Preseason package: The one about the Tigers
posted in 2008 predictions |I’m rolling this out in three parts today as I write it. The first — or third if you happen to be visiting Monday! — part is the league standings, awards and add a few comments. I fully acknowledge this is an exercise in futility. In the second part, I shall get slightly more in depth when looking at the A.L. Central. And in the final — or first! — part I will look deeper at the Tigers. Enjoy!
The Tigers are not a perfect ballclub. This comes as no surprise to anyone who follows the club. Really it comes as little surprise to the national “experts” of the game, either. And so maybe for that reason there are two camps when it comes to the upcoming Tigers season. The first sees the Tigers as a 100+ win team that will score 1,000 runs. Sorry, but I’m here to tell you they are not that ballclub. And the second, maybe in reaction to the first, sees the Tigers as a fragile team where the pitchers hold their arms together with duct tape and the aging hitters have silly putty in their knees. No team like that can truly be contenders. Brother, I’m here to tell you, they are not that ballclub, either.
The Tigers are a very good ballclub that will win a lot of games and maybe go to the World Series if all the chips stack up right. And if they don’t? They’re still a pretty good team, but maybe they’ll fall a bit short. So what? You can repeat that claim for every contending team in baseball.
The Tigers’ lineup will hit often, score often and probably steal more than its fair share of games at Comerica Park due to hitting last. There’s almost no place for an opposing pitcher to catch his breath, and they’re going to wear some starts out pretty good. And if their hitting gets contagious, there’s going to be some very lopsided numbers on the scoreboard. There’s really no weakness. The lineup is mostly right-handers, but I’ve shown in the past their numbers against right-handed pitchers don’t suffer. It’s a lineup of professional batters who can pick up whatever the pitcher is tossing. And holy cow, the day-to-day lineup when Curtis Granderson plays center field is better than anyone’s in baseball, far as I can tell. But score 1,000 runs? No. “Murderers Row”? I’d rather we not go there, thanks. The Tigers lineup is good, there’s no reason to exaggerate it.
The starting pitching, we can start to worry about. I think that’s fair. I think Justin Verlander can repeat his first two seasons. I don’t think we need to worry about any injuries for the sake of worrying. Injuries can be inherent or random. If he gets hurt, it’s going to be a random one. Jeremy Bonderman, I think there’s some worry over with his elbow problem last season and love of sliders. But he rested it. He workd out. He didn’t have structural damage. I think Nate Robertson is a decent “plug-and-play” pitcher. You know what you’ll get. Not a frontline guy, but a valuable pitcher. Hopefully they can score some runs for him. Kenny Rogers is a wildcard at this point, I should think, as is Dontrelle Willis. Starting pitching could be a strength, or it could be a wildcard. Even if more than one starter struggles, that’s still going to be a statement most teams in the MLB can make.
As for the bullpen, well, yeah. It isn’t pretty. Who says it has to be? The purpose of the bullpen is not to lose games. Sure, some teams are lucky and have bullpens that can win games, and sadly, the Tigers aren’t one of those teams. Possibly a year of Joel Zumaya and Fernando Rodney pitching back-to-back innings spoiled Tigers fans and the experts. Maybe it was a year of some immaculate meltdowns in 2007 that started the theme. (In case anyone forgot, Fernando Rodney was one of those guys…) In any case, you might need to keep a roster nearby to know who is pitching in the seventh or eighth inning, but I really don’t think the Tigers are going to play a lot of 2-1 or 3-2 games to get the blood pressure excited. The bullpen is obviously the weak point, but something had to be.
Conclusion
So I add it all up. I weigh an injury here or there. I think about the schedule. And what do I come up with? I don’t have a clue what’s going to happen! But you didn’t read this section first for my honesty, you wanted a number. So I’ll say the Tigers are a 91 win team. Maybe even 92. They are better than last year. They might not face all the major injuries they did last year. They should be OK. They can win the World Series. But so much can happen in the next six months, I’m not even going to get near that prediction.
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