Team 84: The 1906 Tigers

• Year: 1906
• Record: 71-78
• Win %: .477
• Win % Change: -39
• Run Differential: -81
• Pythagorean Record: 65-84
• AL Finish: 6th of 8
• Manager: Bill Armour
• Best Transaction: Purchased several good players including, Davy Jones, Ed Siever, and Ed Willett.  Willett and Siever ended up being pretty decent starting pitchers while Jones was a valuable player off of the bench. Nothing too impressive here, but a pretty solid haul that helped set the Tigers up for success later in the decade.
• Worst Transaction: Nothing to speak of.
• Upper: Sam Thompson and Sam Crawford.  Thompson was a fun story because  he was a Hall of Famer and this was his only time with the Tigers.  Thompson was a member of the Detroit Wolverines of the National League in the 1880s and didn’t play for the Tigers until 1906 when he was 46 years old.  The other Sam, Crawford,  was beginning to hit his stride as a player in 1906 when he was 26 years old.  Crawford smacked 16 triples (no one in baseball history has more career triples) and finished the season with an OPS+ of 131, tying Ty Cobb for the team lead.
• Downer: This team had an unfortunate mix of old and young.  The young guys were too far away to contribute and the older guys were too far past their primes to help the team all that much.  Ty Cobb was only 19, and almost every regular on offense was under the age of 26.  Many of them would contribute later, just not in 1906.  On the other side we had Sam Thompson who was 46, Bobby Lowe was 40, and Frank Scheibeck was 41.  You have admit, that’s  a pretty weird mix of guys.
• Summary: The Tigers were bad but not awful in 1906.  However, this group of young players helped lead the Tigers to three-straight World Series appearances in 1907.  While they never won the World Series in that three year span, it was probably the greatest three year run in the history of the franchise.  The 1906 club finished the year with an ERA+ of only 90 with George Mullin leading the way with a 21-18 record.  The club’s OPS+ was only 86, so this team wasn’t exactly firing on all cylinders.  The outfield led the way for the offense with Crawford, Cobb and Matty McIntyre.

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