Tiger Geist

Good news on the bullpen front; unless he can hit it won’t have immediate impact.

At least all of the Tigers got to Boston for their whipping yesterday.  Apparently Oakland’s Dana Eveland missed his flight to Toronto yesterday.  The reason?  His backpack was stolen out of his car as he stopped for coffee on the way to the airport.  Inside was a laptop, ipod… and passport, required for air travel into canada.

Someone beat me to it and requested that Clete Thomas be added to the Reggie Cleveland all-star team (via Bill Simmons); they even offered it to be re-named “Clete Thomas all star team”.  Congratulations to Clete, who, with this honor, has had more success then the entire 2008 Detroit Tigers combined.

Detroit vs Boston, going on now.  I finally purchased a month of mlb.tv so we’ll see how that works out.

This is getting ugly. I really think the best thing that the team can do right now is go on the road to somewhere in the New England area and let the fans focus on the other local sports for a while. What? They’re heading to Boston? Perfect. Get out of town and away from the fans. Scotty Bowman used to say he wanted to open up every hockey playoff series on the road; it put less pressure on his players. The weight of expectations seems to be crushing the team right now, and the best thing they can do is get out of town.

If you look at the tigers who have world series rings — Pudge, Cabrera, Willis (2003 Marlins), Renteria, Sheffield (1997 Marlins), none of them were really expected to win. They were all young and losing actually was an option — they had nothing to lose. Now, you’ve got a lineup full of hitters making $10mil / year each and pitchers who seem overwhelmed.

Nothing is going right at this point.. they’ve made a baserunning error in nearly every game (nice double last night Santiago — next time keep your ass on second). Fielding is starting to fall apart, and the pitching seems dominant at times, only to let the bottom of the order get on base too easily. Luckily it seems the league is beating itself up right now, so we’re only a few games back.

I was lucky to catch most of last night’s game on my friend’s new HD screen during a dinner party. I was unlucky to have a few non-sports fans ask me why my team was losing so badly. I tried to explain how it gives me nothing to write about and just frustrates me in general… that because its such a long season, you have to let the peaks and valleys work themselves out without nit-picking. So.. thats what i’m going to do. I’m hoping that the pitchers stop walking batters, that Cabrera realizes we’re not paying him to hit into double plays, that Polanco starts hitting the ball on the ground, and next time we’ve got 2 on with no outs, someone hits it out of the infield. I’m waiting for Leyland to turn into a Lou Brown, and next time someone screws up during the game they drop where they are and do 20 push ups.  Maybe next time Dontrelle decides to walk 7 batters, Jimmy walks behind the mound, pisses on Willis’ contract extension, and heads back to smoke a carton or Marlboros.

Between this and Michigan’s lack of a spread option QB, I’m going to either get an ulcer or my wife’s going to divorce me.  Ah, the blessed off day.

I imagine Detroit can even up their record to 5-5 pretty easily. I imagine, once things start to click, they will really start to click. But until we get some sort of outburst, the team doesn’t look like its having fun. To quote one Benjamin Franklin Rodriguez,

Man, this is baseball. You gotta stop thinking. Just have fun

Or, from Crash Davis:

You just got lesson number one: don’t think; it can only hurt the ball club.

Last, from Mr LaLoosh, technically also quoting Crash:

A good friend of mine used to say, “This is a very simple game. You throw the ball, you catch the ball, you hit the ball. Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose, sometimes it rains.” Think about that for a while.

Its just that easy. Step 1: Have fun. Step 3: World domination. Its Jimmy Leyland’s job to figure out step 2. And i’d prefer he do it without Jason Grilli.

I also respectfully disagree with Lynn Henning’s assessment of what’s been going wrong with the team so far. Clete Thomas has played better then expected in place of Curtis Granderson. While he hasn’t (and probably won’t at this point in his career) matched the power of Granderson, he’s hitting .500 and strikes out less. The real problem offensively is Polanco; he’s not moving runners. No reason to think he won’t turn it around, but the leadoff position has been getting on base.

Apologies to Jason Grilli for not enjoying getting booed by the crowd. I’m sure the crowd hasn’t enjoyed paying top dollar to see you stink up the joint. Team called up another pitcher, something’s going to have to give soon.

Something isn’t right with Dontrelle Willis. Rumors are that his velocity was down last year, and everyone thought he was hurt. Now his velocity is back up, but he can’t find the strike zone (7 walks today; career high). After one pitch today the trainer came out to check on him — I think the team thinks something is wrong. I really hope he can figure something out.

Interesting question: Who would you rather have right now, Matt Cain or Placido Polanco? Is it as easy as you think?

Widely rumored that Detroit offered Ugueth Urbina to SF in 2004 for Matt Cain and presumably other players. The Giants were adamant that they were asking for too much. No one knows for sure what the hold up was, but I’ll make the assumption that Detroit could have wrestled a then-19 year old Cain in some sort of deal. Detroit was going nowhere, finishing 72-90. The Giants, however, maybe should have made the deal: they finished one game out of the wild card, and two games out of the division lead. At this point, it might be so long before they’re good again that they may never get much use out of Matt Cain.

No question, Detroit got a steal when they traded the soon to be jailbird Urbina to Philly for a player Philadelphia felt they no longer needed (due to Chase Utley’s star potential). No question that Polanco helped fuel Detroit’s push to the world series two years ago. But lets pretend San Francisco took the deal in 2004.

Assuming the SF trade, going into the offseason after 2006, here are Detroit’s top pitchers (with their late 2006 ages):

• Justin Verlander — hard throwing 23 year old righty
• Jeremy Bonderman — hard throwing 24 year old righty
• Andrew Miller — hard throwing 21 year old lefty
• Matt Cain — hard throwing 22 year old righty
• Kenny Rogers — crafty 137 year old lefty
• Nate Robertson — hard throwing 29 year old lefty
• Mike Maroth — wiffle ball throwing 29 year old lefty
• Joel Zumaya — hard throwing 22 year old righty (with previous starting experience)

Hmm.. sounds like some impressive arms in there. Who is your starting 5? Now, consider the 2006 offseason rumors of a Mark Teixeira for Bonderman deal… now you have no reason to make the trade for Miguel Cabrera, at which point you hold onto your top prospects AND don’t take on Cabrera and Willis’ contract extensions. Right now, I think Matt Cain is a better pitcher then Bonderman… and two years younger. Maybe its a wash over their careers, but Cain is also a lot less expensive.

So.. going into 2007, you’ve some amazing young arms and a farm system full of talent. Now, how do you play out the Sheffield trade? You can move Guillen to third and find another shortstop.. and they’ve probably shaved millions from their payroll.

Knowing now that we miss the playoffs last season, would you trade for Polanco all over again? Not as easy anymore.

Not much else to say today.  Couple thoughts on today’s loss:

• Edgar Rentaria’s hot start has put some of my fears to rest about his return to the american league.
• The Gambler looked solid.  Saw him in a rain-shortened spring training game and we weren’t impressed.
• I like Zach Miner.  But, as a reliever, you CANNOT walk someone on four pitches, nor have the fourth pitch advance the runner on second, losing the force out.
• After watching Miner pitch the seventh, get a few strikeouts and continue to throw sinkers, I stick by my statement that he, not Grilli, should have entered the game for Verlander on Monday.
• Losing doesn’t bother me as much as getting 3-hit by the Royals bothers me.  Tigers were as blah as the weather.

Thoughts in general:

• How happy are the Tigers that Cabrera signed his extension before playing one game in 42 degree Detroit?
• 3 strikeouts in 6 official at-bats… its not fair to you Mr Inge, but the fans are going to be BRUTAL this year if you don’t figure out how to get on base.  Ask Drew Stanton and Dan Orlovsky why they’re fan favorites — its a tough city.
• I see left hand hitting Clete Thomas starting in center next game, and probably some pinch-hitting by either Raburn or Thames for Mr Jones after a left handed reliever is brought in.  No need to panic (and Leyland won’t), but its going to be hard to get the starting lineup in rhythm, and get the bench some at-bats so they can help, and play the match-ups to your favor.
• MLB game day needs to have a smaller imprint on my screen so i can get some work done while trying to watch the game.  Most games will start while i’m still at work and its nice to keep the play by play in the corner of the monitor… so it at least appears i’m working.

In the “for what its worth” section, two teams linked as possible trade partners for B Inge played yesterday.  Jose Castillo was 0-3 for SF, while Blake DeWitt was 1-2 with two walks for the Dodgers.  Neither team seem like possibilities anymore, though I bet if Detroit were willing to pick up the $126million golden child SF would listen.

My dad started talking this up during spring training games.  Why did Detroit (or any other outdoor cold weather team) host opening day in March?  What is the purpose?  Last year Cleveland ran into all sorts of issues with rainouts / snow outs.  Why put that pressure on a team in the middle of the summer to come up with enough arms to complete double headers, etc?

Let’s look at the American League:

NY Yankees:  Cold

Boston: Cold

Toronto: Cold (but wait — its a dome)

Baltimore: Cold

Detroit:  Please

Cleveland:  Detroit minus the glitz

KC:  Warmer

Tampa:  Warm + dome

Chicago:  Cold

Minnesota:  See Toronto

LA Angels: Warm

Seattle:  Rain

Oakland:  Average

Texas:  Balls hot

14 teams… 7 decent places to play.  Oakland may be the least favorable, but at the end of March you’re still looking at 60’s and sunny for a day game.  If they insist on shoving March baseball down our throats, they should take into account the local fans and the players health during the year.  Have the following teams start on the road:  Yankees, Red Sox, Orioles, Tigers, Indians, Mariners and White Sox.  Done.  Make it happen Bud.