If you’ve been on the internet in the last few weeks (or within earshot of a Michigander) you may have heard about the Tigers. Specifically, you may have heard about how the odds in favor of a Detroit appearance in the 2014 ALDS dropped from 21-to-1 on July 25 to under break-even by August 23 before a slight rebound to finish out the month. Even more specifically, you may have read Mike Petriello’s article about that on this very website. Or at the very least, you may have heard their struggles described in a less quantitative fashion. Regardless, the month of August was not kind to the Bengals.

As Petriello pointed out, this has been less of a Tigers collapse than a Royals surge. But there’s still something to the idea that the Tigers were playing worse in August than they had been previously. Let’s start with the basics:

In August, the Tigers scored fewer runs, allowed more runs, and won fewer games than in the first half. On some level, that’s all that really matters. On another level, something else is different about August for these Tigers.

Back on July 14, Buster Olney and Jeff Sullivan both wrote articles about schedule strength. Olney called the Tigers’ schedule the second-most difficult of 17 “contending” teams (paywall), while Sullivan said it was the easiest in all of MLB. One of the key reasons for the discrepancy was that Sullivan was using projections to determine the difficulty of a particular opponent, while Olney was using actual results. Score one for Sullivan. Another key difference was that as of July 14, the Tigers were about to play 55 games in 56 days, which did not factor into Sullivan’s analysis.

A point for Olney? Perhaps. But first, what would we expect to see if this was a result of schedule fatigue? Or put another way, which groups of players might be hurt most or least by not having a day off? Based on conventional wisdom, the bullpen would probably be the most affected, and the starters the least. So how does this match up to the Tigers? Read the rest of this entry »