Garret Craig

While thinking about the Tigers this morning, I punched some numbers in to my calculator… I would have liked to have made it a bit more in-depth (Division Analysis, Comparison to rest of MLB, etc.), but here’s what I ended up with:

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.

_____________________________________________

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

I could have titled this article a lot of other things; “Angel Hernandez” seems like a very plain title. Other titles I had selected may have been very clever and comical, but they would also have been very rude, so I decided against them this time (I’m feeling nice right now).

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.

Miguel Cabrera has hit .291 this season, and only .292 over the past 7 days, but the Tigers are sure making him look good right now. Cabrera has batted in 9 runs in the last 3 games, about 53% of the Tigers total run production, and has earned them a 1-2 record in that span. But a .333 win percentage is not going to win very many ball games, especially the way the Tigers have played in their last 2 games.

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.

The Motor City Kitties are making a run at last place in the division, and nobody seems to care. Is it honestly 7-1 in the 2nd inning when Justin Verlander, your “staff ace”, started the game? Oh, wait, make that 8 to 1.

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…

A little something I did in my spare time may give you a better idea of the Tigers chances of making the playoffs in 2008.

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.

The magical number of baseball which symbolizes sweet, sweet, mediocrity. The number which teams such as the Red Sox and Yankees fear falling to; The same number, teams like the lowly Nationals and Mariners can only dream of reaching. It is the number that can make or break a career.

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.

The Detroit Tigers lost a rare pitchers duel last night to the Kansas City Royals, 3-2. With the loss, they fall to 16-23, 7 games below the .500 mark. They finally got a good start from their pitching (Nate Robertson went a strong 7), but the offense failed to convert their nine hits into more than two runs.

The offense (projected before the season to possibly score over 1,000 runs), has shown signs of coming out of their slump since Curtis Granderson came back from the DL on April 23rd, but has still been kept under 4 runs 10 times in those 18 games. You may also find it interesting that they have lost all 10 of those games. For the entire season, they have only lost three times when scoring more than 3 runs.

The bottom line is inconsistency. They score 10 runs, then only 1 run, then all the way up to 6 runs, and then they fall to 2 runs for the next two games. Their starting pitching isn’t helping either, with the worst ERA in baseball. A Tigers starting pitcher has not yet recorded a complete game, which makes them the only team not to have a starter go a complete 9 innings in the AL.

Does this sound like a team that cost $150,000,000? I didn’t think so.

The Tigers batted around Kei Igawa last night in their 6-5 victory over New York, and have now won 2 of their last three games. Despite being held to just one run against Josh Beckett on Thursday night, the Tigers have scored 17 runs over the past three games.

Last night, Ivan ‘Pudge’ Rodriguez went 3-4 with 2 RBI’s, Placido Polanco and Magglio Ordonez each went 2-4 with an RBI, Gary Sheffield doubled in a run of his own, going 1-4, and improving his average to .204.

The Tigers are now 4th in the AL (7th in the MLB) in batting average, and 2nd in the AL (6th in the MLB) in total runs scored. The Tigers also find themselves 2nd in the AL (5th in the MLB) in base-on-balls.

But don’t get too excited, the Tigers pitching is still among the worst in the league statistically. They’ve given up the most runs in the MLB with 204, and they have the worst ERA in the MLB with a staggering 5.10.

The Tigers will try to put a streak together as they play the Yankees today (Saturday) at 3:40p. Jeremy Bonderman will duel Darrell Rasner.

They just don’t seem to care any more. The moves by Jim Leyland Monday were supposed to give the Tigers some sort of new energy, but the Tigers batters will have none of it. The Tigers, who scored three runs last night, and were shut out 5-0 tonight, are now averaging 2.2 runs in the past 5 games, and 4.7 runs per game over the first 34 games.

Let me take you to the bottom of the 8th inning, two outs, “All-Star” Ivan ‘Pudge’ Rodriguez at the plate. Pudge lines it down the right field line into the corner. Now most players, not making the money Rodriguez is, would be running hard out of the box, putting some pressure on the opposing team and maybe trying to spark a rally. But Ivan Rodriguez, since he knows he’s just an amazing player, trots around the base paths like he just hit a grand slam. This is just one of the many things I’ve seen over the last month+ that tell me this team doesn’t want to win a World Series.

Why? They have no reason to. Most of these players have guaranteed money for many years to come. And good money too. Just as one example, Miguel Cabrera is locked up for 8 years, and if he never hits the ball again in his career, he will be set for life with $153.3 million. That comes out to $120,000 every game in the next 8 years. What incentive does Miguel have to win?

Gary Sheffield, who will make around 13 million this year, and around $80,000 per game, is currently hitting .176 with 2 home runs. The Tigers have him locked up through next year. That sounds promising doesn’t it?

Until now, I’ve been preaching “We’re only a few games back, we’ll be OK.” All I can say now is that Tigers fans have reason to be scared.

Tigers bullpen scapegoat in 2007 and 2008 will not see the Tigers again till June 08′. He was traded today for 22-year-old Class A reliever Zach Simons of the Colorado Rockies.

It’s doubtful that Simons will ever be a Major League pitcher, which begs the question, why trade Major-League Junk for Single-A Junk? I know they needed to make room for Cruceta, but is this really all the Tigers could get for Jason? Do other teams really think he’s as bad as Tigers fans think he is? Grilli was actually pitching moderately well in recent games.

I guess I don’t really know what to think about this one.