OT: the Tigers Suck, but...
I'm not making excuses for them. Their record is bad, and the way they have gone to 3-9 is pretty heinous (same weak offense, last season's bright spot--the bull pen--regressing, bone-headed base running, etc.) But...
The schedule makers did them no favors whatsoever the first couple of weeks of the season. They have had 9 road games and 3 home games. Their opponents as of this morning are a combined 32-20. Even if you take out the 12 game they played the Tigers, they are still 23-17 against the rest of their opponents. Like Chuck Foreman said in the Superbowl against the Steelers, "C'mon you mothers; give us a yard!"
One team, Tampa, accounts for 13 of those wins. I'm all for being optimistic but you could have just stopped at the Tigers suck.
Going into Wednesday, the Tigers had 30 runs scored. Tampa had 29 home runs at that point.
Maybe the tigers have 30 home runs.
The best part of the season is the great stats like this that will come. I'm ready for more ridiculous stats. Feed me.
*Tampa Bay
first thought in my mind as well.
One of the biggest issues, if not biggest, was the awful returns we got when trading players, especially Verlander and JD Martinez.
Just fucking awful.
Drafting was not good either, pretty damned average when you consider how high the draft picks have been, sigh.
April 14th, 2023 at 11:38 PM ^
It's not just the drafting, though. I'm starting to see articles about how the Tigers repeatedly forced the pitchers they drafted to change their deliveries in the minors in the mistaken belief they could improve on what got them drafted so high to begin with.
All four of their supposed studs are injured now. That's ... that's pathetic. Al Avila should be drawn and quartered. I'm so fucking pissed at what he did to that team.
Worst Detroit front office guy since Millen.
If you have Cabrera, both Martinezes, Verlander, Sanchez, Kinsler, Castellanos and others - you have to get something in trades. And yet the Tigers have one of the worst farm systems in the whole league. Only possible through incompetence
Houston and Tampa do that as well. They just succeed at it.
JD was on an expiring contract if memory serves so was not going to get you much. Verlander yes but when you trade a stud for prospects you are just praying. See what we gave up for Miggy who was about to hit his prime and be a HOF player for a decade. (pretty much a ball of bags) Baseball prospects are so variable.
Agree on the drafting - in an era forward thinking clubs are reducing the reliance on 7-8 inning workhorse starters, we were here drafting pitching prospect after pitching prospect. The development of field players in the organization is multi decade bad. We are talking Granderson and Fryman only home grown guys on any value in 3 decades.
Also Avila is bad.
Al Avilia has to be one of the worst GM in Detroit sports and probably all of baseball. It has been 10 plus years of rebuild. Add in the horrible contract to Baez and extending Cabrera to to long. Should have paid more for a sorter contract. The new GM hasn't done much to inspire confidence either so far but I hope he does because summer sucks with no sports to watch.
As a Cubs fan, I was elated that someone else paid Javy. He's a good guy, and I wanted him to get paid -- but I didn't want him on the Cubs for what he was going to cost. There's no way that swing ages well, and the base running and defense isn't enough to warrant the money he was being offered (and those skills seem to be declining as well).
As a Tigers' fan, I was hoping that Javy would have a really good year so that he would opt out of his contract in the mistaken belief that somebody, somewhere would give him the same kind of stupid free agent money that Avila gave him. Then Detroit could get out from under a multi-year contract for a guy who has absolutely no idea where the strike zone is.
I know, I know. But a guy can dream.
April 14th, 2023 at 10:43 PM ^
Crazy the Tigers signed up for another giant contract for a player that's not worth it anymore, just as Cabrera's is finally expiring. The difference being with Cabrera they got his amazing prime years as well, while for Baez he may never have a good season for them. Very glad Avila is gone, not sure what they were thinking having him in charge in the first place
It's going to be a long summer...
...and an even longer decade.
Shit, I might die before the Tigers are good again!
Yes the farm system is pretty shitty even after all the draft capital. A guy here or there. That's it.
I don't know what Cleveland is doing right but they seem to be developing position players (and pitching) with a relative shoestring budget. Detroit just seems broken.
.... at least Metallica has a new album out!
As a Red Sox fan, I'm glad they got to play the Tigers. That helped get to 5 wins.
1984 is so long ago...
I was a month away from turning 6 years old when that happened and I still remember it vividly.
started 35-5, went .500 the rest of the way, and punked everyone in the playoffs.
If 69-53 is .500, then yes, the Tigers went .500 the rest of the way.
Shhh, he said he remembers it vividly
He can, at the same time, remember it vividly AND suck at math.
Vividly, at the age of 6.
Effing child prodigy!
Let's go back to the early evening hours of August 7, 1984:
- The Tigers have just lost Game 1 of a DH, 12-7 at Fenway.
- But the game wasn't really that close, it was 10-3 Red Sox after 2 Innings. Jack Morris pitched awful, and that wasn't exactly rare of late. He has allowed 5+ earned runs in 6 of his 12 starts since June 1 (he was 10-1 in April & May, 3-7 since).
- The Tigers have now allowed 9+ runs in 5 of their last 7 games, and were 4-8 in their most recent homestand.
- The Tigers' record is 73-40.
- They are 38-35 (not far at all from .500) since their 35-5 start, and their lead in the AL East is down to 8 games.
Game 2 of the DH --- because of various April rain-outs, this is Detroit's 6th game in 3 days. It's a tired team, on a hot summer night. The Tigers actually get some pitching, and they take a 4-0 lead. Until Milt Wilcox loses it all at once in the 7th Inning, 5-4 Red Sox.
But the Tigers scratch out a run in the 9th (partially thanks to a Bill Buckner error on a grounder to first!), Aurelio & Willie hold down the fort, and a 2-run Lance Parrish HR in the 11th results in a 7-5 win.
Many of the Tigers, in retrospect, point specifically to that game as a turning point. Yes, the Tigers went 69-53 overall after the 35-5 start, but there absolutely was a point where things had been rather so-so for an extended length of time.
Detroit would go a solid 30-18 after that game (and then 7-1 in the postseason).
I feel like I read that in Bless You Boys.
I didn't copy that from anywhere, I looked up the details on baseball reference (https://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/BOS/BOS198408072.shtml) --- but Sparky definitely talked about that game in his book.
Probably why it sounded so familiar. Read that book over and over as a kid. I was 12 that year and what a ride for a young baseball fan! Went to Toronto for the 3 game series they had there in early September. Swept them and pretty much put a bow on the division. Got to go to game 4 of the World Series...Trammell's 2 HR game.
April 14th, 2023 at 10:22 PM ^
Yep! I'm a late Jimmy Carter administration baby --- I do recall the Tigers winning the World Series but I don't really remember it. But I read Bless You Boys (Eli Zaret has a book too) 100 times over also, so I feel like I lived it.
My first ever baseball game was on a Friday night, August 17, 1984 - Seattle @ Detroit. Tigers won, Milt Wilcox pitched well, Mike Moore did not (foreshadowing of his tenure with the Tigers!), the stadium with the blue and orange seats and the impossibly green grass. Good times.
Damn. U r nearly my birth brother. Born October 1978. Still remember the roar of 84. One of my earliest memories
April 14th, 2023 at 10:19 PM ^
I was 4. No recollection at all. :(
I was 9 when they won it, but my memory of that time isn’t so good.
I do remember Sparky talking to Ronald Reagan after they won and joking that he knew Reagan wanted the Padres to win.
But like I said, I was 8 and my memory isn’t so good.
I was born in July that year. I can at least say they won in my lifetime. I think my parents went to one of the home games in the world series. I doubt they took me though.
Such a good year for movies as well.
So is 1968
April 15th, 2023 at 12:45 AM ^
I was going to mention them but decided to see if anyone beat me to it. I was beginning to think I was the only one with a memory of them.
April 15th, 2023 at 12:57 AM ^
Hard to believe, but it will be 55 years ago this October that Mickey Lolich won game 7 and celebrated by leaping into the arms of an all-time U of M great, Bill Freehan.
I wasn't quite 8 years old, but I remember it. I especially remember Freehan (my favorite player) catching the final out, then catching Lolich.
Saw Game 7 of the '68 Series on MLB Network during the COVID shutdown. Aside from the black-and-white picture and rudimentary graphics, I noticed three things: 1) The players were much more "normal sized." (Nobody was all jacked up.) 2) Batters got in the box and they stayed there. It moved the innings along much quicker. 3) The strike zone was so much bigger. 1968 was the year of the pitcher, with McLain winning 31 games and Bob Gibson having a 1.12 ERA. But they, and pitchers all over the the league, benefited from the fact that the strike zone went up to the batter's shoulders.
I had just turned 5 in 1968, I seem to remember some of the game watching with my Dad. Though I remember the reaction of my Dad better, than the game. He seemed discouraged at the start of the series but was ecstatic at the end. It's just like the TV series Star Track that we watched together, I can remember some of it but not much.
I'm glad I was between my Junior and Senior year at Michigan. Following the '84 team made my summer of working a lot enjoyable. Also, it was nice having the Tiger's winning the WS during football season, since JH broke his arm against MSU and the '84 season was over.
I remember this all too well. It was my birthday weekend, and I was visiting my girlfriend, who had just transferred from UM-Flint to Ann Arbor. She had a nice apartment off Plymouth Road near North Campus. My birthday dinner was at some restaurant on South U. (It might been Good Time Charley's, but I may have the location wrong.) I ordered fettucine alfredo, thinking it sounded terribly cosmopolitan, and discovered that it was a fancy name for noodles in cream sauce.
The next day we watched Game 5. Gibson had himself a day: 2 HR, including the late-game bomb off Gossage that everyone remembers, and he also tagged and scored on a deep pop-up by Rusty Kuntz. I remember thinking that the Tigers' first Series crown since 1968 was a great birthday present for me, and a great end to the weekend.
A month later, the girlfriend dumped me for some black-leather artsy-type who took her to Europe over the holidays. That loss gives a bittersweet edge to memories of the '84 championship.
But in retrospect, suffering a big loss after a big win prepared me for a lifetime as a UM fan. BPONE: That's the birthday gift that keeps on giving.
The Tigers suck but… At least tickets will be $8 for the rest of the season.
April 14th, 2023 at 10:23 PM ^
Silver linings, right? There will be some Comerica Park/MGM Grand doubleheaders in my future this summer.
It’s not just that the Tigers suck; it’s that they have little chance of being good for at least 5 years.
I always thought the 90s were horrible but this stretch is now even worse!
That's what bugs me. There is just NO reason to be optimistic right now. This is a AAAA team at best. Am I crazy to think we should just root for this team to be so terrible that management FINALLY has to do SOMETHING, a la 2003?
April 14th, 2023 at 10:25 PM ^
Unless ownership changes, it's better to hope that we luck ourselves into a good team.
Cool, now take out the Rays and the Tigers are 3-6 against teams with a combined 19-20 record. They suck. Could have just left it at that.
Hate to say it, but their record ain't getting any better. They have a terrible lineup, an atrocious bullpen, and the only talent they have in their rotation is on the long term IL.