I'm back!

My Blogger dashboard tells me that I have not posted since August 10th. I have to believe that 2 1/2 months is plenty of time for a break. So let's jump back into this - shall we?

Let's sum up- in 2008 the Tigers spent more money on payroll than anybody but the Yankees. They started out 0-7 and never really recovered. They flirted with .500 but only enough to tease all of their fans before sliding backward, ever backward. They ended up finishing 74-88 for the year, good enough for last place in the AL Central. Even the Royals were a better club! For those of you who are looking forward to a weekly recap of those last 6 weeks or so that I didn't cover here- well... the Tigers sucked. That should about cover it.

So, now what do they do? Well, conventional wisdom says that they need pitching. They don't have a solid closer (now that Todd Jones has hung up his spikes). They are weak in the set up roles (with Zumaya a huge question mark and Rodney a series of different symbols followed by an exclamation point! For example: "What the @#$% just happened?!") The starters are just as uncertain. Verlander is still amazing, but his numbers aren't. Bonderman is hopefully recovering from shoulder surgery. Rogers will (or won't) retire- he won't say just yet. Willis and Robertson are mainly there to drive fans (who remember how solid they can be) just crazy. They fired the pitching coach. Maybe that will matter, maybe it won't. I don't know.

Their defense wasn't exactly helping the pitchers this year. They are statistically worse almost everywhere. The only player who really shined this year defensively was a pitcher. Not exactly what you're looking for at a payroll just north of $138,000,000. So Jim Leyland announced that Brandon Inge would be the starting 3rd baseman in 2009. I'm sure that will plug some of the holes on the left side of the infield. But that doesn't solve everything. Polanco is still a great 2nd baseman. Cabrera seems to be getting pretty good at 1st base. Everyone is talking about Shortstop and Edgar Rentaria. I'm not sure that he is that much of a problem. He didn't hit for squat in the first half of the season, but after that he was improving. In fact he shows some real good stats as you can see at Tiger Tales. I think that, with the limited payroll options the Tigers have right now that there are other places to spend their money. The outfield will be another area to focus on. Center is solid with Granderson. Right seems solid with Ordonez (assuming that he stays in Detroit). Left has been a question mark for a long time, but Leyland said that Carlos Guillen will be the starting Left Fielder. I'm not sure about that, but Leyland is better at this than I am so we'll see.

So the Tigers have a lot of questions to answer and apparently not a lot of money to solve them with. I think that it is fair to say that nobody is going to pre-maturely buy their World Series tickets this year. Hopefully they will do better than last place.