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Photo: AP
Nothing like a wild win on a Saturday night. There seemed to have been a lot of sentimentality around Jeremy Bonderman because it might be his last home start as a Tiger, but to say he didn’t have it would be an understatement (Bonderman’s not my favorite, but I’m certainly willing to give him his props when he pitches well; I have no props to give him this time). I only missed part of the first inning, but by the time I got home, he had already given up five runs. He did settle down for three innings, but once the Tigers gave him the lead, he served up long home runs to Jason Kubel and Danny Valencia, ending his night. This probably isn’t the best time to say this, and I have no justification in saying this other than player preference, but if Jeremy Bonderman is in the Tigers’ starting rotation next year and Armando Galarraga is not, I am going to be pissed. Anyways, things changed after Bonderman’s exit, because the bullpen was terrific. Even Eddie Bonine pitched better than his line indicates (He gave up three runs, but in that sequence, not a single ball left the infield). Ryan Perry and Daniel Schlereth were perhaps the most impressive. Perry retired every batter he faced, and Schlereth worked around a single, error, two intentional walks and a double steal to strike out Kubel and Valencia with the bases loaded.
Meanwhile, the Tigers offense hit Carl Pavano like they’ve never hit him before. If they’d have done a little more of that last year, they would’ve won the division. Going into last night’s game, none of the Tigers had ever homered against Pavano. They hit three home runs against him in the fourth inning. Alex Avila led off the inning with a solo shot. Don Kelly later hit a two-run homer, and after a Johnny Damon single, Miguel Cabrera absolutely launched one over the bullpens in left. Once the Tigers came back later to tie up the game against John Rauch, there wasn’t a whole lot of scoring after that. There also weren’t a whole lot of chances until the bottom of the 13th inning. After loading the bases with no out on two singles and an error, Brandon Inge came up the hero on a night where he became the Tigers’ franchise leader in strikeouts (which I don’t really care about as much as the haters do). He laced a single to right to score Cabrera and give the Tigers the win. Also of note is that Austin Jackson scored his 100th run of the season, putting him in rare company for a rookie.
And now for some lighthearted fare. Yesterday morning, a friend of mine and I had a very entertaining discussion on Twitter about which Wizard of Oz characters the members of the Tigers’ starting rotation would be. This is what we came up with: Jeremy Bonderman would be the Scarecrow (for obvious reasons), Max Scherzer would be the Tinman (He seems to be the most emotionless on the mound), Armando Galarraga would be the Cowardly Lion (He needs the courage to trust his stuff), Justin Verlander would be Dorothy (He has twelve wins at home as opposed to six on the road, and his home ERA is over two full runs lower), and Rick Porcello would be Toto (mostly by process of elimination, but he is the youngest of the group). We also decided that the Chicago White Sox would be the flying monkeys, and so by extension, that means Ozzie Guillen would be the Wicked Witch of the West. I want to hear him say “I’ll get you, my pretty, and your little dog, too,” just for kicks.
It is a sad day today, because it is the final home game of the season. Rick Porcello gets the ball today. He’s coming off a strange start against the Royals in which it looked like he was cruising and then ended up with five earned runs and a no-decision on his line. He hasn’t faced the Twins since early May, when he gave up five runs (three earned) in a Tigers loss. He’ll be up against Brian Duensing, who continues to pitch well and I don’t know why. He got a no-decision the last time he started against the Tigers in which he did not pitch badly (though he got outpitched by Armando Galarraga even though the Tigers bullpen gave it up later). He also made a relief appearance in an extra inning game in that series.
Photo: AP
I did say that crazy things happen on ESPN, didn’t I? Having had to get up at 6 AM this morning, I didn’t appreciate the length of the game, but the Tigers did win. Jeremy Bonderman looked kind of the same way he did in Texas. He didn’t really have good stuff, leaving him to kind of gut his way through it, and as a result he allowed at least two baserunners in each inning and threw 121 pitches, a career high. And that was in 5.2 innings. After a cameo from Brad Thomas and two very good innings from Ryan Perry, the rest of the bullpen had a complete meltdown. Phil Coke was handed a comfortable four-run lead in the bottom of the ninth and proceeded to allow a whole lot of baserunners and only get one out. He was pulled in favor of Robbie Weinhardt, who looked good until he hit Alex Rios with an 0-2 pitch. He kind of fell apart after that and allowed the tying run to come in on a wild pitch. He did end up vulturing the win by throwing a scoreless bottom of the tenth. Eddie Bonine got one out in the bottom of the eleventh, but came within a heartbeat of giving up a walkoff three-run homer to Paul Konerko (the ball hooked foul by about five feet at the last second). Daniel Schlereth finally got the last two outs for the save but took it right to the edge before dropping a called third strike on Manny Ramirez with the bases loaded. I have no idea what the issue was with any of these pitchers because none of the quotes about them made it into the news stories (since the Tigers won), but when all was said and done, the White Sox left twenty-one men on base. And through each and every one of them, Joe Morgan rambled on and on about changeups, slowly draining his audience of the will to live.
This started out a typical John Danks outing against the Tigers, wherein they did not get many good swings off him at all. For five of his first six innings, he retired the Tigers in order. All of his baserunners came in the fourth inning, with a home run, a double, and a walk. Then all of a sudden, once he got Miguel Cabrera on a popup to lead off the seventh (Cabrera went 0-for-5 yet again, and finishes the season series against the White Sox having only hit .152 against them), he never recorded another out. After walking Jhonny Peralta, Casper Wells hit a two-run home run to tie the game. It was a steady stream of baserunners for the rest of the inning. Gerald Laird (who could have been pinch-hit for with the righty J.J. Putz on the mound) hit the go-ahead double and the Tigers added on from there. Then the offense went quiet again until there were two outs in the top of the eleventh. Fittingly, Brandon Inge reached on a strikeout-wild pitch and made it to third on AJ Pierzynski’s throwing error (It would have been even more fitting if he had struck out on a changeup, but according to Inge, it was a slider). An intentional walk to Boesch brought up Gerald Laird again. And Laird once again put the Tigers ahead, this time with an RBI single. Austin Jackson added an RBI double for insurance, but this time the lead held (barely).
After a nice end to the road trip by getting a rare sweep of the White Sox, the Tigers return to Comerica Park for their final homestand of the season (very sad). The Kansas City Royals come to town for one last go-around, and they tend to be a pain in the ass to the Tigers at season’s end (It’s happened for years). And they’ll be stuck facing Zack Greinke tonight. He’s coming off a win against the A’s in which he went seven innings and gave up three runs. The Tigers scored four runs against him last time they saw him (and it happened in an out-of-the-blue fashion similar to last night). I’d still say the odds of that happening again are slim. Rick Porcello gets his first start in almost two weeks. He had his start skipped because of an injury to the flexor tendon in his right index finger. From what I’ve heard, he’s good to go and his finger feels fine. He made two starts against the Royals in the past month. The start at Comerica Park was very good. The start at Kaufmann Stadium was not as good, but he got victimized by some bloops and bleeders. Hopefully he, like the other Tiger pitchers, can finish the season strong.
Before I begin this somber task, I must apologize once again for my tardiness. Someone like Curtis Granderson deserves a lot more promptness. Unfortunately, the Winter Meetings happened smack dab in a two-week period where I am swamped by exams, assignments, etc. as the semester winds down, not to mention work. I deeply regret this. This year’s Winter Meetings will be remembered as a dark time in the Motor City, when Tigers fans were forced to bid farewell to one of our most popular players (and hey, I think most of us were fond of Edwin Jackson as well). I was understandably a lot more upset when Pudge got traded, but Curtis Granderson was in my top 5 (#4, to be precise) and was one of the classiest and smartest human beings, let alone baseball players (and if I was deeply saddened by it, I can’t imagine what it’s like for someone who considered Curtis to be “their Tiger,” to quote an old promotional campaign). And he’ll always be remembered for the numerous sensational catches throughout his tenure. I have longed to be able to watch a great player destined to be a lifelong Tiger. Having been born in 1983, Al Kaline is ancient history to me and I have no memory of Alan Trammel. I badly want a Kaline/Trammel for my generation, and I had high hopes that Granderson would be it. So to have him be gone, just like that, well…it hurts. It hurts a lot. And it will hurt for a long time. I will miss him terribly.
My objective assessment of this trade has taken a day or so to formulate because I have had to gather information from other sources on the background of the acquisitions (though I have watched a surprising number of Diamondbacks games). I wasn’t too sure what to make of Max Scherzer because my perception of him was that he has good stuff but has trouble pitching deep into games. However, I had a tendency to watch games in which the D’Backs lost, particularly if they lost spectacularly (reason being is that Darron Sutton and Mark Grace are downright hilarious when the Diamondbacks lose, but unbearably smug when the Diamondbacks win). Therefore, I probably didn’t have the best sampling, and I admit this. Likewise, I did not know the background on Daniel Schlereth, other than the fact that he was left-handed and his father played in the NFL. All I knew was that the Diamondbacks’ bullpen was so bad that they kept calling up anybody and everybody they could get out of necessity. However, both Scherzer and Schlereth are very highly thought of, as it turns out. In that case, the return on Edwin Jackson looks to be a pretty good one (as an aside, one annoying aspect of this trade is there are too many players with either similar-sounding or downright identical last names). However, I feel like we could have and should have gotten more for Granderson. The word on Austin Jackson from Tiger fans isn’t particularly favorable (though most of their arguments delve a bit too much into the slippery slope of sabremetrics for my taste). They seem to think he’s overhyped. Of the four players we got, Phil Coke has probably been talked about the least. I may have seen him back in July when the Tigers were at Yankee Stadium, but I’m not sure. I did see him in the postseason, but maybe that’s not a good representation of him. In any case, he seems to be serviceable enough, but Grandy was worth more (And as a side note, what is it about Tigers I like constantly getting traded to the Yankees? Cecil…Pudge…now Grandy. Perhaps the reason I don’t hate the Yankees is a simple act of mental self-defense).
Several bloggers more knowledgeable and established than I have come out with numerous posts wherein they basically shed tears and scratch their heads. They absolutely cannot make sense of this trade. On the surface, I agree with them. However, the Tigers have to have some line of thinking to have made this move. It may be flawed (or not), but there has to have been one. This leads me to ponder Dave Dombrowski’s possible motive, and from here on out I will speak almost exclusively on Granderson since I have already reached the conclusion that Edwin Jackson got a good return (Whether you put any faith in the rumor that the Diamondbacks offered Max Scherzer for Edwin Jackson straight up depends on whether you’re more inclined to believe Josh Byrnes or Joel Sherman, so this is the only time I will mention it and it will not figure into my deductions). Dombrowski can be a hard man to figure out at times because his sound bites are so annoyingly cryptic. I’ve become more and more skeptical about the national media’s standard line of saving payroll due to the Michigan economy. For one thing, it’s too simple an explanation, and things are never THAT simple. For another thing, I have read a couple of very well-written articles from TigsTown and The Detroit Tigers Weblog that attempt to determine where the money comes from and both articles make the assessment that the Tigers’ financial situation is not as critical as one would be led to believe. These articles are very well-researched and their arguments are extremely well-constructed and well-thought out, much moreso than anything the traditional media has come up with. In addition, it would be very uncharacteristic of Mike Illitch to order a huge payroll slash. It’s well-noted how he desperately wants to win a World Series, but the man’s eighty years old. He probably doesn’t have time for another 5-10 year rebuild, and I would guess he knows that. Also, Granderson’s contract for next year was a mere $5.15 million, and everyone knows about how much payroll gets freed up for 2011 anyways, making his contract even more affordable in the long run. So unless I get concrete evidence to the contrary, for now I am ruling out payroll as the (primary) motivation. That leaves “baseball reasons” as the likely explanation. And to that end, I have three theories (and bear in mind that I am merely attempting to gauge Dave Dombrowski’s line of thinking; if they are true, I do not necessarily agree with the logic). The first is that Dombrowski felt that Granderson had peaked and was trying to “sell high” on him. He has done this before (and here I am venturing into unfamiliar territory and am forced to rely on the assessment of others). I do not remember Jeff Weaver as a Tiger, but I do know he did his best pitching in the Olde English D. Since he was traded away, he hasn’t pitched as well (though he did have a decent year for the Dodgers out of their ‘pen in 2009). And I’ve talked to Tigers fans who strongly objected to the Weaver trade at the time it happened (We did get Carlos Peña and Jeremy Bonderman out of the deal). And there was evidence to suggest that Granderson was headed in that same direction (although at this point I believe it was merely a down year). The second theory is that Dombrowski or someone in the front office thinks incredibly highly of Austin Jackson. Jackson was always thought of as the centerpiece of any potential deal for Granderson. Perhaps the most compelling piece of evidence to support this theory is that once the three-way trade talks were believed to be dead, the Tigers suddenly re-opened them and by doing so, they lowered their asking price for Granderson. This would suggest that they believe (erroneously or not) that Austin Jackson will eventually be better than Granderson, and likely within the next two years or so. The third theory is a combination of the first two theories, and of the three, this is most likely candidate. Again, I’m not saying that I agree with any of these. I’m just trying to take a stab at what the Tigers think. Now, it could be that my train of logic is totally off and this was purely a cost-cutting move. It could be that I’m right and Dave Dombrowski’s line of thinking is completely wrong and this’ll blow up in his face. Or it could be that I am right and so is Dombrowski. For all our sakes, I hope this is the case.
The last few days have seen Tigerland rather melancholy, morose, and depressed, and this is understandable. I feel those same things myself. HOWEVER, there is reason for hope. The sun will rise again, and it may rise as soon as next April as far as we know. My best guess is that the Tigers are trying to position themselves for a big run in 2011 (provided they don’t trade away Verlander or Cabrera), but that doesn’t mean that 2010 has to be a wash. The loss of Granderson will cripple the Tigers…if they let it. But what if they could be motivated by it instead? Motivated to not let it happen again, motivated to inspire Austin Jackson and Phil Coke (Grandy’s “final contributions,” as it were) to reach their full potential, motivated to win in Granderson’s honor, or whatever. Now, making some sort of “win-now” move this offseason would not be prudent (with the exception of maybe signing a closer, provided you can get one for one year and less than $5 million). But the team we have right now is certainly capable of providing plenty of wins, especially when you consider the weak division we play in. There’s an awful lot of talent in the front end of the rotation with Verlander, Scherzer, and Porcello, and it’ll be even better if Bonderman/Robertson/Galarraga can shake off their injury woes and pitch like they’re capable of doing. Of the gaggle of relief prospects in the minors, most won’t be ready until at least 2011, but some may make their presence felt in 2010 and one would hope guys like Ryan Perry continue to improve. The offense may be down two men but most of the remaining guys are still capable of putting up better numbers than they did in 2009. A few things that went wrong in 2009 would have to go right in 2010, of course, and some things that went right in 2009 would have to keep going right. But I have a good feeling about 2010, even though I can’t explain why. As a matter of fact, I’d had a feeling of some dread ever since the season ended, perhaps before. Starting about 36 hours after the Granderson trade, that feeling went away. I have absolutely no logical explanation for it, and so you may discard it and that is your right. But I have a fairly good track record as far as the team’s fortune is concerned. After the acquisition of Miguel Cabrera, Tigers fans everywhere were ordering their champagne in January, and yet I had misgivings (nothing to do with Cabrera, of course). Last year, I was one of only a handful of Tiger writers and bloggers who still believed in the team. Now I feel as though SOMETHING good will happen to the Tigers in 2010 (Bear in mind that it may be something like a division title but it could also merely be some sort of individual achievement; I do NOT believe it would be something so indirect as the Tigers finishing with so bad a record they get the #1 pick in the 2011 draft). If I have to be the sole beacon of hope in Tigerland, so be it. And if there was any way at all that I myself could do to personally ensure victory, I would do everything within my power. Admittedly, I have nothing to back this up, and it is contingent of the Tigers not trading away any more franchise players (a loss of Verlander and/or Cabrera WOULD cripple the team in most circumstances I can think of). But as it stands right now, it goes right back to the two things that I preach are essential for success: Ability and execution. The Tigers still most certainly have the ability. Now they must execute.
