By Jeff Moss
June 26, 2012
DetroitSportsRag@gmail.com
If you are looking for reasons the Tigers offense has sputtered all season long when the team’s bats were expected to carry the franchise to an easy divisional title, you could come up with more suspects than the board game Clue plus the movie Gosford Park combined.
Miguel Cabrera is having one of the worst offensive seasons of his career. Miggy’s on-base percentage is down nearly ONE-HUNDRED (100) points and his OPS is the lowest it has been since he was in his second year in Miami.
Prince Fielder’s OPS is down about 100 points from his last season with the Brewers and I am starting to wonder if Ryan Braun’s urine sample got mixed up with the Tigers new first baseman or some shit. Because, remember all of the talk that Braun’s number would plummet without Prince in the lineup and sans [ALLEGED] performance enhancing drugs?
While Fielder’s advanced metrics numbers are all down across the board, the “Hebrew Hammer” is enjoying the best offensive season of his career.
Combined with Jhonny Peralta remembering he was Jhonny Peralta, Delmon Young reverting back to 2011 Minnesota Twins Delmon Young, Brennan Boesch struggling to regain his pre-thumb injury form and Jim Leyland’s atrocious lineup decisions, you have a perfect storm for getting locked down by the Brad Lincoln and Jake Westbrook’s of the world.
But maybe the most aggravating and preventable offensive downturn in 2012 belongs to Alex Avila who once again is experiencing knee problems that might land him on the Disabled List.
Last year, it looked like the Tigers had discovered their modern day Lance Parrish in the son of their Assistant General Manager.
Alex had an incredible season behind the plate and offensively which included an All-Star appearance and a Silver Slugger award. Avila finished 2011 with an OBP of .389, a wOBA of .383, an OPS of .895 and a WAR of 4.9.
(Just in case Leyland is reading this column, those are what you like to call “Geek Stats.” For brain-dead, mouth breather, relics like you, Avila had a batting average of .295, 19 home runs and 82 RBI.)
To put those numbers in perspective, Avila’s OPS in 2011 was better than Prince and Miguel’s current on-base plus slugging. That is how good the young catcher was last season.
But by the end of 2011, Avila was completely useless. During the postseason, Avila’s numbers torpedoed like the economy of Greece. A batting average of .073. An OBP of .113. And a horrendous OPS of .263 that would make the lovechild of Neifi Perez and Don Kelly shiver.
It is purely conjecture, but a healthy Alex Avila producing like he did for the majority of the ’11 season MIGHT have been the difference between an ALCS exit and a World Series appearance.
And it surely wouldn’t take Sherlock Holmes or Matlock to figure out why Alex Avila hasn’t been the same Alex Avila since about the final week or so of last September.
Once Victor Martinez’s own knee injuries prevented him from being able to catch last July, Avila became the only backstop in the entire Tigers organization that Leyland trusted behind the plate
So, between August 5, 2011 and the last day of the regular season, the Tigers had 52 games on the schedule. And Alex Avila played in FIFTY of them.
A manager who is constantly criticized for pampering his players and giving them TOO MUCH REST (Please See: Placido Polanco during the last week of the 2009 season) decided that the Tigers couldn’t play a game during the stretch run without Avila.
A position that is BY FAR the toughest physically to play on a daily and nightly basis. And it’s not like Leyland doesn’t know all of this, since ya know, when he was a career minor league with very little talent, HE WAS A FUCKING CATCHER!!!!!
But the man who is borderline OCD when it comes to utilizing all 25 players on his active roster had no problem with abusing Avila and his body. It didn’t even matter if it was a day game after a night.
And please do not think this is 20/20 hindsight from me. Anyone who is a follower of my Twitter account or this website knows that I was SCREAMING BLOODY MURDER about Avila’s workload constantly during August and September of 2011.
And not only was Avila playing every game, the dude was getting abused in the field. Janitors at San Francisco bathhouses haven’t seen that many balls ricochet off a man’s face. Shit, one foul tip almost set Avila on FIRE.
Like, giving Omir Santos a few more starts or at-bats would have been the difference between winning the AL Central and losing it. WE WON THE FUCKING DIVISION BY 15 GAMES!!!!!
And not only did Leyland throw Avila to the wolves every single game, he refused to take the kid out when games would get out of hand which could have saved some wear and tear on those knees.
On September 2nd against the White Sox the Tigers had an 8-0 lead in the fifth inning. Avila caught the entire game.
Just two days later, Detroit crushed the Sox again 18-2. This time they had a 9-0 lead after the fifth inning. Alex Avila was behind the dish for EVERY inning of this game as well.
Two days after that massacre, the Tigers defeated the Indians by a score of 10-1. They were winning this matchup by EIGHT runs after two innings. Avila had FOUR at-bats in this matchup and wasn’t taken out until the eighth inning.
On September 16th, the team celebrated their AL Central title in Oakland. Want to know how many games Avila started after that division clinching performance?
ALL. OF. THEM.
Yep, a guy who was developing patella soreness in BOTH KNEES at the end of the year was still being run out there EVERY SINGLE NIGHT by Leyland. A man that committed managerial malpractice in the process.
Someone should have “Called Sam” on the Tigers manager so the Bernsteins could have shipped the case to another firm so they could get their referral fee. Wait, you don’t actually think the photogenic family actually practices law, do you?
It was bad enough that Leyland’s insistence on “Bobby Orr’ing” Avila’s knees during the last two months of ‘11 transformed Avila from Johnny Bench to Jorge Fabregas, but at least most Tigers fans figured that Avila would come back in 2012 totally rejuvenated and healthy.
Except that hasn’t occurred. Instead, Avila has had issues with his left knee for most of this season which finally culminated with severe pain on Sunday afternoon in Pittsburgh and an MRI in Dallas on Monday.
And when Avila DOES play he clearly isn’t the same offensive powerhouse that he was last year. His OBP is down 65 points. Slugging percentage? Negative 110 points.
I am no math wizard, but it wouldn’t take Will Hunting to connect the dots of why Avila has taken such a precipitous offensive dump since last fall. Or why we might be days away from an arthroscopic knee surgery prognosis for our All-Star catcher at the DMC.
This all would suck and be inexcusable if it wasn’t avoidable. That fact that Leyland refused to rest Avila last season in OBVIOUS situations is a fucking crime against humanity.
Like, if WE can all see what Cancer Stick did to Al Avila’s son’s health, why can’t the Tigers executive see it? If he were my kid, I’d be fucking pissed and would be whispering in Dave Dombrowski’s ear that the old man has CLEARLY lost it.
I am just glad for Leyland’s sake that he doesn’t have a close relative in the Tigers organization that plays the same position as Alex Avila. You know, like a nephew or SON where the manager might be accused of sabotage due to nepotism.
Look, I don’t want to cast any aspersions, but if I was Rob Brantly, I might want to Google “Toledo Food Testers” just to be on the safe side.