Roar of the Tigers midseason report card 2010

photo by Samara Pearlstein

Time for another one of these, oh the excitement, oh the wonder! Oh the arbitrary, not-necessarily-logic-based nature of my grading decisions!

PITCHERS

Jeremy Bonderman
Grade: B-
Reason: He has been mediocre. I’m grading him up because he’s already pitched more innings this year than he did in the previous two seasons– COMBINED.

Eddie Bonine
Grade: B+
Reason: I keep forgetting he’s on the team. This could be considered a good thing or a bad thing, depending on how you view his position in the bullpen.

Phil Coke
Grade: A
Reason: He’s been good on the mound, he’s been hilarious off of it. Anyone who can rock those sideburns is OK by me.

Armando Galarraga
Grade: B
Reason: He got screwed.

Enrique Gonzalez
Grade: C+
Reason: Small sample size.

Fu-Te Ni
Grade: C+
Reason: My head says D, but my heart says A.

Andy Oliver
Grade: C-
Reason: Small sample size also, but not in a good way. Not graded down further because he’s just a kitten.

Ryan Perry
Grade: B-
Reason: I wonder what percentage of his struggles can be attributed to his arm pain.

Rick Porcello
Grade: C
Reason: FredFred, baby, what happened?

Max Scherzer
Grade: A-
Reason: His record, ERA, and WHIP are not spectacular, but I like his K/BB ratio and he’s definitely had his moments. Probably could have gone B+ here, but he brings me too much cartoon joy and I cannot justify grading him down.

Daniel Schlereth
Grade: C
Reason: Small sample size.

Brad Thomas
Grade: B
Reason: Very eh. But he has been called upon to fill a lot of random roles this year.

Jose Valverde
Grade: A+
Reason: Great pitching, great facial expressions. Great personality, brings joy to the team and to my life. So far from being Fernando Rodney, he can’t see even the tip of that aggravating pointy goatee. I LOVE YOU PAPA GRANDE, NEVER CHANGE.

Justin Verlander
Grade: A
Reason: He’s an All Star, he strikes a lot of dudes out, he’s trying his best to anchor the rotation. Still throws too many damn pitches, though.

Robbie Weinhardt
Grade: C+
Reason: I know his big league numbers are good, but THA SAMPLE SIIIIZE.

Joel Zumaya
Grade: n/a
Reason: deceased (armplosion)

CLICK THE LINK TO CONTINUE WITH TEAM GRADES

Roar of the Tigers midseason report card 2009

photo by Samara Pearlstein

Aw yeah it’s that time again, time to grade the team RotT-style. Verlander had a good game on Sunday, Clete and Inge went crazy with their bats, this should put you in the mood for the gloriousness that is to follow.

PITCHERS

Jeremy Bonderman

Grade: n/a

Reason: deceased (zombie)

Freddy Dolsi

Grade: B

Reason: small sample size

Luke French

Grade: B+

Reason: OK so he also has a small sample size, bite me, I am grading him up based on his most recent start.

Arrrrrrrmando Galarrrrrrraga

Grade: C

Reason: Struggly struggles. There have been times where he looked like he was bouncing back to form, but there have also been plenty of times where he looked like he wouldn’t survive to see the light of another day with his own two eyeballs.

Edwin Jackson

Grade: A+

Reason: 1.06 WHIP, ’nuff said. Actually that’s not enough said. EDWIN JACKSON HAS HAD AN AMAZING FIRST HALF OF THROWING THE BASEBALL. How’s that for enough?

Brandon Lyon

Grade: B

Reason: I give him this grade mostly because of his cat-name, which, yea, has been as a boon unto us bloggers, and because I kind of want to pet his hair.

Zach Miner

Grade: C

Reason: He has not been that good. We didn’t really expect him to be that good, though.

Fu-Te Ni

Grade: B

Reason: Smaaaallll saaaammmplllle siiiiiiiize. But he says Ni!

Ryan Perry

Grade: C-

Reason: Toledo will do that to you.

FredFred

Grade: A-

Reason: Probably a little generous, but he has managed to amass 8 wins before he is even old enough to legally purchase a handgun or down a fifth of vodka. Respect, yo.

Nate Robertson

Grade: n/a

Reason: deceased (evil malformed stunted twin growing in elbow)

Fernando Rodney

Grade: D+

Reason: I can’t actually fail Fernando, he still has not yet blown a save. But I think we all know what the stress of watching him pitch has done to my already-fragile little mind, OK, that is plenty of reason to dock him several gradepoints.

Bobby Seay

Grade: A

Reason: He has been quietly going about his business, doing pretty damn well without making much of a fuss, or having much of a fuss made over him. He’s pitching significantly better against lefties, as he ought to do. He’s got a WHIP of 1.00 and an ERA of 2.89. I am surprised and gratified.

Justin Verlander

Grade: A-

Reason: He has more wins than Edwin Jackson, but mostly because he gets more support. He doesn’t get to strike that minus from his score until he stops being so bloody stinkin’ inefficient. I am picking nits, but this is a peeve of mine, I take it personally.

Dontrelle

Grade: n/a

Reason: deceased (zombie)

Zoom

Grade: C

Reason: Maybe if he would stop being so catdamned in love with his own velocity and started being just a little bit in love with mixing pitches and learning control, you know, maybe that would get him out of the Cs.

Grading continues under the ‘read more’ link!

the midseason report card, Roar of the Tigers style

photo by Samara Pearlstein

OK, I’ve seen a lot of blogs on the magical internets doing these midseason report cards and scorecards. I am currently being bored to tears by the All Star game, so what the hell. Obviously this is going to be RotT-style, but you already knew that, didn’t you?

PITCHERS

Jeremy Bonderman
Grade: n/a
Reason: deceased

the Bovine kid
Grade: C
Reason: Every time he goes out there and doesn’t sit down on the mound and start screaming, it’s a plus for us. He’s not handling major league hitting all that well but then again nobody really expected him to do so. In an ideal world (or a less-than-ideal world that nonetheless did not include the destruction of Bondo and Dontrelle) he wouldn’t be anywhere near the big league roster right now.

Freddy Dolsi
Grade: A-
Reason: I saw the very first ever pitches he threw in the big leagues in person, and it seemed eminently likely that the poor kid was going to be scarred for life. This has not been the case. Leyland has been leaning on him awfully hard and he’s bearing up under the pressure remarkably well for a kid who is 12 years old and weighs about 100 pounds.

the Fossum Possum
Grade: D
Reason: Look, it’s Casey Fossum, what do you expect? He doesn’t fail because a) he’s a lefty and b) he gives me an opportunity to say ‘Fossum Possum’.

Arrrrrrrmando Galarrrrrrraga
Grade: A
Reason: The thing with Arrrrmando is that he SHOULD be like Bonine– every time he goes out there and doesn’t start screaming hysterically on the mound, it’s a major plus for the Tigers. But Arrrrmando has been serviceable. Heck, more than that, he’s actually been GOOD. He has been performing so far above any reasonable expectations that it would be downright churlish to give him anything other than an A and a bunch of extra Rs in his name.

Rollercoaster Jones
Grade: B-
Reason: I know this is going to seem insanely generous to a lot of cats, but Jonesy is dead weird and cannot be graded according to the standards of normal people. Sure, his ERA sucks. Sure, his WHIP sucks a LOT (a 1.54 WHIP is pretty bad for a starter, let alone a closer; the best closers in the league right now all have WHIPs under 1.00). Sure, he only has 17 saves– of course the Tigers haven’t given him a ton of save opportunities. But, insanely, he only has 2 blown saves. This compares favorably with some of the best closers in the league. Mariano has none, but Joe Nathan has 2 and Papelbon has 4. Jonesy is frustrating in the extreme but he’s not ACTUALLY deadly most of the time. It’s weird. So, B- .

Aquilino Lopez
Grade: A-
Reason: He’s been fairly good, and kind of flying under the radar. It’ll be interesting to see if the Tigs do manage to convert him to a 5th starter at some point. The best thing about him is still the fact that his name is Aquilino.

Zach Miner
Grade: D
Reason: CONTROL. GET U SUM.

Clay Rapada
Grade: C
Reason: Eh. Sometimes he pitches OK. Mostly he comes up when we need a spare left hand in the bullpen, and gets sent down when more reliable options become healthy/available/sane. Probably the coaches have a good reason for this.

Nate Robertson
Grade: C+
Reason: Nate has had some hard luck this season, we all know that, and he’s pitched some amazingly amazing games, but he’s also pitched some awful games. In a beautiful world filled with fluffy kittens and the ballplayers who hug them, Nate would be a #5 starter. Unfortunately, we do not yet live in that world, and Nate has to play like a less marginal pitcher because we barely have 4 starters, let alone 5.

Fernando
Grade: C-
Reason: Watching Fernando fail on the mound, when I KNOW that he has the latent ability to throw deadly, unhittable pitches, is one of the most frustrating things in the whole wide world of baseball. Fernando makes me want to pull out my own hair and at the same time reach through my TV screen to strangle him. It’s very healthy. He doesn’t get a D because he is at least still (slowly) (incrementally) dragging his numbers back down towards respectability, and because he’s from a city that’s only one letter off from my name. I dig that.