Winter Ball Update

The Dominican Winter League, or more properly (and way more fun to say) Liga de Beisbol Dominicano, features several of our own:

Timo Perez - Licey, .407 AVG, .686 SLG, 1.162 OPS

Ramon Santiago - Gigantes, .353 AVG, .441 SLG, .905 OPS

Brent Clevelen - Escogido, .256 AVG, .316 SLG, .663 OPS

Timo and Ramon are performing well so far over a small sample size (10-15 games appearances).

Pitchers Aquilino Lopez and former Tiger Francisco Cruceta are also in the DWL.

Cruceta:  2.89 ERA, 9.1 IP, 1.29 WHIP

Lopez:  1.13. ERA, 8 IP, 0.75 WHIP

All I can say is I wish I could travel to one of the winter ball league games (sigh).  Already pining for baseball, and it's only November.

Inherited Runners

One of the maddening parts of last season with the Tigers was the inability to prevent inherited runners from scoring.  Each time a reliever came in with runners on, I cringed, because I knew what was coming.

To me, this statistic is crucial.  We've got to have some arms(minds) that can come in with runners on and prevent them from crossing the plate.  We were absolutely abysmal at this in 2008.  Look at these numbers, our five worst IRA (inherited runners allowed) offenders:

Aquilino Lopez - 29

Bobby Seay - 16

Freddy Dolsi - 12

Zach Miner - 11

Casey Fossum - 10

(Side note, Farnsworth had 7, and he was only a Tiger from the trade deadline on.)

Total for our top (bottom) five:  78 inherited runners allowed

I'll compare this to the totals of the four AL teams that made the playoffs:

Rays - 45

Angels - 48

Red Sox - 59

White Sox - 67

You can see from the list of offenders, these are our core middle relievers (with the exception of Miner who converted to starter.)  So not acceptable, so depressing, so mind-numbing, so making me lose my sanity!