Honestly, I am definitely most concerned with left field and the pen. Hafner's numbers while not like the old Beast Pronk, are still not horrendous - he can take a walk and hit a double every now and then.

As for the infield play, I think this site is pretty much in agreement that we need to see more Marte if only for potential upside. With regular playing time, I think he is more likely to be serviceable as a defensive third baseman given the hearsay from his minor league track record. It's going to be impossible for Marte to get into any rhythm offensively or defensively playing once a week.

I don't mind Blake getting regular PT in leftfield and I would prefer to move quicker than I expect us to on moving either Michaels or Dellucci as I mentioned below.

Bullpens are scary just because of their volatile nature....and the fact that we have Blowsavski backstopping us.

Bit of an aside on the Choo thing. Since teams know that we have to open up a spot for Choo, how will getting rid of Dellucci and/or Michaels shake down? They seem to have too much value to end up on the waiver wire, but are teams going to trade for them knowing that if they wait it out long enough they might be able to get them for dirt cheap off the wire? This to me is the danger in not showing any urgency to shop either one of them right now.

I watched the game last night and Fausto appeared to be 92-94 on his sinker which sits fine with me

While the Tribe's poor early showing has been overshadowed by the Kittens' 0-6 (and they're down 3-0 to Boston at the moment), they're too good not to make a big run at some point. The Tribe too, but let's just hope that theirs doesn't come sooner than ours and put us in a hole.

Similarly, while the White Sox and the Royals are pretty outclassed by both us and the Tigers, it'd be dangerous to find ourselves a month or two in and down 5 or 6 to either of them. We all remember what happened a few years ago when the Sox got on a roll and took advantage of seemingly every break that came their way. They rode that to career years for about half their team and a World Series.

I guess what I'm saying is while it's probably too early to panic, it's not too early to start looking for things the team isn't doing well and making plans to fix those things if the solution doesn't present itself. It's also pretty unlikely the Tigers are going to have multiple 6+ game losing streaks over the season, so it be nice to start taking advantage of it while it's going on.

Didn't Grady homer in the first four games or something ridiculous like that?

So we're still three games up, with a chance to make it 3.5 tonight.

That's up over the Tigers, of course, not atop the division.

That's awesome, but we're still not at halftime of the first NFL game of the season yet, percentage wise.

Still, much nicer to see than 7-0.

Comment from BYB game thread:

I wavered in the offseason on whether or not to buy a 27-game package again. My wife and I had just had a baby, and we didn't think spending the money on baseball tickets would be the best use of our income.
But then they went and traded for Miguel Cabrera and, suddenly, we became a favorite in the AL. I imagined a summer full of great baseball in a sold-out Comerica Park. I spent money that I probably shouldn't have spent on tickets because this team looked special.
Well, now I know how absurd that thinking was. My tickets are worthless, and this team is playing like s***.
I want my money back.

I feel (a little) sorry for the true fans. Detroit has some great and knowledgeable fans. But I don't much abide bandwagon jumpers. One trade and its subsequent hype is not a reason to buy season tickets. It's really this whole hype thing that has me so enjoying the flameout.

Imagine the hand-wringing that would be happening if detroit was playing well. Yikes.

And they need to score 6.35 runs per game.

Yeah, the math does start to become a problem when you keep racking up the losses.

Let's just start with the assumption PECOTA arrived at, that both teams are basically 91-win teams, that's .561. Well, you now have to start looking at it as, they're .562 teams (at best) for the next 155 games, but those first seven games are in the books already -- and luck doesn't "even out," as Einstein had it, "the dice have no memory."

So PECOTA would now say (at best) that each team is projected for another 87 wins -- 87 total for them, 90 total for us. And that's assuming that their performances aren't so bad that they "move the needle" on the projection -- for them, not for us. Our variance from the projection is too small, but theirs, despite the sample size, is significant.

But for them ... well, if you add this 0-7 run into their 2007 stats, now they're an 84-win team rather than an 87-win team last year, and maybe that makes them an 89-win team for this year. Only once again, there's only 155 games left, so it's really 89 x 155 / 162 ... and now they're expected to win 85 of the next 155, meaning they finish at 85-77.

Granted, this is all really quick and sloppy, but the basic premise is sound. An underperformance can only be overcome by a counterbalancing overperformance -- be it by luck or skill or a bucket of chicken -- which is made less likely by that same underperformance.

In other words, losing seven straight really is not good, and it is in fact a little worse at the start of the season.

I understand PRC as much as I understood VORP 2 years ago.

Of the six starters a 0.00 ERA, five have a 0.00 RA and are listed with 0 PRC. Felix has a 0.60 RA and gets 17 PRC. The five PRC = 0 results are not real zeros, they're divide-by-zero errors; the formula uses RA, not ERA, and can't handle a 0.00 there.

Step 1. The custom exponent turns out to be an abnormally low 1.56, but it also turns out this doesn't matter. He could go with a constant exponent of 1.9 or whatever and it wouldn't make much difference, he's just being picky with this step.

Step 2. Here's where the trouble starts, because any version of the Pyth formula would yield an expected win rate of 1.00, regardless of the exponent. And then ...

Step 3. ... when you use the win rate to derive the pitcher's "runs scored" equivalent, you get nothing.

Basic pyth is: RS^y / (RS^y + RA^y) = W%, where y is the custom exponent, usually ~1.9. RS is runs scored, RA is runs allowed, W% is the win rate. The core idea of PRC is that once you have the pitcher's expected win rate, you want to know how many average RS would be needed to achieve that win rate, assuming the RA is league average. He says he fiddled with the Pyth formula to get a formula for RS, which would look something like this:

RS^y = W% x RA^y / (1 - W%)

So if W% = 1, you get: RS^y = RA^1 / (1 - 1)

And since 1 minus 1 is zero, and you can't divide by zero, you get nothing -- not 0 (zero), but ø (null).

So the answer is, Ben Sheets has infinite PRC, because a pitcher who allows no runs is equivalent to a lineup that never stops scoring.