Saturday, October 13, 2012

2012 ALCS Preview - Tigers vs. Yankees

It took the Yankees and Tigers the full five games for both teams to advance past the ALDS, but here they are.  The problem for both teams is that they had to use their aces in the fifth game, which means they can’t start the ALCS with Justin Verlander or CC Sabathia.

The Tigers as presently constituted are better than the 88 win team in the AL Central that they were this year, at least if you believe the projections.  Here’s how their offense projects over a seven game series using Oliver from the Hardball Times.

Order	Player	Pos	PA	avg/obp/slg	woba	Outs	BR
1	Austin Jackson	CF	31	.279/.343/.421	.335	20	3.9
2	Omar Infante	2B	31	.286/.315/.409	.314	21	3.5
3	Miguel Cabrera	3B	31	.334/.415/.604	.432	19	6.0
4	Prince Fielder	1B	31	.298/.405/.517	.400	19	5.2
5	Delmon Young	DH	31	.279/.311/.443	.324	22	3.7
6	Jhonny Peralta	SS	31	.263/.320/.413	.320	22	3.6
7	Andy Dirks	LF	31	.279/.323/.448	.333	21	3.9
8	Avisail Garcia	RF	20	.252/.279/.375	.285	15	1.8
9	Alex Avila	C	25	.260/.352/.410	.338	16	3.1
Bench	Gerald Laird	C	7	.244/.304/.360	.295	5	0.7
Bench	Ramon Santiago	IF	4	.254/.313/.351	.295	3	0.4
Bench	Danny Worth	IF	1	.239/.305/.357	.294	1	0.1
Bench	Don Kelly	UT	0	.242/.296/.376	.295	0	0.0
Bench	Quintin Berry	OF	8	.239/.312/.320	.287	5	0.8
Bench	Brennan Boesch	OF	0	.263/.317/.419	.322	0	0.0
Bench	Bryan Holaday	C	0	.223/.274/.331	.267	0	0.0
Total			282			189	36.6

wOBA: Weighted on base average
BR: Linear weights batting runs

The Tigers obviously have the two best hitters in this series in Miguel Cabrera and Prince Fielder.  The rest of the lineup is not quite as impressive.  They’ve been platooning Alex Avila and Gerald Laird at catcher and Avisail Garcia and Quintin Berry in he OF, so I’ve assumed they’ll continue doing that.  Defense was an issue for them for most of the year, but adding Omar Infante and getting Brennan Boesch out of the lineup seems to have helped them there quite a bit, and with Justin Verlander and Max Scherzer striking out everyone it’s probably not going to be a big problem in three of the games at least.

If we give them 27 outs per game they project to score an estimated 36.6 runs over 7 games.

Here’s how their pitching looks.

Player	Role	IP	H	R	ER	HR	BB	K	ERA
Doug Fister	SP1	13	13	5	5	1	3	9	3.46
Anibal Sanchez	SP2	12	12	6	5	1	4	10	4.09
Justin Verlander	SP3	14	11	5	4	1	4	14	2.89
Max Scherzer	SP4	6	6	3	3	1	2	6	4.02
Rick Porcello	SP5	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	4.56
Jose Valverde	CL	4	4	2	2	0	2	3	3.70
Joaquin Benoit	SU	4	3	1	1	0	1	5	3.10
Phil Coke	SU	2	2	1	1	0	1	2	4.03
Octavio Dotel	MR	3	3	1	1	0	1	3	3.35
Al Alburquerque	MR	2	2	1	1	0	1	2	4.43
Drew Smyly	MR	3	3	2	1	0	1	3	4.30
Darin Downs	MR	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	4.55
Luis Marte	LR	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	4.31
Brayan Villarreal	LR	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	4.72
Total		63	58	27	25	6	18	57	3.58

The Tigers have Doug Fister, Anibal Sanchez, Justin Verlander and Max Scherzer lined up to pitch the first four games.  In theory that would mean Fister, Sanchez and Verlande would pitch games 5-7, but since those games won’t be played it doesn’t matter.  The rotation is strong, with only Anibal Sanchez projecting worse than any of the starters the Orioles threw at the Yankees and he’s only .03 runs per nine worse than Jason Hammel and Wei-Yin Chen’s projections.  If the Yankees had trouble with Baltimore’s starters, they’re really going to have trouble with Detroit’s.

They’ve had some issues with their closer, who projects worse than Joaquin Benoit and Octavio Dotel so it’ll be interesting to see if Jim Leyland sticks with him if he struggles in his first appearance or two.  Our old friend Phil Coke is their main lefty out of the pen, although Drew Smyly provides depth there as well.  You can futz around with how I assigned the bullpen innings but if you don’t they project to allow 27 runs in this series.

36.6 runs scored and 25 runs allowed equals a team that would win about 63.8% of their games, or 103.3 over a 162 game season.

How does that compare to the Yankees?  Let’s see.  First, the position players.

Order	Player	Pos	PA	avg/obp/slg	woba	Outs	BR
1	Derek Jeter	SS	31	.299/.353/.405	.337	21	3.8
2	Ichiro Suzuki	LF	31	.289/.324/.385	.313	21	3.5
3	Alex Rodriguez	3B	25	.271/.348/.462	.352	17	3.5
4	Robinson Cano	2B	31	.304/.361/.530	.381	20	4.9
5	Mark Teixeira	1B	31	.256/.346/.489	.359	20	4.5
6	Nick Swisher	RF	30	.267/.357/.463	.357	20	4.2
7	Curtis Granderson	CF	30	.249/.337/.509	.360	20	4.5
8	Raul Ibanez	DH	29	.256/.319/.454	.334	20	3.7
9	Russell Martin	C	29	.232/.323/.389	.317	20	3.2
Bench	Eric Chavez	3B	8	.264/.321/.431	.327	6	1.0
Bench	Brett Gardner	OF	0	.266/.360/.391	.337	0	0.0
Bench	Eduardo Nunez	IF	3	.254/.294/.346	.283	2	0.3
Bench	Chris Stewart	C	0	.230/.289/.318	.272	0	0.0
Bench	Jayson Nix	IF	3	.216/.273/.356	.276	2	0.3
Bench	Chris Dickerson	OF	0	.252/.332/.384	.319	0	0.0
Bench	Andruw Jones	OF	0	.232/.327/.456	.340	0	0.0
Total			281			189	37.4

I’m kind of hoping that Alex Rodriguez will be back in the lineup for good but I’ve given some of his PA to Eric Chavez in case.  With Detroit’s rotation all right-handed, the Shockmaster™ should be mostly full-time.  We may see Nun-E and Nixy a few times so I threw them a few PA as well.  With these assumptions they’d project to score a bit less than one run more than the Tigers over seven games.  Of course, they’ll have to hit a lot better than they hit in the ALDS to even sniff that number.

The pitching is a mess.  By blowing Game 4, the Yankees lost the option to start CC in Game 1.  The good news is they have Andy Pettitte fully rested to start Game 1.  Unfortunately, they have no one else from the ALDS rotation who can start on full rest in Game 2.  They could try Hiroki Kuroda on three days rest but he’s never started on three days rest and I don’t think they’ll go that route.  My guess is they’ll use David Phelps with Derek Lowe caddying him in Game 2 and hope for the best, then bring back CC on three days rest to match up against Verlander in Game 3.  That would set him up to pitch in the theoretical Game 7 that won’t happen since Detroit’s going to sweep but let’s let our imaginations run wild. 

So my guess at the rotation is something like: Andy Pettitte, David Phelps, CC Sabathia, Hiroki Kuroda, Phil Hughes, Andy Pettitte, CC Sabathia. 

The order could change.  Pettitte would have four days rest before Game 5 so he could start that one.  I’m more concerned about how the innings get allocated than the order for this so let’s press on.

Player	Role	IP	H	R	ER	HR	BB	K	ERA
Andy Pettitte	SP1	12	11	5	5	1	3	10	3.58
Hiroki Kuroda	SP2	6	6	3	2	1	1	5	3.67
CC Sabathia	SP3	13	12	5	5	1	3	12	3.44
Phil Hughes	SP4	5	5	3	2	1	1	4	4.22
David Phelps	SP5	5	5	2	2	1	2	4	4.06
Rafael Soriano	CL	4	3	2	2	0	1	4	3.41
David Robertson	SU	5	4	2	2	0	2	6	3.46
Boone Logan	SU	3	3	1	1	0	1	3	3.99
Joba Chamberlain	MR	3	3	1	1	0	1	3	4.14
Clay Rapada	MR	2	2	1	1	0	1	2	3.62
Derek Lowe	MR	5	6	3	3	0	2	3	4.64
Cody Eppley	MR	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	4.15
Freddy Garcia	LR	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	4.74
Ivan Nova	LR	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	4.60
Total		63	60	28	26	7	20	56	3.76

Because of the mess that is the rotation I gave Derek Lowe more innings than I’d typically give a long reliever and the worst projected pitcher on the staff.  It shouldn’t make a huge difference on the bottom line though.

Based on this playing time the Yankees figure to allow around 28 runs, which makes them a roughly 62.7%/101.6 win team.

Detroit has a slight edge at .638 vs. .621.  Having home field advantage gives the Yankees about a .006 boost, so you’ve got something like a .633 team playing a .624 team.  Given that, here’s what my playoff simulator says for this series.

Yankees: 49.7%
Tigers: 50.3%

The Tigers are slight favorites, but it’s basically a tossup.  It’d be nice for the Yankees to avenge the last two times Detroit knocked them out of the playoffs, but I’m not betting on that happening.

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