By Jeff Moss
February 21, 2012
DetroitSportsRag@gmail.com
What do Mike Patton, Halloween II, Nakatomi Plaza, the Count of Monte Cristo, the Grim Reaper, one-armed bandits, Izzy Stradlin, Quicken Loans, the Flux Capacitor and Greedo have in common?
Yep, they are all part of Tuesday Morning Mossisms™.
When Do Playoff Tickets Go On Sale?
At various times during the fall and winter I was worried that the Tigers weren’t going to do enough this offseason to stay competitive with the Yankees, Rangers, Angels and [Devil] Rays of the world.
When it appeared their big Hot Stove league acquisitions were going to be limited to Gerald Laird and Octavio Dotel while the rest of the AL heavyweights were loading up on premium players like they were Scott “The Gator” Anderson at the Panda Buffet, I was a tad perturbed.
But then out of nowhere™ (Faith No More), Mike Ilitch decided to throw nearly a quarter of a billion dollars in Prince Fielder’s general direction and any ongoing consternation about the team’s 2012 roster instantly disappeared.
It has now been four weeks since Detroit’s baseball organization signed the preeminent free-agent on the market this offseason (even more desirable than Albert Pujols) and there are still times when I wake up in the middle of the night wondering if the acquisition REALLY occurred.
Then I slowly come out of my grogginess and recall that Prince Fielder, a guy who has a career OPS of .929 and is just entering the PRIME of his CAREER, is now wearing the Olde English D.
And because of my continued amazement that Fielder and Miguel Cabrera are going to constitute the heart of the Tigers batting lineup this season, I can’t feign outrage when something as trivial as the announcement that Brandon Inge might be given a shot to compete for the second base job is made.
Or the continued handwringing that is going on regarding the Tigers FIFTH STARTER. Or even worse yet, any concern about this team’s MIDDLE RELIEF PITCHING!!
I am sorry, as much as I despise Inge (and he is in the Top 3 of my Most Hated Detroit Athletes Ever), I am not going to throw a fit just because he is going to get an audition at second base.
First of all, I was never under the delusion that Inge wasn’t going to get a TON of playing time at third base anyway. There isn’t one credible scout, General Manager or commentator in the entire baseball universe who believes that Cabrera can adequately play third base on a full-time basis.
Secondly, I just can’t fret over Inge’s continued employment on this team any longer. My nerve endings were forever fried when the Human Check-Swing Strikeout was designated for assignment last August which should for all intents and purposes been the end of Inge’s career in Motown.
But only a few weeks later the guy was recalled from Toledo proving that the limp-hitting third baseman might be some sort of bizarre combination of Jason Voorhees, Michael Myers and Alexander Godunov’s character from “Die Hard.”
Unless Reginald Veljohnson puts down his Twinkies for a second and shoots Inge square in the head, I am going to presume that a guy who is making nearly $6 million this year and is a personal favorite of the owner will probably get some playing time over the course of the upcoming season.
And I just can’t get that outraged about any of it considering the team just signed a slugger who Baseball-Reference.com’s “Similar Players Through 27 years of Age” comparisons are:
Eddie Murray
Juan Gonzalez
Jose Canseco
Darryl Strawberry
Jim Rice
Kent Hrbek
Mark Teixeira
Here is a simple equation for all of you worrying over such trivial matters. The Tigers are a very, very, very good team. And they play in a very, very, very bad division.
They have a strong starting pitching staff led by the best pitcher in all of baseball.
They have two of the top five hitters in ALL of baseball and plenty of quality to surround them with including Brennan Boesch, Delmon Young, Alex Avila and Jhonny Peralta.
They have as good a back portion of the bullpen as anyone in the American League.
And they are playing in an AWFUL division that had only one team finish above .500 last year. Yep, those surprising and upstart Cleveland Indians of 2011 couldn’t even win 81 games!!
The Tigers were a severely flawed team for a large part of 2011 and yet they still won the AL Central by a whopping FIFTEEN GAMES!!!!
People forget that last year at this time the team’s fourth starter was Brad Penny and Phil Coke was penciled in at #5.
Or the fact that for approximately the first 81 games of 2011, Jim Leyland was throwing out three guys who barely were hitting over .190 in Ryan Raburn, Brandon Inge and Magglio Ordonez.
The Chicago White Sox did absolutely nothing to improve their team during the winter and if anything sold valuable parts in an effort to reduce salary, the Twins big move was replacing Joe Nathan with Joel Zumaya when they weren’t losing Michael Cuddyer and the Kansas City Royals showed ZERO desire to win THIS YEAR when they refused to make an offer to either Roy Oswalt or Edwin Jackson.
And it isn’t like the fans of these teams haven’t already thrown in the 2012 season as well. Most sensible people in Chicago, KC, Minnesota and Cleveland know they aren’t going to compete with the Tigers this year.
Just the other day, Mike Valenti offered Matt “Hang Up on This Idiot” Dery 8-to-1 odds on the Indians winning the Central and The Count passed. Over the last few years I have wagered $5 a game on the overall standings with a buddy of mine from Chicago who loves the Sox and he deferred on that bet this season as well.
The bottom line is if that flawed 2011 squad could win this pathetic division in a Reagan/Mondale-esque landslide than the LEAST we can do as Tigers fans is show a little patience … I’ve been walking the streets at night …. just trying to get it right …. it’s hard to see with so many around … you know I don’t like being stuck in the, oh shit, sorry, going to see Axl Rose and a bunch of guys who AREN’T Guns N’ Roses at the Fillmore tonight and I guess I am just a little excited to lose my hearing.
Anyway, my point is people need to relax and I even include myself in that group. I have already had an internal conversation with myself not to go ape-shit the first time Leyland puts out a lineup that I don’t like.
Barring an absolute calamity, this team is not only going to win the AL Central, they are going to do it in runaway fashion.
By my count, Dombrowski has 160 days to fix any holes on this team whether it be at second base, the pitching staff or for any injury that might occur during the first few months of the season.
That is when Major League Baseball’s non-waiver trade deadline will occur and any serious fretting up until that date should only be considered noise to sell newspapers or generate sports talk radio ratings.
And Now the Sobering News
With all of that said, there should be an extreme sense of urgency on the part of the fan base for the Tigers to win a World Series in the VERY near future.
A couple of months ago I wrote a column in which I discussed the payroll potential of the team after Mike Ilitch, Sr. dies.
Subsequent to that posting, I have received some solicited and unsolicited opinions on what Tigers fans should expect when that eventuality occurs and it is not pretty. At all.
People who are close to the situation have advised me that a signing the likes of Prince Fielder would NEVER have occurred if it weren’t for the member of the Ilitch family who actually played minor league baseball still breathing oxygen.
Ya think Marian would have signed off on a $214 million expenditure if her husband was dead? A fixture for most Red Wings announcements, Mrs. Ilitch was attending her FIRST press conference for her husband’s baseball team and the family has owned the damn team for TWENTY FREAKING YEARS!
(And yes, I know because of her interest in Motor City Casino that Marian really has no say in Tigers affairs. Of course, if you fall for that that you will also probably believe me when I tell you that Terry Foster is under serious Pulitzer consideration for his continued expose on Prince’s relationship with Cecil.)
And from what I have been told, the children who are in control of Olympia Entertainment aren’t as passionate about winning as their old man and would most likely put the family’s finances ahead of any pipe dream acquisitions as well.
So it is imperative that the Tigers win before Mr. I kicks the bucket and based on his frail appearance at the Fielder presser who the hell knows how long he has left.
(Shit, I am not against requesting the assistance of the Terry Schiavo Family Foundation if it means keeping Mike, Sr. on a ventilator for perpetuity if it would guarantee future $140 million payrolls.)
From everything I have been told by people close to the situation, the over/under on months it will take for Tigers fans to get on their knees and BEG the Ilitch Kids to sell the team to Dan Gilbert after Mr. I takes his last breath is 15.5.
And the smart money is on the UNDER.
I Hate The Pistons and Everything They Stand For
Before the laughter of Detroit sports fans could subside upon the release of ESPN’s Future MLB Power Rankings which included three AL Central rivals (the Twins, Indians & White Sox) in the bottom five of all of baseball, the Worldwide Leader had to sober us up with their NBA equivalent.
And in the latest installment of subjective slotting in which ESPN’s experts try to assess the future success of NBA franchises, the Mothership ranked the Pistons 28th out of 30 teams. But wait, the news gets worse.
These current rankings were released BEFORE Detroit won five of their last seven games which of course has negatively impacted the team’s chances of getting a top three selection in this June’s Draft.
At the beginning of the season I took a photograph of myself, Joe Dumars and Kentucky super freshman, Anthony Davis, wearing a Mickey Mouse t-shirt. With every Pistons win, Davis has slowly disappeared from the picture and the only part of his body currently remaining in the photo is his one eyebrow.
Seriously, I am not sure I have seen a team as frustrating as this recent Pistons outfit. They are bad, but not awful enough to actually get a premium draft selection. I mean, as horrid as the Matt Millen Era Lions were, at least they were exceedingly good at LOSING. They had that part pretty nailed down.
This organization’s continued refusal to tank a season under Dumars’ stewardship is about as aggravating a Detroit sports development that I have ever witnessed.
And I am not even saying that you can possibly instruct professional players to not give maximum effort in an effort to increase your team’s odds at getting a top pick. But not re-signing Tayshaun Prince might have cost the team a few meaningless wins this season. Or even using their amnesty on Ben Gordon could have helped the Pistons “compete” with Charlotte, New Orleans and New Jersey.
In 2010, the team secured the seventh pick in the Draft.
In 2011, the Pistons selected seventh in June again.
And as of this writing, the Pistons currently possess the seventh worst record in the NBA.
7-7-7 might be a big winner at a Las Vegas slot machine, but it is doing NOTHING for the future of a team that has ZERO chance of eliciting a top free-agent to sign here.
Greg Monroe is a nice little player, but he is no DeMarcus Cousins.
Brandon Knight might turn into a quality point guard, but I don’t think anyone is going to confuse him with Kyrie Irving anytime soon.
If you keep accruing worthless W’s during regular seasons where you have no chance of making the playoffs, don’t be surprised when you continue to mire in this purgatory of being just lousy enough to never get better.
And finally…
As many of you already know, I don’t believe in anything that I can’t see which is why I have zero faith that a higher power exists.
But I do believe in something called the “DSR Jinx” because I have witnessed it occur on SEVERAL occasions over the past nine years.
From the site’s promotion of Michael Vick and Tiger Woods to deity status before they precipitously fell from grace to the whammy I put on Armando Galarraga’s career in May of 2009 to my almost single-handed elevation of Tim Tebow, the DSR Jinx has proven to be a tangible force on repeated occasions.
But I am not sure the site has ever witnessed such a supernatural turn of events as we witnessed last Thursday when Los Angeles Kings defenseman, Jack Johnson, idiotically decided to join the DSR’s Facebook discussion.
Johnson, a lifelong friend of fellow DSR contributor Justin Spiro, signed up for the page just hours before the Kings home tilt with the Phoenix Coyotes as he graciously played along with the collection of morons who participate on our message board.
Later that evening, Johnson’s Kings lost their game to the Coyotes at Staples Center which wouldn’t be that bizarre on its own. But considering the final score was 1-0 and the only Phoenix goal was scored on a power-play while JOHNSON was serving a penalty for Delay of Game, well, I started to get nervous for the poor kid.
And then things got really bizarre. On the same day that Jack Mother Fucking Johnson joined the Detroit sports version of the Cantina bar on Mos Eisley, a rumor started buzzing around the hockey world that he was the potential centerpiece in a blockbuster Rick Nash trade with the Blue Jackets.
As if it wouldn’t be bad enough to get traded from the city of LOS ANGELES to Columbus. Or going from a playoff team to a moribund franchise that has NEVER won a postseason game. How about the fact that Johnson attended the University of Michigan and would be forced to play his home games in the same city where Ohio State University is located?
Anyway, the Kings have not scored a single goal since the Kings defenseman joined the site and I can only blame this on our silly superstition. Thankfully, Johnson wisely deleted his membership from the DSR in the last 24 hours and hopefully this will lead to a reversal of his fortunes.
Actually, now that I think of it, is there any way we can get all 12 members of the Pistons roster to sign up for the Dort?