Someone Please Destroy Detroit With a Nuclear Briefcase

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detonfire

By Jeff Moss
DetroitSportsRag@GMail.com
January 20, 2015

Only in this HORRIBLE baseball town could the loss of a terrible utility player overshadow the departure of a former Cy Young winner and one of the best starting pitchers in the game.

But that is exactly what occurred on Sunday night in Detroit when it was learned that both Don Kelly and Max Scherzer would be leaving the Tigers to play in Miami and Washington D.C. respectively.

Sunday January 18, 2015 was the culmination of this despicable fan base gleaning their baseball information from the likes of John Lowe, Jon Paul Morosi, Tom Gage, Matthew B. Mowery, Doug Karsch and his virginal broadcast partner, Scott “The Whale” Anderson, Mario Impemba, Rod Allen, Dan Dickerson, Jim Price, Jason Beck, Chris Iott and websites like Uncle Tom bloggers BlessYouBoys.com for the past few years.

After years of garbage-in/garbage-out brainwashing of Tigers fans by the above homers, slapdicks and mathematically-challenged propagandists, the chickens finally came home to roost with the outpouring of good riddance for Scherzer and the memorial services people are having for DON KELLY.

Only in this embarrassing baseball town — where winning it all is somehow viewed as the cherry on top while divisional titles are overly glorified, individual achievements are sacrosanct and the minority of fans who actually are desperate for a World Series title are viewed as spoiled, petulant children — could this occur.

I mean …..

A starting pitcher in the prime of his career just left town — crippling the team’s starting rotation in what may have been the final year of a potential championship window — and many Tigers fans are preoccupied with the loss of a loser with a career WAR of .1.

Yes, according to FanGraphs.com, Don Kelly is pretty much the living embodiment of a Replacement-Level Player (meaning you could insert an International League player in his place with no decline in production) and fans are more melancholy about his exit than than that of a starter whose team won SEVENTY PERCENT of the games he pitched in Detroit.

Can you imagine? And if that wasn’t bad enough from the Congressman who served for 59 years, the Samuel L. Jackson character from “Django Unchained” of websites, BlessYouBoys, posted this drivel on Twitter after the news of Kelly signing a MINOR LEAGUE contract with the Marlins became public ….

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A sad face? Farewell, sweet prince? …

Ya gotta believe me …

This for a dude with a career OPS of .632. Of course, by using terms like WAR and OPS, I am already alienating 98% of Tigers fans who treat those advanced stats the same way Dr. Cornelius treated Charlton Heston in “Planet of the Apes.”

But Kelly was a GOOD GUY so it didn’t matter that he had already been let go TWICE by the Tigers with NO OTHER TEAMS wanting the guy and that the career nothing was taking the spot of a player who could have actually helped the Tigers WIN ….

Of course, the argument that Don Kelly lovers had made over the last couple of years is that Kelly was the prototypical 25th man and the problem wasn’t that he only had SIX extra-base hits in 185 plate appearances in 2014 — it was that the Tigers didn’t use him correctly.

That if only Jim Leyland — and later, Brad Ausmus — would have utilized him as a “25th man” on the roster, everything would have been copacetic. Well, can someone show me the team that goes through a season with ZERO INJURIES where the “25th man” doesn’t have to shoulder more of the load?

Well, the predictable occurred in 2014 and Kelly ended up in CENTERFIELD — a position he had no business playing — to which this evidence can attest …

Meanwhile, the team’s flagship radio partner actually posed the following question ….

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A majority of Tigers fans are actually HAPPY that Scherzer isn’t coming back. Why? Because he had the audacity to turn down the Tigers’ “generous” 6-year, $144-million deal. You know, the one Tigers management tried to brainwash you into believing was more than fair and that Scherzer was selfish for not accepting.

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Except Max just received a better deal from the Nationals.

And by doing so, a sizable segment of fans is now callimg Scherzer disloyal. I am sure a bunch of those slobs would turn down a pay increase in order to stay with their current employer.

Oh, and by the way, while 100% of Tigers fans were all on board for the $144 million offer, a majority now are appalled at the actual deal Scott Boras landed his client with the Lerner family.

Even though Dave Cameron wrote on Monday that it’s really not that much different than the one the Tigers offered last spring ……

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So, Max only has to justify about $170 million over the next seven years? That averages out to $24.28 million per season. Or in other words, .28 million more than what Dave Dombrowski had offered Scherzer — with an additional year included!!!!

The mentality of a Tigers fan reminds me of college football fans when they are in the hunt for a high school recruit. When they believe the five-star player is coming to their university, he is the greatest thing ever. But when that player has a change of heart and signs a letter of intent with a rival, he becomes just another guy.

If Scherzer would have signed a new deal with Detroit, the SAME people who are now saying he is a traitor who can’t finish his own games, is going to deteriorate quickly and isn’t worth the money would have thrown a parade down Woodward.

Not to mention that the backloaded contract Scherzer ended up signing would have been the perfect antidote for the team’s current budget constraints. Let the NEXT owner pick up some of the tab on Scherzer’s deal because there is no way the Ilitch family is keeping the Tigers after Mike dies.

Do you really think a prospective owner is going to walk away from purchasing the franchise over some deferred Max Scherzer payments? Get fucking real.

Yeah, if it’s someone like Dan Gilbert, whose childhood dream was to buy the team — for somewhere near a billion dollars — they aren’t going to balk over something so trivial. Dombrowski should have matched this offer because now — due to his own incompetence — he is left with zero good options.

The starting rotation now consists of David Price; Justin Verlander coming off a lousy season; the less-than-durable Anibal Sanchez; the potential one-year wonder of Shane Greene; and the absolute wildcard of Alfredo Simon.

I mean, Greene has pitched exactly one season in the majors and he wasn’t considered to be much of a prospect before that.

Simon is coming off a horrendous second half and he has never pitched well in the American League. And there are no sensible options by which Dombrowski can improve the starting staff in 2015.

James Shields is a couple of years older than Scherzer and committing to him until he is 37 is insane considering the number of excellent starting pitchers who will be available as free-agents next offseason.

And while there might be a few quality starters available via the trade market, what assets does Dombrowski have to offer now that he has obliterated his depleted farm system while chasing his tail trying to recover from the Original Sin … the Doug Fister Debacle.

We are basically fucked and none of this even had to occur. As DSR contributor @JFunk2800 pointed out on Monday, if Dombrowski hadn’t been in a rush to overpay both Miguel Cabrera and Verlander two years before they became free-agents, the money they would have SAVED on those eventual deals would have helped in re-upping with Scherzer.

Or, ya know, he could have refrained from trading Fister in return for the clearance table at Five Below. If the team’s window wasn’t closing fast enough already, Dombrowski’s actions have been battening it down like he’s a Palm Beach resident expecting a Category Five hurricane at any moment.

And as all of this goes down in real time, many Tigers fans are sitting shiva over the loss of a guy whom Baseball-Reference compares to Gary Varsho and Max Venable while telling Scherzer to not let the door hit him in the ass on the way out of town.

It would be like if someone stole your Rolls-Royce and you didn’t care that the car was gone but were brokenhearted that the Jax air freshener inside had also been lifted. 

Someone please nuke this city and just end it all already.