By Jeff Moss
DetroitSportsRag@gmail.com
June 18, 2013
After last season’s MVP debate over the candidacies of Mike Trout and Miguel Cabrera, I know a majority of Detroiters don’t want to hear about the advanced baseball metric known as WAR.
So, I won’t start off this column lecturing you on Wins Above Replacement. I will just give you a few pieces of information before dropping that flying elbow from the top rope.
The Tiger currently have a record of 39-29. That’s good for a win percentage of .574. On pace to win a respectable 93 games and the AL Central title. Yet, they are only five games ahead of the Kansas City Royals. A team at one point this season that had lost 19 of 23 games.
As of this writing there are six teams in Major League Baseball with a better record than the Tigers. None of those teams have the reigning AL MVP (who, by the way, is having a BETTER season than he did in 2012,) potentially one of the best starting rotations of the modern era and Prince Fielder.
The Tigers pitching staff is so good that they have a dude who would probably be the #2 or #3 starter on half the teams in their OWN division pitching out of the bullpen because they don’t have room for him.
Hell, when the Tigers needed a spot starter and didn’t feel like stretching Drew Smyly out for a game they called up some minor league free-agent named Jose Alvarez who promptly threw six innings of nearly flawless baseball against the Cleveland Native-Americans.
Do you want to know how good the Tigers starting staff has been? Of the team’s five starters, Justin Verlander has the WORST opponent’s OPS in the group at .674. According to Fangraphs.com, the Tigers have four of the top eleven starters in ALL OF BASEBALL.
In fact, the stats oriented website published an article a few days stating the 2013 Tigers are on pace for a historically significant WAR.. The team’s WAR/162 of 66.6 would put them only behind the Yankees of 1927 (anyone ever heard of THEM?????) and 1939 .
So why would a team that is statistically favorable to a couple of pantheon teams in the history of the SPORT have a worse record than the 2013 PITTSBURGH PIRATES?!?!!?!?!???
Well, I am going to guess it has something to do with their relic manager behaving like he is actually managing one of those pre-World War II NYY squads with his horribly antiquated thinking.
If there is a Kryptonite to WAR it probably revolves around bringing lousy relief pitchers you just called up from the minor leagues THAT DAY into high leverage situations and attempting to play small ball with a team built around the three-run homer.
In conjunction with this interesting Fangraphs article confirming my suspicions that the Tigers are underachieving, I figured I’d bring up two Leyland centric points in this space.
The first centers around Cancer Stick’s obsession with bunting and the fucked up thought process this man possesses. Because the media that covers the Tigers can only process one thought at a time, Leyland’s managing of last Wednesday’s awful loss against the Royals completely went unnoticed.
That would be the game in which Jose Valverde gave up a two-run homer to Lorenzo Cain in the bottom of the ninth and then Phil Coke lost in the tenth.
Previous to that game, Leyland went on a rant to the Tigers eunuch beat writers that they were focusing too much on Valverde’s hanging splitter and not the fact that his team wasn’t scoring enough runs.
Well, did ONE of those morons ask Leyland why the hell he told Torii Hunter to sacrifice bunt in the FIRST INNING of that game?
And not only did he direct Hunter to bunt (the same Torii Hunter who Mike Ilitch is paying $26 million a year over this season and next) he did so with Avisail Garcia standing at SECOND BASE.
How the fuck can this imbecile whine about his team’s lack of run production when he asks Hunter to move Garcia from SECOND to THIRD with Miguel Cabrera and Prince Fielder due up?
You might have heard of Miggy and Prince. At the time Leyland ordered the sac bunt the pair were currently on newsstands as the cover boys of that week’s Sports Illustrated. Also, did I mention there were still NINE INNINGS TO PLAY????
I mean, giving the other team a free out when they still have 27 to play with is mentally challenged enough. Doing so when the chemical-free “Bash Bros” are coming up?
Miguel Cabrera has an OPS of 1.499 with runners in scoring position. And Fielder has an OPS of 1.077 with runners in scoring position and two outs.
Does this math challenged dumbshit know the statistical chance of Avisail Garcia scoring from second with nobody out and Hunter, Cabrera and Fielder coming to the plate?
And he BUNTED!!!!!!!
In the FIRST INNING!!!!!
You can make fun of taking the wind and going for two and any other bumbling Detroit coaching decision EVER MADE and it still will not be as statistically retarded as that particular sacrifice.
And did anyone in the Detroit sports media raise the issue? Of course not. They were too busy dreaming up awful Papa Grande jokes.
And speaking of Valverde, that leads me to my other point about the “Week that Was Leyland.”
While every quasi-journalist covering the Tigers regurgitated the following Leyland quote regarding the current bullpen situation, not ONE made the totally obvious point that I am about to make:
“Who do these fans think we should be closing with? I don’t understand this. When I read (stuff) like this … and there’s nothing wrong with the article. I don’t understand who they think we should be closing with.
“So I’m asking that question — who the (bleep) should I be closing with?
“They want some rookie kid? I mean, I don’t understand that.
They wants some rookie kid? I mean, I don’t understand that.
Wait, Emaciated Grossness, you can’t fathom why some Tigers fans would be clamoring for a ROOKIE instead of Jose Valverde. I wonder where fans could have gotten the idea that a ROOKIE could close for the 2013 Detroit Tigers. Hmmmmmm. I …… wonder ……
“This guy (Bruce Rondon) is a special potential closer with the makeup of a closer. Normally you’re not going to thrust that in a young guy’s hands and say automatically, ‘That’s your job,’ but it would not surprise me if he earned that job. There are not many arms like this. And he cherishes that kind of role. He’s a rare talent.”
Now, what FAN said that just MINUTES after the Tigers were swept out of the World Series by the San Francisco Giants? Was it Jeff Daniels? Kid Rock? Ashley Couturier?
Nope. Those comments were made by the team’s GENERAL MANAGER.
If Jim Leyland can’t understand where fans got the idea of a rookie as their closer, I guess he doesn’t read the propaganda pieces that Lynn Henning writes at the behest of Dave Dombrowski.
“People don’t believe this, but it is true. He averages 100 mph and tops off at 103 and throws his breaking stuff for consistent strikes. We really, really seriously thought of, before the first of September, if we should bring him up and let him join us for the postseason.
“If I had a choice of any young closer in baseball to give an opportunity to in any organization, it would be him. Now, would be ready? I don’t know that. But he is that good.”
I mean, NOBODY could make the connection about Leyland being incredulous to the fanbase’s desire for a rookie closer with his BOSS’S choice this offseason to let Rondon have a shot at closing instead of making a trade or signing Rafael Soriano?
“I mean, I don’t understand that.”
This most recent Leyland diatribe which boiled down to “Who the FUCK do you think should close” was basically his own version of Dombrowski’s famous “If you can trade him, call me tomorrow” tirade.
Leyland’s comments were a huge EFF YOU to the front office and have continued this week when he compared the bullpen situation to “Days of Our Lives.”
Classy move, Jim. Throwing your GM under the bus when he has done nothing but protect you publicly even when I am sure Dombrowski wasn’t thrilled with some of your antiquated managerial decisions.
Hell, he even had your back privately when DSR correspondent Justin Spiro was on his one-man “Fire Leyland” protest at US Cellular Field last September.
In response to Spiro’s “Fire Leyland” sign, the team’s President called the lifelong Tigers fan “ungrateful.”
You know what is “ungrateful?” Being given a $150 million payroll that includes Justin Verlander, Prince Fielder, Miguel Cabrera, Anibal Sanchez, Max Scherzer, Austin Jackson, Jhonny Peralta, Omar Infante, Torii Hunter, Doug Fister and more …..
……. and then subliminally ranting and raving like a lunatic about the one position on the team the front-office didn’t personally gift-wrap for you.
“Who the (expletive) should I close with? Who do you want me to close with? Who the (expletive) do you want to be the closer? … I don’t know what the (expletive) these people want. They just throw stuff out there. People just talk, they don’t think about it. Sometimes it boggles my mind.”
If Dombrowski doesn’t believe those words are a shot at him, well ….. he’s a better man than me.
Leyland has THIS roster and he can’t keep his shit together when asked about the ONE glaring weakness on the roster?
That would be like Randy Marsh bitching about the letters that were on the board when he blew when his final “Wheel of Fortune” puzzle ……
(Editor’s Note: I’d like to thank the Oakland Press’ Matthew B. Mowery for the Leyland quotes he transcribed that are used in this article. Mr. Mowery can currently be seen in the Broadway production of “Bring it On.”)