Winning Percentage.

Only the Royals, Twins, and Mariners have a worse record.

With that in mind the Tigers can not beat those teams.

The current AL Central Division standings are in alphetical order .. Chicago, Cleveland, Detroit, Kansas City, Minnesota.

So the solution is to move the club to Alpena!

Obviously there is an error in this complex stat you provide. There must be - -

Although the juggernaut has not performed as expected offensively they are:

3rd in that highly regarded OBP stat
4th in the less regarded Ave stat
6th in the important runs scored stat and
7th in that most important OPS stat

This is supported by being 8th (not so hot , but beats 11th) in ERA.

Now could the standings position that you allude to have something to do with the differential between runs scored against and earned runs scored against - a category in which we are in 1st place. Have to point out that this differential doesn't even include things like balls that we did not get to, runners not thrown out etc.. Categories in which we are clearly champs.

It all kind of ties in with Mr James's assessment that we are , by quite a margin, the worst team in the league at allowing "bogus" runs.

D I T T O on your last point!

The Tigers do lead the league in Unearned Runs Allowed, but the next two teams in that category, with just a few less than the Tigers, are the Rangers and the Rays. Of course, they may not let as many weak ground balls roll into the outfield for "hits," and they may catch a routine fly ball now and then.

Thanks for the stats mog.

I don't think anyone would disagree that the two most important stats on any baseball team are Runs scored (RS) and runs scored against (RSA). Teams typically enjoy good times when RS are higher than RSA.

Detroit has scored 356 runs while 367 runs have been scored against them.

Minnesota's pitching staff is the worse in the AL with 420 RSA. They are also second in the league in HR's given up with 104.

Tigers could have been 1 game over .500 by now, instead they are back to 3 games under. A huge missed opportunity for the Tigers. Now they have to win these next 2 games against Minnesota just to get back to where they were before The Twins came to town.

<weakly> go tigers!

This year Alpena has turned into Zeeland

I know that folks don't think that "it's early" is appropriate anymore - but from what I've seen over the years, almost anytime before mid- August is "early".

I still like our chances. Avila looks healthy, Jhonny looks a little better at the plate and even Boesch has shown signs of life.

If we get Dirks back and figure out what happened to Fister we should be OK. Rick and Max, who have not been favorites of mine, have pitched well the last month, and the bullpen has been very good.

The Sox addition of Youk could help them, even though he has had a tough season up until now. They scare me a little, but I still like our chances.

That's assuming the Dirks they get back is the one from April, and not the one from last season.

Agreed - if you are talking about the 2nd half, he was a real bust.

I don't think that all of the anticipation for Victor is merited either - if he comes back in mid-September, by the time he gets oriented we may be on vacation.

You're cracking me up Dave, but I agree. Dirks has been good for only 2 months. There's no guarantee he won't play like last year. I'm hopeful he returns and picks right up where he left off.

I'm just trying to have a realistic outlook on things. Dirks may have been having a career year this year, before getting hurt. His OPS is almost .200 higher than last season. It's possible he figured it all out in winter ball, but that's a huge increase year to year.

I hope he will, but I don't think it's all that likely.

but, but, but defense doesn't matter.

Our defense has been so bad that it has even silenced some of the folks who say it makes little difference (not all of them , I would note).

One thing that is not "arguable" is that the real key is the run differential, i.e., runs for and against. Over the season Mr P's theorem is almost always on target, in terms of W/L. The "for and against" is surely highly dependent on pitching, also, so defensive performance is difficult to address separately.

The problem for managers of a team like the Tigers seems to be trying to measure the trade off that occurs between the offense and defense offered by various players, that is, how they would affect the differential on the bottom line. Some can hit but not field, some the other way around , some can do neither.

Overall it has turned out that Miggy and Prince in the end , are a plus -although they would be more of a plus if Miggy played 1st and Prince DHed. Jackson is surely a plus, Jhonny and Avila about neutral, while Berry still seems to be a bit of a plus despite his fielding problems - a plus that could deteriorate over time. Thing is his speed has given them much better run scoring.

The rest of the group: Boesch , can't field - up until now hasn't hit, Raburn, can't field -can't hit, Kelly, can field -can't hit, Ramon fielding OK but deteriorating, hitting below average, Laird, good defense, hitting above expectations.

No matter who we put out there we are pretty bad defensively. With some combinations we are just plain awful.

Defense can make a big difference. It just usually doesn't, and especially not in relation to offense and pitching. The Tigers this year are a relatively rare example of a defense so horrendous that it is having a big negative impact on the team's record.

Even so, if the offense and pitching were anything like we expected, they could overcome the terrible D. Because they haven't been, the Tigers are a wall-to-wall mess.

I still expect the patient to have a full recovery in terms of W/L .

If we can figure out what the problem is with Fister, I think we can stumble through.

"I still expect the patient to have a full recovery"

<chuckle>

a fair assessment old timer. and i do not disagree that some players you bite the defensive bullet on because of their offensive contributions.

the tigers though went stupid. they neglected the defense completely in favor of an all offense team. naturally everyone not named cabrera goes into a slump from time to time.

soooooo, was the first half the real tiger team or is there another tiger team that is waiting to pounce? at this point i think that what you see is what you get.