Poor performance in high leverage situations hurt the Tigers this year

In one way, the Tigers looked pretty good. Their OPS differential was 0.036. Their hitters had an OPS of 0.720 while their pitchers allowed 0.684. That should bring a winning record (more on this below).

But what about by leverage? This table shows how the Tigers did in different leverage situations and what their differentials were in each case

	Low Lev	Med Lev	High Lev
Hitting	0.714	0.752	0.673
Pitching	0.638	0.701	0.759
Differential	0.076	0.051	-0.086

Notice that they had by far their lowest hitting OPS in High Leverage situations while the reverse was true for pitching. They allowed their highest OPS in High Leverage situations.

The Tigers hitters had the 4th highest overall OPS in the AL at .720 (AL Avg was .712). Yet they had the 3rd lowest OPS in High Leverage situations at .673 (AL Avg was .711).  

The Tiger pitchers had the 4th lowest overall OPS allowed in the AL at .684 (AL Avg was .717). Yet they had 5th highest OPS allowed in High Leverage situations at .759 (AL Avg was .719).

How much difference might this make?

To find the impact of OPS differential on winning percentage I ran a regression all teams from 2021-2025. The dependent variable was team winning percentage and the independent variable was OPS differential. Here is the equation:

Pct = 1.21*OPSDIFF + .4997

R-squared = .879

Standard error = .028

 

The Tigers' estimated winning pct is .543, good for about 88 wins (by plugging in their OPS differential into the equation). They won only 76.

 

But I also ran a regression where the dependent variable was team winning percentage and the independent variables were the OPS differentials for the different leverage cases. Here is the equation:

 

Pct = .282*LOW + .420*MED + .487*HIGH + .500

 

R-squared = .9346

Standard error = .021

 

The Tigers' estimated winning pct is .501, good for about 81 wins (by plugging in their leverage OPS differentials into the equation). So that is 7 fewer than predicted by total OPS differential alone.

 

So they won 12 fewer games than expected by total OPS differential alone. More than half of that gap is explained by breaking things down by leverage.

 

One stat further amplifies this analysis and could explain some of the remaining gap in expected games won. It is HR%. The table below shows how the Tigers did in hitting and allowing HRs compared to the league average

 

	Tigers Hitting	Tigers Pitching	AL Avg-Hit	AL Avg-Pit
Total HR%	2.93%	2.78%	3.01%	3.02%
Low HR%	3.17%	2.45%	3.11%	3.06%
Med HR%	2.87%	2.66%	3.07%	3.14%
High HR%	2.53%	3.83%	2.66%	2.71%

 

The last two columns show what was average in the AL for both hitters and pitchers (the numbers don't match due to inter-league play).

 

But notice that as Leverage increases the Tigers' HR% falls (even more than than the AL average for hitters). But for Tiger pitchers it goes up and the HIGH% is very high. The lowest for the AL overall is in High LEV cases.

 

Also notice that the Tigers overall had a positive HR differential. But it is very negative in High LEV cases, -1.3%.

 

Remember that HRs always mean more runs. Allowing base runners does not always lead to more runs. But this poor HR performance only strengthens the case that High Leverage hurt the Tigers this year.