Why I'm not worried about .500 on May 14... The Tigers have played 34 games (1/5 of the season). They are wrapping up a long (9 game) road trip out west with 2 more games in Chicago. They are 1 game behind the suprisingly first place Indians. You know what? I could have simply copied and pasted that paragraph from 2011. Each statement is almost exactly true from last year (Detroit was 3 1/2 games behind the "surprising Indians" then. How did 2011 work out? Pretty well (in my humble opinion). The Tigers were 2 games away from the World Series. Let's take a look at the team we have today versus the team we had 12 months ago. Verlander, Fister, Porcello, Scherzer, Smyly versus Verlander, Scherzer, Porcello, Penny and Coke. Between you and me, gentle reader, I'll take this year's rotation. For position players we have Jackson, Dirks, Cabrerra, Fielder, Young, Avila, Boesch, Peralta and Raburn. Last year it was Jackson, Rhymes, Ordonez, Cabrera, Martinez, Raburn, Inge and Avila. Again, I'd rather have the 2012 line up on my side than the 2011 version. Are they producing right now? No, they aren't. Is the sky falling down around us in burning heaps of molten sky? No, it isn't. In fact the Tigers are at .500 and 1 game out of first place. In spite of an OPS of .700 (the League OPS is .725) they are at a .500 record. In spite of only scoring 4.18 runs/ game they are at a .500 record. Are the Indians better than last year's version? No, I don't believe so. How about the White Sox? No, I still don't think so. The Twins threw in the towel for 2012. The Royals are getting better, but I don't see them taking the AL Central Division. In fact, let's look at who the Tigers have played so far this season. Boston, Tampa, CWS, KC, Texas, Seattle, Yankees and Oakland. Out of those 8 teams, 3 were in the playoffs last year (along with the Tigers) and another would have been if they hadn't imploded at the end. Not an easy first month of the year. For the rest of May they face the White Sox, Twins, Pirate, Indians and Red Sox. Not to take anything from those teams, but the rest of the month should be easier on Detroit than the first half was. So, take heart. It's a long season, and as we learned last year, lots of great baseball can be played in the remaining 80% of the season. Don't jump off of the Bandwagon just yet.