The Tigers’ Season in a Microcosm

or Why Jim Leyland Should Retire Soon

It all comes down to this. A single game to decide the Central Division crown. A chance at an early exit against the powerful Yankees. Or so the pundits would say. Regardless, a division crown is still important to both of these teams. To the Twins, who have played a nearly unconscious stretch of baseball without Justin Morneau, their MVP first baseman. And also to the Tigers, who haven’t won a division title since they were in the AL East, back in 1987.

This is why, even when you play 162 games, every one of them counts. Because if the outcome of just one of those games was different, Detroit and Minnesota wouldn’t be tied. So that’s what makes Jim Leyland’s game-to-game attitude so maddening sometimes. Because the games did matter.

There’s more than enough blame to go around if the Tigers fall to the Twins tomorrow and watch the ALDS from home. Blame pitching for faltering down the stretch. Blame Jackson for an ERA spike of nearly a full run from July until now. Blame the defense for committing inexcusable errors at critical junctions in big games. Blame Cabrera for drinking until 5 AM Friday night (Saturday morning), and subsequently laying a goose egg in a pivotal game later that night. Blame the offense in general, for making minor-league spot-starters look like Cy Young candidates more times than I care to count. Blame Dombrowski for trading away Jurrgens for one (less than) memorable year with Edgar Renteria. Blame him again for throwing millions at Dontrelle Willis. Blame Gene Lamont for holding Clete Thomas at third during the day/night doubleheader (which would have given the Tigers the lead in a 1-run game). See, plenty of blame to go around.

But today, my blame is focused squarely on Jim Leyland. To be fair, he deserves much of the credit for Detroit being a perennial contender again. (By contender, I mean a team playing meaningful games in August and September, which the Tigers have done for 3 of the last 4 years.) But he has single-handedly cost the team more games than any other individual, and his stubbornness nearly cost the Tigers a chance to even be in this 1-game playoff with the Twins.

Leyland is a throwback manager. He relies on the old baseball adages of lefty-righty matchups in the late innings, he’s conservative when it comes to baserunning and small-ball, and he doesn’t believe in momentum. I can understand the lefty-righty thing to a point. There’s plenty of empirical evidence to back it up, and it’s been a big part of the late-inning chess match for decades. But here’s what I don’t get. Leyland also insists on the lefty-righty split when concocting his daily lineups. Which meant that Granderson sat out a bunch against left-handed starters before this season. And Aubrey Huff got a ton of starts at DH down the stretch against righties, even with a batting average hovering around the Mendoza Line and as much power as your average Chevy Aveo. Why wasn’t Rayburn DHing? I don’t care about the lefty-righty thing at this point. If I’m managing, I’m playing Rayburn every day. He simply gives the Tigers more power, and he’s a bigger offensive threat than Huff, regardless of which hand the opposing pitcher uses to hurl the ball. Like I said, the lefty-righty thing does have merit, but how is a left-handed hitter supposed to improve against left-handed pitching if he’s never given the chance? Granderson’s average against lefties has gradually increased, because the added exposure to left-handed starters has allowed him to improve. Now, when it’s late in a game and you want to play the odds, then by all means pinch hit a lefty against a righty. But most of this is positioning meant to force your opponent to dip into his bullpen.

Another problem with Leyland is his insistence on keeping his starter in for (at least) an inning too long. He’s got one of the slowest hooks in all of baseball. I understand that the bullpen isn’t the strongest, so you don’t want to head there any earlier than absolutely necessary, but come on! Why trot Verlander out in the 8th after he threw 100+ pitches through seven? At least give him the hook once the first two men were aboard. He was gassed, and he wasn’t going to get out of the inning. So why let him try? You’ve got an effective setup man in Lyon and a serviceable closer in Rodney, why not just let them finish the game off? He knew that Monday was an off day no matter what, so why try to save the bullpen? Lyon and Rodney would have been fine to pitch on Tuesday after resting Monday. Why keep Jackson in there so long on Saturday? When there were runners on the corners in the 5th, pull him and try to keep the lead at just three runs. But no. Leyland left him in, and by the time the inning was over, it was 8-0 Sox, no chance for a comeback.

He’s managing these games like it’s mid-May, like it doesn’t matter if they win today, because there’s always a game tomorrow. When you’re only 50 games in to a 162-game season, sometimes you have to look at it that way, and just give up a chance at winning to ensure that you can compete for the next 3-4 days, rather than tapping out a bullpen with a crucial 3-game set against a division rival coming up. But this was October. His team was fighting tooth and nail with a scrappy Twins team that doesn’t give up and always finds a way to win. He needed victories now, not a healthy bullpen three days from now. If the Tigers don’t get these wins, the bullpen rests for another six months. That said, why was Leyland managing from a damage-control, play-not-to-lose perspective, rather than playing for keeps? It just seems like the game is starting to pass him by. Don’t get me wrong, I think he’s a great manager, and probably destined for the Hall someday, I just think that he’s past his prime.

I know this is a short post, but it's been busy for me. Just know that once the Tigers' season is over (whether tomorrow or sometime in the postseason), I'm going to do a more in-depth look at this year's team. Plus I've got some other juicy topics to discuss, so stay tuned.

Pure Madness

or Why I Only Wrote About the Tournament Once

I was going to try to write at least three times about March Madness, but seeing as how I’m in law school and had a huge paper due, it took over the majority of my time. So now that it’s out of the way, on to my condensed NCAA Tournament column! There’s not much about the first couple rounds of the tournament because I’ve forgotten a lot of it (not that memorable), I’ve had a lot going on (see above), and frankly, I really didn’t feel like looking up a bunch of game scores and statistics (I’ve done enough research for a while).

FIRST WEEKEND – ROAD TO THE SWEET SIXTEEN

No Valparaiso, no Santa Clara, no Davidson, no George Mason. No Cinderella teams at all. The only team seeded 10 or lower to make the Sweet Sixteen was Arizona, but a team with 25 straight tournament appearances, four Final Fours, and a national championship is not exactly an underdog. Just one year after every number 1 seed made the Final Four, 2009 marked the first year that the top 3 seeds in every region advanced to the Sweet Sixteen. The upside (in theory) was that just as an all-#1 Final Four made for a tremendous championship weekend last year, a no-underdog Sweet Sixteen would make for a more interesting tournament. Nothing could have been further from the truth.

SECOND WEEKEND – ROAD TO THE FINAL FOUR

I’m definitely eating some crow this time around, after my scathing review of Hansbrough, my misguided faith in Pitt, and my belief that Griffin was clearly the superior college player. Pitt needed a 25-footer from Lavance Fields just to get out of the Sweet Sixteen, then couldn’t stop Villanova from going coast to coast for the game winner at the end of regulation, falling short of the Final Four again.

On a slightly ridiculous side note, the ‘Nova-Pitt game was by far the best game in the tournament, which was surprisingly devoid of either high drama or Cinderella stories. That is to say, it was one of the most boring tournaments ever.

Carolina-Oklahoma was by far the most intriguing matchup of the tournament – on paper. Last year’s Naismith winner head-to-head against this year’s Naismith suitor. This was the game where everybody was going to realize just how much better Blake Griffin is than Tyler Hansbrough. I even recorded the game to watch later because I had a basketball game that night. Of course, the gym had TVs with the game on, and it was a snoozefest from what I caught. Only one thing really jumped out at me. In the first half, Blake Griffin scored zero points in the 11 minutes Hansbrough was on the court. The bow-legged farmboy* from Poplar Bluff, MO shut down Blake Griffin, who had dominated everybody all year. Maybe Psycho-T will do okay in the NBA.

* Hansbrough’s father is an orthopedic surgeon. Orthopedic surgeons are one of the highest paid types of doctors. Even in Poplar Bluff. So Tyler Hansbrough is definitely not a farmboy. But see how being a white dude from Middle America means everybody just assumes you’re some sort of rural hick? You probably didn’t even consider that Psycho-T wasn’t a farmboy. Until I put an asterisk behind it.

CHAMPIONSHIP WEEKEND – TOBACCO ROAD

The 2009 NCAA Tournament belonged to the North Carolina Tar Heels. Sure, the Michigan State storyline was intriguing, particularly because the Final Four was in the D this year, but the national media blew this out of proportion. First, Michigan isn’t like Connecticut or North Dakota, in that they have multiple state schools with major sports pedigree. Michigan is split between Wolverine and Spartan fans. The entire state of Michigan wasn’t going to galvanize around Sparty this March. Besides, whether State had made the Final Four and the championship game or not, Detroit still would have gotten the same economic boost from hosting the event. The Spartans didn’t cause Detroit to make more money. They didn’t sell more tickets. So I’m still trying to figure out exactly how MSU winning the tournament was somehow going to magically fix the economic wasteland that is the Mitten these days. (Hey, I live here! I can poke fun.)

State’s run through the tournament was phenomenal. They beat the defending national champion Jayhawks, then two straight number-one seeds in Louisville and UConn. Louisville was the number one overall seed in the tournament, and the Spartans took it to them in spectacular fashion. They outplayed them from the opening tip. Goran Suton had a career first half, knocking down four three-pointers, and basically running the offense. Every play went through him in one way, shape, or form. When the Cardinals keyed on him for the second half, it opened things up for Summers, Lucas and Green. This was the best game I saw State play all year. Next up, they beat UConn, who hung around for the majority of the game, but mailed it in for the last three minutes, once they figured the Spartans had it in the bag. That’s the only way I can describe it. The Huskies didn’t foul, they weren’t aggressive, they just flat-out quit. For a team that was top-ranked for a substantial portion of the regular season, it was a remarkable tank job. Which, of course, put Sparty in the championship game.

I’d been waiting for the Spartans to perform their fabulous, show-stopping meltdown trick since the Sweet Sixteen. I figured we’d see it against Kansas. They let me down. Certainly they’d pull it out against Louisville. Nope. Oh, I get it, they’re saving it for Detroit, so they can do it in front of the home crowd. Not against UConn. They just kept on winning. And proving me wrong. Meanwhile, Carolina just dissected Villanova in the late game on Saturday. The Wildcats had no chance. They hung around for a while, and even made a run in the second half, but couldn’t overcome the Tar Heels’ overwhelming firepower.

This, of course, sets up the ‘conflicting destinies’ theory. First, Tyler Hansbrough decided to return for his senior season. Then Danny Green, Ty Lawson, and Wayne Ellington joined him. So here was the destiny of North Carolina: Small-town white boy returns for his senior year, even though he was the player of the year last year, because he lost in the Final Four, and can’t go out like that. His decision inspires his teammates to come back with him and accomplish something special. A national championship is their destiny.

Later, Michigan State starts winning games in the tournament. First they knock of Kansas, and people start paying attention. Then they obliterate Louisville, and the whole country takes notice. Then the pundits put Michigan State and Detroit together, and start spouting nonsense. The Spartans can resurrect the state of Michigan! They can be the first team to win a championship in their home state for the first time since 1975! It’s destiny!

Here’s the problem. Only one team can take the trophy home. So there can’t be two teams destined to win the title. Who prevails? Well, look at the storylines above. Which one do you think will win out? The story of destiny that revolves entirely around the team and the players on it, and was set in motion by the team almost a year ago, or the one that sprouted up just last week, and was entirely a concoction of media hysterics? Yeah, I thought so. But a lot of people didn’t. Jim Rome picked the Spartans. So did Greg Anthony and Seth Davis, just moments before tip-off. The hysterical, media-created ‘destiny’ that the Spartans seemed so certain to fulfill duped a lot of people.

But Michigan State still hadn’t performed their most impressive trick. And when they finally unveiled it, wow, what a doozy! Out of the gate, State tried running with Carolina. They pushed the ball up the floor. More to the point, they turned the ball over. A lot. This was the performance I had been expecting out of the Spartans for the last four games: the game where they stand around, force shots, and just get outplayed end-to-end. A complete and utter collapse. Given that Tom Izzo himself said that if his team played their best game and Carolina played their best game, that his team would lose, why would you start of the game by baiting the Heels into running the ball and crushing them? It makes no sense. The only way MSU was going to win that game was by playing deliberately slow and methodical, trying to take Carolina out of its rhythm. Instead, they tried to beat UNC at their own game, and got humiliated.

Izzo said to his team that he wanted to try to save his timeouts, and didn’t want to burn them just to stop runs. So his team had to knock down shots to keep Carolina honest. Which they didn’t, because they were jacking ill-advised threes and running nothing that remotely resembled an offense. They couldn’t get the ball inside, they couldn’t get open for clean looks, they couldn’t do anything. Carolina’s lead grew to ten and then more, and by the midway point of the first half, the Heels led 31-11. Everything was going Carolina’s way. From loose balls to rebounds, UNC was all over everything. They dominated every facet of the game, including defense and rebounding, the two things that Michigan State utilized to get to the championship. Lawson had eight steals, a championship-game record. One of them was a video game steal, where he ran right in front of a Spartan and stole the lazy inbound pass for an easy jumper. That doesn’t happen in real life. But it did in this game. The Spartans couldn’t take care of the ball, and it led to a whole bunch of Tar Heel points. It was abundantly clear at the end of the first half, with Carolina leading 55-34, that these Tar Heels were much bigger, stronger, and better at every position than the remarkably overmatched Spartans, who had just played the entire first half like a bunch of deer caught in the headlights of this national stage. It was also clear that Carolina had been here before, because they were poised and crisp. 55 points was a first-half title-game record, and the 21-point lead was the largest halftime advantage in the history of the championship game.

The game wasn’t near as close as the final score of 89-72 indicated. Carolina led from the opening tip. They had a double-digit lead for the final 35 minutes. In fact, they had a double-digit lead in 154 of the 240 minutes they played in the tournament. They won every game by 12 or more points. They flat-out destroyed the field this year. Nobody could touch them. It was Carolina’s year. The destiny of this team was put in motion nearly a year ago, and it culminated in their coronation as national champions on April 6th. They reached the pinnacle of college basketball, which was their goal since losing to Kansas in the Final Four last season. Hansbrough now has the feather in the cap that is his NCAA career. He has a Naismith award, holds the ACC scoring record, the NCAA free-throw record, a 4-0 record at Cameron Indoor Stadium, and now a national title. His four years in Chapel Hill will be viewed favorably as one of the greatest college careers of all-time.

Random Thoughts on College Sports

or Just what Exactly Goes On in the Minds of NCAA Officials?

 

I’ve been staying away from the college topics because they seem to anger up the blood.  All the dyed-in-the-wool alma mater get into irrational pissing matches that are entirely off topic.  So I’ll do my best to stay objective and stay on topic.  I want to bust through a handful of college hoops and gridiron topics that have been bugging me for a few weeks (months, years, depending on the topic).

 

HOOPS

 

Tyler Hansbrough

People might think that I’m writing the following paragraph because I’m a Duke fan, and therefore a Tarheel hater.  Not true.  I write this based on an objective observation of a substantial number of UNC games.  Psycho-T has been a fairly dominant college player this year.  He was the odds-on favorite to win the Naismith again this year.  But he’s been outplayed this season by Hasheem Thabeet, who in turn has been outplayed by DeJuan Blair (especially head-to-head.  More on this later).  And none of those guys mentioned have put together the season that Blake Griffin has in the Frying Pan State.  (What?  That’s not Oklahoma’s actual nickname?  Crazy.)  Sure, Hansbrough’s still one of the best players in the college ranks this year, and a big reason why the ‘Heels are one of the favorites to win the title this year.  But all this talk about Hansbrough’s upcoming (and outstanding) NBA career needs to be shelved.  I can’t understand for the life of me why people honestly think Psycho-T is going to be a superstar at the next level.  He’s a tweener.  His size and skill set lands him squarely between a 3 and a 4 in the NBA.  He’s too small to be a power forward, and too slow to be a small forward.  Think about it.  Can you envision Hansbrough battling night in and night out with the likes of Amare Stoudamire, Kevin Garnett, and Chris Bosh every night?  Of course not.  And there’s no way he’s stopping LeBron, ‘Melo, or Kevin Durant off the dribble.  What does this mean for Psycho-T?  He’ll get drafted (probably 15 spots too high), have a few good games and a bunch of crappy ones, be described by phrases like, “he should be much improved next season” countless times, then mire in mediocrity, playing limited minutes as a role player over a 12-15 year career.  You watch. 

 

Hasheem Thabeet & DeJuan Blair

Sure, it’s only one game.  But that beatdown Pitt put on UConn a few weeks back was full of messages: overt, subliminal, and otherwise.  Hasheem Thabeet was exposed.  DeJuan Blair put himself back in water cooler roundball talk.  First there’s Thabeet.  Ok, the guy’s 7’3”.  He’s a beast, and he blocks just about every shot that comes his way.  So how did a 6’7”, Barkley-esque dude from Pitt get the best of him?  Scratch that, DeJuan Blair didn’t just get the best of Hasheem Thabeet, he flat-out owned him.   Just when everybody was ready to call Thabeet the most NBA-ready prospect in all of college ball, Blair (who had fallen off the radar because he has a reputation for taking plays off) had the game of all games, and left all of us scratching our heads.  The towering center from Dar Es Salaam got taken to school by a guy who was giving up 8 inches.  Thabeet never found his groove, scoring 5 points and mustering just 4 rebounds, while blocking a season-low 2 shots.  Defensively, Blair had him off-balance and out of position, forcing him to commit four fouls.  Meanwhile, Blair puts up 24 points to go with 23 rebounds.  Seriously, a 20-20 against Hasheem Thabeet?  That’s big time, folks, and you can bet Mr. Blair just got (re)noticed by a bunch of NBA execs.  Even though he’s shorter than the prototypical power forward, he showed he was capable of taking it to guys bigger than he is.  Kind of like Charles Barkley, who at a generous 6’6” (he admits he’s closer to 6’4”) was considered too small to be an NBA power forward coming out of college, but only went on to be one of the 50 greatest players of all time.  I think Blair will be fine in the NBA. 

 

(Note: I wrote this before UConn and Pitt played for the second time this season, a game in which Thabeet did moderately better (I say moderately because his stat line - 14 points, 13 rebounds – belies the fact that he scored exactly zero of those points in the second half), and Blair spent the majority of the game in foul trouble, finishing with a single-single (that should be a term to describe people like Blair and Dwight Howard, who almost never finish in single digits in either category, let alone both).   However, Pitt did win again, becoming just the seventh team to beat the #1 team in the country twice in a season.  This time it was Sam Young who did the dominating, dropping 31 on the Huskies.  The Panthers have become my favorite to win the big dance.)

 

GRIDIRON

 

BCS Stands for…

Bullsh*t Championship Setup.  Built-in Controversy Starter.  Businesses Control Sports.  Any of those better represent the spirit of the BCS acronym better than what the letters actually stand for: Bowl Championship Series.  Since its inception in 1998 (in the wake of the wildly unsuccessful Bowl Alliance), the BCS has done little to clarify the national championship picture.  Indeed, it has mostly muddied the waters, leading to a split title in 2003, and a yearly debate of who deserves to play in the national championship game. 

Why can’t the NCAA just give it up and have a playoff?  The arguments the NCAA uses to support the BCS are beyond ridiculous.  Talking out of both sides of its mouth, the NCAA claims that a playoff in D-I would pull kids away from classes too much, but supports such a system for D-I AA, D-II, and D-III.   There is also the notion that it would take away from the regular season if teams knew they would still get into the playoffs after a loss.  How about the teams that have nothing left to play for after they’ve been mathematically eliminated from title contention in week 5?  Has the unparalleled excitement generated by March Madness not been recognized by NCAA officials?  Imagine what a crazy 2-3 week period of college football would mean, when a pool of 10-12 teams duke it out to decide who is crowned champion. 

Message to the NCAA: Stop the charade and call the BCS what it really is – a system of making money hand-over-fist that hasn’t (totally) broken yet.  Until it does, and the money dries up, there’s no way anybody involved is changing the BCS.  Not the sponsors, not the conferences, and not the NCAA.  Which is too bad for the players, especially those on teams on the outside looking in, like Utah and Texas last year, and Boise State in 2006. 

 

Touchdown Celebrations

I’ve always thought that the dumbest flag in all of football, be it college or pro, was the ‘excessive celebration’ penalty.  In my mind, excessive celebration is drinking too many shots on your birthday and spending the waning hours of the morning praying to the porcelain goddess.  I like the sheer, unbridled joy that players used to exude when they scored an especially pivotal touchdown in a big game.  Current rules mean those pivotal touchdowns are the very ones players err on the side of caution, lest their team lose critical yardage on the ensuing kickoff. 

Look, I’m all for throwing the flag when a receiver catches a routine slant route over the middle for 3 yards and a first down, then gets up and makes a huge demonstration, especially when his team is getting slaughtered.  (You’re on notice, Roy E. Williams!)  Personally, I don’t think the refs penalize that enough.  Anything other than a simple fist pump and high-fiving a teammate after a first down should be grounds for a flag, unless the following conditions are met: a) the gain on the play was 20 yards or more; b) there’s less than 2 minutes to go in a game separated by 6 points or less; or c) the catch itself was a thing of beauty (triple-teamed, tipped-and-bobbled, you get the idea).  Same thing goes for any tackle that isn’t for at least a five-yard loss, unless it saves a touchdown, or it forces a turnover on downs or a punt in the last two minutes of a close game.

That said, I’m sick of flags flying in the end zone when somebody scores the go-ahead touchdown in a rivalry game.  If you catch a 65-yard touchdown pass that gives you a 3-point lead over your biggest rival with a minute and a half left, you should have carte blanche to do whatever the hell you want in the end zone, within reason.  The limitations: 1) no celebration can last more than 15 seconds; 2) no props of any kind can be used; and 3) other than your helmet, no other article of clothing can be removed. 

Special deference to the scoreboard and clock should be paid to offensive and defensive linemen.  Any time a defensive lineman picks up the football and runs it into the end zone, he can celebrate however he wants, no matter what the score is.  It’s probably the only chance in his career to feel the joy that some running backs get to experience 20 times a season… so let him celebrate, baby!

My sentiments aren’t exactly uncommon.  So what is the NCAA doing to make the game more exciting?  That’s right; they’re cracking down on excessive celebrations.  They’re even tossing around the idea of making some celebrations live-ball penalties, which means an excessive celebration may negate the very touchdown being celebrated.  What?  The NCAA uses the rationale that it wants to cut out taunting.  Fine.  Then penalize actual taunting.  If I turn around and point at the d-back chasing me down as I cross the goal line, I deserve a flag.  But I shouldn’t elicit one for dancing for joy when I score the go-ahead touchdown.  The proposed rule change is overbroad.  It should focus on the actual issue, rather than blanketing all modes of in-game expression.  Don’t penalize a player for getting excited about a big score in a big game.  Once again, the NCAA is proposing another rule change that hurts the players more than anybody else.    

 

Transfer (Student) Athletes

If you transfer schools in college athletics, you have to sit out for a year.  That’s the rule.  The NCAA claims this cuts down on a deluge of student transfers every season, which I’m sure it does.  The last thing I want to see happen is college hoops and college football turn into a free-agency driven sport, where athletes transfer every year just to get on a better team or to get more playing time.  However, there are instances where the transfer rule as it stands imposes an undue hardship on players. 

The University of Michigan has been in the news a lot lately for the slew of outgoing transfer students since Rich Rodriguez arrived as head football coach last fall.  Ryan Mallett bolted before last year, then this offseason Sam McGuffie and Steven Threet sought greener pastures.  Their reasons for transferring are valid: they don’t really fit into RichRod’s scheme.  So they have to sit out for a season before they can play football again.  Fine. 

But what if you’ve been recruited to play for a certain coach, and then after your freshman year, that coach decides to jump ship and sign the big-dollar deal somewhere else?  Now the school brings in a coach with a completely different offense, and it’s apparent that you’re not going to figure heavily into the game plan.  Wouldn’t information like that have affected your decision to commit? 

I know that players aren’t just committing to the coach, they’re committing to the school, too.  But why is it a one-way street?  Why can coaches abandon their school for money, with the only repercussion being a contract buyout (which is usually paid by the school that hired them)?  Yet the players that were brought to the school by that coach can’t leave without sacrificing a year?  That makes no sense. 

Here’s what I propose:  if you can show the following three elements, you should be allowed to transfer, no questions asked.  No sitting out, you can go suit up somewhere else next season. 

1)      You must have been recruited by a coach who has since left the school to coach somewhere else (no credit for coaches who retire or get fired)

2)      The coach must have been currently under contract at the time he left

3)      The coach brought in to replace him must run a different style offense, and you must be able to show that the offense in question does not suit your style (yeah, it’s a subjective test, but these cases should be heard by a panel of coaches and NCAA officials.  They can make these kind of judgments)

Notice I’m not calling for allowing full-scale transferring of student-athletes without repercussions.  Not by a long shot.  The NCAA will have to analyze transfer students on a case-by-case basis.  They do this already, but the threshold that needs to be met for exemption should be relaxed.  If the coach gets fired, the players are unaffected by this rule. Same thing as when a coach retires.  It’s only when a coach leaves in the middle of his contract to take a different job.  When Nick Saban left LSU (and MSU five years prior) and when RichRod left WVU, they left student-athletes behind that had come to their school under the presumption that they would be playing for a certain coach.  When that certain coach then abandons the program with green in his eyes, those players should have some sort of remedy. 

 

This isn’t the only time that I’m going to hit on the college game, I’m sure I’ll be back for at least one NCAA Tournament-related column.  I can’t let my favorite 3 weeks in sports go by without saying anything.

The Sad State of Major League Baseball

or Why Bud Selig Needs to Step Down as Commish

 

Alex Rodriguez is the latest name tainted by the steroid scandal.  He was just one on a list of 103 names tied to positive steroid tests from the early part of the decade.  Sure, the test was supposed to be confidential, but once the names were matched to the samples, it was only a matter of time before the information became public.  It's the American way!  Now that A-Rod has been brought to earth, I’m sure Red Sox and Tiger fans are just bracing themselves for the seemingly inevitable exposure of Big Papi and Miggy Cab.  ManRam doesn’t have a team, but he might get nabbed, too. 

Right now, I’d be more surprised to find out unequivocally that a baseball player didn’t do steroids, especially a masher like Ortiz, Cabrera, or Ramirez.  Or even Albert Pujols or Ryan Howard.  Once A-Rod was implicated, nobody seemed safe.  See, this is how bad it’s gotten!  Even the ‘good guys’ are suspects.  As it stands right now, the all-time hits leader, the all-time home runs leader, the person who broke Roger Maris’s record, and the player with the most 60 home run seasons will all be left out of Cooperstown by voters.  How did this happen?  Two words: Bud Selig. 

Selig had the audacity, in a public forum, to say he doesn’t want to be held responsible for the steroid era.  What?  Say again?  Seriously?  Let me get this straight.  Selig wants to be heaped with praise for all the good things he did for baseball, like the increase in revenue, the increase in attendance, and the general overall growth.  That’s fine.  Way to go, Bud.  However, he can’t pick and choose what is attributed to him.  He has to take the good with the bad.  And unfortunately for him, the bad is overtaking the good as far as what has happened to baseball on his watch.  And if you analyze it further, most of the good can be attributed to the bad. 

Let’s look closer, shall we?  First, a little history.  In 1994, Major League Baseball closed its doors on the season on August 12.  No playoffs, no World Series.  Not surprisingly, this led to a fan backlash, and baseball’s popularity plummeted.  Attendance for a full season in 1995 was only 400,000 fans more than that of the strike-shortened 1994 season, despite that 900 more games were played.  A full 20 million more fans attended games in 1993 than in 1995.  Attendance in 1996 and 1997 lagged significantly behind pre-strike figures.  Baseball was in dire straits. 

Enter Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa, circa 1998.  Big Mac and Slammin’ Sammy battled neck-and-neck in an epic home run race.  The final totals were 70 home runs for McGwire and 66 for Sosa.  Never mind that McGwire was 25 pounds heavier now than he was during his Oakland years, and that his forearms were bigger in 1998 than his biceps were in 1988.  Or that the 1998 Sammy Sosa couldn’t hide behind two of his rookie self.  These guys were huge.  Bigger than anyone who was just “working out a lot” should have been.  And bigger than if they were just taking andro, or whatever Mac claimed he was gobbling at the time.  No, something else was going on here.  A lot of the fans knew that.  Some cared, some didn’t.  Some expressed their outrage.  Most didn’t.  And for that, fans as a whole are partially to blame.  Not completely, because the nature of the fan is to watch in awe as super-human athletes perform super-human feats.  Nothing personified that idea more than the summer of 1998. 

Yes, McGwire and Sosa deserve a share of the blame.  They shouldn’t have compromised the integrity of the game by taking PEDs.  The same goes for all the players named in the Mitchell Report, as well as the 103 mystery players on the latest report, the one that exposed A-Roid.  However, this fact alone does not exonerate Bud Selig.  Baseball needed the home run race of 1998 to inject some excitement into the game.  Face it: for the common fan, a 10-9 slugfest is much more exciting than a 1-0 pitchers’ duel. Pitchers’ duels are for purists and hardcore fans.  But baseball is a business, and the weighty cost of new stadiums and outlandish player salaries cannot be supported by the hardcore fans alone.  MLB needs the fringe fans.  And the fringe fans will only watch if the game is exciting.  A purist like myself finds an epic pitchers’ duel exciting, but to the average fan, the only excitement that a pitcher could generate is a no-hitter.  Fringe fans like the long ball. 

Baseball needed a boost in popularity; it needed to bring those fringe fans back.  So Bud looked the other way at steroid use, because the home runs produced by ‘roids were bringing fans back in droves.  And it’s not like Sosa and McGwire were the only case studies, either.  Brady Anderson hit 50 home runs in 1996.  Fifty!  He never reached even half that amount again in his career.  Roger Clemens ballooned in size and became a much better pitcher in his late 30s than he was in his late 20s.  And the man who was supposed to save baseball, the one who was going to render Barroid’s tarnished record irrelevant, now he’s a steroid statistic. 

Looking past individual players, there’s the empirical evidence as well.  Over the last 30 years, not including the strike-shortened 1981 and 1994 seasons, there have been an average of 4276 home runs hit each season.  On its face, this shows nothing.  It’s the 15-year splits that are so telling.  From 1979-1993, there were just 3454 home runs hit per year, as contrasted with 1995-2008 (1994 was a strike-shortened year, and therefore not included in the calculations), which saw 5099 home runs fly over the fences every season.  How do you account for a 47% increase in home run production?  During the same time period that the alleged steroid activity was taking place?  Was Bud Selig even watching baseball during this time? 

That’s why I’m calling for Bud Selig to step down from baseball.  He needs to just admit he was wrong, that he screwed up and horribly mismanaged America’s pastime, and simply walk away.  No more excuses, no more pleas to be exonerated, no more crap.  Bud Selig is no more deserving to continue as the commissioner of baseball than Barry Bonds, Mark McGwire, and Roger Clemens are to be elected to the Hall of Fame.  Less deserving, in fact.  Not electing players like Bonds or Clemens is akin to pulling the wool over America’s eyes and pretending the steroid era never happened.  But that’s what Buddy-boy wants to do.  Just get a big-ass Sharpie and start blacking out the records.  Hey Bud, you might be able to get an industrial-strength asterisk machine at Staples.  That might come in handy when you attempt to alter the past.  

Everybody involved in baseball has to face up to one simple fact: the steroid era was real.  It really happened.  Steroids or not, McGwire and Sosa actually chased Roger Maris's record of 61, way back in 1998.  McGwire actually hit 70 bombs in a single season. Barry Bonds broke Hank Aaron's legendary 755 career home run record, by actually hitting career home run number 756.  He currently actually has 762 career home runs. These moments are real, because people were there.  They saw it happen.  They let it happen.  And now they have to live with the consequences.  The steroid era was everybody's fault.  Even the common fan.  As the saying goes, "never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups," the fans could have done something.  But they didn't.  We didn't.  Bud Selig didn't.

They say history is written by the winners.  If we let Bud Selig rewrite the past and hide the steroid era behind the curtain, then he’s won.  He gets his money, he gets his credit for bringing baseball back, but most importantly, he gets to throw everyone under the bus for the steroid epidemic.  Bud, please.  Do us a favor.   Throw yourself under that bus instead.  It’s what baseball deserves. 

 

It’s Been a Long Time

or Things I’ve Thought About in the Meantime

 

I haven’t been able to write much what with school and all, but there is a handful of issues that have passed us by that I want to comment on.  This installment of Wrecking Trains is kind of a mixed-bag affair.  I’ve got a few things I want to talk about, but none of them are deep enough to warrant an entire column.  And since I don’t have enough readers yet, I can’t turn this into a mailbag, either. 

 

World …[rain delay]  … Series

It was an interesting Fall Classic this year.  There’s not much to be said; it was pretty boring, there was a ginormous rain delay (2 days to finish 3.5 innings of game 5), and an incredibly anticlimactic finish for the 2008 (Devil) Rays.  They reminded me of the 2006 Tigers for obvious reasons.  They came out of nowhere to make the playoffs, everyone spent all season waiting for them to falter and return to earth, and they beat a perennial playoff powerhouse to reach the World Series.  Oh yeah, and when they got there they completely forgot how to play baseball and got trounced.  They couldn’t hit (sound familiar?), couldn’t pitch (yep), and couldn’t play defense (pretty sure that happened to the Tigers, too).  So Philadelphia took home the trophy, and brought a championship to the most tortured city in sports for the first time since Dr. J and the Sixers secured the Larry O’Brien trophy in 1983. 

For all the arguments that the pundits make about the American League being so much better than the National League, the Phillies’ win in 2008 pulls the leagues even in titles over the last eight years.  If you look at the interleague splits over the last twelve seasons (since 1997, when interleague play began), the AL is ahead 1,536-1,420.  This is not the absolute dominance that some would have you believe.  Sure, the AL leads 440-316 over the last three years, but they’ve also lost two of the three World Series over that same period.  And honestly, what matters more, the interleague play record during the regular season, or World Series wins?  It all goes back to the basic premise in all of sports: any team can beat any other team on any given day.  There are no ‘sure things’ in sports.

Personally, I think the bigger issue is that 2008 is the fifth straight World Series in which the losing team has won no more than just a single game.  It’s the sixth straight series without a Game 7.  This is a problem, folks.  Why is the World Series not competitive anymore?  Well, once again, there were long layoffs between (and in the middle of) the series.  Is this really the problem?  Until this year, that was the consensus.  After all, the Rockies (9 days off in 2007; swept in Series) and Tigers (8 days off in 2006; lost Series 4-1) both had long breaks between the LCS and World Series, and both lost the momentum and mojo they had in the first two rounds of the playoffs.  That was the reason, right?

Not so fast.  The (Devil) Rays turned this theory on its head.  This time around, it was the Phillies that disposed of the Rays after sitting on their tails for over a week.  But baseball is a game of streaks and slumps, and injecting unnecessary breaks in the action will inevitably affect the quality of play.  Either way, the breaks in the playoffs are ridiculous.  The teams play 162 games in 180 days during the regular season, then play just 13 games in 25 days (2006 Tigers), 11 games in 22 days (2007 Rockies), or 14 games in 27 days (2008 Phillies).  Why is that?  Having a day off for every day they play (on average) is not helping these teams.  Sure, a long season can take its toll on players, but if the concern is really about injuries and fatigue, then the regular season should be shorter.  Yes, there will be inevitable delays, like when one LCS goes to 7 games, but the other is decided in only 4.  But that’s a difference of 3 days, so why did these teams have 8 or 9 days off? 

It’s all about TV revenue.  MLB wants prime-time matchups in prime TV slots.  So it sacrifices the flow of the playoffs to accomplish this end.  But this self-serving purpose is also self-defeating.  It undermines baseball’s credibility when, in an effort to boost television ratings, baseball tampers with scheduling, and in turn diminishes the quality of the World Series.  Sure, this juggling act may help ratings for LDS and LCS games, but it’s killing the competition in the World Series, and fans have stopped watching. 

 

0-16! Congratulations!

Kudos to the Lions for completing Jim Rome’s dream.  It takes a cohesive team effort to go out and lose every single game you play for an entire season.  No, seriously.  Wow.  Not even a single victory.  See my first blog post if you want a further explanation for why this happened.  Matt Millen is a moron.  And the team’s not getting any better if all they’re going to do is hire his underling to replace him. 

Ford:  “So, what qualifications do you have for this position?”

Mayhew:  “Well, I worked and studied under Matt Millen for eight years.”

Ford:  “You’re hired!”

Is that how Martin Mayhew’s interview actually went?  Here’s a thought, William Clay: 0-16 is karma for being one of the worst owners in all of sports.  Well, at least one of the worst owners that hasn’t moved his team to another city. 

And speaking of 0-16, I think it’s important for Lions fans that the team got a big ol’ goose-egg in the win column this year.  That’s right, I said fans.  Everyone is going to remember the 2008 Detroit Lions as only team to go 0-16.  Which, in a twisted, sadistic way is good for Lions fans.  Things can’t get better until they get worse.  By Because of 16 games of epic failure, the 2008 Lions have cemented themselves in history as the worst team ever.  Fans have abandoned all hope.  Most of them realize that the only way to fix this is a complete overhaul, and may finally take steps to accomplish it. 

The reason William Clay Ford never spent the money to put a good team on the field is because he didn’t have to.  Why pay more to make the same amount of money?  Every game was sold out.  Fans bought jerseys, shirts, and hats.  Ford counted his money, and thought nothing of the 2-14, 3-13, and 4-12 teams that mired in mediocrity.  Oh, sure, coaches were fired, players were cut, rookies were drafted, and free agents were signed.  But there wasn’t much rhyme or reason to it all, because the end results didn’t matter to the bottom line.  The team was still going to make the Fords money. 

But now that the team exactly one win in their last 24 games, and none in their last 17, fans may actually stop attending games.  They may stop buying memorabilia.  If this happens, the money supply dries up.  And the Fords have to fix it, starting with the product on the field. 

 

Closing the Door on the Bullpen

It only took most of the offseason.  But Dombrowski finally signed a closer.  It’s not K-Rod, it’s not K-Wood, and it’s not some Putz (pootz, not putz, apparently, is the correct pronunciation).  But it’s also not F-Rod (or F-Bomb, based on what comes out of most fans’ mouths when he enters the game) or the Roller-Coaster.  Enter Brandon Lyon.  Dombrowski and Leyland expect him to compete with Zumaya to be the everyday closer. 

Lyon’s career ERA is 4.46, so he’s not exactly Rivera-esque.  But he is a better option than Fernando Rodney, who looks like a criminal.  When he glances around the park while he pitches, you wonder if maybe he’s keeping an eye out for his parole officer.  Which may explain his erratic pitching, not having his full focus on the game at hand.  Needless to say, it will be infinitely more pleasing to watch a closer whose primary sequence isn’t either [single – single – walk – warning track fly ball – strikeout – double – FAIL] or [single – 0-2 count beanball – home run – single – home run – FAIL].  High comedy, and entertaining as hell if you don’t care about the outcome of the game.  On the other hand, if winning brings you joy, following the 2008 Tigers was probably painful, especially in the later innings.   

Look at it this way.  The Tigers bullpen had 34 saves as a team last year.  But that’s not even the worst part.  Those 34 saves were all the team could muster in 63 opportunities!  That’s a 54% success rate.  Fifty-four percent is a failing grade in just about every college course ever.  In other words, the bullpen failed.  Lyon, on the other hand, converted 26 of 31 chances last year.  That’s 84%, which is about a B or B-minus.  Given that the Tigers won 74 games last year, and 89 wins took the division, this is bad.  They blew 29 saves in 2008.  If you turn just half of those blown saves into wins, the Tigers are right there in the divisional race.  If Brandon Lyon converts 84% of his saves, given 63 chances he saves 53 games.  Nineteen more games than the bullpen did, in fact, save last year.  Add that to their actual win total of 74, and the Tigers have 93 wins, taking the division.  However, Leyland and Dombrowski determined that Todd Jones and Fernando Rodney were the right guys for the job last year, so the egg is all over their face. 

Thanks for listening to my ramblings.  I know some of the topics are pretty old, but I couldn't let them go by without commenting on them at least a little.  Hopefully I'll be a bit more consistent with my posting.  Stay tuned because I've got a piece on Bud Selig that I'm working on.   After that I'm going to try to post every week or two, even if it's just something small.  

Kwame Killed Our City

or Why the Pistons Will Have Another Disappointing Season

The Pistons are set to kick off the 2008-2009 season, five years after they won the title in 2004.  It’s been four straight years of underachieving and early playoff exits, yet the Pistons still carry themselves with a swagger that says ‘We’re the best team in the league.’  Why?  What have they done?  Do they know something we don’t?  Winning one title does not give the Detroit the right to carry on the way they have.  Sure, back in 2004 the Stones could turn it on whenever they wanted.   They were a second-half team; they might struggle in the first half, but they would get their act together at halftime, and turn it around, dominate the second half, and win the game.  But they’ve gotten older, everyone around them has gotten younger, and yet the Pistons think they can do the same thing.  Four years of playoff disappointment has proven them wrong, yet they still believe they have what it takes to win. 

Well, I don’t, and here’s why.  Joe Dumars got a lot of credit for putting together the 2004 title team, and for good reason.  That team was one of the best teams the NBA had seen in a long time.  But the NBA has become inherently an individual sport, as evidenced by the Jordan teams of the 90s, and now Kobe, Shaq, Wade, and LeBron.  These guys are X-factors that can take over a game at a moment’s notice, hitting clutch shots and playing shutdown defense.  The Pistons don’t have a guy like that, and it hurts them.   They need a pure scorer, one who can take over late in games; a guy who can put them over the top.

(Note:  Carmelo Anthony or Dwyane Wade could have been this player for the Pistons.  Instead, Dumars drafted Darko with the #2 pick.  Until this offseason, this was just about the only knock against him.)

Yet, despite all this, Dumars has stood pat for the most part.  Despite losing to LeBron’s Cavaliers in 2007, when he took over in the 4th quarter and overtime of game 5, scoring 29 points, Dumars didn’t go out and try to get a pure scorer.  Instead, he started the 2007-2008 season with essentially the same team.  And after losing to (nay, getting dominated by) the Celtics, Dumars kept the team intact once again.  The only significant offseason moves were firing Flip Saunders (I agree with this, just not with the coach he hired.  More on this in a moment.), and signing Kwame Brown. 

Detroit already tried a meaningful relationship with a guy named Kwame (see Kilpatrick, Mayor), and it was an abomination.  This relationship won’t turn out any better.  Kwame Brown is one of the laziest, softest, and lamest big men in the game.  He’s missed 145 career games due to injury, and is probably the worst #1 overall pick since Michael Olowokandi.  His career averages are 7.2 points and 5.7 rebounds per game.  And he positively shrinks in big moments.  This is not the guy I want seeing crunch-time minutes in a crucial playoff game.  And if he can’t perform in that situation, then why did the Pistons sign him?  Their biggest problem over the last three years has been relying on a reserve tank that just isn’t there anymore and wilting when the game is on the line.  Yet they go out and overpay for one of the most unclutch (yes, I just made that word up) players out there.  Doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, does it? 

This Pistons team is old, folks.  There’s no way around it.  The average age of the starters is 31.5 years old.  By comparison, the Celtics starters average 28 (remember, people called this team old during the playoffs last year), and the Cavaliers average just 24.5 years old.  The Pistons are senior freaking citizens!  Dice and Sheed are 34, Chauncey is 32, and Rip is 30.  Tayshaun is the only starter under 30, and he’s 28.  They need an injection of some youth and enthusiasm in a hurry.  Sure, they’ve got some young bench talent, like Rodney Stuckey and Jason Maxiell, but until the core group retires or is traded, they will receive the brunt of the playing time.    

Speaking of enthusiasm, it seems as if this team has just been going through the motions lately.  And by doing so, they make stupid mistakes.  Chauncey is not an elite point guard anymore.  His assist-to-turnover ratio has been steadily slipping since 2004, and he launches ill-advised shots at the worst possible times.  Sure, when he was younger and he buried those shots he was vindicated, but heaving 30 footers with 19 seconds on the shot clock is not an ideal shot under any circumstances.

Over the last five years, as Rasheed Wallace goes, so go the Pistons.  Well, he’s finally gone downhill in a bad way.  As long as he’s still around, it’s only a matter of time before the rest of the team tumbles down the hill with him.  Don’t get me wrong, I love Sheed.  I just think his time in Detroit has come and gone.  When the Pistons traded for him in 2004, I was one of the first to declare that they would win the title that year.  Lo and behold, they did.  (Before you think I’m calling myself the next Nostradamus, keep in mind that I’m about 4-57 in picking major sports champions over the last ten years.  So there.)   But Sheed’s act is tired.  He’s a whiner, and while that may have been endearing and a sign of intensity and caring back in 2004 and 2005, now it’s just annoying.  And he’s got the rest of the team doing it.  Fans and teams around the league hate how much the Pistons complain about calls.  Based on the players’ reactions over the last five years, I think they believe they haven’t committed a single foul over that span. 

My solution?  Joe Dumars should have packaged Sheed and Chauncey and gotten out of them what he could.  Baron Davis was available this offseason.  So was Elton Brand.  Both of them would have been huge upgrades at the one and four positions.  Did you see how Baron Davis single-handedly willed his team to a series win over the heavily favored Mavericks two years ago?  The guy’s a beast.  I’m sure that trade would never have happened straight-up, but as a general manager trying to put a championship-caliber team on the floor, don’t you have to at least entertain trade offers for the two players most responsible for killing your team over the last three years? 

Michael Curry has been a fine assistant coach, with a decent track record.  But shouldn’t his introduction to the big time be for a lower caliber team?  To put it another way, shouldn’t the Pistons have gone out and gotten a premier coach?  Remember this:  the Pistons won a title in 2004 with Larry Brown, a Hall-of-Famer in both the NBA and NCAA, and the only coach to win titles in both leagues.  He also took them to the NBA Finals the following year, ultimately losing in seven games to the Spurs, who are a modern dynasty.  After he left to go to the Knicks (This was the reason he sleepwalked through the 2005 playoffs, because he was so distracted by the media saga surrounding the NY job.  Had he been wholeheartedly in it for the Pistons, they probably repeat.), Dumars hired Flip Saunders, a career .485 coach.  The players never really played for Flip.  You could see it in their demeanor.  They thought after winning a title and barely losing in seven games the next, that Bugs Bunny could coach the team and they would win.  They never had respect for Flip, and it showed. 

So why are they going to respect Curry?  Truth is, they probably won’t.  The cocky attitude and false sense of entitlement that plagues this Piston team will continue, unless Joe D hires a coach that can bring them back to earth.  That said, who should they have hired?  The answer is obvious.  Bill Laimbeer.  One of the most intense individuals on the planet, and physically imposing as well, he’d be a perfect fit.  Lamb is legendary in Detroit, and he’s one hell of a coach as well.  Granted, I know it’s the WNBA (I say this because it’s a totally different game; I’m not going to get into the girls vs. boys debate here), but the man’s won three titles in five years!  He’s got a stellar track record, he commands respect, and he’s been there before, on the floor and in the trenches.  As a key member of the two-time title winning Bad Boys, he knows what it takes to win a championship.  Plus, he played with Joe Dumars.  Why this hasn’t happened yet is beyond me.  Michael Curry?  Really?

So what does this all mean for the 2008-2009 Detroit Pistons?  Another 50 win regular season, maybe even a Central Division title, and another frustrating playoff exit.  This team has hit its ceiling, and is currently on the way down.  If you really think the Pistons have a chance this year, you’re kidding yourself.  They’re trotting out the same team that has failed to win the last three years.  The only difference between this year and last?  Kwame Brown (laughable, man) and Michael Curry (not really an upgrade, not really a downgrade.  Sidegrade?  Yes, I made that word up, too.)  Oh yeah, and the core of the team is another year older and another step slower.  Anyone who thinks the Pistons are going to accomplish anything of note this season is going to be woefully disappointed.  

Tigers Declawed

or Why 2008 was a Season to Forget

 

Well, the painful Detroit Tigers’ season is officially over.  Ouch.  This was definitely one to forget.  Tiger fans, including myself, were (just about) on top of the world last March, after the Cabrera/Willis deal.  On paper, the Tigers had an incredible lineup.  Predictions of 1,000 runs, 100 wins, all kinds of crazy ideas.  They didn’t seem so crazy then, but they certainly do now.  Even the pitching staff, on paper, looked decent.  Well, maybe not, but we were able to convince ourselves that it was, if only because we thought the offense would be able to offset any pitching deficiencies that may have been exposed over the course of the season.  Obviously, that didn’t happen.  The Tigers started 0-7, the starters (other than one rookie) never pitched to their potential, the offense as a whole underperformed, and the bullpen imploded down the stretch.  The result was a behemoth limping to the finish line, finally collapsing under its own weight on September 29th, finishing the 2008 season at 74-88, in sole possession of last place in the AL Central.  They hadn’t finished in last place since 2003, when they lost 119 games.  It was their worst record since 2004.  What went wrong?  In a word, everything.  Let’s look in a little more detail at what happened in 2008, why it was a year to forget for Tiger fans, and what we may or may not have to look forward to in the future. 

 

THE LINEUP

 

The Motown Mashers.  Murderers’ Row.  The Bengal Bombers.  Whatever you called them, this lineup looked sick on paper.  Really sick.  Proclamations of 1,000 runs were abound, the World Series title was practically being handed to the Tigers in early March.  Spring Training hadn’t even started, and already the pundits were convinced that Detroit would be World Series champs come October.  Well, it’s October, and the Tigers are sitting at home, watching the Fall Classic on TV.  Ouch.  They came 154 runs away from the 1,000 mark, nearly a full run for each game played.  They batted .271 as a team, good enough for 4th in the AL, but still nearly 30 points under .300.  Not great, considering the composite batting average of the 2008 roster during the 2007 season was .303.  Even with Inge and Sheffield dragging the average down, the 2008 Tigers regulars batted over .300 in 2007.  The Tigers were shut out just 3 times in all of 2007, and the first time was not until June.  However, the ‘New & Improved’ 2008 Tigers were shut out 12 times, including 4 times in their first 12 games.  Not good. 

(Note: in most cases, new & improved is an oxymoron, because if something is new, there’s nothing to be improved upon, and if something is improved, then it already exists and can’t be new.  However, in this case I think it applies because the lineup itself was ‘improved’, and some of the players were ‘new.’  But it’s still a stretch. )

So what happened?  Why was the offense so anemic?    Part of it was the absence of Curtis Granderson for the first month of the season.  He gets the offense going, and his absence was noticeable.  Put it this way:  Granderson finished second in the league in runs scored, despite missing 21 games this year.  In fact, Granderson scored just 6 fewer times than Dustin Pedroia, despite reaching base 37 fewer times.  When Grandy gets on base, he scores, more often than not. 

Some of the offense’s problems could be attributed to the team not gelling right away.  Cabrera finished with a decent season, but got off to a slow start.  He needed time to get used to American League pitchers, and being merely a cog in a high-powered offense, rather than the only good hitter on a poor team.  He was also most likely feeling the pressure to perform after signing a lucrative deal.  Fortunately, he turned it around, becoming the first Tiger to lead the league in home runs since Cecil Fielder, and finishing third in RBI.  Renteria never really adjusted to AL pitching, and finished 62 points below his 2007 average.  Inge, who became the team’s jack of all trades, never found his rhythm or a position to call his own, and his numbers at the plate struggled as a result. 

Another problem was age.  There’s no denying that Sheffield, Renteria, Guillen, and Ordonez are starting to show their age.  Nobody’s old age was more apparent than Sheffield, who in his two years in Detroit has become a shadow of his former self.  It’s obvious the guy has played for 20 years.  His power numbers are down, he can’t get around on the ball as well, he’s hurt all the time, and he grounds out and pops up a lot.  Sure, he was legendary in his glory years, but he’s no longer deserving of an everyday role, even as a DH, and certainly not deserving of a middle-of-the-order batting slot.  Leyland played him nearly every day he wasn’t hurt, usually as the third hitter.  Whether this was out of loyalty or to avoid his destructive behavior, I’m not sure.  But I know the Tigers would have been better served by a different option at DH. 

The final reason for the drop in offense is the unrealistic expectations created by media and fans, and the crushing reality that piles up when a team begins to fail to live up to those expectations.  People looked at this lineup on paper saw incredible talent and high expectations.  What they failed to keep in mind was that half the players in the lineup were coming off career years.  Ordonez, Polanco, Granderson, and Renteria put up astounding numbers in 2007, and everyone expected these to carry over into 2008.  These unrealistic expectations made it seem as if their lower output in 2008 was a failure, but in everyone’s case except Renteria, their numbers were still respectable for a player at their position.  Taken as a whole, the offense underachieved by the standards we all measured them by, whether fair or not.  Once the team started struggling, the media slammed them, fans were outraged, and the players tried too hard to get out of the rut.  It was a vicious cycle, and it resulted in even poorer results. 

 

THE PITCHING STAFF

 

If the lineup underperformed, then the pitching staff took a dump all over the field.  Starters, middle relief, closers; everybody was culpable.  With the exception of one pitcher, everybody on the staff shared some level of responsibility for the atrocity that was Detroit Tigers pitching in 2008.  Only Armando Gallaraga is free from blame.  As a rookie, he posted a 13-7 record with a 3.48 ERA, not too shabby for a rookie.  Had the bullpen not blown leads in seven of his starts, he could have ended with 20 wins.  Beyond this, nobody, not even the ace of the staff, performed above or even near expectations. 

As a whole, the Tigers’ pitching staff ERA was 4.84, good for fourth worst in all of baseball.  I think everybody knew pitching was going to be this team’s Achilles heel, but nobody expected this.  After all, they had Verlander (a solid ace), Rogers (the crafty veteran), Bonderman (a power pitcher with something to prove), Dontrelle Willis (looking for change of scenery to revive his career), and Joel Zumaya (104 MPH!!!).  Whoops.  Verlander was a trainwreck, Bonderman and Zumaya got hurt, Rogers pitched like he was 65, and Willis, well… ouch.  All of this contributed to one of the worst pitching performances we’ve seen in a while. 

Starters

Justin Verlander was 3 years removed from a Rookie of the Year award, 2 years removed from a 19-win season, and just one year removed from the first Tiger no-hitter since the 60s.  Yet his struggles personified this pitching staff, as he stumbled to a 1-7 start with an ERA floating near the 7s.  When your ace is giving up nearly a run an inning, you know you’re in for a rough year.   He wasn’t the only one, though.  Kenny Rogers showed his age, Nate Robertson showed his inability to pitch at the big league level once again.  He isn’t cut out to be a starter in the bigs.  He was the only starter without a winning record in 2006.  His career winning percentage is .426, and his career ERA is 4.90.  In fact, his only winning season is 2004, and since then he’s barely won 40% of his games.  I’m sick of seeing him out there in big-game situations.  He’s not a big-game pitcher, and should be a fifth starter at best.   Zach Miner was good as a starter down the stretch, but doesn’t get off the hook because his bullpen performance was remarkably substellar. 

Dontrelle Willis is another animal altogether.  Perceived as kind of a ‘bonus’ to the Cabrera trade, his best pitching days are obviously behind him.  His stats for 2008 are beyond horrific.  0-2 with an ERA over 9, and 35 walks in just 24 innings.  That’s just not okay for anyone, let alone a former Cy Young candidate.  He’s not even that old, but he’s obviously washed up.  Word on the street is the Tigers are working on his mechanics, and that it’s a complete rebuild.  We’ll see. 

Bullpen

What can I even say about the bullpen, other than that it was terrible?  Completely and utterly terrible.  The bullpen converted just 35 of 63 save chances.  And Todd Jones, Mr. Rollercoaster himself, was a respectable 18-21.  Yes, his ERA was around 5 again, and he was hurt for part of the year, but his performance as a closer was much better than anybody else.  The rest of the team was 17 for 42.  By comparison, Francisco Rodriguez of the Angels converted 62 of the 69 save opportunities he was given this year.  Brad Lidge was a perfect 41 of 41, and Mariano Rivera only blew one of the 40 opportunities he had. 

But it wasn’t just the closers that stunk up the joint.  Middle relief was a sore spot as well.  Countless times this year the Tigers’ starters kept the team in a game, only to have the bullpen flush it down the toilet.  It reached the point where no lead was safe.  At one time down the stretch, the Tigers lost 11 of 12, and had a lead in the seventh inning or later in eight of those games.  That level of bullpen incompetency is unacceptable. 

 

THE DEFENSE

 

We’ve seen that both offense and pitching have contributed mightily to the Tigers’ forgettable 2008 season.  How about fielding?  Could the defensive performance of the position players be any less culpable?  Let’s take a look. 

Only four teams committed more errors than the Tigers this year, and only three had a worse fielding percentage.   These are not good numbers.  Who was the primary cause of the problems?  Or was it a collective effort (or lack thereof)?  The obvious first scapegoat is Renteria, who, in addition to being flaccid at the plate this year, stunk it up in the infield as well, committing 16 errors in 578 chances, for a fielding percentage of .972, well below the league average for shortstops.  Guillen, who bounced around from first to third, committed 14 errors in 277 total chances.  Even Polanco, errorless in 2007, got in on the fun.  He made up for lost time, committing 8 errors this year. 

Now seems to be the time to talk about Brandon Inge.  Yes, his bat is terrible.  It wasn’t always so (he hit 27 home runs in 2006), and I attribute his struggles at the plate mostly to Leyland callously jerking him around, and he was never able to get into a groove.  When you’re not sure what your status on the team is, or where you’re going to play, it’s never good for your psyche, and it showed in Brandon’s case as an offensive atrocity.  But his defense is unbelievable, and I’m incredibly happy to hear that Inja is the third baseman for next year.  He’s hands-down one of the best third basemen in all of baseball.  Sure, he commits errors, but mostly because he gets to balls that nobody else does.  He dives into the stands, makes stabs at balls that would otherwise be surefire doubles or triples, and yes, occasionally boots a ball.  But overall, he’s stellar. 

According to Baseball Prospectus, Brandon’s defense at the hot corner saved 57 runs in 2007.  By comparison, the league average at that position was 18.  In terms of impact, those 39 extra runs saved serve the same function as RBI.  Had Inge been at third for the full season in 2008, how many wins do those 39 runs translate into?  Six? Ten? Eighteen?  How many games did the Tigers lose because of a shot down the line that Guillen couldn’t reach?  Like it or not, this seemingly innocuous move could have cost the Tigers a shot at the playoffs in 2008. Obviously, there was a lot of blame to go around, but this is a severely understated concern.  Everybody loves throwing Inge under the bus, and by doing so, they may have inadvertently destroyed the Tigers chances in ’08. 

 

THE COACHING STAFF

 

Everybody loves Leyland.  He’s a hard-ass, a chain-smoker, and an old-school throwback.  But is he really the right manager for the Tigers?  Obviously Chuck Hernandez and Jeff Jones had to go, considering the Tigers’ pitching woes, but should Leyland have been spared? 

There’s no question that Leyland was a big reason for the 2006 turnaround.  But he’s equally a big reason for the 2008 downturn.  Playing Sheffield, despite horrific numbers, for the whole season.  Pulling Inge off third base and juggling the defensive lineups constantly.  Inexplicably benching players in the middle of hot streaks (Thames, Joyce, Rayburn).  Routinely relying on Fernando Rodney, despite evidence that he’s not ready for prime-time.  Consistently trotting Nate Robertson out in the sixth and seventh innings despite the fact that his effectiveness diminishes exponentially after the fifth.  Dare I go on?  Need I go on? 

Yes, Leyland has helped to bring this team back into glory.  But he cannot escape blame for this abysmal season.  Not when everyone else’s culpability is on trial.  He even had the gall to request a contract extension, just two days after the season ended, beyond the 2009 season.  What has he done to deserve this?  Take away his lone World Series ring in 1997, and what do you have?  A sub-.500 manager with just 5 playoff appearances in 17 seasons.  I know managing the Tigers was his dream job, but he needs to bring the Tigers back to the playoffs in ’09 to justify an extension. 

 

THE 2009 TIGERS

 

So what’s in store for the Tigers next year?  A lot of it depends on the moves Dombrowski makes in the off-season this winter.  I know he’ll shake it up, and it seems like nobody is safe.  Does he trade Maggs, whose trade value will never be higher, for pitching?  How about a pitching fire-sale?  Thames, Rayburn, Joyce, Hessman, and Clete Thomas could all be trade bait.  They’re not picking up the option on Renteria’s contract, and for good reason.  $12 million for .265 and 16 errors is bad fiscal policy.  Ramon Santiago has better range, hit better (albeit in limited capacity) and makes about 1/15th of what Renteria does.  The Tigers are high on Cale Iorg, who may see some limited action next year, but is about 1-2 years away from making the leap.

Shaking up the pitching staff is mission critical and priority number one for Dombrowski this winter.  Only two starters are guaranteed: Gallaraga (whose rookie season was the lone gem of the staff) and Verlander (whose 2008 will be chalked up to an anomaly until further notice).  Beyond that , the status of Bonderman is unknown, Robertson has to go, and whether Willis will ever regain even an iota of his previous form is completely up in the air.  As far as bullpen help goes, I wouldn’t be sad if there was 100% turnover in the bullpen.  Not a single pitcher there impressed me this year.  Zumaya is proving to be an unreliable, injury-prone raw talent with the inability to focus and deliver.  Rodney is Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.  You never know which one is about to take the mound. 

As far as the lineup goes, we know Inge will be back at third, Cabrera at first, and Polanco at second.  Guillen is moving back to left field, where he played in the beginning of his career.  Granderson and Maggs will round out the outfield.  So far, Dusty Ryan has emerged as the primary catcher, though he may platoon with Dane Sahrdina, and Inge may get a start or two behind the dish as well.  Leyland likes to juggle the lineup, and next year will be no exception.  Santiago is the likely candidate at short, unless a more enticing option presents itself via free agency.  I’d like to see Thames as the full-time DH, because he can be a 40-120 guy if he plays every day, but Leyland doesn’t seem to be too high on the guy.  Matt Joyce and Ryan Rayburn are possible options as well. 

Offensively, the team is fairly solid, and I think they’ll get off to a better start than last year.  But pitching is a complete unknown, and needs only slightly less work than Michigan’s economic plan.  At least we know that Illitch will spend money, and that Dombrowski has a track record of bringing in solid talent.  So now we need to wait out a long, painful off-season.  The players are even more anxious, no doubt counting down the days before they can atone for what was a season to forget.  But for now, all anybody can do is wait. 

The only thing I’m certain of in 2009 is that it can’t be worse than 2008.