And with today’s game over, the season has ended. It didn’t really bother me until Mario Impemba pointed out the next broadcast would be in March. MARCH. That’s five months and countless feet of snow from now! This baseball season just went so fast. Even with the disappointing premature ending, it was a good one. Just a few memories.

• Magglio Ordonez won the batting title with a .363 average. WOW! Who’d have thunk it?
• Placido Polanco went the entire season without an error. While that may not be a good sabermetric measure of a season, it’s still quite a feat. Especially when you consider he hasn’t made an error since summer 2006. His range may not be perfect, but he’s a solid second baseman every day. I think he’ll get some Gold Glove consideration, just for the fact voters will see no errors and go ga-ga. But it’s still political.
• Curtis Granderson joining Willie Mays and Frank Schulte in the 20-20-20-20 club. Granderson is the only in the 23-23-23-23 club, Lee at Tiger Tales tells us. It’s just a statistical thing of course. Sorta fluky in nature, but yet, a show off a well rounded player. Definitely cool.
• I was trying to think of my favorite memory for the season. That’s pretty hard to do. FSN showed a few clips.
• The 3:30 a.m. walkoff might have been my favorite. That was just amazing because the game didn’t start for so late, then seemed like it may never end. Considering Detroit really needed a win against the Yankees, it was all the better.
• Justin Verlander’s no-hitter was probably my favorite, because other than the excitement of the playoffs in 2006, I’m not sure I could think of a more electrifying game. By the time Magglio made a sliding catch and Neifi Perez made an amazing no-hit saving play, it was just all the more improbable and awesome. It’s definitely a game I, and probably most others, won’t forget.
• I also remember Granderson’s catch over the fence to rob Boston. Detroit was on a roll and swept the Sox and looked like the best team in baseball. *wistful sigh.*

So there were plenty of good moments. Some great achievements. A lot of fun, some heartbreak. Everything that makes you love baseball. Too bad it ended a couple of weeks too soon. Over the next month, I’ll try to analyze a few things that went right and wrong and, interestingly enough, show how April pointed out how the season might end.

And now we bid a fond farewell to Sean Casey, who won’t be coming back. I think this is farewell for Kenny Rogers, but we don’t know yet. Pudge, I think we’ll see again, but it is possible he spent his last day in the D.

Update: Danny Knobler reports the Tigers won’t exercise the option on Pudge, meaning they’ll be looking for a catcher. Earlier today, I had an outlandish, tossaway theory about trading Cam Maybin for a catcher and signing an outfielder. Hmm. Maybe I’m not totally loony. Nah. I probably am. If true, the Tigers need a shortstop, catcher and left fielder, in that order of priority.
In the meantime, Go Cubbies!

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Detroit 13, Chicago 3

The Tigers picked up 18 hits in their final game of the season and nearly as many runs. The seven-run seventh broke a tie and helped Detroit to an 88th and final victory for the season. The most important 3 hits came from Magglio Ordonez, as he wrapped up the Tigers first batting title since Norm Cash in 1961. But 15 more — including three by a Curtis Granderson batting in the 2 hole and 2 by first baseman Carlos Guillen put the Tigers in a solid lead.

Nate Robertson pitched into the seventh, and Jason Grilli allowed just one hit and no runs for the final 2-1/3 innings.

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White Sox 5, Detroit 2

Let’s play a game of what do we know.

• We know that a win or loss really didn’t mater unless you wanted 90 wins
• We know Detroit will win no more than 89 with the loss.
• We know Magglio went 2-for-4 virtually guaranteeing him of the batting title, which is pretty cool.
• We know Carlos Guillen is moving from shortstop to first base next season.
• We know the White Sox, in all their suckitude of 07,  still own the Tigers.

What don’t we know?

•  We don’t know if the starting pitcher, Kenny Rogers, played his last game in the Tigers uniform. I think not, but you can’t say for sure whether he and the team will come to an agreement. Right now, they’re both saying the right thing.
•  We don’t know who will play short stop, although Guillen thinks it will be a good player, which is why he made the move. We think.

What can we presume?

• We can presume that means there’s no chance of Sean Casey coming back, unless it’s as a backup or something.
• We can presume Chris Shelton has little future unless maybe he’s going to be Guillen’s backup.
• We know Guillen is pretty good at first base defensively, but he’s not overwhelming as a first-base style batter. Not that I think it matters as much as others think.

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Detroit 9, Twins 4 (6 5 innings)

The Tigers and Jair Jurrjens bounced back from a bad first inning in which the Twins scored all four runs. But nine Tigers runs, two rain delays, a called game and 87th victory llater, the Yankees had already brought their playoff magic number to 0. Detroit was eliminated from postseason contention.

Mike Hessman had a home run and two RBIs. Ryan Raburn hit a triple. And that was all in the same inning! Mike Rabelo hit a double.

Maggs watch: 1-2 in the shortened game, .359 average.

Ichiro watch: 1-2, .349 average, through four innings.

Bunt Singles:

• Detroit won 12 of 18 games against the Twins, including 9 of the last 10.
• Jim Leyland will discuss a contract extension with GM Dave Dombrowski Monday. He’s signed through 2008 but would like to add a year. I fully expect this to happen.
• Detroit News columnist Rob Parker is nuts. Ian tells us why at BYB.

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Detroit 8, Twins 0

Yorman Bazardo made the best of his opportunity to start for the Tigers Tuesday, shutting out Minnesota for seven innings while allowing six hits. The Yankees lost, so the Tigers playoff hopes are still (.0000000001%) alive.  Stranger things have happened, I guess… just not in baseball.

Maggs watch: He  hit another double went went 2-for-4. He’s batting .359.

Ichiro watch: He went 1-for-4. He’s batting .350

Curtis Granderson hit his 23rd triple of the season. That’s exciting. There’s still a chance he could get 25 or 26. You just never know when a triple will be hit. It could just as easily be his last of the season. 23 is just an incredible number.

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Twins 2, Tigers 0

Well, Nate Robertson pitches a good game and doesn’t get any run support. That sounds like a familiar story, doesn’t it? Nate, king of the quality start tough loss, wasn’t getting a lot of good starts this season, but his seven-inning, one-run performance went to waste when the Tigers failed to score.

Maggs watch: Ordonez went 1-for-3, slightly decreasing his average. But he hit his 51st double.

Ichiro watch: Seattle was off.

Bunt Singles:

• Jeremy Bonderman was due to pitch Tuesday, but was shut down for the season when he didn’t respond well to his side session. It’s for the better, as Ian says at BYB.
• The Yankees lost but their magic number is 1.

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Tigers split the weekend, but a few things of importance happened beyond the Cleveland Indians clinching the A.L. Central.

For one, with only a handful of games left, Magglio Ordonez is batting .358. It’s not like there’s a magic number for winning the mythical batting title, but he leads Ichiro by .007, so that’s pretty cool. Saturday, he hit his 50th double. Unfortunately, the Tigers lost.

Sunday, Detroit bounced back for its 85th win of the year. There’s a chance the Tigers can win 90. Not that it matters much, but hey, wins are good. But more importantly, Verlander won his 18th game of the season.

He has 35 wins in his first two full seasons, the most for a Tigers pitcher since Frank Lary also had 35 from 1955-56. (AP article)

Marcus Thames homered twice.

Six games remain.

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Detroit 5, KC 4

 The Tigers returned home to a large, loud cheering section, the newspapers report. I caught an inning during a lightning delay of a high school game, and I was quite impressed that you could hear Sean Casey’s home run before Jim or Dan could make the home run call.

Detroit had to rally back from a 4-0 deficit as a team finally figured out Jair Jurrjens. But with Casey’s homer in the fifth and Brandon Inge’s two-out single in the sixth, the Tigers came up with the victory. That allowd Todd Jones to earn his 38th save of the season.

Milestone game — sorta. I never know if it’s the “tie” or the “pass” that’s really the milestone –  as Pudge Rodriguez caught his 2,056th game, tying Gary Carter for third on the all-time list. Pudge is on track to pass Carlton Fisk in 2009. Oh, and Pudge doubled.

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The schedule makers last fall let the computers do the heavy lifting, but all eyes turned to the final series of the year. Chicago vs. Detroit. Two 90-plus win teams in 2006 duking it out for the division title. And now, we’re a week from the start of that series, and what do we see? The White Sox will not finish north of the .500 line. The Tigers will be grasping for the 90-win mark but most likely fall short. The result of the games have no meanings except to the history books.

Individual players still have reasons to keep going. Magglio Ordonez can bring home the batting title to Detroit for the first time in forever. (Although Ichiro caught him). Curtis Granderson has nothing in particular to shoot for, including hope at leading baseball in extra-base hits, but he can keep adding to his already historical 20-20-20-20 season. Every game Placido Polanco plays without an error adds to his major league second baseman’s record errorless streak. It all rings hollow, but at least it’s something.

• Different eulogies are up around the Tigers blogosphere. Bilfer. Samara. Ian (and so uniquely Ian!)
• Curtis Granderson was in Sports Illustrated this week. I read about half of the article to start. It’s a good read. It’s the issue with USC on the cover. Definitely pick it up. He’s also up for vote in SI’s Best Dressed poll. (That don’t look like Walmart to me!)
• Oh, and he’ll be on Jim Rome’s ESPN show at 4:30 p.m. eastern today.
• There’s some hubbub about whether Carlos Guillen will play first or short next year. Jon Paul Morosi and Danny Knobler didn’t exactly draw similar inferences from Guillen’s quotes. I’m not sure myself what to make of them. I’ll opine on the future at the position during the offseason, however.
• Speaking of schedules, the Freep has a glance at 08.
• Off the top of my head, I’ll say CC Sabathia should be Cy Young this year, although I still like Johan Santana’s numbers better.

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Indians 4, Tigers 2

Tigers swept. Tigers led for third game in the series and blew the lead for the fourth time in the series. *shrug* Day game after night game be damned, that was a lineup that lost before it took the field. Cleveland, on the other hand, seemed to keep its killer spirit.

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