Comments on: How I’m coping - or - it’s hard to be a fan

By: billfer

billfer — Fri, 21 Sep 2007 12:15:39 +0000

Thanks to all those who left comments and to those who emailed. I’m glad this post resonated with many of you on some level. I didn’t write it to try and influence or sway anyone, it was just an expression of my fan experience.

By: Ronnie DeLaura

Ronnie DeLaura — Fri, 21 Sep 2007 04:36:49 +0000

Wow, thats al I can say. What a great post. \X/00T 2 that.

By: Slashpyne

Slashpyne — Fri, 21 Sep 2007 01:30:52 +0000

I hope in 20 years the things I remember about this season are
Magglios great year, Grandersons 20,20,20,20, Poloncos error-free streak and Verlanders no-no-not how frustrating the end was…

By: Chris in Nashville

Chris in Nashville — Thu, 20 Sep 2007 23:36:34 +0000

Man….that really made me want to cry. Well put Bilfer. I’ve been so frustrated the last few days that I don’t even know how to handle it. But the realization has set in, but we really have a lot to be thankful for. This is still a team that is young in the right spots and with some better luck next year, I think we have the tools to make an even stronger playoff push. But that is going to be a LONNNNNGGGGGG 6 months wait to start it over again. That picture of Porcello kind of brought things full circle for me.

By: Illy-P

Illy-P — Thu, 20 Sep 2007 22:31:50 +0000

Amen Billfer. While this year was a bit disappointing, it was ten-fold better than what my kids have ever experienced until the last two years.
So much af a team’s success is defined by the vagaries
of chance. It seems to me that what makes baseball so great is that, for all its statistics and the weight we give them, the potential for surprise trumps our deep certainty and that dichotomy is what makes baseball so much more entertaining than any other sport for me. It’s better to be lucky than good, but its best to be lucky and good. Even though I am disappointed with our finish, we had a great year and I am satisfied with that because we were good…again.

By: Mike R

Mike R — Thu, 20 Sep 2007 21:34:06 +0000

But how do I close it off–just throw in the same tag again?

Sorry man, but I put in the codes with spaces and it went ahead and put it altogether.

basically it’s (i)text(/i), only with

By: Kurt

Kurt — Thu, 20 Sep 2007 20:53:48 +0000

Whoops. It’s going to ask Bilfer to confirm since there’s two links. In any case, here’s his post on it and a link to BP.

http://www.detroittigersweblog.....-round-up/

I found it unreasonable at the time myself, and yet, well, it’s pretty close to the truth.

By: Kurt

Kurt — Thu, 20 Sep 2007 20:51:42 +0000

Matt,

I was on board with this being a better Tigers club too. But reasonably speaking, it’s an aging team, injuries were going to happen. There were some career years last year that were going to taper off. And Sheffield was coming off quite an injury.

http://www.baseballprospectus......cleid=6023
(and bilfer’s original post on it: http://www.detroittigersweblog.....-round-up/ )

By: Matt

Matt — Thu, 20 Sep 2007 20:38:52 +0000

Kurt:

That’s interesting about the Baseball Prospectus’s supercomputer’s opinion. I was not aware of that.

Maybe you are right. Maybe our perception of how this season should have gone was in err.

But to be honest… last year’s Tigers made it the World Series. This year, we added a professional hitter (Sheffield) to the line-up.

It’s pretty reasonable to expect a better season… or close to the same season. To not even make the play-offs certainly hurts.

When you started to name the players that “over-performed”, it’s a little weird to think that we couldn’t get to the play-offs.

In retrospect, I think the “under-performers” on the team this year under-performed sooooo badly that they wiped out the “over-performers” actions during ball games.

By: Kurt

Kurt — Thu, 20 Sep 2007 20:25:11 +0000

But the Golden State vs. Tigers analogy ends with the Tigers 06 season. They were playing above their heads to some extent.

Not that I disagree with the premise that some Tigers players (who were healthy) underperformed. But it’s complicated. Every year, some overperform (Maggs. Grandy? Polly?) some underperform (Inge, we hope, left field in general). If you ask Baseball Prospectus’s supercomputer’s opinion, the season turned out pretty much as it saw, minus the Twins. Detroit was in the mid-upper 80s for wins. The White Sox were in the tank.

Maybe it’s our perception of how the season should go that was in err.