By Jeff Moss
August 16, 2011
DetroitSportsRag@gmail.com
One of the continual threads connecting the DSR over the seven years of our existence has been the website’s role as a sports media watch dog in Detroit.
When I was growing up in this town there was always a Free Press or Detroit News reporter dedicated to the sports media beat.
Sometimes it was Vartan Kupelian and Mike O’Hara with their “Behind the Scenes” column or the late Corky Meinecke at the Freep.
But in recent years the Detroit papers have engaged in massive cost cutting measures and one of the many casualties has been a regular journalist covering the sports media scene exclusively.
And since my return to regularly updating this website I have touched upon this issue in a variety of forms including my expose on the Drew Sharp/Justin Verlander no-hitter story, but I still haven’t concentrated on the Detroit media as much as I probably should.
So I am going to try to pen a column exclusively dealing with Sports Media three or four times a month which hopefully will involve the latest gossip I have gathered from my inside sources and critical analysis of the local sports writers and broadcasters.
And since I have been advised by many people that this column should be treated like a hybrid of the ESPN Ombudsman and Harvey Levin at TMZ, I am going to refrain from swearing or making personal attacks in this space.
At least, that is the plan. The odds are 50/50 I will get through this column without doing so.
The Case of Lynn Henning vs. Impartiality
One of this website’s favorite targets over the years has been Detroit News Tigers writer Lynn Henning.
Ever since Henning declared in 2005 that the Tigers were “5-to-10 years away from competing in the AL Central” and then getting to the World Series the following year, this guy has been all over our radar.
What I find bizarre about Henning at the DSR is that in the last ten years the man has done a complete 180 on his coverage of the team.
Back in the early part of the century the MSU grad couldn’t get through an article without obsessing over the dimensions of Comerica Park. He could have been penning a soliloquy about Tiger Woods at Augusta and in the middle of the column he would blast the left-field dimensions of the Tigers new home.
And based on his 2005 prediction about the team potentially not competing in the AL Central until 2015, he wasn’t exactly blowing any hot air up Dave Dombrowski’s skirt either.
But something changed with Henning the year the Tigers got to the World Series in 2006 (15 to 20 years before Lynn’s projection) and ever since he has been the biggest apologist for the team and its management.
It was almost like Henning went through a midlife crisis and instead of buying a shiny red Corvette, he instead decided to sell his journalistic soul to the Little Caesars empire. A more cynical person than me would accuse Mike Ilitch of giving Henning a lifetime supply of “Hot and Ready” pies, but I have no evidence to back that assertion up.
There has been a mountain of evidence regarding Henning’s bought-and-paid for columns in recent years, but Soak-Your-Head Lynn really topped himself in the last month.
In between columns saluting Ilitch for his savvy contract extensions for Dombrowski and Jim Leyland, he also managed to write two columns praising the Tigers farm system.
On July 30, 2011 Henning wrote an article titled, “Talent rich Tigers could afford to pay dearly for M’s pitchers.” The very next day he wrote another column entitled, “Players Tigers gave up in trade are replaceable.”
(You can read those articles here: http://tinyurl.com/3ewp35b and here: http://tinyurl.com/4xxrmpf)
Now, it would be have been bad enough to write those two columns in successive days if the Tigers farm system was stacked like the Kansas City Royals, but it isn’t. Not by a LONGSHOT.
It is universally documented among anyone who knows anything about baseball that the Tigers farm system is depleted and one of the worst in all of the majors.
Here are some recent rankings of Detroit’s minor league system:
Baseball America – 25th
ESPN.com (Keith Law) – 25th
Bleacher Report – 25th
AOL Baseball – 24th
You cannot find ONE baseball writer in America (other than Henning) who actually believes the Tigers farm system is in the upper echelon.
Henning’s contention was the Tigers must have strong organizational depth because they were able to make the deal with the Seattle Mariners for Doug Fister and David Purcey.
In the trade Dombrowski gave Seattle the team’s second best hitting prospect and two of their better pitching prospects for a pitcher the Mariners had labeled a #4 or #5 starter at best and a middle relief pitcher having a career year that defies advanced metrics.
Is there ANY farm system in baseball that is so depleted that a GM couldn’t pick up the phone and make a deal for a #4 starter and a sixth inning relief pitcher?
Of course not, but Lynn never dealt with that fact in either of his two fluff pieces.
Henning also refused to address the Tigers failure to acquire their bigger target leading up to the deadline, Ubaldo Jimenez.
The main reason that the Indians were able to pull off the Jimenez deal and Detroit could not is because the Indians farm system is everything the Tigers isn’t.
Baseball America had rated Cleveland’s farm system the seventh best in baseball going into the 2011 season and that is why the Tribe could send top prospects to Denver while the Rockies wanted Rick Porcello or Max Scherzer AND Brennan Boesch in any deal for the righty flamethrower.
And because it would have been counterproductive for the Tigers to deal major league assets when the team is trying to win THIS year, Dombrowski sat back and watched Ubaldo get dealt to his team’s divisional rival.
Instead of penning a column dealing with this reality, Henning instead decided to write two articles completely devoid of reality which can only be seen as a blatant attempt to suck-up to the Tigers front office.
And those two moronic pieces weren’t the only evidence of Henning’s complete devotion to the Tigers organization.
On August 10th, Henning wrote a bi-polar article in which he argued with himself over some recent Tigers related debates.
Here is one of the point-counterpoints in Henning’s column:
* Point: The change in pitching coaches seems to have gone smoothly with Detroit’s staff. But the hitting coach, Lloyd McClendon, remains. Don’t people see what’s happened with Curtis Granderson since he left Detroit?
* Counterpoint: You mean the Granderson who’s batting .273 for the Yankees when he batted .302 and .280 during the first two years of McClendon’s stint as Tigers hitting coach? You mean the Granderson who has 29 home runs at Yankee Stadium, where most of us thought he would hit 35 or 40, or more, each season? You mean the Granderson who hit .247 last season as the Yankees’ omniscient hitting coaches got a hold of a guy whom McClendon had so hopelessly screwed up in Detroit?
Henning actually attempted to make a case here that Granderson isn’t a different hitter this season in NYC than he was in Detroit. It might be the most disingenuous two paragraphs in the history of the Detroit News and this is a paper that publishes Thomas Sowell’s self-hating trash on Sundays.
Most of us thought he would hit 35 or 40 home run or more, each season? That was the general consensus when the trade was made? Umm, okay. Must have missed that memo.
The guy COULD NOT hit lefties when he was in Detroit. At all. In his last year in Detroit, Granderson had an OPS of .484 against left-handed pitching.
His absolute failure to hit southpaws was one of the major reasons Dombrowski felt Granderson was dispensable.
And after struggling through the 2010 season the Yankees started platooning Granderson and the team began overhauling his swing™ (Tiger Woods.)
Whatever correction the Yankees and Granderson made have led to stunning results. Remember the .484 OPS Granderson had in 2009?
Well, it is now .910 against lefties this year!!!!
Granderson is on pace to hit 45 homers, knock in 159 runs, score 146 more while stealing 30 bases and putting up an OPS of .945.
Or to simplify that sentence with three letters, Granderson is currently the overwhelming favorite to win the American League MVP.
It is absolutely unconscionable for a writer to compare the Detroit Granderson to the 2011 Granderson and not state that the centerfielder is a completely different hitter.
I mean, he has almost DOUBLED his OPS against lefties since leaving Detroit, yet Henning thinks that the Yankees hitting coach, Kevin Long, has had no impact on that at all.
If Tigers.com propagandist Jason Beck had written these three articles it would be somewhat understandable since he is, you know, paid by MLB to cover the team.
The question the rest of us should be asking is who is writing Henning’s checks?
MediaNews Group or the payroll department at the corner of Witherell Street and Montcalm Avenue?
The Rumor That Won’t Die
There is rampant speculation that Clear Channel owned 106.7-FM is about to change formats again because it would appear that Detroit only needs 43 dance music stations as opposed to 42.
And every single time there are rumors that Clear Channel is going to change directions at 106.7 there is an equal amount of buzz that CC executive Til Levesque will finally take sports talker WDFN to the FM dial. (Not that anyone has a dial anymore.)
My sources have informed me that the odds of 106.7 becoming all-sports are still a long shot. If Levesque didn’t make that decision years ago when she could have given WXYT the death blow, why would she do it now?
But if some Hail Mary Pass does occur and Clear Channel finally decides to make the big switch it would be welcome news for Detroit sports fans looking for an alternative to “The Ticket.”
You would have to think an investment of that magnitude would lead to a revamping of 1130’s “talent” because there is absolutely no way Clear Channel would make that type of move and then hand the keys to 106.7 over to Matt Shepard and Sean Baligian.
It is one thing to operate on the cheap like they are currently doing when they are getting absolutely anihilated by 97.1, but if this switch is made you can bet there will be wholesale on-air changes in an effort to re-brand DFN.
And I am sure many of 97.1’s listeners would appreciate the competition because maybe, just maybe, the station would have to get serious about their morning show and also improve the horrid Scott Anderson and Doug Karsch broadcast.
And Finally …..
Based on a recent on-air comment it would appear that one of the listeners to 97.1’s morning show of “Stoney and Bill” who would like to see a change in that program’s direction is the station’s afternoon drive host, Mike Valenti.
On the day that the Tigers extended Leyland and Dombrowski’s contracts, Valenti equated that move to 97.1 potentially extending the deals of morning show hosts Bill McAllister and Sara Fouracre through 2017.
(And I am not totally sure if Fouracre is Sara’s last name or a description of her size.)
Based on that off-the-cuff remark it would appear Valenti is one of the many 97.1 listeners who yearn for an actual sports show on the SPORTS TALK STATION hosted by Michael Stone and someone other than McAllister in the AM.
It was a pretty ballsy on-air comment by a station employee as I haven’t heard an afternoon drive guy go after the morning show like that since Howard Stern attacked Don Imus way back when on DOUBLE-YEW–ENNNNNNN-BEEEEEE-SEEEEEEE.