Primary returns
posted in 2007-08 offseason |As we gear up for another baseball season — pitchers and catchers next week — we have some early returns from the pollsters on how the Tigers may fare.
Baseball Prospectus has a free look at the American League Central.
Joe Sheehan says the Big Four of the American League may actually be the Big Three — and he doesn’t mean the Tigers aren’t included. Sheehan does not think the Indians did enough this offseason, while the Tigers made leaps and bounds by trading for Edgar Renteria, Dontrelle Willis, Miguel Cabrera and Jacques Jones.
There are things that can go wrong here. The Tigers have given up a lot of their pitching depth, so injuries to the rotation could set a fairly ugly cycle in motion. They have an old lineup, and a collective significant drop in performance by the group of Ordonez, Sheffield (whose second half last year was awful), Rodriguez, Jones, and Polanco isn’t out of the question. They’re the best team in a tough division, so unlike the Angels, they’ll need to win 90-93 games to assure themselves of making it to the postseason. Overall, though, you’re looking at one of the best teams in baseball, one that should play into October.
The Joy of Sox looked at Lindy’s magazine’s projections. I haven’t seen the mag, but it appears to like the Tigers, predicting a Justin Verlander Cy Young award, Jim Leyland manager of the year honor and a Tigers pennant.
Yahoo! Sports also toured the A.L. Central recently.
Sphere ItIn five years time, the Tigers have taken the worst offense in the game and made it, potentially, the best. There are better pitching staffs out there, but, perhaps, nothing a Granderson-Polanco-Ordonez-Cabrera-Sheffield-Guillen-Renteria lineup can’t handle. Generally, the Tigers are leaning on power arms and power bats, the preference everywhere, but more reality in the AL. And while the knee-jerk analysis says this was a win-now winter for Dave Dombrowski and the Tigers (and it was), much of the roster is locked in through 2009 or beyond.
