Earlier today, the Detroit Free Press tipped the new Sports Illustrated cover, pictured above, reporting that “it’s . . . thought to be the first time a pair of Tigers have been on the cover of SI since Al Kaline and Denny McLain made it in September 1968.” (Such thorough and confident reporting by the Freep is in line with their recent work on even more important issues.) For anyone who collected baseball cards in the late 1980s and early 1990s, the headline is immediately evocative of an earlier pair of mashers. The caption dubs Miguel Cabrera and Prince Fielder “Baseball’s 21st-Century Version of Mantle and Maris,” explaining to the Free Press in greater detail:
Ruth and Gehrig. Mays and McCovey. Ortiz and Ramirez. To the list of great hitting duos in baseball history we can now add one more: Prince Fielder and Miguel Cabrera of the Tigers. Both were established stars long before coming to Detroit but since joining forces prior to last season, Fielder and Cabrera have become baseball’s best 1-2 punch, which makes it only fitting that the sluggers appear together on the cover of this week’s Sports Illustrated.
We’re a dozen games into the season and the Tigers, with a few hiccups, are off to a respectable 7-5 start. Despite the day/Pacific time starts and my living outside the Tigers Radio Network, I’ve been able to keep decent track of these first few series and, while mindful of small sample size they represent, I was beginning to notice something concerning.
The Tigers are in the World Series! As I wrote to reader and White Sox fan chikat this week, the AL Central ended the way we all thought it would, with Detroit in first place, and Chicago and the rest of the ragtag divisional band lining up behind them. The journey from game one to game 162, though, as documented here from the Tigers’ perspective, did much to raise doubts about what was once thought to be a foregone conclusion. When Detroit, after losing Victor Martinez– an offensive leader on the field and an emotional leader in the clubhouse– to a season-ending injury in the offseason, signed Prince Fielder, they had upped the ante in a big way. For reasons I explained at the time of the Fielder signing, the window on a Tiger World Series victory had been accelerated and focused on the immediate next few seasons, beginning with the present one. For a variety of reasons, enunciable and otherwise, I had pegged next year in my mind as the year this Detroit team would play for a world championship. But here they are, facing off against the San Francisco Giants, who are just a year removed from defending their own World Series title.
I don’t think the Tigers are a year early. I do think they have more confidence in themselves than I do, as evidenced by that prediction and by some of the things I’ve written about them this season. I also think that baseball, for all of its extended, plodding slowness, is a sport of fleeting opportunity at least as much as the other, faster-paced games we play on a major level. (Brendan and I criticized the Washington Nationals for ignoring this fundamental premise when they shut down their ace this season.) There’s no reason to shy away from this moment or otherwise treat it as a test run or bonus opportunity, and this Tiger team has a variety of means by which they can and should seize this opportunity to bring Detroit its first World Series championship since 1984 and its second since 1968.
It seems I spoke too soon. I didn’t say it explicitly, but I thought losing a Justin Verlander start to the Royals while treading water in second place in all the relevant standings in late August was pretty much rock bottom for a team with the preseason expectations and on-paper (both white and greenbacked) potential of the 2012 Detroit Tigers. No, I see now that getting swept by the Royals to end the month of August three games out of both the division lead and the second wild card spot is rock bottom. Although I’ve begun the process of emotionally untangling myself from this team, they aren’t dead in the water and their closing schedule allows them to control their own destiny. If that destiny is to include a playoff berth, though, they’re going to have to string together some winning streaks against critical opponents, something they largely have avoided this entire season. If there are to be no playoffs for this team, though, then I think we can all look back on the above-captured moment when Mike Moustakas grapple-tackled Prince Fielder as the Tigers’ point of know return.
The reality is that it’s a big country and there’s plenty happening all over the place to fill national media broadcasts. People also probably get tired of hearing about how life is tough in the Motor City. But ESPN’s emphasis on the coastal cities, especially New York and Boston, whether things are good, bad, or uninteresting there, feels like it belies the notion that the Worldwide Leader is looking to spread its coverage evenly and objectively. There’s probably somebody who’s spent too much time next to the Belle Isle salt lick with a scientific analysis of the network’s Motown slights. Thankfully I don’t have anything like that (heck, I don’t even have a television– am I qualified to write this post? any post for this website?), but I do have a lifetime of accumulated, small experiences, little things that build up over the years like plaque, arterial blockage, uric acid, or whatever early middle age male medical condition the target sports audience has, as determined by the concordant commercial advertisers.
I’m not talking about being accustomed to only seeing the Lions on other teams’ highlight reels— that’s just a bad team making the film editors’ jobs easy. It’s things like the ESPN Radio “SportsCenter” segments on their morning show, Mike & Mike, always starting with the Yankees or Red Sox game and frequently omitting the Tigers’ score from the night before. And stuff like this, from two nights ago:
These are small things. Petty things. Sometimes undefinable things. But they’re real things, at least insofar as they’re experienced, or perceived to have been experienced. When things are bad, Detroiters want the attention to validate their sorrow. (That’s why I wanted the Tigers to lose 120 in 2003. At least the record books would have to bear witness to that misery.) When the supercharged Tigers got off to a disappointing start this season, was Jim Leyland “on the hot seat,” from a national perspective? No way. Bobby Valentine? Almost immediately.
Anyway, trotting out all these examples would be an unenjoyable exercise for me and unenjoyable reading for you. It’s about getting your fair attention for bad times and good. And times are pretty good right now. Justin Verlander won the Cy Young and the MVP in the same season last year! He got shelled as the All-Star game starter last night, but he’s dating Kate Upton! Miguel Cabrera is the best hitter in baseball! Calvin Johnson is the best receiver in football! (And ESPN’s Chris Carter can’t acknowledge that?)
Just in time for the All-Star break, which marks the half-way point of the MLB season, the Detroit Tigers have clawed their way back to an above-.500 record, which feels like much more of an accomplishment than it should, but things really do seem to be getting back to the way they should be. The team followed up its strong showing in interleague play by finishing the first half of the season having won five straight and seven of their last nine, earning a 44-42 record. The pitchers seem to be getting settled in (Scherzer leads the AL in some strikeout statistic I forgot, Phil Coke is a workhorse, and Justin Verlander’s done well enough to earn the starting spot for the AL All Stars), and odd-walking liability Delmon Young homered in each of the last four games. Brennan Boesch still is hitting below .250, but Jhonny Peralta seems to be coming on, and Quintin Berry is a joy to watch on the basepaths. Team-wide, defense remains a very frustrating problem, however.
The second key is the two spot in the lineup. Quintin Berry has done a terrific job in the two-hole, but the return of Andy Dirks could help fuel the Tigers offense. Dirks was having a tremendous impact on the numbers that Prince Fielder and Miguel Cabrera were putting up. Below is a look at the numbers for the two sluggers with Dirks in and out of the lineup:
With Dirks batting second: With other hitters batting second
While Dirks is out of the walking boot and his achilles is feeling better, getting him back before August is not a good bet at this point.
Mario also tempered the optimism headed into the second half with this note:
The last week has given the Tigers hope that a second half run is on the horizon. The first three weeks following the break will be telling. Detroit will play 29 straight games against teams over .500.
Brace yourselves, listeners. ALDLAND’s latest podcast features a very special guest. I don’t want to spoil anything, so fire up the podcast and find out for yourself who it is.
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I largely agree with Bpbrady and Dave Cameron’s assessment of the deal that made Prince Fielder a member of the team where his (estranged) father was a star. In short, the Tigers had better win a World Series by 2015. Fielder probably is close to his athletic peak right now, but, like Albert Pujols’ new contract with the Angels, compensation doesn’t really ramp up until later.
Those early-contract numbers might look a tad pessimistic, given that Fielder’s coming off a season in which he hit .299/.415/.566 and racked up 5.5 wins above replacement, and he’s just 27 years old, smack in the middle of the age range in which the average major leaguer peaks. But for all of his power potential, Fielder is a lousy defender who’ll play either first base (poorly) or DH. That means he needs to hit a metric ton to yield as much value as a player manning a premium defensive position, like Matt Kemp or even Dustin Pedroia.
The national media reaction to this deal has been pretty tepid: it just seems to be too rich for their liking, and Fielder won’t earn the money over the full length of the nine-year contract. My buddy in Detroit called me a couple hours after the announcement to discuss, and he said that the reaction over there largely remained in the surprised shock stages. The general consensus that’s filtering through there and nationally, though, is that the Tigers over-leveraged their future in an attempt to win now, making this a bad deal for the Tigers. In other words, this 275 lb (and growing), $214 million (and escalating) albatross will be such a drag on the team that it will clearly outweigh any short-term benefits.
This, of course, is hardly the case. The theory underlying the criticism of the Fielder deal is that teams should be trying to build perennial contenders, and that this contract will prevent Detroit from becoming a perennial contender once Fielder’s decline sets in. The second clause in the preceding sentence may be true and probably will be, but the first contains a cliché assumption that is bogus. Maybe it isn’t totally bogus. If some success is good, more success is better, and once having found success, it’s nice to sustain that success. The problem is that very few teams have been able to maintain top-level success. (Moreover, there was no indication that the 2011 Tigers were calibrated such that they were on the cusp of a decade of dominance or anything like that.) Detroit hasn’t won the World Series since 1984, and the years since then have been pretty thin. If presented with the option of winning the division in each of the next three seasons, winning one championship during that period, and then sinking back into mediocrity for the next six years, I can’t imagine a single Tiger fan saying no. Our willingness to forego future stability for an increased chance of present gains has put our economy in the stink pot, but when it comes to baseball, and a team that hasn’t won it all in 28 years, the strategy makes perfect sense.
Dave Cameron, whose work I know and respect from the blog USS Mariner recently wrote this post in reaction to the Prince Fielder signing. The gist of the article is that while Fielder’s signing, coupled with the presence of Miguel Cabrera and Justin Verlander, will make the Tigers a contender for the next few years, the Tigers will eventually regret the contract as Fielder ages and presumably declines in skill.
Dave Cameron’s a sharp guy, and he can do the math and work out the expected value of Fielder in wins to the Tigers next year and over the lifetime of his contract a lot better than I can, so there’s not a whole lot I have to say that he doesn’t say in that article. In the end, I think the Tigers are incredibly short sighted for pulling the trigger on Fielder. For this deal to be worth it, the Tigers absolutely must bring Detroit its first World Series championship since 1984. A few division titles and a pennant or two aren’t going to cut it when Fielder is 34 and stumbling around the base paths en route to hitting 18 homers and batting .260. The contract might not even be worth it if the Tigers win a World Series, if it cripples the franchise for years to come afterward (although given the fact that Detroit is now paying three players 20 million dollars per year, that is not a given).
Furthermore, as Cameron notes, this money could be better spent elsewhere. He suggests Jose Reyes and CJ Wilson as two players the Tigers could have signed for around the same money they gave to Fielder. Having watched the Tigers a lot in the past year, I felt they needed a pitcher more than they needed another impact bat going into 2012. Obviously the injury to DH/C Victor Martinez changed that, however if I was Tigers GM Dave Dombrowksi, I would have signed a pitcher CJ Wilson and traded a couple prospects for a bat like Houston’s Carlos Lee who could help Detroit in 2012 without hindering the franchise’s ability to contend later on. But perhaps there’s a reason that he is a major league GM and I am not. I guess we’ll find out in four or five years.
I was hoping that this article would still be topical by the time I started writing it yesterday night, and lo and behold the only free agent of consequence to sign on November 3rd was Juan Rivera. I have literally no idea who he is. I watch at least a hundred Mariners games each year (MLB.tv FTW), plus a good number of Phillies games and even as much of a Tigers game as I can stomach now and then. Between that and fantasy baseball, I feel like I have a pretty good handle on who’s who in the MLB and I had literally no idea who this guy was.* So basically he wasn’t going to be on this list anyway.
Here is a list of ten of the top free agents and where I think they will sign:
Albert Pujols
2011 team: Cardinals
2012 team: Cardinals
Why: Everyone has been jawing all season long about Pujols testing the market, but I think a lot of that was ESPN puffing the subject up so they had something else to talk about during Sports Center besides whether Tom Brady having longer hair than Aaron Rodgers makes him a better QB. When all is said and done, I think this is going to turn out like the Matt Holliday-STL deal where there weren’t a ton of other serious suitors for the money and the player didn’t want to leave St. Louis anyway. Add in that two of the big free agent spenders, the Yankees and Red Sox already have top tier 1Bs and you don’t have anyone to seriously compete with the Cardinals at the price Pujols wants. So in the end St. Louis will end up overpaying a bit, talking heads who said that Pujols would sign for 300 million will complain about how St. Louis overpaid, St. Louis fans will complain about how they overpaid, but inside everyone will be happy.
Outside shot: Real Madrid? At that price, I don’t know. Keep reading…
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