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15
Apr
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TIGERS CAN’T WIN . . . MORE THAN 152 |
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Written by Jack Ebling
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Tuesday, 15 April 2008 |
 Imagine calling the outcome of an election with 7.4 percent of the vote.
Or naming an NCAA basketball champ after 2 minutes, 58 seconds of play.
That’s what disillusioned Detroit fans were doing Monday afternoon when they said the 2-10 Tigers were the worst team in baseball.
That impression didn’t improve much a few hours later when their team trailed Minnesota 9-4 entering the seventh-inning stretch.
Suddenly, the bats stopped looking like limp linguine. And the Twins must’ve borrowed two pitchers from Detroit’s sorry bullpen, better known as “Gasoline Alley.”
With a run in the bottom of the seventh and a six-spot in the eighth, the Tigers proved they wouldn’t go 2-160 this season. And they moved within two games of Cleveland, the second-biggest disappointment in the AL Central.
The moral of the story? Be careful when you assess a team’s merits and handicap a pennant race in the first two miles of a marathon.
Maybe we should’ve expected a horrible start when Sports Illustrated picked Detroit to win the World Series. But a lot of the hype had the Tigers scoring 10 runs a game in April, then getting hot.
The good news is they shouldn’t have to. Detroit played as bad as it’s capable of playing for two weeks _ the first two of 26 _ and was just three-and-a-half games back of the Yankees.
Does anyone really think we’ll check the starting pitchers’ ERAs in October and see: Justin Verlander _ 6.52, Kenny Rogers _ 6.75, Dontrelle Willis _ 7.20 and Nate Robertson _ 7.84?
Can anyone say with a straight face the final batting averages will be: Gary Sheffield _ .212, Miguel Cabrera _ .205, Jacque Jones _ .194 and Placido Polanco _ .159?
Or that those four would have a total of nine RBI in 13 games? Didn’t think so.
When Curtis Granderson gets back in the lineup and bats leadoff again, the Tigers should still have one of the best offenses in the majors. Can you point to one that’s clearly better?
So what if Magglio Ordonez and Polanco don’t have quite the career years they had in 2007? They shouldn’t have to be Ted Williams and Pete Rose for their team to win 90 games.
They’d just need to be contributing cogs in a wheel that turns at a 87-62 clip. That’s .584 baseball _ not .700 success.
If you thought Jim Leyland’s team would finish third-or-worse in its division, you shouldn’t be surprised by its start. And if you said Detroit would be as good in ’08 as it was in ’68, you shouldn’t stop saying that, either.
Remember when the Tigers clawed the Yankees and chomped the A’s in October 2006? They finished that regular season with 19 wins in their last 50 games. No one said they had to be brilliant all year to shine in the post-season.
And no one said they didn’t want playoff tickets at Comerica Park. If you know anyone with an option on good seats with this team, please have them give me a call.
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