by Rich Kincaide

Heading into the series opener at home against the Twins a week ago Monday, the Tigers were more in a death spiral than they were in a swoon. Detroit had fallen to 2-10 to open 2008 and came into the game on the heels of an 11-0 drubbing at Chicago the day before and a 7-0 smackdown by the White Sox the day before that.

When the Tigers failed to score in the first five innings of that game a week ago Monday — falling behind 5-0 to Minnesota in the process, it meant Detroit had gone 24 innings without scoring a run.

But in what has become a recurring theme since, the Tigers, largely on the strenghth of a 6-run bottom of the 8th, dug themselves out of the hole that night and in the process perhaps dug themselves out of the hole that the whole season was fast becoming.

Starting with that 11-9 win over the Twins on April 14, Detroit has won 8 of 11 and, while still fourth in the American League Central Division standings, are only three games back of first-place Chicago. Which makes it worth noting that Detroit is a miserable 1-5 so far this season against the Pale Hose. Which makes it worth noting that if the Tigers were a little better head-to-head against Chicago, they’d be right there right now with the Sox, challenging for the division lead.

Perhaps the most interesting aspect of the Detroit surge is the fact that the Tigers, in their 8 recent wins, have trailed at some point in the game in each and every one of them. As a matter of fact, the only game in the last eleven in which Detroit has not ever been behind was their series-ending 5-1 win at Toronto last Monday.

In two of the 8 wins, the previously mentioned game against the Twins and, surprisingly, the 19-6 thunping the Tigers gave the Rangers Wednesday night, Detroit trailed by 5 runs before coming back to win.

Detroit has rallied in the 7th inning or later for a come-from-behind win in three of the 8.

Although the lack of a key hit with men on doomed them in back-to-back games they could have won but did not win last Saturday and Sunday in Toronto, hitting is no longer quite the concern it was when the Tigers got off to that awful start. Detroit has outscored the opponent 42-11 during the four-game win streak they take into their game at home tonight against Los Angeles.

If there is any concern with the club going good, real good, right now it is this: Tigers starters are not exactly going deep into games these days, even with the club winning. Jeremy Bonderman fell one out short of the 5 innings he needed to get as a starter in order to get the win yesterday. The day before, Kenny Rogers failed to survive the 4th. Six times In the last eleven games the Detroit starter has been gone before the 7th inning rolled around.

That means strain on the bullpen, but with the Tigers hitting the way they’ve been hitting this week — 11 homers in the last four games and 19 in the last eleven to go with 9 hits or more in 8 of the last 11 games — it really doesn’t matter how effective the starters have been, now does it?

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by Rich Kincaide

After the Tigers beat the Indians by 11 runs last night, we devoted a few words in this space to a discussion of Cleveland starter C.C. Sabathia’s stunningly poor start this season.  The 2007 AL Cy Young Award winner is, as we mentioned, off to an 0-3, 13.50 ERA start in 2008.  Sabathia won 19 games a year ago.

Justin Verlander won 18.  After the Indians beat Verlander and the Tigers by ten runs tonight, we will spend a few moments talking about his stunningly poor start.  Like Sabathia, Verlander is off to an 0-3 start.  His ERA isn’t embarrassingly high as Sabathia’s, but at 7.03, it’s way higher than you’d like it to be.

In fairness to Verlander, in his last outing prior to the loss in Cleveland, he was a strike away from having worked 8 complete versus the White Sox while allowing only 2 runs.  But he didn’t get that last strike, that final out, and what had been a 1-0 ballgame when the inning began was a 7-0 blowout when it ended.

Scotty Bowman used to say that “the goaltenders put the numbers on themselves.”  It’s the same with pitchers.  Verlander allowed 4 earned runs in 6 innings while blowing a 3-0 lead in the season opener.  He gave up 4 earned in 5.2 IP in his next outing, a 13-2 loss at Comerica Park against Chicago.  Then the good outing last Saturday before a not-so-good start against the Indians tonight in which he surrendered 5 earned in 5 innings.

Verlander has started four games this season.  The Tigers have lost all four.  This from a guy who’s won 35 games for Detroit over the past two years.  That puts him first on the staff in wins over that stretch, and by a wide margin.  Jeremy Bonderman’s second on the Detroit Wins list since the start of 2006 with 25.

A word about Zach Miner who had a another rough outing tonight: 5 runs, all earned, on 5 hits in 1 IP.  One thing you can say about Miner so far this year — when he comes in, somebody on the other team is going to score.  Miner has made six appearances this season, and has given up at least one run in five of them.  In fairness, in one of those games, the sole run he surrendered was unearned.  But the numbers Miner’s put on himself have not been good.  To say the least.  His ERA is, gulp, 15.75.  He has allowed four of five inhereted runners to score.  

If the Tigers had Joel Zumaya or Fernando Rodney in their bullpen this wouldn’t be as big a deal as it is.  But they don’t, and nobody knows when (or if) they will.  Until those studs return, it’s up to Miner to carry the load.  So far, it’s a load which has proven to be too heavy for him to lift.   

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by Rich Kincaide

A few notes on the Tigers 13-2 win at Cleveland Wednesday night, and a few other things as well:

• The Tigers scored 30 runs in their last three games during which they went 3-0.
• The Tigers scored 33 runs in their first twelve games, during which they went 2-10.
• The Tigers hit 7 home runs in their first twelve games.
• The Tigers hit 7 home runs in their last three games.
• Indians starter and loser C.C. Sabathia has now lost more games to Detroit (9) in his career than he’s lost to any other team.
• Sabathia, the 2007 Cy Young Award winner, is now 0-3 in 2008 with an ERA of 13.50.
• Sabathia has allowed 9 earned runs in back-to-back starts.
• Sabathia is the first Cleveland pitcher in 100 years to win in double figures in each of his first seven years in the Majors. 
• The last Cleveland pitcher to win 10 or more in his first seven seasons was Addie Joss (1902-09).  Ever hear of Joss?  I can’t tell you how to pronounce his name, but his career ERA of 1.89 (min 2000 IP) is second-best in AL history.
• Detroit has caught Cleveland, the defending AL Central champions, in the division standings.  Each club is 5-10. 

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by Rich Kincaide

I need more TV’s.  I was trying to watch game 3 of the Red Wings/Predators series and the Twins/Tigers game at same time and to paraphrase what Jack Buck said when Kirk Gibson hit that homer to beat the A’s in a World Series game a couple of decades ago, “I can’t believe what I just didn’t see!”

The Tigers, trailing at various times 5-0 and 9-4 and looking therefore for all the world like a team that was about to be 2-11, were in the midst of a six-run 8th en route to pulling out an 11-9 win over the Twins and in all the excitement of that I forgot all about the hockey game. 

It was 3-2 Wings the last time I’d checked and I remember the clock said there was 4:13 or so to go in the game.  So, when I flipped back over the FSN I wasn’t surprised to see the post-game show had begun.  I surfed right on over to nhl.com to get the final, fully expecting to see the Wings had won and had taken an insurmountable three games to none lead in the series.  When the scoreboard at the top of the webpage read NSH 5, DET 3, in spite of the fact I’d never seen the wrong score put up on that website I still thought to myself,  ”No, that can’t be right,” and I went to the scoreboard page to get the actual final score and there learned that there had been no computer input error, that the wings had indeed, somehow, lost 5-3.  A check of the boxscore showed Nashville, about thirty seconds after I had switched back to the baseball game, scored goals :09 apart before scoring (apparently into an empty net) in the final minute to stun the Wings.

It was a lot like what had happened Saturday when I was also switching back and forth between games since the Tigers and Wings were also playing at the same time.  I just happened to see Nashville erase a 2-0 second-period Detroit lead with goals :11 apart and I wondered at the time if those had been the fastest two goals ever allowed by the Wings in a playoff game.  The WIngs post-season media guide offered no answer as it listed only the fastest two goals scored by Detroit in a post-season game, not the fastest two goals allowed by Detroit.  I couldn’t even tell if it were a record for Nashville since their post-season guide, in spite of the fact that it goes over 250 pages, a remarkable length for such a book, failed to include that record.  Well, if it had been a record for Nashville, or a record against Detroit, it was broken tonight.  The record for fastest two goals be Detroit in the playoff game, for the record, is as follows from that Red Wings Post Season Media Guide

FASTEST TWO GOALS: *5 seconds
- Norm Ullman, Apr. 11, 1965, second period vs. Chicago, 17:35, 17:40
against Glenn Hall  *= NHL Record

As for the Tigers, they won and in spite of this awful start of theirs, stand a not-insurmountable five games out of first pending the outcome of tonight’s west coaster between the White Sox and the A’s.  Cleveland got beat on a two-outs in the 9th inning homer tonight by the Red Sox and the Indians aren’t off to the best of starts, either.  Just sayin…

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We’ll get to the Tigers in a moment, but first…

The Detroit Red Wings’ two games to none lead over the Nashville Predators marks the 29th time the Wings have won the first two games of a best-of-seven series.  This is, by the way, the 82nd best-of-seven series in Wings history.  Detroit is 22-6 (.786) in series in which they’ve led 2-0.  Detroit’s won the last three series in which they won the first two games.  The most recent best-of-seven in which the Wings opened with back-to-back wins but failed to win the series came in 2001 when LA overcame Detroit’s lead with four straight wins, all by one goal, two in overtime.  The most famous, or infamous, Wings collapse after taking a two-games-to-none lead came in 1966 when Detroit opened the Stanley Cup Final with back-to-back wins in Montreal before losing the next four.  Unless you want to talk about 1942.  That year, the Wings not only led the series two games to none, they led the series three games to none.  But in that series, the 1942 Stanley Cup Final, Toronto came back to win four straight and best Detroit in seven.  One other note.  Of those 22 series won by Detroit after taking a two-games-to-none lead, ten (45%) wound up being four-game sweeps for Detroit, most recently in 2000 against the Kings which was, by the way, the last time Detroit swept any playoff series.  The Wings led Nashville two games to none in their only previous playoff meeting in 2004 before taking that series in six games.

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When the Detroit Tigers were 0-5, I wrote an article headlined:  “Is It Time To Panic In Detroit?  You Bet It Is!”

Many reacted, and I think quite understandably, by saying I was pulling the chute too early on the 2008 Tigers.  Way too early.

Now, with the Tigers 2-10, do you still feel the same way?  It’s okay if you do.  I understand that not even 10% of the seasons been played.  I understand that there is a long, long way to go. 

But right now, this is a bad ball club.  A very bad ball club.  Touted during Spring Training as a potential, perhaps likely, World Series team, Detroit instead owns the worst record in the Major League Baseball.  How have they managed to pull that off?  In the words of the old Smith-Barney commercial, they’ve done it the old-fashioned way.  They’ve earned it!

The Tigers are last in the league in hitting (.235) and last in the league in pitching (5.94 ERA) and, as I so presciently pointed out previously, when you don’t hit and you don’t pitch, you don’t win. Sparky Anderson told me that once and I’ve never forgotten it.

It’s little wonder Detroit’s been shut out four times in twelve games this season.  In addition to being last in the American League in team Batting Average, Detroit’s at the bottom of the League in RBI (30) and Slugging Percentage (.335).  They’ve hit a grand total of seven homers.  That’s as many homers as the White Sox have hit this year — in Chicago’s 6 games against Detroit, that is.

With Runners In Scoring Position (RISP) Detroit is hitting .192.  In 99 RISP at bats this season, Detroit hitters have been almost as likely to strike out (15) as they have been to get a hit (19).  Additionally, in those 99 clutch at-bats, the Tigers have grounded into 8 double plays. 

Of the Tigers who currently have enough Plate Appearances to qualify for the batting title, Carlos Guillen leads the way at .314.  Brandon Inge (whose job was given away in the off-season) is next at .282.  It’s a big drop-off after that.  Edgar Renteria is hitting .245, Magglio Ordonez .234, Ivan Rodriguez .195, Gary Sheffield .179, Miguel Cabrera .175, and Placido Polanco .154. 

As for the pitchers, Detroit starters are is 1-7 with an ERA of 6.38.  The relief pitchers are 1-3, 5.36.

I read a story this morning on MLB.com in which the author wrote, “The question is not if the Tigers will live up to the billing, but when.”  I wonder what his sourcing was.

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If you followed the 2008 Masters on-line at Masters.org like I did, you may have noticed that not all of the masters were out on the golf course.  There was at least one in the Press Tent.  The bulk of the writing on the official Masters website carried the by-line of Vartan Kupelian, the great golf writer from the Detroit News.  I was wondering this morning if Trevor Immelman’s 75 Sunday was the highest final round score ever posted by a Masters champion.  Kupelianwas there to pick me up without my having to involve myself in deeper research on the topic. In his final round wrap-up, Kupelian noted that Immelman tied Arnold Palmer (1962), for the highest final round score by a Masters champ.  Thanks, Vartan!

I heard a local sportscaster Saturday night say that Tigers Woods was “back in contention” at the Masters following his 68 in the third round.  Which was good to know.  Woods, you see, entered the third round seven shots off the lead, and when the round was over he was down to six shots out of first.  Therefore, we now know that when you are seven shots off the lead you are not in contention, but when you are six shots back, you are!

My favorite Masters moment came during a visit to the Augusta Chronicle’s website.  A while back, leaving Ford Field, I noticed the sign at the concession stand saying a beer was $8.50, a hot dog $4.50, a brat $5.50 and so on.  I remember thinking to myself, at least in the case of the beer, that the $.50 seemed to be “piling on.”  Well, the Augusta Chronicle posted concession prices at stands at the Augusta National.  I hope you are sitting down because here they are:

• Sandwiches: $1.50-$2.50
• Beverages: $1
• Beer: $2 (Not available on the main course after 4 p.m.)
• Snacks: $1
• Fruit: $1
• Coffee: $1

Damn.  I wonder how much all of this cost in the Press Tent?

Rich Kincaide

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