The Tigers Shut Down After the 6th Inning

While watching the Tigers this year, there seemed to be one trend that kept coming up: the Tigers seemed to do nothing after the 6th inning.  Rather than chalk it up as selective memory, I decided to see if the numbers supported this.  

Here is how the Tigers offense ranks in the American League in the first 6 innings:

Stat	Value	AL Rank
Runs	312	1st
AVG	0.307	1st
OBP	0.369	1st
SLG	0.482	1st
HR	69	T-4th
BB	185	4th
K	303	1st

First in every single category except walks and strikeouts, which they are still in the top 5.  There's a good argument to be made that the Tigers have the best offense in the American League during the first 6 innings.

And here is their pitching ranks in the first 6 innings:

Stat	Value	AL Rank
Runs Allowed	204	1st
ERA	3.69	1st
WHIP	1.19	1st
BAA	0.245	1st
HR	40	1st
BB	122	2nd
K	470	1st

Most of this is due to their awesome starting pitching, which has already been well-documented as being the best in the American League. 

Now let's see how much they fall in the 7th inning and later.  First the offensive numbers:

Stat	Value	AL Rank
Runs	80	15th
AVG	0.227	13th
OBP	0.310	8th
SLG	0.319	15th
HR	14	T-14th
BB	95	5th
K	209	6th

Walks and strikeouts are middle of the pack, but everything else is near the bottom.  This is a complete 180-degree turn from the first 6 innings.

Here are the pitching ranks in the 7th inning and later:

Stat	Value	AL Rank
Runs Allowed	114	13th
ERA	3.98	13th
WHIP	1.30	12th
BAA	0.247	12th
HR	18	T-4th
BB	90	9th
K	266	1st

Strikeouts are still #1, but mostly everything else is near the bottom.  Most of this is due to the bullpen, which again has been well-documented as being bad this year.  

Offensive and pitching stats are taken from Baseball-reference as of games played through 6/28.

One sabermetric stat is the Pythagorean Expectation.  It shows how many games a team should win based on the amount of runs scored and runs allowed.  Right now the Tigers have a Pythagorean W/L record of 46-32, which is 3 wins better than their real W/L record of 43-35.  The formula is:

Win%= runs scored^2/(runs scored^2 + runs allowed^2)

Using the first 6 innings, the Tigers have a Pythagorean Win% of .701 which translates to between 113-114 wins over 162 games.  However, in the 7th inning and later, the Tigers have a Pythagorean Win% of only .330 which translates to between 53 and 54 wins over 162 games.  

This could be a small sample anomaly, but there's just one thing that needs to be asked, what happened to playing 9 full innings?