Tiger Geist

This whole boston series was a debacle.  It pretty much pointed out the flaws of the team — namely, what happens when Verlander and Jackson don’t pitch in a series.  I’m slightly angry (perturbed??) at the outcome of the series; how excited can you be about a first place team that doesn’t seem like it can do any damage in the playoffs?  Granted, if this were the playoffs, the rotation would have been re-arranged and they probably go with four pitchers.  But they’re about to hit a rough stretch of games, and if pitchers 3 through 5 can’t cut it, its going to be a long summer.

And wow… Lynn Henning really lit it up on the detroit tiger podcast yesterday.  A scathing review of the current roster, and the difficult decision that lay in the month ahead.  Difficult?  Not really, just EXPENSIVE.  Most interesting to me is that Lynn thinks these moves will happen — instead of the general “Magglio is struggling, he’s going to hurt the team in the future with payroll”, Henning basically says “Magglio is done, they need to cut him now”.  I don’t disagree, but it was extremely surprising to hear someone closer to the team actually make that statement.  And Henning doesn’t beat around the bush, some great commentary in under 20 minutes.  His commentary on Comerica Park is equally surprising, though I don’t disagree.

I still need to add up the carnage of what Henning implied would/should happen to the roster in terms of dollars.  I’m intrigued by the Ordonez contract, in terms of, if Magglio was cut/DFA’d and someone else picked him up, and he were to have enough plate appearances, is Detroit on the hook for his contract escalators?  Generally speaking, this is a really rough stretch of the season and something has to be done.  But how does Dave Dombrowski approach Mike Illitch?  “Mr. Illitch, I know things are tight, and that whole ’stanley cup thing’ is drawing some of your attention… BUT…..”

Other thoughts:

• I’m standing by my statement that Dontrelle should have retired after his first victory of the season.  Its not going to end well.
• If you had a matrix drawn up of Zach Miner’s strengths and weaknesses, we can pretty much cross off anything except “decent starting pitcher”.  Even in long relief he’s solid, except he seems incapable of cleaning up the mess of the starting pitcher.  There is a lot of talk about Miner’s approach to hitters, but there seems to be little talk of “hey, lets cater to this guy’s strength which seems to be starting”.  Its called ‘putting someone in a position to succeed’.  So far this is one of Leyland’s most bizarre decisions on the year.
• Talking about the backup catcher situation is boring.  But when you have to pinch hit for a guy (Sardinha) with another guy (Laird) who’s only hitting .230, you have a problem.
• Laird also doesn’t appear to be much of a pinch hitter, going 0-4 this year with an RBI.  He’s a career .200 hitter as a pinch hitter.
• A lot has been made about Nate Robertson spending his winters in the Detroit area.  I have a feeling he’ll find a warmer climate to reside in come November.

And finally… Comerica Park has been named by PETA as the 7th most vegetarian-friendly ballpark.  So at least they have that going for them.  Which is nice.