, who we have pegged at present for the 4th or 5th slot in the rotation. After losing Fernando Rodney, Brandon Lyon, Bobby Seay and Zach Miner we expected the bullpen to be a weakness, and it was. If we’re going to win the Central in 2011, that has to change.

Bullpen forecasting is dominated by ‘regression to the mean’, so bad bullpens are rarely as bad as they look and good bullpens rarely as good. It is also true that the Tigers have a stockpile of young, live bullpen arms almost ready to contribute – so it is possible that the situation can be rectified with internal resources alone.

Still, a line-by-line analysis gives a great deal of cause for concern. Fu-Te Ni utterly imploded… will he regress back to the mean, or simply disappear? Joel Zumaya’s tendons and cartilage doomed the Tigers’ pen this year… will he be healthy next year? Can we ever expect him to pitch a full season? Jose Valverde was awful in the second half this year… can he fix whatever went wrong? Does anyone even know what went wrong? Daniel Schlereth and Brad Thomas made positive contributions despite terrible peripherals.

Thomas had 29 walks to 30 Ks and a WHIP of 1.53, if you think he can do that again and keep an ERA of 3.89 you probably blow your whole paycheck on ring-toss games. Schlereth hasn’t made any improvement in control, and no matter how many guys he strikes out won’t be able to get by with a WHIP of 1.61. Unless he does make those strides, he’s more likely to have an ERA in 2011 north of 6.00 than to repeat this year’s 2.89.

Those other ‘live arms’ we’ve been hearing about: Casey Fien, Jay Sborz, Robbie Weinhardt & Alfredo Figaro gave us a negative 1.7 WAR last year. Can we count on them making our bullpen strong in 2011? It’s one thing to talk about regression to the mean after a bad 6th season, it’s another to talk about regression to the mean after a bad rookie year.