2008 PLAYOFF PAYROLLS

AL
Boston Red Sox - $133,440,037
Chicago White Sox - $121,152,667
Los Angelas Angels - $119,216,333
Tampa Bay Rays - $43,820,598

NL
Chicago Cubs - $118,595,833
Los Angelas Dodgers - $118,536,038
Philadelphia Phillies - $98,269,881
Milwaukee Brewers - $81,004,167

AL Total: $417,629,635
AL Average: $104,407,409
NL Total: $416,405,919
NL Average: $104,101,480
MLB Total: $834,035,554
MLB Average: $104,254,444

2007 PLAYOFF PAYROLLS

AL
New York Yankees - $195,229,045
Boston Red Sox - $143,526,214
Los Angelas Angels - $109,251,333
Cleveland Indians - $61,673,267

NL
Chicago Cubs - $99,937,000
Philadelphia Philles - $89,368,214
Colorado Rockies - $54,424,000
Arizona Diamondbacks - $52,067,546

AL Total: $509,679,859
AL Average: $127,419,965
NL Total: $295,796,760
NL Average: $73,949,190
MLB Total: $805,476,619
MLB Average: $100,684,577

COMBINED 2007 & 2008 PLAYOFF PAYROLLS

AL Total: $927,309,494
AL Average: $463,654,747
NL Total: $712,202,679
NL Average: $356,101,340
MLB Total: $1,639,512,173
MLB Average: $819,756,087

Average AL Playoff Team*: $115,913,687
Average NL Playoff Team*: $89,025,335

*Between 07′ and 08′ seasons.

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The Yankees spent $209,081,579 this year, and didn’t make the playoffs… You can draw your own conclusions from this.

More coming…

You may ask, at this point, what can you do but laugh when watching a Tigers game?  Why even write about the Tigers anymore? But I, like Jim Leyland, can’t prevent myself from finding something to complain about night after amusing night, and I feel obligated to make my point known.

I could talk about many things on the night of another horrifyingly disappointing loss for the Detroit Tigers, and I am by no means excusing Fernando Rodney for his terrible pitching in the 9th inning of tonight’s game or blaming the home plate umpire for the outcome of the game, but really, Mr. Hernandez, could you be any more arrogant?

Seriously. Do you really have to be so right that you can’t even ask the first base umpire for help when 3 different people think you might be wrong? Not to mention the rulebook says you don’t have a choice.

Rule 9.02(c) in the MLB Official Rulebook states; “Appeals on a half swing may be made only on the call of ball and when asked to appeal, the home plate umpire must refer to a base umpire for his judgment on the half swing.” Also, “Field umpires must be alerted to the request from the plate umpire and quickly respond.”

But you probably already knew that.

On Tuesday night the madness started early, when the names Marcus Thames and Gary Sheffield were posted on the lineup card, and it transferred to the field early in the first inning. With one out and runners on first and second, Chris Lambert leaves a fastball right down the middle, but he get’s lucky; The batter pops the ball up to shallow right field. Placido Polanco circles under it for what seems like hours, but lets it tip off his glove, and everybody advances.

Polanco and the Tigers failed to play fundamental baseball again in the bottom half of the frame, as a ground out and a pop-out, both to third, fail to advance a man on second base with no outs. Miguel Cabrera picks up Polanco and Ordonez with a two-out RBI single. Then, with two outs, Gary Sheffield pops up with a 2-0 count to end the inning.

Good news came for the Tigers in the top of the second, when Edgar Renteria charged a ground ball! But we had to shield our eyes again in the next inning as Torri Hunter stole second base with 2 outs in the 3rd. This wasn’t just any steal… The Tigers were paying so little attention to what was going on, Hunter was probably half-way to second before the pitch was even thrown. Not to mention Placido Polanco couldn’t even beat him to the bag. It looked like defensive indifference, really.

I feel like I’m going to have to repeat myself alot here… That’s really how bad this is. Gary Sheffield fails to move another runner on second over with less than two outs; Ground ball to 3rd. Top of the 4th, one out, man on second, and Brandon Inge drops a pitch that hit him right in the glove, and lets the runner move to 3rd with one out. Brandon is one of the last players I want to be accusing of sloppy play, but it seems like it’s becoming a team trend now.

Off to the bottom half of the 4th now, nobody out, Renteria on first. Brandon Inge lines a ball to the right fielder, who throws it back in to first base. The ball hits the first baseman and trickles away about 5 ft. Edgar Renteria tries to advance and is easily thrown out. Now I understand taking a chance, making an effort, but sometimes it’s just plain stupidity, and that seems like the case here. Threat over.

The climax of bullheadedness starts in the top of the 5th, two men out, and a man on second. An error by Ryan Raburn on a ground ball to third moves the runner up and keeps the inning alive, and brings up Brandon Wood. Wood hits a ground ball back to the pitcher; Gary Glover kicks it away toward the 3rd base side, and every body’s safe. While the Tigers pick their noses and decide what to screw up on the next play, Mike Napoli moves over to 3rd with nobody covering.

Skipping through some more horrible play, I thought I should include something good in this article; Brandon Inge lays down a successful sacrifice bunt! That makes him 1/3 in bunt attempts all night!

Back to the bad… I believe most of the above falls on the manager, Mr. Jim Leyland. He has had poor decision-making all year. My expectations aren’t high for the next 2 games, but I’ll try to keep the complaining down for a few days.

2 errors, in 1 2/3 innings? And that doesn’t include Magglio Ordonez watching a line drive fall 2 feet in front of him without making anything remotely related to an effort, or Placido Polanco watching his ground ball roll down the 3rd base line from the batters box as he was thrown out by 90 feet, or Miguel Cabrera dropping a foul pop-out.

The Tigers were supposed to have the day off today. They’ll get a day off anyways! They’re only here to watch the Yankees trot around the bases!

And the crowd goes wild! Gary Sheffield leads off the bottom half of the 2nd inning with another team-trademarked SOLO HOME RUN. Hey look! They stranded the bases loaded with one out! Surprise!

I don’t know what else to say, other than you should at least TRY when there is 40,000+ in attendance on a Monday afternoon for a sub-.500 baseball team.

I’ll get you some interesting stats later this week…

If the White Sox keep their season pace to finish their final 58 games (33-25), they will finish with 92 wins and a .567 win percentage. For the Tigers to finish with 92 wins, they need to go 39-18 in their final 57 games with a .684 win percentage.

If the White Sox finish .500 in their final 58 games (29-29), they will finish with 88 wins and a .543 win percentage. For the Tigers to finish with 88 wins, they need to go 35-22 in their final 57 games with a .614 win percentage.

If the Tigers keep their season pace to finish their final 57 games (29-28), they will finish with 82 wins and a .505 win percentage. For the White Sox to finish with 82 wins, they need to go 23-35 in their final 58 games with a .396 win percentage.

This, however, does not factor in the AL Central’s 2nd place Minnesota Twins, who the Tigers play 3 more times this season, and the ChiSox play 6. The Tigers play the Sox 6 more times, all at U.S. Cellular Field.

It is also the number that the “stacked” Detroit Tigers team has been chasing all season–until now. Finally, on Saturday, June 28th, 2008, 80 games into the yearly roller-coaster we call Major League Baseball, the Detroit Tigers have finally clawed their way back to .500 with a thrilling 8-7 victory in front of a rowdy crowd of 42,729.

Call it what you like, but the last 20 games for the Detroit Tigers, I can only describe as magical. The Motor City Kitties went a cool 15-5 in the stretch that may have saved their season. 4 of 15 wins were in walk-off fashion, thanks to Miguel Cabrera, Gary Sheffield, and Clete Thomas.

It all started on Saturday, June 7th at Comerica Park against the Tigers division rival; The Cleveland Indians. The Tigers had dropped the opener of the series the night before 4-2, but the loss was overshadowed by the news that came shortly after: “Jeremy Bonderman Will Likely Miss Rest of Season”. Bonderman’s jersey was hung in the dugout on Saturday night as the Tigers dispatched of ‘The Tribe’ 8-4 behind a 6-run rally in the 8th inning. The Tigers went on to split the Indians in the 4-game set, followed by a 3-game sweep of the division-leading Chicago White Sox, and a 3-game sweep of the Los Angeles Dodgers. The Tigers went on the road and took 4 of 6 in an exciting pair of series in San Fransisco and San Diego, then came home and continued their recent tear at Comerica Park, winning 4 of their last 5 games and finding themselves sitting in the lap of Mr. 500.

The Tigers will go for the sweep of the Colorado Rockies Sunday afternoon behind Kenny Rogers, and then start an extremely important stretch of games with Minnesota, Cleveland, and Seattle leading up to the All-Star Break.

Don’t be surprised to see the Old English D in October, 2008. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

Back to the third period; The Red Wings clinging to a 3-2 lead, the Joe Louis Arena loud as ever, singing chants of “We Want Cup!”. Michel Therrien calls Fleury to the bench with a little over a minute left in a last stitch effort to keep their season alive. With the Stanley Cup in the building, the Detroit Red Wings were seconds away from winning it all. Then….. BAM! 30 seconds on the clock, and Maxime Talbot stuffs in a rebound and the Red Wings and Penguins are back to square one. The crowd was silenced, and the Penguins had squashed the phenomenal momentum of the Wings.

It was off to Overtime #1. Detroit out-shot the Pens 13-2, but Fleury was incredible, keeping the game even. In the 5th frame, the Penguins once again were out-shot, and out-hit, but the Red Wings once again failed to score. The game dragged on into the third Overtime period, where Jiri Hudler was sent to the box for 4 minutes for accidentally clipping a Pen in the face. Though the Penguins had already failed to convert two OT powerplays, it didn’t take very long for Peter Sykora to send everybody home.

I sat in my living room as thousands of others did: Shocked. Devastated.

Now I’m not going to be pessimistic about this thing. I think Detroit will come out with lot’s of energy on Wednesday night, and the Penguins won’t have enough of whatever it was they had last night. So as much as I would have liked to see the Wings win a series at home, I’ll settle for Detroit in 6.

I’ll add highlights of the last two games as soon as I have time. These videos video can also be accessed through my Dad’s account on Youtube, or through the play-list I made on my account.

Photos

Click here for pictures of the entire weekend, including Go-Karts and at the Hotel. If you have any photos to add to this collection, please e-mail them to either dean@gotwww.com, dianne@gotwww.com, or garret@gotwww.com. These photos can also be seen on Facebook.

Game Results

Game 1 - Flint Steelers Fire (1), Farmington Flash (1)

(Goal(s) scored by Jared Sterba (1))

Game 2 - Flint Steelers Fire (2), PASS Impact (1)

(Goal(s) scored by Michael Boyne (2))

Game 3 - Flint Steelers Fire (3), ROYSA Renegades (0)

(Goal(s) scored by Kenny Allen (1), Connor Carey (1), Michael Boyne (1))

Championship - Flint Steelers Fire (2), East Lansing (1)

(Goal(s) scored by Kenny Allen (2))