Jim Leyland's Extension; Alfredo Figaro Debut

Well, this blog was once started way back when on a late August night in 2007 after a meltdown against the Cleveland Indians in which I blamed Jim Leyland for the loss and, subsequently, the end of our Division Title chase. Since then, I've never posted more than 17 posts in a single calendar year; to say posting here is sporadic would be a compliment. Over the last year-and-a-half I've gotten more and more into sabermetrics and mellowed on my Jim Leyland frustrations because of reading at just how many games a manager actually wins or loses with his actions. Bottom line is that a manager is only as good as his players and as such, probably only wins (or costs) 3-5 games a year. That's enough to push you into the playoffs or just keep you barely out.

That said, Jim Leyland got a 2-year extension on Friday. I know that this is Fire Jim Leyland, but I'm in favor. His questionable decisions (to put it nicely) won't leave; that's just a packaged deal. But, all managers make bad moves consistently and at the end of the day, I am not convinced is costs us more then, you know, Armando Galarraga's terribleness. Given how little I think managers actually impact the win/loss record of a team at the end of the year, if the team loves Jim Leyland, respects him, and is willing to run through walls for him like many players sound like they would, then why not keep him?

Now, back to the non-traditional baseball goodness. Alfredo Figaro debuted today giving up 8 hits while striking out 7 in 5 innings of work. Kurt at Mack Ave Tigers, Lee at Tiger Tales, Mark at TigsTown, have all profiled him before today's start. Matt Wallace -- my go-to guy for all things Tigers Minors related has written a couple of times about him over at Take 75 North.

The skinny: middle-90's fastball, good breaking ball. Like I've done with Edwin Jackson for the season (and once against the Angels) and Justin Verlander, I've got Figaro's pitch fx data and, through Harry Pavlidis' great pitch flight template, have got Figaro's average pitch flight for each of his pitches. Click the chart to enlarge.


I put all three pitches on one graph. If there's 4 or more pitches, I will group fastballs with fastballs, or go fastball-change-up and put the breaking balls together. Pitch f/x only recorded 3 different type of pitches and I've lumped all the fastballs together, though I don't think the pitch f/x data classified any as two-seamers without looking at it again.

The Fastball: Averaged 94.13 MPH and touched 9 out of the 61 times he threw it. His slowest fastball was 89.9 MPH, but mostly was 92-95. He doesn't appear to have much tail on it (look back at the Verlander link for comparison -- JV's got similar velocity and much more tail then Figaro does).

The Curveball: Averaged 82.49 MPH while getting as fast as 85 MPH twice, and as slow as 79. So, his velocity was very consisten with the curveball. You can see very little (if any) sweep with it. He threw 28 curveball's today.

The Change-up: Averaged 81.16 MPH with it while ranging 80.1 to 81.6. He only threw 8 of them, but seemed consistent with his velocity of it. It seems to be nearly as straight of a change-up as you can get with no discernable tail on it. His curve and change come from just a tick above his release point on his fastball (look at the 1st base view) while his arm slot appears to be the same (look at the bird's eye view). Given the 13 MPH difference between his change-up and his fastball, coupled with keeping a consistent arm slot, it's easy to see why he can get consistent swings and misses with his arsenal.

Conclusion

He's been overlooked by the prospecting community as a whole but I feel that's got to do with getting to the A-ball level semi-late at age 23 in 2007. He posted a bad ERA in 2007 at High-A Lakeland, but his .358 BABIP has much to do with that as his peripherals (17.3% K rate, 9.0% BB rate) didn't stray much. What does concern me is that he's had a ground ball percentage going the wrong way. In 2007 and early 2008 he was posting GB rates of 54-62%. But, once he got out of Low-A West Michigan he's posted GB rates of 38 and 48% at High-A Lakeland for the former and Double-A Erie for the latter. Combining his totals from Lakeland and Erie I get a total GB rate of 44.96% which isn't terrible, but I'd like to see closer to 50%. I only say this because he hasn't been dominant in his K% (K/Total Batters Faced), just good. On the whole, from a numbers perspective coupled with the above pitch flights (assuming that they are representative of his typical start which is a HUGE assumption given the small sampling of pitches), I'd say he's got the chance to be a solid middle-of-the-rotation arm for the Tigers for the foreseeable future. And for a team with a few albatrosses around it's neck financially (Magglio, Guillen, Robertson, Willis) for the next couple of seasons, cheap arms are a must for this organization to move forward.