The Sixth Annual Authoritative Detroit Tigers Season Preview Vol. 2

I've lived in Flint, Michigan for a little over a year now and it has been interesting to say the least. I know Flint has a bad rap as it annually tops lists for most dangerous city, most depressing city, most violent city and city most likely to be overtaken by rats and turned into a highly intelligent rat society Secret of Nimh style. I mean there was even a list that came out this past winter of the worst places to live and they didn't even bother listing Flint because they said nobody would ever willingly move there. However, my experiences living in downtown Flint has led me to believe the city has gotten a bad rap over the years. Sure the violent crime rate is through the roof, unemployment levels are around 25%, it has more foreclosures than any place in the country, an arsonist is currently running amok, bankruptcy looming and weekly human sacrifices to appease the bum god Hobonicus but the city is not without its' charms.

For example there is this kickass takeout Chinese restaurant located in the heart of the most dangerous part of the city. There would never be any reason to travel to this part of the city unless you were looking to tweak on meth, get stabbed and have your shoes stolen or buy a giant Tweety Bird rug from the back of some serial killers van. However this Chinese food is so amazingly good that it's worth the risk it takes to go get it, even if a person has to armor up like they are going off to fight Predator just to pick up some Cashew Chicken. The people that work at the takeout place are amazing too. The place is run by an old Chinese lady who hardly speaks any English and a teenage girl that wears a different terrifyingly graphic "Cannibal Corpse" t-shirt and helps translate for the lady as well as prepare the food. Where else on Earth would you find a business like this? Some sixty year old Chinese lady screaming at costumers in Mandarin while some pimply faced teenage girl in an oversize black t-shirt that says "Hammer Smashed Face" on it scoops out chicken fried rice as costumers keep glancing nervously back at their car to make sure someone isn't murdering someone in it.

Why am I writing about this? Because I ate it this evening and it was so transcendently delicious that as I was eating it I could see through time and space. Yes, as I was eating it I suddenly got the sensation of floating through the fourth dimension, passing by grandfather clocks with the hands spinning out of control, math equations sailed past me, neon colors flashed and I think I saw Kirk Gibson making out with a bear, but that might have just been another fantasy dream I had. I was fascinated to see where I might end up when my journey through time ended. Sometime during the French Revolution? Maybe a thousand years from now in a utopian world where everyone had hovercrafts? No, instead I ended up in September of this year looking at Tigers statistics and what I saw surprised me. I woke up on the floor in a puddle of sweet & sour sauce with my cat licking my face, but I rushed to the computer to write down what I saw. But since I wrote this long ass introduction I forgot everything from my vision and now I have to make up all this stuff as I go along. Crap.

Regardless here is volume two of my season preview focusing on the infielders.

Miguel Cabrera: Cabrera famously finished last season on a sour note, when reports came out that he spent the night before the most important game of the season getting shit-faced with a few White Sox players, including former Tiger Freddy Garcia at the Townsend Hotel in Birmingham. He then got into a violent argument with his wife, had the police called out to his house, blew a .26 and then topped it off with a night in the drunk tank to sleep it off, before Dombrowski picked him up in the morning and drove him to the ballpark to get ready for THE BIGGEST GAME OF THE SEASON!

That's the part of the story that cracks me up I always picture Dombrowski as a dad from an 80's movie, mostly because of his haircut and wardrobe of blazers over turtlenecks. I just picture him showing up at the jail with a stern look as Cabrera looks on sheepishly before Dombrowski cracks a boys will be boys smile and promises not to tell Mom of all the trouble Miggy cause as he slaps him on the back and they walk out of the police station as the credits roll. Of course in the movies Cabrera would've showed up in time to hit the game winning homerun and as Cabrera celebrated with his teammates he would take a quick break to giving a knowing thumbs up to a smirking Dombrowski in the croud.

Not surprisingly, in real life, Cabrera put up an oh-fer in that game and generally play like a guy who was working off a hangover. Of course people were annoyed by Cabrera's unbelievable immaturity and it was the latest incident in a long line of childish behavior that has followed him throughout his career. Even with his huge statistics last season (.324/.396/.547) it seems as though Cabrera is seen as a mild disappointment mainly because he hasn't improved much statistically from his early numbers with the Marlins. This may be true but I think most people, myself included, forget that he is just now entering his prime years as he doesn't turn 27 until the 18^th of this month. Even with all the tales of immaturity off the field and some goofy baserunning mistakes on the field from all accounts he is a tireless worker who has put in a ton of work in trying to make himself a solid defensive first baseman. Also there were reports that he went to alcohol counseling and received mentoring and is working to control whatever problems he has with booze. It seems like Cabrera is someone who wants to learn from his mistakes and continue to make himself a better player or, who knows, maybe he peaked early and he didn't have any projection left in him from when he was tearing it up as a 22 year old, but at least he's working to maintain that still extraordinary level and I wouldn't be surprised if he had a breakout season during his peak age 27 season.

Alex Avila: Avila jumped straight from AA Erie to the majors and in seventy-two plate appearances gave the Tigers nearly as much value with the bat as Laird had over an entire season. Avila is a little rough defensively as he's only been playing the position regularly for the past few seasons, but his switch-hitting bat carries enough promise that if he can just become an average defensive catcher he would provide a tremendous value to the club at a nice cost controlled price. My ideal scenario for Avila this season would be for him to split the job with Laird at the beginning of the season and slowly taking over the lion's share of the playing time as the season progresses with an eye towards Avila being the starting catcher from the outset of the 2011 season, leaving Laird and his good defensive skills and weak bat to test free agency. I know this is likely what the plan is going to be and I'm not breaking any new ground with this prediction but I just have this nagging feeling that Laird is going to be a Tiger long past his utility as Avila scuffles to find regular playing time. Hopefully I'm wrong on this one

Gerald Laird: Something about Laird is off-putting and I'm not sure what it is, maybe it's his goblin like face, or the fact that his legs look to skinny for the rest of his body or the fact that his batting stance looks like he's straddling over one of those weird European toilets that requires a person to poop in what is essentially a tiny whole in the ground. It also could be that his bat was completely absent for most of the season and it seems like he came up to the plate time after time in big situations only to end up striking out swinging at a pitch high in the zone or skying harmless flyballs into the infield. There is no question that Laird is a great defensive catcher and that is where most of his value lies but as I laid out in the Avila paragraph above I hope that Laird slowly gets replaced by Avila and by the end of the season is used exclusively in the short side of a platoon or as a defensive replacement for Avila in the late innings.

Scott Sizemore: Sizemore is an intriguing prospect replacing the popular and uncannily consistent Placido Polanco. I don't know much about Sizemore other than that scouts love him and project him to be a solid .270 hitter with 12-15 homeruns and solid defense. If he comes close to that and gives the Tigers a solid #8 hitter to break up the whirling, infinitely dark swirling vortex of suck that are known as Gerald Laird and Adam Everett than I will be happy. Whenever I see Sizemore's jersey out on the field I think of Detroit native Tome Sizemore playing for the Tigers and think of the team's second baseman as a surly, chain smoking, prostitute banging, Passenger 57 co-starring menace out there. Hopefully Scott Sizemore's personality is much different than his Hollywood namesakes.

Adam Everett: It's a toss-up between Everett and Laird for the title of my most hated Tiger. This is a very prestigious title as the winner would join the likes of Bobby Higginson, Juan Gonzalez, Todd Jones, Roger Cedeno, Jason Grilli, Mike Moore and the granddaddy of them all Chad Kreuter, (as a quick aside when I was a kid I had an irrational hated towards Chad Kreuter because 1) he looked like a douchebag before I even knew what a douchebag was and 2) I saw his as the usurper to Mickey Tettleton's rightful position on the team as starting catcher. It made no difference to the nine-year old me that Tettleton was still in the lineup every day as the DH or that Kreuter was a better defensive catcher because I was playing catcher in Little League for one reason only because it was the position Tettleton played, not because of Chad Effin Kreuter. It would also explain why Rich Rowland and Phil Clark received misspelled death threats written in crayon imploring them it was in their best interest to not make the team out of spring training.)

It seems Everett is living off a defensive rep that has long since been untrue. It's not that he is a Yuniesky Betancourt level disaster in the field, it's just that he seems only average at best and not noticeably better than Ramon Santiago out there. His arm seems a little weak out there as it seems like he really has to load up on his throws to get it across the diamond. Also his bat is completely non-existent almost on a Ray Oyler level of uselessness, especially against right handed pitching. I never thought I would ever see a Tigers shortstop that made me long for the Edgar Renteria era but Everett's helpless flailing at the plate made me misty eyed for the days when the Tigers had a shortstop who could ground out solidly to the shortstop with regularity.

The problem with hating Everett is that he seems like a likable enough guy and he's making near the minimum for a veteran and there were no expectations of greatness when he signed as a free agent. In fact he was supposed to be a one year patch for an organization that had shockingly little depth at the position unless you're one of those people who believed Cale Iorg would be anything other than a below average Double-AA player, and I think the only person who believed in that scenario was Cale Iorg and maybe Iorg's mother.

Brandon Inge: After struggling mightily at the plate the past two seasons as well as bouncing around the field in a utility role and playing some catcher at the end of the 2008 season, Inge had a surprisingly great start to last season hitting 20 home runs in the first half and even getting an invite to participate in the Home Run Derby. Inge went homerless during the derby and then fell off a cliff during the second half of the season. Honestly if Inge had actually fallen off a cliff in real life it would have helped explain away his atrocious second half. Of course in real life Inge was playing with two wrecked knees and it made him a completely useless hitter in the second half (.186/.259/.279).

Not only was he ineffective at the plate was his amazing defense in the field fell precipitously in the second half as he went from being a highlight a night player at third making plays and showing range that no one else in the league could match to just being an average defender who looked like he was wearing concrete shows during some games. Not only did Inge struggle at baseball but he also alienated his fan base of 40 year old moms who thought he was hot and would go to the games with their girlfriends get drunk and yell out things about Inge's ass as their husbands silently stewed at being so publicly emasculated, by getting those gigantic forearm tattoos of his kids names. I feel like that was the real turning point of the season for Inge. However Inge did have offseason surgery on both of his knees and claims to be feeling 100%. If he can just return to being a .250 hitter with 25 homeruns and play some spectacular defense at third he could remain a valuable part of the team while setting himself up nicely for someone other than Detroit to over pay for his decline when he becomes a free agent after the season.

Ramon Santiago: Santiago has made a nice little career for himself as a utility infielder. Pretty amazing if you can remember how overmatched he was during his rookie year on that atrocious 2003 Tigers team that was full of overmatched young players. As I said in the Everett paragraph I kind of hope that Santiago can take over the job as the everyday shortstop or at least the starter against all right-handers given Everett's severe limitiations against righties.

The Sixth Annual Authoritative Detroit Tigers Season Preview Vol. 1

hello.......

who goes there......?

Is that a reader...?

Come closer into the light, see I've been blogging for nearly six years, which equates to about 300 years in real life and due to spending an ungodly amount of time over the years staring at the computer screen my eyes aren't what they used to be. It's nice of you to stop by because, you see, I don't get as many visitors as I used to. When you get to be my age in blogging years it gets to be awfully lonely, most of the friends who were the reason why I started this silly little hobby have passed me by, evaporating into the ether of Tigers lore. Why it seems only yesterday that I was singing the praises of a young fireballer named Wil Ledezma or jumping up and down on my futon cheering a homerun robbing catch made by wiry, speedster Nuke Logan. I can't believe years have passed since Jason Grilli would drive me into a alcohol fueled rage by coming into a game, allowing every inherited runner to score with ease, walking the bases loaded and then leaving the mound to a chorus of boos covered in his disgusting flop sweat, while I frantically searched my apartment for anything to help me drink away the trauma of another Cheese-man experience. This would also help explain the chemical dependency I have for store brand cough syrup mixed with Olde English and the delusions where I see Grilli's head on my cats body, but I digress. Now in my advanced blogging age I have noticed it takes me longer to recover from tough losses and distressing transactions. I remember my early days as a strapping young blogger, back when I was a just sickly underweight, ghostly pale and could survive on a diet of Sour Patch Kids, chocolate milk and burritos that I could buy and microwave at a gas station. Back in those days a Todd Jones blown save would just lead to a string of curse words and a few holes punched in the wall. As the heartbreaking losses mounted over the past few seasons my erratic behavior escalated. Soon I was drinking vodka from a Dora the Explorer sand pail and training a pack of wolves that I would unleash to terrorize my neighborhood after I was angered by Brandon Inge flailing at a face high fastball for strike three with runners on base. However after the double whammy of the Tigers painful loss in their one-game playoff against the Twins and the trade of fan favorite Curtis Granderson I finally became unhinged. I wandered out of my Flint apartment in a haze, wearing only a silk bathrobe and leaving behind a whole harem of beautiful women who had been gifted to me out of thanks by the locals for agreeing not to release my wolf pack anymore. For days I ambled along the streets disoriented, covered in feces, talking to myself and threatening strangers. Since this was Flint, I was able to blend in with the rest of the homeless and mentally ill for weeks before I finally collapsed in defeat outside of Halo Burger. The once proud, feared, underweight, ghostly blogger Beefshower was now just a sad, broken down, emaciated and translucently pale shell of a man.

It took months to recover my physical and mental health after the loss to the Twins and the trade of Granderson to the hated New York Highlanders. Intense therapy that allowed me to finally see the name Carlos Gomez or Alexei Casilla and not want to vomit in rage or to think about Zach Miner without turning into a homicidal maniac, not unlike Officer Matthew Cordell in the Maniac Cop series of movies. I know I'm not all the way recovered from those terrible events of last fall, but I do feel as though I'm 95 % of the way back and my memory is still as sharp as ever. Why I still remember where I was when I heard that Magglio Ordonez had just edged out Nap Lajoie for the first Tigers batting title since Ty Cobb was the oldest batting title winner in major league history as a sixty-nine year old in 1955. I listened live on the radio as famous Detroiter Louis Whitaker fought and defeated the ghost of Primo Carnera and helped boost U.S. morale in the fight against the spread of fascism. I even served as Luis Pujols' second in his famous duel in the Caucasus where he killed Phil Garner while protecting the honor of Wendell Magee. Yes, so many memories and so many great moments following a team with such a rich and storied history, and to be honest that is what baseball is all about and what drew me to becoming a fan at such a young age. The chance to watch the unknown, to potentially watch history be made, to see something that I've never seen before, or to see a player that I will tell my grandkids about someday, that is if hours sitting in front of a computer screen hasn't left my testicles withered and sterile. That is what has me so excited for the beginning of the season tomorrow afternoon in Kansas City. Kansas City was where that magical 2006 season began, when untested rookies Justin Verlander and Joel Zumaya helped propel a team of new faces to the Tigers first World Series appearance in 22 years. Who knows, maybe tomorrow we could see a new set of untested Tigers in Austin Jackson and Scott Sizemore along with veteran free agent signings like Johnny Damon help propel the Tigers to a division title and October baseball.

Enough with the intro though, here is part one of my Tigers season preview.

Justin Verlander: Verlander has had an excellent beginning to his still young career. A.L. Rookie of the Year and a World Series appearance in 2006, a no-hitter and increase in his strikeout rate in 2007, followed by a wildly inconsistent 2008, that looked like it could have been a major step backwards for the young ace. But for all the promise Verlander showed during his first three full seasons, he was still frustrating because it seemed like he hadn't filled his considerable promise yet. I was worried that he might be one of those players who coasted by on his tremendous natural skills such as his effortless velocity and the sharp break of his curveball. Not that I would ever begrudge somebody for coasting because given the opportunity to be very good with almost no effort or transcendently great with a lot of hard work and effort, I would choose very good a thousand out of a hundred times. But that's just because I am apathetic and lazy, in fact if I had to pick the one thing that I probably am fantastic at it would be by apathetic laziness of "lazithetic" as I like to call it because I'm too lazy to say both words. Last season though the Tigers finally got to see Verlander put everything together and put in a truly dominant Cy Young caliber season. After a rough start Verlander pitched lights out baseball for nearly the remainder of the season, putting up quality start after quality start and once again overpowering hitter with a fastball that routinely touched the high 90's again after a year where his velocity dipped noticeably. By the time everything was said and done, Verlander had paced the A.L. in strikeouts and posted his best statistical season yet, and if you believe the stats Verlander may have been a little unlucky and could still see room for improvement if his BABIP comes into line. He parlayed this success into a much deserved 5 year deal worth $80 million and if he pitched like he did last season over the life of the contract he has a very good chance of going down in history as the greatest Tigers pitcher ever. Now for the bad, Verlander pitched the most innings of his career last season by a wide margin and also threw more pitched than anybody in baseball, even more than traditional workhorses like C.C. Sabathia, Roy Halladay and Oliver the pitching Tennessee Walking Horse that was found on the Carnival Circuit and pitched 43 straight complete games for the Pittsburgh Pirates. Also, even though Verlander earned the money of his new contract, the Tigers recent history of doling out big money contracts for pitchers is discouraging. Now, granted, Verlander has much more talent and a better track record than Bonderman, Robertson or Willis but having lived through that trio's history of injuries and ineffectiveness I can't help be wary of big money contracts given out to pitchers wearing the Olde English D.

Rick Porcello: With Porcello last season I was expecting the worst. I thought he was being rushed, I thought the Tigers were sliding down a slippery slope that they had fell down once before with Bonderman and I was certain that Porcello would struggle mightily. After a shaky first month to his career, (with the exception to his superb second start against the Mariners) I was concerned the Tigers might be doing irreparable damage to their young prospect who didn't have a start above High-A. It wasn't so much a concern over his ability, which he obviously had plenty of, or even his health as the Tigers were doing everything possible to protect his arm and limit his innings. Instead I was more worried about damage that might be done to him psychologically. Not to read too much into a players psychological makeup because everyone is different, but I think back to when I was 20 and my lack of maturity in handling adversity at such a young age. Back then if I asked a girl out and she said no, I usually started hyperventilating, crawling about the floor gasping for air as tears filled my eyes. I had essentially the same reaction if I did poorly on a test or ran out of Count Chocula, so I couldn't imagine struggling on such a big stage, with so many of your peers relying on you. Obviously there are more differences between 20 year old Porcello and 20 year old Beefshower than 40 miles per hour on a fastball. Porcello settled down in May and easily established himself as the Tigers third best starter. The one bugaboo with Porcello was his alarmingly low K rate, striking out only 4.7 batters per nine innings, which is about as low as a pitcher can be without being knocked out of the league. All the signs were there that Porcello had the capability to be a high strikeout pitcher, the mid 90's fastball and assortment of filthy off-speed pitches but he wasn't putting hitters away and was relying predominantly on his low 90's sinker to induce groundouts. However in the 163^rd game against the Twins Porcello finally cut loose and showed the kind of dominating pitcher he could be, striking out eight Twins in 5 2/3 innings and keeping the Tigers in a close game. Of course we all know how that ended, Leyland brought in Zach Miner who promptly shit all over himself. But focusing just on Porcello in that one game playoff, it was amazing to see such a poised, young pitcher giving it his all with the season on the line and putting his team in the best possible position to win. It exceeded all of my wildest expectations and I'm excited to watch Porcello over the next several seasons fulfill his potential as one of the best young players in the game. What do I expect for the upcoming season? Well, for one I think we will see more of the eight strikeout version of Porcello as the Tigers turn him loose a little bit. Sure they will still protect the hell out of his arm, as they should, and they aren't going to rely on him for some kind of Old Hoss Radbourn workload but I think the kid gloves will come off and he'll be allowed to tap a little deeper into his arsenal. I'm of the opinion that there is really nothing a team can do to protect a young arm, for example the Tigers did everything right with Bonderman and he still broke down, it just seems like some pitchers are pre-disposed to injury, whether it be because of reliance on a high stress pitch or some violent mechanics but from everything I've read Porcello doesn't have either of those issues. Whatever happens I just want Porcello to stay healthy and productive as baseball has seen to many promising your pitching careers ruined by injury. Jesus this paragraph turned into a rambling mess, I shouldn't have drank that bottle of Listerine, I think my cat could write more coherently than this by just walking across the keyboard.

Max Scherzer: Scherzer famously has two different colored eyes a medical condition technically known as "What the hell is wrong with your eyes". I have a friend Josh who has this same condition and my friends and I still aren't entirely convinced that Josh is not some sort of werewolf. We've shot him with silver bullets, covered our houses with mountain ash and even stabbed him with a knife covered in wolfsbane and he's always reacted like a human would but there have been signs of an underlying werewolf, namely stemming from events during late night games of Risk that involved rage, lashing out at the game board, growling and possible transformations. I'm sure the Tigers put Scherzer through a battery of tests to see if he suffered from lycanthropy before they traded for him but we won't really know the story until we see if there is a sudden rise in attacks throughout the city. Seriously though, I love the Granderson/Jackson trade from the standpoint that flipping a possible fluke season by EJack into a 25 year old strikeout artist under team control for several more seasons was a stroke of genius on Dombrowski's part. I've always been a big Scherzer fan and think that adding him to a rotation already featuring Verlander and Porcello gives the Tigers a devastating short rotation that would make them a difficult out in the playoffs, if they are fortunate enough to get there.

Jeremy Bonderman: I'm going to use Bonderman's spot to talk a little about the Nate Robertson deal that went down last week. Yeah, I'm not a big fan of this deal. Neither Bonderman, Robertson, nor Willis are great options for a long relief mop-up duty spot on the roster let alone the final two spots in the rotation. I have zero faith in Willis and I think his whole spring has been a mirage. Best case scenario for him would be a five inning pitcher w/ a 5.00 ERA who has the occasional wild outing and worst case scenario is he reverts back to the mechanical disaster who walks every other batter and is a complete mental train wreck to boot. Bonderman is supposedly healthy but his spring has been less than encouraging and he was a guy who relied completely on his slider for any kind of success and that pitch is supposedly a shadow of what it used to be. He might have the same velocity but the bite on the pitch is lacking from all the reports I've read. Robertson has some utility and he did pitch relatively decent down the stretch last season after he came back from injury. He also is the only guy who probably had any trade value so I see how he was easily the choice to go if he didn't win a roster spot. I could see taking a token prospect like Voss if the Tigers got a little salary relief from it but they didn't, they are still on the hook for everything they would have paid if they just released him outright, and if you are going to release someone outright just get rid of D-Train and keep Galarraga (I can never spell his name right) or Bonine as the 5/swingman. Also I don't see the need for another lefty in the pen, which is surely what Voss' role would be if he made it to the big leagues, the Tigers already have decent younger guys for that role in Ni, Coke and Thomas. Maybe Voss' ceiling is Clay Rapada's role, which isn't that exciting.

If I were in charge I would have either cut Willis outright anticipating him blowing up eventually and being useless and giving him a chance to change scenery and get his career back together and thrown Bonderman and Robertson in the 4/5 role and kept Bonine/Galarraga in reserve. Or I would've given Robertson the 4 spot Willis the five, moved Bonderman to the bullpen and see if his two pitch repertoire and short outings might make him an effective middle innings reliever and have Bonarraga ready to step in.

Dontrelle Willis: I feel like I pretty much covered my feelings on Willis in the previous section under Bonderman, but like any well prepared and thorough person I always come up with a plan B. If Willis turns out to be an unmitigated disaster for a third straight season I think it would behoove the Tigers to have a clubhouse attendant "discover" a bloody leather apron in Willis' locker, making Willis a prime suspect in the 122 year old unsolved Jack the Ripper murders in London's Whitechapel district. Now obviously Dontrelle couldn't be the murderer unless we get into some kind of weird 4^th dimension theory about time and space, but given the physical evidence, the anxiety disorder and the history of pain he has inflicted on Tiger fans who have had to watch him pitch over the past two seasons, I think this is a risk worth taking. The English tabloids would have a field day and the constant inquests and trials would keep D-Train tied up for the majority of the season. As a token of gratitude I will offer to serve as his barrister for a minimum fee, although with my lawyering skills I would probably end up just getting him put into stocks at Trafalgar Square or something, so he probably wouldn't want that. In all honesty though, I am rooting for Dontrelle and I hope that even if he doesn't get his career back going he can at least be happy with his personal life.

Phil Coke: There was some debate between Dombrowski and Leyland at the beginning of spring over what Coke's role on the team was going to be. Dombrowski wanted him to be tried out as a starter while Leyland was adamant that he remain in the bullpen. In the end the Marlboro Man won out and now Coke joins a whole gaggle of lefties in the bullpen, alongside Fu-Te Ni, Brad Thomas and the now injured Bobby Seay. This seems like lefty overkill for the pen, especially considering the rotation doesn't necessarily have the greatest options at the 4-5 spot, so personally I would have liked to see what Coke had to offer as a starter and maybe even give him a little time in Toledo to see if this is where his potential might lie down the road. Even if he turned out to be only a league average four starter, I believe that would be considerably more valuable than his current role as an above average lefty specialist in a pen that already has three of those including two that are appreciably better in Ni and Seay.

Fu-Te Ni: Ni was a nice surprise last season, as like most people I am are not a hardcore fan of the Taiwan Professional League. I had never heard of him prior to last year and had missed his work in during the World Baseball Classic. Ni quickly turned into one of my favorite pitchers to watch last season as I've always had an affinity for junk balling situational lefties. Ni hardly throws anything above the high 80's and he never throws anything straight. He was absolute murder on lefthanders last season and by the end of the year had earned the confidence of Leyland to pitch in big spots. He played a crucial role in the 163^rd game last season against the Twins, effectively shutting down the Twins dangerous left handed heavy middle of the order. Having Ni makes it much easier for the Tigers to stomach the loss of Bobby Seay due to injury and he is a credit to the Tigers eye for pitching talent.

Ryan Perry: Count me among the many who are really excited for Ryan Perry's future as a Tiger. Although he struggled mightily with his control at times last year and was sent down to the minors on more than one occasion to corral his wildness and develop some semblance of a second pitch, Perry's overall numbers at the end of the year were impressive for a young player. The Tigers drafted Perry in the first round two seasons ago because they thought he was major league ready and would move quickly through the minors, however I don't think the Tigers expected him to move this quickly. His fastball is still a little straight and the lack of a consistent second pitch is troubling, but when a pitcher cooks with as much gas as Perry does, high 90's with the occasional triple digit offering, they can afford to have a shall shallow repertoire. My best case scenario for Perry would be for him to slide into the set-up role sometime during this season, find some success in high leverage situations and have him groomed and ready to slide into the closer's role when Valverde's deal expires after the 2011 season.

Jose Valverde: Initially I was pissed at the Valverde signing, since it came right on the heels of the Granderson trade. In an effort to make my monkey brain understand the Granderson trade I came up with the conclusion that the only way to justify it was that it must have been first and foremost a business decision, strictly a cost cutting move because the team was in dire financial straits and all those rumors of the team hemorrhaging money due to the economic collapse were not only true, but possibly even worse than imagined. Then the Tigers went out and spent $14 million on a closer who would make more money over the next two seasons than Granderson would and I was infuriated. It seemed like such an unnecessary signing, especially considering the Tigers had options in-house such as the aforementioned Perry, or maybe they could do some wishcasting and hope and pray that Zumaya would be healthy and effective enough to finally take over the mantle of closer he seemed destined to inherit 3 years ago. In all honesty Perry is probably a couple years away from being crowned closer and expecting Zumaya to ever be healthy enough or dependable enough to be closer probably died with his first serious arm injury, so after I calmed down and realized that the Granderson deal wasn't the worst thing to happen to me since my parents gave away my first dog while I was away at school, I sort of like the Valverde signing. Also after having to sit through years of watching Todd Jones and Fernando Rodney desperately struggle to close games with their differing high wire acts, the money saved on health care and Rolaids and Tums alone would more than make up for the value of Valverde's contract.

Joel Zumaya: I'm putting the over/under on how many innings Zumaya throws this season at 40 and taking the under. I'm also putting a line out there that the over/under on how may years it will be before Zumaya throws a pitch so violently that his arm detaches from his body and makes it to home plate at 2 years and I'm once again taking the under. It truly is amazing that with how many traumatic arm injuries Zumaya has had that he can even throw a baseball much less a fastball that still regularly hits triple digits. However with each injury Zumaya has suffered it seems like he loses a little bit of effectiveness, which is completely understandable. Even though he may look like the same pitcher from his magical 2006 season, when he was living the high life of local sports sensation, folk hero, future closer and Comcast High Speed Internet commercial stardom, a quick look at his statistics for the past three seasons show that the Zumaya of 2006 is long gone and he ain't coming back. I think the only thing to hope for is a full healthy season of Zumaya serving in a late inning role, with an ERA around 4.00 and hopefully some flashes of the dominant fireballer we all fell in love with four seasons ago, but I fear even that is probably asking for way to much.

The Fifth Annual Authoritative Detroit Tigers Season Preview Vol. 1

Holy crap! Tomorrow is Opening Day. The only thing I had written in my planner for the whole month of March was....and to write my Annual Detroit Tigers Season Preview. Now here it is a week into April and I haven't written a single word about the Tigers. I think the reason this season has snuck up on me is because it doesn't really feel like spring yet. For example, as I'm writing this right now a heavy and wet snow is falling outside my window and I'm trying to stay warm in my apartment by burning all of my books and wrapping myself in layers of bearskins and beaver pelts while growing a long grizzled beard. I look and feel more like I'm getting ready to join Henry Hudson on an expedition through Arctic waters than I feel ready to watch Opening Day tomorrow night. I'm sure it will be just as cold and miserable in Toronto tomorrow night as it will be in Michigan and I hope the Blue Jays do something to commemorate the occasion of opening the season in sub-zero (Celsius, of course) temperatures by having their most famous citizen, Yeti, throw out the first pitch.

Wait, why am I complaining about some bad weather? Tomorrow is the beginning of baseball season, which for me is the most exciting day on the sports calendar not involving women's field hockey or Olympic Qualifying for German men's handball. If anything, when the first pitch is thrown tomorrow night all of the snow will melt away and flowers will bloom, the packs of hungry timberwolves roaming the streets will be replaced by singing robins and playful chipmunks and Old Man Winter will die a sudden and violent death gasping for air and clutching his throat as he's replaced by the smiling, giggling baby Sun from the Teletubbies.

In past season previews I have usually given a short recap of the prior year and tried to put a positive spin on it, but I'm going to skip that this year. This is because the Tigers 2008 season has to rank as one of the most depressingly disappointing seasons in the history of sports. Sure the Tigers have had several seasons with won-loss records worse than last years 74-88 record, but there were usually no expectations for those teams. However after the offseason trades that brought in Miguel Cabrera and Edgar Renteria, as well as the continued excellence of Magglio, Placido and Guillen, the rising stardom of Granderson and a dead cat bounce season from Gary Sheffield last years Tigers outfit came affixed with a guarantee to score a thousand runs and bludgeon opposing teams pitching staffs into submission. However in the time it takes to recite all the U.S. Presidents without consulting Wikipedia, (for me about a week because all the ones after Lincoln look identical, you know those guys...the ones with the moustaches) it became apparent the Tigers were over hyped and barrelling towards disappointment. The offense looked old and was wildly inconsistent, fluctuating between getting shutout on three hits by Gavin Floyd and scoring nineteen runs on a seemingly daily basis. The pitching staff wasn't able to pick up the slack as they dealt with injury, ineffectiveness and bad luck in almost equal doses. Finally the defense overwent a major facelift in the early stages of the season, with several players switching positions on the fly, and never seemed to gel. In fact I would go so far as to say the past year, dating back to the beginning of last April when Tigers began the year 0-7, has been the most difficult and trying year as a Detroit sports fan and Michigan resident in decades. It began with the disappointing Tigers season, then the Pistons losing to the Celtics in the playoffs, 0-16 for the Lions, 3-9 for Michigan football, Chauncey being traded, the Pistons struggling to make the playoffs this year, tens of thousands of people losing their jobs and homes and the Big Three teetering on the edge of bankruptcy. And to think, this is all Edgar Renteria's fault, and if Detroit were somehow relocated to 14th century Europe Renteria would certainly have been presumed to be some sort of warlock that had brought an evil spirit to the city and led to a year of darkness and bad hoodoo. Uttering his name in Detroit would lead to mothers covering their children's ears and elderly women blowing out their candles and slamming their shutters closed. Edgars swath of destruction in his one season as a Tiger is truly legendary and hopefully now that he's been banished to San Francisco happy days can return to Detroit.

Alas, the season preview...

Mike Ilitch: During the first few years that I wrote these season previews I was hard on Ilitch and his tenure as owner of the Tigers. I blamed him for sticking with Randy Smith as general manager for about 3 years to long. I cursed him for being reluctant to spend any money in free agency and failing to put a competitive team on the field during the first few seasons at Comerica Park, especially the 2003 season. I compared his appearance to Nosferatu with a gheri curl and blamed his cheap pizzas for giving me a heart murmur, but now I feel the need to defend him. We've become a version of the odd couple, the penniless, handsome, young and talented recent college grad and the billionaire, hideous, ancient and translucent pizza industry mogul. However I'm sick of all the rumors that the economy in Detroit will force some kind of massive firesale not seen in baseball since the '97 Marlins or early '90's Padres. The most egregious of these believers is Bill Simmons who has written about it repeatedly and even devoted a lengthy portion of one of his podcasts to the subject. He's practically counting down the days until the Red Sox trade for Miguel Cabrera in exchange for some middling overhyped Red Sox prospect like Ryan Kalish or something. Look I know shit in Michigan is bad right now. It's arguably the most economically depressed state in the country and if GM and Chrysler go under the damage would be devastating. However it's not like everyone in the state is penniless. Sure season ticket sales are down drastically but I think thats a product of a last place finish as much as anything. Also Ilitch's wealth isn't tied to the auto industry in the least (I think a lot of outsiders thinks the whole state of Michigan is employed by or financially dependant on GM/Ford/Chrysler) and his net worth supposedly went up in the past season (unlike several owners who have lost millions in this economy i.e. the Wilpons). He's also ridden out tough times in the NHL and isnt cut from the same cloth as some owners that care only about the bottom line. I believe that nothing motivates people like the icy cold hand of death approaching them. I don't mean to sound grim or insensitive but Ilitch is getting quite old and from everything I've read the one thing Ilitch wants more than anything right now, besides an endless supply of blood for sustenance, is to bring a World Series Championship to Detroit. I realize this is overly simplistic but so are many of the arguments about why the Tigers are facing economic disaster.

Jim Leyland: Leyland goes into this season with his managerial butt firmly on the hot seat, and not because he fell asleep on the couch with a cigarette in his mouth. After last season Leyland was a little miffed that he did not receive a contract extension. There were also rumblings of a growing discord in the previously tight relationship between Dombrowski and Leyland. How quickly past accomplishments are forgotten in a win now environment with the second highest payroll in baseball. It just seems like yesterday that Leyland was kissing his wife through the fence and getting carried of the field after Magglio's walk off homerun in the ALCS in 2006. There is no question that Leyland will be managing for his very job this season and Dombrowski is accommodating him by allowing him to take the 25 players that Leyland sees as the best fit for the team come north with him. Even if that did mean the embarrassing scenario of cutting bait and eating 14 million dollars in payroll for a much ballyhooed addition to the team just a couple of seasons ago, as well as allowing him to take a couple of pitchers who between them have very little pro experience and none above A ball.

Gerald Laird: Laird is the Tigers new starting backstop. If that statement doesnt really inspire a lot of confidence there is a reason for it. Laird broke out with the Rangers in 2006 while splitting time with Rod Barrajas. He was given the full time job in 2007 and promptly fell flat on his face. Last year Laird split time with a gaggle of Rangers catching prospects and after putting up slightly below average offensive production coupled with slightly above average defense was deemed expendable as the Rangers decided to flip him to the Tigers for a pair of live minor league arms. Laird is the definition of a league average catcher with decent pop, low OBP and decent defense. The thing that impresses me the most about Laird is that he has been able to succeed despite having an ugly sounding name. I'm a big believer that a person's name plays an important part in how their life will turn out. For example if your name is Colt McCoy is there really any doubt that you're going to grow up and become a star quarterback? Would Cole Hamels have grown up to be the ace of the World Champion Phillies and married to a model if his name had been Melvin Thorpe? If Gerald Laird were to exist in 1930's Hollywood I guarantee the first thing that would've happened is some cigar smoking, bowtie wearing studio executive would have changed his name to Jerry Sexington or Chase Powers or something outrageous like that. Just say Laird's name out loud and tell me it doesnt sound like the guttural sounds someone makes when they are having a stroke or vomiting.

Miguel Cabrera: There was some concern last season when Cabrera got off to a slow start at the plate, slugging about 100 points lower than his career average midway through June. This was coupled with his atrociously bad defense at third base, which prompted a move across the diamond (to replace the equally atrocious Carlos Guillen at first) as well as another round of questions about his conditioning and dedication to the game. Then over the course of the last three months of the season Cabrera caught fire and slugged over .600 and hit 21 second half homeruns which propelled him into the league lead. He also adapted quite nicely to playing first base and even though he may never cover much range he did prove adept at picking throws out of the dirt and making the occasional spectacular diving stab of a line drive shot. Questions about his conditioning still persist but with his natural talent and the fact that he's still so young, (he'll turn 26 in a couple of weeks) there is a chance that we haven't even seen his best seasons yet.

Placido Polanco: Polanco is entering the final year of the four year contract he signed with the Tigers shortly after his arrival in the trade that sent Uegeth Urbina to Philadelphia, back when Dombrowski was still making trades that worked out favorably for Detroit (Pre-Jurrjens/Hernandez/Renteria). No one can argue that Polanco hasn't been a bargain for the duration of this contract, back when Dombrowski was still signing guys for below market value (Pre-Robertson/Willis). It will be interesting to see what happens with Polanco following this season. If he puts up another .300/.350/.400 season with solid defense there will be a strong sentiment to re-sign him and possibly reward him for his past performance when he was vastly underpaid. However if there is one thing that my subscription to BP has taught me its that baseball is a business and the best route is to ruthlessly cut loose any player in his mid-30's regardless of sentimental value as they are likely on the downslope of their career. However, given the relative dearth of options on the free agent market following this season at the keystone (Freddy Sanchez anyone?) and the similar lack of options up the middle in the minors the Tigers may find themselves backed into a corner when it comes to negotiating with Polanco this offseason.

Adam Everett: When you live a fast paced lifestyle like I do, with sports cars (my 2001 Buick Century), illicit drug use (drinking cough syrup until I pass out), beautiful women (my obese cat Sgt. Hugs) and thousands of dollars (...in student loan debt) you don't have time to regret anything. In fact "No Regrets" is kind of my motto to live by as evidenced by the large Hello Kitty crossbones tattoo that covers my entire back will emphatically tell you. Long story short I can't really empathize with the regret Dave Dombrowski must feel when he looks out at Adam Everett starting at shortstop every day. Sure Everett isn't really costing them anything monetarily as he signed a 1 year 1 million dollar deal this past offseason, but his anemic bat and slick glove are whats left to show for Dombrowski's decision to trade Jair Jurrjens and Gorkys Hernandez for Edgar Renteria. I know I've mentioned that trade a hundred times already but it may take years of therapy for me to get over that deal, so instead of continuing to bitch about the trade I'll shift gears to something else. After the Rays shaved hundreds of runs off their runs allowed total en route to the World Series last year defense became the hot commodity during the offseason. Much of the credit for the Rays defensive turnaround was credited to their acquiring Jason Bartlett a no hit good-glove shortstop from the Minnesota Twins. Well lucky for Detroit they signed a similar scrappy white shortstop with a good defensive reputation away from their AL Central rival Twins. He should be a vast improvement defensively over Renteria who had all the range of my 84 year old wheelchair bound Grandpa. Did I mention we traded Jair.......whoops sorry.

Brandon Inge: I think the lesson I learned from Brandon Inge last season was that if things aren't going your way or your employee asks you to sacrifice for the good of the team the proper and professional way to act is to publicly question their decisions through thinly veiled passive aggresive remarks. Maybe even demand a trade or two or openly sulk to the point that it effects my job performance. Sure this method may get me called out by my boss and may even make my image take a hit but I would be so wildly overpaid that no one else would want me and eventually I would get my way and even a promotion. Probably from the sarcastic tone of those first few sentences its pretty clear that Inge isn't my favorite Tiger. He's joined the list of Tigers, headed by Bobby Higginson, who I once cheered for but who hung around long enough for me to grow to hate them. His defense at the hot corner is rather spectacular and he is exciting to watch while in the field but his performance at the plate has been putrid since his flukey 2006 power surge. His OPS the past two seasons have been sub 700, which means he has to be Brooks Robinson-esqe in the field to drag his worth above replacement value. However maybe now that he's been properly coddled and has the job he wants he'll be able to produce a little with the bat.

Matt Treanor: I don't know anything about Matt Treanor other than the fact that his wife is infinitely more popular and famous than he is and she's a professional beach volleyball player. This led to my startling discovery that there is such a thing as professional beach volleyball. Treanor joins the long line of backup catchers who passed through Detroit for only a season or two before fading away into oblivion, although there is still a chance that the team is waiting for Vance Wilson to return from his seemingly decade long rehab from Tommy John surgery. I'm a little disappointed in the teams decision to bring in Treanor as I had worked myself up into a hot sweaty lather over the prospect of the beginning of the Dusty Ryan era after his promising cup of coffee with the team last September. Oh well Dusty's absence will only make my heart grow fonder.

Ramon Santiago: I've always been a big fan of Santiago and I was hoping he would get a crack at landing the every day job after The Disaster Known as Edgar Renteria had his option declined within seconds of the 2008 season ending.

Magglio Ordonez: Magglio regressed from his MVP caliber 2007 season but still put together an impressive season. He's essentially a .300/.370/.500 player who will hit 20-25 homeruns and drive in 100 plus RBI's a season. He'll never come close to putting up the numbers he did two years ago but he's still well above average for a corner outfielder. Sadly this could be Magglio's final season in Detroit as his name constantly gets bandied about in trade rumors and if the Tigers struggle out of the gate and look to shed some payroll he could be moved. Given how critical many in the media were when the Tigers handed this contract out when Magglio was coming off a devastating knee injury that required some sort of radical surgery that wasn't even legal to perform in this country, this deal turned out surprisingly well for the Tigers.

Curtis Granderson: Granderson wasn't able to match his 2007 season at the plate or in the field. But he still had a productive season overall and ranks among the best centerfielders and most exciting players in the game. Even with a decrease across the board in Granderson's slash stats there were still improvements in his game that, like Cabrera lead some to belief that we haven't even seen the best of Granderson yet. Namely he increased his walk rate while slashing his strikeout rate for the third consecutive season. Also he learned to hit left-handers after previously being completely helpless against them. Granderson had been so bad against lefties before last season that there was a groundswell last spring to have him platoon with a 12 year old blind girl named Nicole Cramer who played in one of those leagues with the beeping baseballs. The only reason the Tigers didn't go through with it was because the idea of a 12 year old blind girl playing professional baseball would have made Rick Reilly orgasm to death and the Tigers didn't want that blood and.....uh....other matter on their hands.

Carlos Guillen: Once again Guillen is switching positions, this time heading to left field. Last year saw his odyssey take him from shortstop to first base, where his awful footwork around the bag almost led to him getting killed in a collision with someone barrelling down the first base line on several occasions. Once it became apparent that both him and Cabrera were out of place defensively the two swapped spots across the diamond where Guillen provided above average defense. He was sidelined at one point by a killer case of hemorrhoids, which is the worst possible injury imaginable. I know this from experience as I seemed to have developed a raging case of them just while writing this insanely long blog post. Anyways Guillen is still athletic enough to where he could be an asset defensively in the outfield and maybe the position takes some of the burden of his aching surgically repaired knees that will allow his bat to return to the level it was a couple of years back.

Marcus Thames: After years of being jerked around by the front office, dating back to 2005 when he didn't make the team coming out of spring training because the team was to gutless to cut ties with Bobby Higginson rotting carcass, Thames has finally forced his way into a major role on the team. A year removed from having the indignity of sharing the short half of a platoon with Jacques Jones it looked like Thames might once again lose significant playing time and possibly his spot on the roster to another aging and washed up veteran, this time future Hall of Famer Gary Sheffield. However, in a surprising move the Tigers cut ties with Sheffield and ate 14 million dollars in remaining salary just for the privilege of having Sheffield not play for them this season. If I were an owner with an infinite amount of money, I think a good way to punish a G.M. who had handed an ill advised contract would be to sit him down and make him actually eat 14 million dollars in singles with a knife and fork for my entertainment. With Sheffield gone Thames will appear to get a full seasons worth of at bats while rotating between the outfield corners and DH. He has the potential to put up the following slash stats in a full season of at-bats: .220/.280/.600. Just as an idea of what kind of player Thames could end up being Baseball Prospectus lists his top player comps as Dave Kingman, Pete Incaviglia and Steve Balboni. I've always had a soft spot for these kinds of all or nothing power hitters and I'm glad Thames finally seems to be getting a full season worth of playing time in Detroit.

Josh Anderson: Anderson is the newest Tiger, having been acquired for one of the several minor league relievers the Tigers seemingly throw into every deal. In this case a side arm reliver named Rudy Darrow. I know even less about Darrow than I do Anderson so I can't really offer any insight on to whether this is a good trade or not. I really cant offer any insight into anything though, so this couldnt really come as any surprise. Most of Anderson's value lies in his batting average, as a glance at his career number reveals little plate discipline and a modicum of power. He also brings a decent amount of speed to the lineup having stole 52 bases between AAA and the majors last season, while only being caught 8 times, so he could have his uses as a pinch runner. Supposedly he also brings good defense to the table, even though he might be a bit overmatched for the expansive centerfield at Comerica. But with a team currently running Magglio, Guillen and Thames out to play defense in the corners Anderson could have some utility as a late inning defensive replacement for any of the aforementioned aging/iron gloved trio. It's been awhile since the Tigers have had a legitimate speed threat on their roster, maybe since Alex Sanchez who was arguably the worst baserunner in Tigers history. Sanchez had as much sense on the basepaths as the squirrel in the video on those late night sports bloopers shows that ran around the paths to Benny Hill's theme music. Somewhere Andres Torres is wondering if Dave Dombrowski lost his phone number because Anderson's job was supposed to be Torres' destiny.

The Fourth Annual Authoritative Detroit Tigers Season Preview: Vol 2 Starting Rotation and Bullpen

There are a million other things I should be doing right now other than finishing this season preview, all of them involving studying for my last round of exams ever at law school. Fortunately I just purchased Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney for my Nintendo DS and after successfully solving the first two cases on the game I've never felt more prepared to enter a courtroom. I never knew I could present evidence by interrupting a judge after yelling out "Take That!!!" or stall for more time to set up a defense by faking my own kidnapping with the help of a fifteen year old magician/co-counsel. Seriously I've learned more about the justice system in the six hours I've played Apollo Justice than I have in my two and a half years in law school. With that being said I now give my faceless readers, none of whom I've never met but all of whom I feel obligated to please the final installment of my Detroit Tigers season preview. Behold!

Justin Verlander: My bold prediction for this seasons pitching staff is that Verlander will have a breakout season and be the Tigers first 20 game winner since Bill Gullickson. Well I guess that prediction isn't really bold since about roughly five million other bloggers, sportswriters, analysts, housewives, Sudanese refugees and OBGYN's have predicted the same success for Verlander. Coming into last season I was worried about Verlander and how he would fare in his sophomore campaign after having experienced so much success and pitching so many innings during his rookie season. Turns out I'm an idiot as Verlander somehow improved upon his rookie year by throwing a no-hitter and upping his strikeout rate by 1/3. Now I'm no mathemagician nor historian but if he increases his numbers by a similar margin this season he will strike out 671 batters and shatter Hippo Vaughns single season strikeout mark set in 1878 as a member of the Cleveland Spiders. Amazing.

Jeremy Bonderman: I don't know what to think about Bonderman anymore. We've been waiting for Bonderman's breakout season for the past three years and it hasn't happened. It seems like he's been around forever and has probably peaked/leveled off but then I remember that he's only 25 years old. Last season he started off strong and had a 10-1 record, 3.48 ERA and 4:1 K/BB ratio at the All-Star break before tailing off badly in the second half before he was finally shut down with elbow problems. He has one of the most devastating pitches in all of baseball with a vicious/biting slider but he's been completely unable to develop an off-speed pitch to complement it. He's as exciting as he is extremely frustrating. He might be the biggest enigma/contradiction in all of baseball. He's also the Tigers number 2 starter and I think the biggest key to the Tigers success this season. If he can finally put all of his talent together and give the Tigers the kind of 1-2 punch the Indians had last season en route to winning the A.L. Central behind Sabathia and Carmona then there is no limit to how far this Tigers team can go. However, I get the nagging feeling that I'm going to be writing the same thing about Bonderman this time next year. Aargh.

Dontrelle Willis: Let's see. Dontrelle had the worst season of his career last year. There were scouting reports at the end of last year about his velocity being down in the low to mid 80's and that he might be hurt. This spring the only way his pitching could have been worse was if he had rubbed the ball down with feces before each pitch, he also had the unsettling habit of shaking his arm after pitches like it was hurt as well as looking identical to my friend T.J. who may be, not only the least healthy person I know, but the least healthy person on the planet (T.J. once ate 80 Chicken McNuggets in a 24 hour period, sleeps with random girls from a sleazy bar in Flint and in the death pool my friends and I have regarding T.J....well let's just say I'm feeling pretty comfortable with my prediction of 38). Hmm. So why don't I feel good about D-Train being the Tigers No. 3 starter? For one if Dontrelle lowers his ERA into the low to mid 4's, the Tigers offense should be good enough to get the D-Train about 15 wins. Also I'm going to invest in the theory that Willis was just beat down by the non-existent crowds and losing in Florida and being back in a pennant race will be just what he needs to turn his career around, although by October I'll probably be wishing I had put my money in the "Dontrelle moving to a tougher league w/o a pitcher batting and will see his ERA increase steadily before he goes on the DL in June with a frayed rotator cuff" investment.

Nate Robertson: I wear glasses. Big thick coke bottle type glasses. Without my glasses I am completely blind and if I were set loose in a forest at night without them there is a 96.7% chance that I would scooped up by an owl and carried off into the dark never to be seen again. For years I was ashamed of my terrible eyesight and suffered throughout high school with never being able to read the blackboard. I finally broke down and got contacts about five years ago and, after dealing with two terrible eye infections due to wearing contacts, I switched to glasses at the beginning of this year and wear them proudly. What the hell does this have to do with Robertson you ask? The goggles. I used to think Robertson looked like a douche for rocking Rec-Specs on the mound but no more. I guess you could say I Re-spect the Rec-Specs. Did everyone else just hear a loud groaning sound? That has to be the worst paragraph that's ever been written on this website. Of course I mean other than that tripe Bill wrote earlier this month about the Lions.

Kenny Rogers: I just want Gamblor to be healthy. His injury at the very end of spring training last year seemed to be a harbinger of the bad luck the team would go on to experience last season. I love watching Rogers pitch and I missed him last season on a personal level. I get just as excited watching old savvy pitchers like Rogers, Moyer, Maddux and David Wells pitch as I do watching the Verlanders, Becketts and Peavys of the world. Guys like Rogers really have no business being successful in the big leagues but they are smart or deceptive enough to get by and I really respect that. I hope Rogers can get 20-25 starts in this season at the least.

Todd Jones: Again?!? Yuck. I'll pass talking about Jones for now b/c I'm sure he'll give me reason to vent soon enough.

Denny Bautista: Who? Oh this is just some crappy reliever with a career ERA of 6.93, there's no way he's making the team and even if he does it will be as the 12th man in the pen so who cares. What's that you say? This guy is our set-up man. Surely you jest......Surely......jesus christ, you're serious. I only saw Bautista pitch to one batter this spring and he gave up a homerun to Travis Hafner that travelled about 450 feet. I get the feeling that I'll be seeing that scenario again during the season. Fernando can't get back soon enough.

Zach Miner: I like Miner. I can't really explain why but I think he's going to have a good season and emerge as one of the most reliable relievers on the team. I don't know if I really believe this but it seems like everything I've written after Verlander has been negative so I thought I would try to be positive. This is no fun let's get to Grilli.

Jason Grilli: Anybody who has ever visited this site knows how I feel about Jason Grilli. So I thought I would present a little timeline of my feelings towards Grilli during his time in Detroit. My hatred for him extends all the way back to the end of the 2005 season when I attended a late September game with my sister and her boyfriend to see Alan Trammell manage one of his last games in a Tigers uniform, since by that time it was readily apparent that Trammell was going to lose his job at the end of the season. I was hoping to have a chance to see Trammell go out a winner but by the time we got to our seats in the bottom of the first inning ass-hat Grilli had already given up two runs and the Tigers never had a chance. The next season Grilli became an important part of the bullpen on a surprising Tigers team that would go on to the World Series. In spite of his solid numbers during the regular season I never really trusted Grilli, mainly because of his atrocious K/BB ratio, and my fears were justified when Grilli had a meltdown in Game 4 of the ALCS walking the bases loaded and only throwing 4 strikes in 21 pitches. He was bailed out when Wil Ledezma induced a double play ball and after Maggs hit the walk-off homerun in the bottom the ninth no one cared or remembered Grilli's misdeeds....except me (If you read that sentence in the voice of the guy that narrates movie trailers it sounds cool). At the beginning of the 2007 season Grilli showed his true colors and after he blew a tie game wide open in an early season loss to the Indians I advocated that he should be drawn and quartered after the game, and I was only half kidding. Anyways with all the injuries in the Tigers bullpen this spring the Tigers are relying on Grilli more then ever and if he's not getting booed off the field in early May after giving up a game tying homerun to Casey Blake then I'll be happy...but I'll still hate him.

Bobby Seay: Every season the league is filled with anonymous left-handed middle relievers like Bobby Seay who appear in about 60 games, throw about 50 innings and make a couple million dollars a year for their trouble. Also, unless you completely fuck things up (see: Byrdak, Tim) you can make a nice 10-12 year career out of this role, or if your really lucky you might be like Mike Stanton and set your family up for generations by being lucky enough to be born left-handed with slightly above average athletic ability. This has to be the greatest job on the planet and Bobby Seay is just Exhibit # 4,217 in why I'm tying my kids right arm behind his back the second he comes oozing out of the womb. The next 18 years of my son's life will be spent building up arm strength and working on a variety of pitches in a training regime that makes what the old Red Army hockey team went threw look like an evening spin class for old ladies at Curves. Once he gets drafted I get to use his bonus money to build my dream house and then he'll hate me so much I'll never have to talk to him again, which would be great. If this is getting any of you women readers hot and you want to serve as the surrogate for this experiment send me an e-mail.

Yorman Bazardo: Bazardo has become my new Wil Ledezma. He has the cool name, he was an unheralded acquisition and he made a dominating late season start that I watched that will forever cloud my judgment and make it impossible for me to ever evaluate him in a non-biased manner. I already have come up with a scenario that I play out in my dreams where Rogers misses some starts during the stretch run, which forces Bazardo into the rotation and he becomes a late season revelation, throwing scoreless frames at will and guiding the Tigers to the post-season with a complete game shutout on the season's final day as I sit in the stands nodding in approval, knowing he had it in him all along. Of course the odds of Bazardo even becomes a mediocre major league starters are between about 0.1 and 0.7% and I'm sure in 3 years Bazardo will be a throw in some trade with the Rangers and I'll be falling for some Venezualean pitcher named Yovanni Alvarado.

I know I'm missing some guys, like Rayburn, Rodney, Zumaya and some guy named Clete Thomas who may or may not be the non-threatening ethnic athlete member of the Burger King Kids Club, but its getting late and I'm tired and the Tigers season starts in about 6 hours so I'll write about them later. I just wanted to get to my predictions for the season.

A.L. Central

1: Detroit (95-67): Come on Tigers this is my last year living in Detroit before I have to move back to Clio and live in the crappy Mill Creek Apt's behind VG's and work in my dad's office for the next 40 years. Give me one World Series title before I leave. Please.

2: Cleveland (93-69): Scary scary team. I'm just hoping their bullpen regresses a little like the Tigers did last year. No way Perez and Lewis and Betancourt have those types of seasons again....I hope.

3: Minnesota (83-79): Even though they lost Santana they are always competitive and I love Gardenhire. I think he really gets the most out of his players and is worth a few wins. I think Delmon Young could be huge for them.

4: Chicago (76-86): This team got old fast, I hope this is the season when Ozzie Guillen's head explodes after watching Mike McDougal walk in a tying run in August

5: Kansas City (71-91): They'll give the Tigers trouble because the Tigers can't get DeJesus or Butler out. Those guys bat like .700 against Detroit.

I can't wait for this season to begin....

The Fourth Annual Authoritative Detroit Tigers Season Preview: Vol 1 Starting Fielders and Bench

Wow. I can't believe I've been writing these season previews for going on four years. So many memories (Maggs ALCS homerun, Granderson robbing Wily Mo Pena's homerun, Jim Leyland, Marcus Thames and Justin Verlander solving The Mystery of the Astronaut Ghost at the O.K. Corral.....hmmm maybe that was a Scooby-Doo episode. I can't remember.) so many new friends (I bought a cat), even more enemies (namely Big Al, Jason Grilli, Lynn Henning, Sergei Kirov, Leon Trotsky, Sovnarkom Molotov.......wait this is a list of Stalin's enemies, I keep confusing the two). So much has changed in my life since I started this humble blog three years ago. Before the beginning of the '05 season I was a lonely senior in a crappy apartment at Michigan State, downloading porn using BearShare, being used by white trash girls from my hometown who thought I was rich because my dad was an attorney and kissing the TV screen when the cute girls would get off the bus on the MTV dating show Next. Now I'm a lonely third year law student at Wayne State, living in a dumpy apartment, downloading porn using LimeWire, being used by attractive girls who think I'm going to be rich because I'm graduating from law school and kissing the TV screen everytime they show a slightly pudgy Hispanic teenage girl on the MTV dating show Parental Control. Sigh, where does the time go?

But you guys (and girl) don't come to this site to read about all the exciting things that happen in my personal life. No, you come here for in-depth subjective analysis those automatons at Baseball Prospectus fail to see with their soulless grey eyes or feel with their cold, shriveled and blackened hearts. I don't need a UNIVAC tabulation machine named after a shitty Royals middle infielder from the 80's to tell me the Tigers are going to score runs by the assloads (thats a scientific term). In fact my cat, my stoner friend T.J. and I just came up with a formula that projects the Tigers winning 125 games and scoring 1,400 runs this season. We are thinking about calling our new equation common fucking sense. Jerks (I'm kidding of course, I subscribe to BP and read Rob Neyer even though I don't completely understand the things they write, but I wear glasses so it appears as though I'm smart. I call this the Howie Long Corrollary).

Enough nonsense though. Baseball is upon us as on Monday afternoon Ernie Harwell will arrive at Comerica Park flanked by his army of Galapados tortoises and carrying Old Man Winters severed head in his fist thus signifying the beginning of spring and the start of a glorious new season of baseball in the Motor City.....I think...or does the tortoise ride Harwell?.... Onto the preview.

Mike Ilitch: I have always been hard on Ilitch. Even though he has loosened the purse strings over the past few seasons, doled out hundreds of millions of dollars in contracts to some of the biggest names in baseball, moves that placed the Tigers into the upper echelon of baseball's financial superpowers and has sportwriters like Peter Gammons comparing the Tigers to the likes of the Yankees, Red Sox, Dodgers and Mets when it comes to spending, I still had a hard time forgiving Mr. Hot-N-Ready (I'm not referencing Little Caesars cheap pizzas here but Ilitch's brief career in stag movies in the mid-60's. Have I mentioned this site is parody? Because it is so don't try suing me or Ilitch or try drinking my blood) for overseeing some of the worst team's in franchise history that happened to coincide with the formative years of my fandom (Jesus, that was a long sentence). I spent my youth as a fan talking myself into being excited about Brian L.Hunter and the other 100+ ex-Astros and Padres the Tigers routinely traded for every off-season between 1995-2000. I remember getting amped about the Tigers signing Craig Paquette and Greg Norton and trading to reacquire Willie Blair. These were supposed to be the greatest years of my life as a Tigers fan and I spent them going to Tiger Stadium with my family only to watch Felipe Lira give up a million runs in two innings against the Orioles during another forgettable 100 loss season. This would be like going through high school and college as a tall, gangly, dorky kid with a voice that sounds like a Muppet that no girls will date. I did that too and it wasn't any fun. So like any irrational sociopath I blamed Ilitch for all the Tigers troubles through the 90's. I characterized him as a greasy vampire hellbent on driving one of the most historic franchises in baseball into the ground and alienating his fanbase. However, that perception changed when I read that he was the impetus behing bringing Cabrera to Detroit, suggesting to Dombrowski that he explore a trade over a Thanksgiving Day phone conversation. Now I love the Ilitch and I'm almost willing to forgive him for the irregular heartbeat his company's cheap pizza's have given me. Speaking of Cabrera...

Miguel Cabrera: Look at Fatty Fat McFatkins over at third base. He has pretty good range for a beached whale. The Tigers can't park their team bus in the infield...wait that's not the bus it's just the Tigers fat-ass third baseman. Now that Cabrera has that big contract he can dive into a swimming pool filled with honey drenched churros and eat his way out. Did I mention Cabrera's fat? Stop, just stop. Cabrera has been in town for five months and I'm already tired of the fat jokes. I made the mistake of watching Around the Horn on Monday and every jackass loudmouth panelist said the same thing about Cabrera, "Sure he's an offensive talent now but what about 8 years from now when he's making $20 million and has his own show on Discovery Health where he has to be forklifted out of the clubhouse and onto the field on a program called 'The 700 lb. Third Sacker.'?" I know his weight is a risk but so far the results this spring have been encouraging. He showed up in shape, he has a ton of veterans to help keep him focused and a manager that's not going to let him get doughy. You think a team with Guillen, Ordonez, Polanco and Sheff are going to let some 24 year old submarine the best team any of them has ever played on by not being in shape or being aloof? Even if he ends up being a fatass as long as he hits .315, 30, 120 for the next eight years I'll buy the Crave Cases for him.

Edgar Renteria: I never wrote about the Renteria trade so I might as well post some thoughts now that I've had nearly seven months to think it over (I'm not lazy I'm just very deliberate). At the time the trade went down I loved it and thought Renteria was exactly what the Tigers needed to field a solid all-around offense. However when the Cabrera trade was consummated I liked the Renteria deal a little less. Once Jair Jurrjens started tearing it up in spring w/ the Braves generating buzz around baseball and drawing raves from Bobby Cox I officially didn't like the trade anymore. Like I said this is all seen w/ hindsight being 20/20 and had the Cabrera deal been the first domino to fall who knows how the rest of the offseason would have played out. It's just that I've really, really, REALLY liked Jurrjens ever since his start against the Indians last season during the stretch run. He was just so poised and filthy and professional and swarthy and handsome and....well you get the idea. This is no knock on Renteria, who I think will be very solid this season, it's just I have this feeling that ten years from now we might look back on this trade and wince a little. It's at times like these that I'm contractually obligated to remind the reader that I was infatuated with Wil Ledezma and compared him to a young Pedro Martinez. Why I signed that contract in exchange for a sleeve of stale Peeps I'll never know.

Carlos Guillen: Last year the Tigers blogosphere convened in ealry spring Houses of Parliament-style to debate whether Chris Shelton or Sean Casey should be the teams starting first basemen. Insults were exchanged, powdered wigs were ruffled and I was firmly entrenched with the pro-Shelton party. Sean Casey won out of course and put together one of the most underwhelming offensive seasons by a first basemen in years and Chris Shelton was relegated to Toledo.. Now both are mercifully gone and Guillen slides over to first base (although I feel awful for all of the people who made the shortsighted decision of sinking a couple of hundred bucks into purchasing a Chris Shelton jersey during his amazing April two years ago and stubbornly continue to wear it to the ballpark). I expect Guillen to do the same things he's been doing every season offensively, which is hit .300 with 20 homers and about 100 RBI, since the Tigers traded Ramon Santiago for him in one of the most lopsided deals in recent history as well as provide some excellent defense and range at first.

Placido Polanco: Speaking of lopsided trades, if the Guillen-Santiago deal is the biggest heist Dombrowski has pulled during his tenure as Tigers G.M. then acquiring Polanco in exchange for machete wielding maniac Uegeth Urbina is a close second. All Polanco does is hit and had it not been for Maggs amazing season Polanco's .341 average would have been the highest by a Tiger in twenty years, (I might be wrong on this but I'm to lazy to research it and the only higher average that I could think of off the top of my head was Trammell in '87 if I'm wrong don't correct me in the comments or I will hunt you down and punch you for showing me up on my own blog. You think that because you got a college degree it makes you better then your old man?). Last season I predicted Polanco would win the batting title and due to my aforementioned laziness I'm just going to roll that prediction over to this season instead of making a new one. Other rolled over predictions for '08. Danity Kane will become this generations version of The Supremes, I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry will become the gold standard for comedies and Carpoolers will finally make Jerry O'Connell a superstar.

Pudge: Pudge says hes in the best shape of his life and has hit 8 homeruns in spring training to lead the team, which means he's probably using HGH or some other kind of performance enhancing drugs. I know thats a baseless accusation and reckless to say on my part but with the current climate for steroid accusations being akin to the Salem Witch Trials I could say I saw Pudge, Palmerio, Canseco and Juan Gonzalez dancing around naked in the woods injecting each other in the butt (with needles!....perverts) and then writhe around on the courtroom floor like I was having a seizure it would probably be enough to cause a Congressional Hearing. Seriously though wouldn't this offseason be the best time to take HGH if you were a player like Pudge? Baseball has already blown its wad with the lengthy and expensive Mitchell Report, so if you weren't named in that report odds are you won't ever be subjected to an investigatory proceeding or, by the time baseball got around to commissioning another report, you would be retired and/or so far removed from the game that no one would care, i.e. Lenny Dykstra. It's reminds me of how in high school every great once in a while the principal would call the houses of every kid who was absent and if they weren't home they would get a one day suspension for skipping. Everyone would know when this happened b/c there would always be some fat brainy girl who had the courage to finally do something cool for the first time in her life, like skip class and make out with some married man that was hanging out at the bowling alley, and she would get caught and be completely distraught and suicidal because she got suspended. The great thing about this was that everyone who didn't skip that day knew they had a window of a couple weeks to miss as much school as they wanted because the principal would be to lazy to go through all the phone calls again and even if you did get caught nobody would give a shit because everyone would still be making fun of and gossiping about the fat girl (Roger Clemens). I've belabored this point but my message is HGH like crazy now if your playing baseball even at the high school or Little League levels because you won't get caught. Like Crazy.

Jacques Jones: Jacques was my name in French class during high school. I picked it because it was the most stereotypical French name I could think of. I was a good student in high school and rarely made trouble or spoke in class. However, I used French class as a release to act like the total smartass jerk I always wanted to be. So whenever I hear the name Jacques I think of my teacher Madame Refice, yelling out "Jacques are you pushing those desks together to sleep on?", or, "Jacques did you pay that elementary student you were tutoring 50 cents to break all the nerdy kids pencils in half?", maybe even, "Jacques why did you draw penises on every page of Leslie Miller's textbook?" I made Jacques my alter-ego alternating between acting like Wally Cleaver during most of my day but turning into Eddie Haskell in French class (Yes I just referenced Leave it To Beaver I hope that's still hip b/c I've got a badass Rifleman reference queued up next.) What does all this have to do with Jacques Jones. Nothing.

Curtis Granderson: The amount of love Granderson receives is amazing. Even my mom, a 90 year old full blooded Native American who has spent her whole life in isolation because she is the last known speaker of the Natchez language and whose interest in sports begins and ends with her love of kapucha toli has Granderson in her Top 8 friends on Myspace. Granderson is out for 2-4 weeks with a broken finger and it will be interesting to see how the lineup performs without him, because there is no doubt he is the Tigers catalyst....blah....blah....blah. I can't think of anything to write about Granderson that hasn't already been written about a thousand times on sites better than this one. So go read those and then come back here with the other sites toaster because I need one for my apartment. I bought Eggo's at the grocery store last week but I forgot I don't have a toaster to make them in, so....where am I?

Magglio Ordonez: I still can't get over how insanely good Maggs was last season. Had he posted those numbers during any season or league not occupied by A-Rod he would have won the MVP like a cake walk through the cake park. I've never seen a guy so locked in and comfortable at the plate as Maggs was last season, sometimes it looked like he was going to take a nap in the batter's box and then he would smoke a double into the gap. The most amazing part about Maggs season on a personal level is that even though he was on my fantasy team and posted those outrageous numbers I still finished in last place. I must squander more talent on a yearly basis playing fantasy sports then any other fantasy manager out there, but who cares about that? I don't expect Maggs to duplicate his numbers from last season but hitting in the middle of this lineup he could still drive in 140 runs even if his average and homerun power tailed off some.

Gary Sheffield: I hope Sheffield is over the jinx my friend T.J. put on him last season after T.J. decided to stop bashing Sheff and jumpon his bandwagon in July even buying a Sheffield t-shirt jersey the same day he got hurt playing right field. I think Sheff will have a tremendous bounce back season as long as he stays healthy because when he was 100% last season the offense really clicked and the Tigers had the best record in baseball. Then Sheff got hurt again and the rotation imploded and things went to hell (I'm not dumb enough to say there is a connection between Sheff's injury and the rotation breaking down I'm just noting that both went south at the same time). The thing that surprised me most about Sheff last season was how great he was on the basepaths. He picked his spots to steal bases and moved from 1st to 3rd, read balls off the bat and all those little things that sportswriters and managers get all misty-eyed about, better than anybody I'd ever seen before. It was like having Alex Sanchez again only exactly the opposite.

Brandon Inge: Inge has been a hot topic during this off-season because of his morose attitude about losing his job to a player that is somewhere between 20 and 1,000,000^9 better than him offensively. Everyone loves Inge, teenage girls scream when he comes to bat, middle age women rock his jersey and talk about his ass and one of my favorite Tigers plays off all time was when he dove face first into the crowd in Seatlle to catch a foul ball, which as I wrote at the time would have had the whole Baseball Tonight crew in a masturbatory froth had Derek Jeter done it. But Inge is wrong here. The Tigers don't owe him anything and he should just accept his new role. I remember he pulled this same crap and complained when the Tigers signed Pudge a few seasons ago. Back then his complaints were laughable b/c he was hitting about .031 for his career and Pudge was a sure fire Hall-of-Famer on a team that had not had a star player since Cecil Fielder. His complaints are a little more justified now since he's established himself over the past few seasons but its not like the Tigers brought in Wes Helms or Pedro Feliz to take his job, no it's Miguel Friggin Cabrera (how ironic that his middle name is Friggin', his parents must have known how awesome he was going to be.) Inge reminds me of my friend Kevin. Kevin is a good guy, he's funny, he's nice, he's good to be around but he's also overly sensitive. He'll joke and make fun of you but if you make fun of him or do anything he perceives as a slight he gets offended. Not angry offended, but mopey and quiet and you have to coddle him for a bit before he comes back around to acting normal. As a friend you deal with it but after awhile it gets annoying. Very annoying. I think Inge is a lot like my friend Kevin and right now I'm very annoyed with him.

Marcus Thames: I love Thames. He just crushes everything and I'm glad he's on the team even though there were persistent rumors that he might get traded for relief pitching. I think his power bat off the bench is way more valuable than what Joe Smith or Scott Schoenweis would have provided as a reliever even taking into account the Tigers dreadful bullpen. Even though I'm glad he's a Tiger I still wish I could see Thames get 600 at bats for a mediocre team, just to see what his power numbers would look like. I imagine something like .232-46-110 with some ridiculous slugging percentage around .600. He would be a modern day Gorman Thomas minus the insane facial hair.

Ramon Santiago: He'll be fine doing the things Ramon Santiago does....whatever that is.