Sunday stats and other thoughts

A statistical postmortem on the sweep, courtesy of ESPN.com:

• The 33-1 margin for the series is tied for third-highest in a three-game set since 1951.
• The Tigers were involved in two larger series scoring margins in that span. They outscored the Twins by a 45-10 margin in late April of 1993, to take the tops at 35. The second-largest is 34, but the Tigers were on the losing of that end with a 43-9 blasting by the Red Sox in June 1953.
• The last series decided by 32 runs was a 36-4 Angels sweep over the Indians in 2002.

Now some other notes about those series, courtesy of retrosheet.org:

• The Tigers’ sweep of the Twins in ’93 actually took place on the road at the Metrodome. And they didn’t get much from Cecil Fielder, who went 2-for-11 with a double and an RBI for the series. He went 0-for-4 in a 17-1 Tigers win in the middle game of that series April 24.
• That ’93 Tigers team actually scored more runs in a series later that season, scoring 47 in a three-game sweep of the Orioles August 10-12 at Tigers Stadium. That series doesn’t rank in the above list because the Orioles scored 17 in that series, including 11 in the series finale that they still lost by six.
• The ’53 series Detroit lost to the Red Sox by a combined 34 runs wasn’t a sweep. In fact, the Tigers picked up a 5-3 win in the opener June 16 before the Sox put on a show at Fenway Park for a 17-1 Tigers loss in the middle game and a 23-3 defeat in the finale. Those losses dropped Detroit to 14-43 on the season. Those same Tigers lost a 15-0 game at Yankee Stadium later that year as well as 25 other games in which they gave up double-digit runs.

One other interesting side item from Sunday went into my late notebook. Jim Leyland said he took out Kenny Rogers after eight innings because he needed to get Todd Jones some work, but also because he wanted to save Rogers. By sparing Rogers an inning here and there at maybe 15-20 pitches apiece, Leyland said, and it could add up to nearly 80 pitches over three starts. That’s a new one for me. It’s something I didn’t expect to hear from Leyland in this situation, where Rogers didn’t seem to be doing anything but cruising, and from a manager who has said other times he doesn’t put much into pitch counts. The deciding factor has to be the competitiveness of the game and whether the closer needs some work.

Given how uncompetitive this weekend’s series was, it’ll be interesting to see if the Tigers can avoid a letdown when the 5-17 Royals come to town coming off four losses in their last five games and problems scoring runs in all but one of them. Unfortunately, Detroiters who aren’t going to the game have to stay up past midnight to watch it on TV. If the Red Wings game goes to overtime, the Tigers on tape-delay is going to be running way too late. Unfortunately, the Wings and Pistons playing the same night didn’t give much of any other option.

Somebody asked what the tape delay means for the Extra Innings and MLB.TV packages. I don’t think it makes any difference, because the game is also on the Royals network.