Not a good week...

This past week has not been a good one for the Tigers. They went 1-4 (with 2 off days). Well, actually they seemed to have more than 2 “off” days, but there were 2 days they weren’t scheduled.

They wrapped up their last West Coast road trip against the Mariners before coming home to start a 4 game series against the A’s.

For one of those reasons that make no sense the Tigers cannot seem to beat the Mariners. The Mariners have not been a good team in 2010. They have good pitching and don’t allow that many runs (189 through the Tigers’ series or 4.1 per game) but they score even fewer (163 or 3.5 per game). With Verlander and Bonderman pitching for Detroit you might think that things look pretty good for a short series win. Yet the Mariners were able to score 5 runs in each game while the Tigers scored only 3 and then 4. Bondo actually pitched a great game, but Ryan Perry didn’t, giving up 5 hits and 4 runs in 1/3 of an inning to turn an apparent 4-1 win into a definite 4-5 loss. In fact, this was not a good week for Ryan Perry at all, but we’ll get to that later. So the Tigers again gave the Mariners a reason to feel good about themselves. So far the Tigers are 1-4 against Seattle this year, providing the Mariners with almost 20% of their wins for the year.

After losing to Seattle (and presumably stocking up on coffee) the Tigers headed home to face the A’s. Now the A’s are a decent team. They are contending in the West and have some good players. The Tigers had beaten them in a short series last week. Now they had a 4 game series here in Detroit. The Tigers are very good, strong at home (14-6 starting the series). Well, things didn’t work out exactly as hoped for. Willis pitched 5 1/3 innings of very interesting baseball, allowing 3 runs on 5 hits and one walk. The Bullpen took over and, for the second time this week Perry could not get it done, allowing 2 runs on a hit and a walk (Ni allowing at least one of the runs to score). Even with newly-minted father Miguel Cabrara hitting 3 home runs the Tigers couldn’t get Willis the win. The next night (Friday) the Tigers bats simply didn’t show up (5 hits and 0 runs). Porcello pitched a pretty good game (2 earned runs in 6 1/3 on 7 hits and 2 walks). The Pen allowed 4 runs in another weak showing, but with 0 runs on the Tigers’ side of the scoreboard it didn’t really matter much.

This raises a question for me about the pitchers- can we have good showings from both the Rotation and the Bullpen in the same week? This week the Rotation had one weak outing (Verlander on Tuesday) but other than that Bonderman, Willis, Porcello and Scherzer each pitched well with 3 or fewer runs allowed. This is the dominant rotation that we have been begging for all year! Here it is! The Rotation’s ERA for the week was 2.84! Their WHIP was 1.17. This stuff can win some ball games! Before the week started the Tigers’ Bullpen was lights-out. Their ERA was 2.32 and their WHIP was 1.23. It has climbed to 2.85 and 1.27. Add the 2 losses (both, unfortunately, assigned to Perry but he had some help in giving them away) and we see a bad week. I’m hoping that this was simply that- a bad week- and not some horrible Greek-economy-type slide toward failure. I say this because I’m not sure where the bailout might come from.

Related to dominance of the Rotation- Dontrelle Willis was Designated for Assignment last night to make room for Max Scherzer. Dontrelle seems to be the happiest (and luckiest) pitcher in baseball but his on again- off again relationship with the strike zone had finally become too much for Dombrowski. With Scherzer having figured out his issues down in Toledo the Tigers needed to make some room on the roster. Galarraga had pitched well enough to stay, so Willis was DFA’d. I must say that I admire what the Tigers have done for Willis. Something happened inside his head and he lost his game. Unfortunately this happed right after Dombrowski signed him to a 3 year worth $29 million. The Tigers gave him every opportunity to turn it around (for both their own interest and his), but ultimately they decided that they could do better.

The bats remain a story of split personality. The top 5 are the best in baseball (in my opinion). The bottom 4 have been terrible. Overall the OPS is .755 for the last 13 games, but the squandering by the bottom has been epic. Inge is hitting .215 and that is the best of the group. Everett is .189 and Laird/ Avila is .154 It is a fair question as to how long these guys can hit like that and stay on the lineup card. I don’t know the answers to this problem, but there has to be a SS or Catcher out there who can hit better than what we have with enough defense to make the outs. If something doesn’t happen with these guys soon then Willis may have only been the first to be shown the door.

So, as Memorial Day starts off the summer season here in Michigan we have a team that is going through some changes and challenges. Their Bullpen slipped but their Rotation stepped up. The bats have been slumbering but woke up in a big way today to support Scherzer. The team is 26-23 and sits 3 games behind the Twins. They are certainly in the race. This upcoming week they finish the 4th game with the A’s and then host the Indians for 3 before going to KC for 3. These are not good teams, these are teams that Detroit should dominate. This should be a good week to be a Tigers’ fan.
Go Tigers!

Reading tea-leaves...

That is pretty much all that we have to go on right now. We can look at the deals which the Tigers have closed, participated in or not participated in and we scratch our heads and attempt to figure out "Why?" and "What it all means!" In the final analysis we cannot really understand what DD and his office have in mind.

This has not been a quiet off-season. First they allowed Polanco, Lyon and Rodney to walk via free-agency. Then they traded Granderson and E. Jackson in a major, 3 team trade. Now they have signed Jose Valverde, a closer who has been with Houston the last 2 seasons and Arizona the previous 5 seasons.

Although sorcery is not something I would aspire to, I will take a crack at seeing if there is a big picture strategy here that DD is following or if he is just grasping at straws.

Who have they lost since game #163?

• Polanco has been a huge part of the Tigers' recent success (and by "success" I mean being a contender after the All-Star Break in the past 4 seasons). He is a consistent hitting threat who rarely strikes out and plays some of the best defense in the league. But, he is aging and his range did seem to decline as 2009 wound down. He was a free agent and was going to get big money from someone. Detroit decided to allow someone else to pay for his success in a Tigers' uniform.
• Rodney had his best year last year, with 37 saves. Again, somebody was going to pay handsomely for his success and Detroit decided he wasn't worth it.
• Lyon was a similar story. He comes off a career year in 2009 and Detroit decides to let him test the free agent market.
• Granderson being traded to the Damn Yankees was a surprise. He was an All Star in 2009. He helped the Tigers lead the league in OPS (.791)for center fielders while continuing to patrol the vastness of center in Comerica Park. He is/was Mr. Baseball in Detroit- the "face of the franchise" and a well rounded ball player.
  
• Edwin Jackson also had a career year. Until August/ September he was as solid as anyone on the staff. He claimed to learn to "throw strikes" over the last off season and he did that with a vengence- 161 strike outs in 214 innings (6.77 k/9). He was 13-9 for Detroit last year.

Here is my take on all of this.

• Polanco has earned a big paycheck, probably more than Detroit was going to find reasonable given his age (34). As I mentioned above, his defense appeared to be slipping toward the end of the year (although his UZR was still 11.4 and his range factor was still 4.8 which are excellent numbers. He signed a 3 year deal with the Phillies for $18 million where he will reportedly move from 2B to 3B. Scott Sizemore is said to be ready for the Big Leagues and DD has bet that this is true. Sizemore will not replace Polanco's glove (who could?) but reports are that Sizemore's bat is more dangerous- at least in power. I hated to see Polanco go, but he earned his paycheck and DD seemed to have planned on this happening.
• Rodney felt that he has earned a big paycheck as a closer somewhere else. Detroit was willing to let him see how that worked out. Well, the best he could do was find a role as a set up man in LAA for 2 years at $11 million. I am very "okay" with letting Rodney go. 2009 was the first year since 2005 he has not suffered some sort of injury and the blood pressure of many Tigers' fans will not have the tests of Rodney's saves (or even worse, his non-save situations) to endure in 2010.
  
• Lyon also had a career year with the Tigers in 2009. After a terrible start in April he settled down to become one of the best relievers on the team. By the end of the year I didn't want anybody else in a tight situation. He finished the year with a WHIP of 1.106. I was disappointed to see Lyon go and I would have tried to keep him, but he ended up with a $15 million/ 3 year deal in Houston and I would not have given him that many years.
• Granderson is the most controversial move Dombrowski made this year (perhaps one of his most controversial ever). Curtis was "My Tiger!" and I love to watch him play. But I truly believe that the writing was on the wall for this long before December. Leyland made comments about Granderson not focusing enough on baseball. Al Kaline made similar comments later in the season. Curtis has still not figured out left handed pitching even though he has been in the Majors since 2004. Leyland tried to compensate by moving him around in the lineup when they faced LH pitching, but nothing could hide the hole Grandy created there. Although he makes spectacular plays in CF, the UZR rating at Fangraphs shows a decline since 2007 for Curtis in the field as well. I think that 2 years from now this trade will appear to be very shrewd on DD's part. Perhaps the New Yankee Stadium will be kinder to Curtis than Comerica Park has been, but as much as I hate to see him go I think that DD unloaded a player who he feels is not going to live up to the reputation he has.
• Edwin Jackson had an outstanding 2009, at least for the first 2/3 of it. After that he seemed to hit a wall and not be able to recover. I don't know if it was his pitch count (who else could the Tigers turn to in early 2009- the bull pen couldn't be trusted and the bats routinely gave Jackson less run support than anyone else in the league). Regardless of the cause, Jackson pitched 214 innings in 2009, which was 31 more innings than he had pitched in 2008 and 53 more than he had pitched in 2007. I don't know if he will be able to recover enough to be as effective in 2010 as he started out 2009. I believe this is another case of Dombrowski "selling high".

I see two overarching trends in this off seasons' moves by DD: 1) he is very wary of making more expensive, long term commitments to aging players. Polanco was this. We already have Guillen, why add to it? 2) he had some players who, he felt, were looking better than they actually were and the market was good to move them. This is Rodney and Lyon for sure, but also Granderson and Jackson. Only time will tell if he was correct.

I don't believe he is just cutting payroll in all of this. He has told us that he isn't having a "fire sale" and I don't see him or Illich doing that when they missed the post season by 1 out.