Chris, you’re right that it reduces our margin for error, but only modestly, since this streak occured so early in the season. BP puts their postseason odds (using PECOTA) at 43%. This is not much different than a coin flip, which is about what the odds were at the beginning of the season.

I disagree.

Most winning teams go long stretches in the season at 500. The Red Sox were a 500 winning team for almost three months last year.

The ‘06 Twins and the ‘07 Yankees are examples of teams that were near or below the 500 mark at the allstar break and cought fire in the second half. Twins did it with pitching, but the Yanks did it by turning into an offensive football team and scoring touchdowns almost every night. If there is any potential for the ‘08 Tigers to do the same, it would likely be simular to the Yanks of ‘07.

The unfortunate thing about this early stumble into 1-7 is that the Tigers have to be a relativly hot team in order to just get at 500. And then we have to hope that there is no other slump in the season anywhere close to this or the one last August.

If the game yesterday marks the upside direction of whatever funk they were in, it’s no big deal at all. The real question is, how many cylinders will this team fire on from out here on out? If the offense is akin to the legendary Ferrari 60° V12 engine with two overhead camshafts, I would say yesterday there was spark in about 6 or 7 of those cylinders — enough for a win against a team not necessarily on their A-game. We could be 2 games up by the end of April if we start firing on 9, 10, or 11 cylinders and continue to do so for a significant stretch. Then again, these high-preformance engines tend to easily break down and/or require continual tweeking/maintenence. Let’s hope the analogy isn’t too accurate.

Was thinking about that last night when Mario and Rod were talk about Ortiz’s .094 batting average (Rod: “That’s a bingo number!”). Good hitters go into slumps; it’s just that all of ours did it at the same time.

Somehow I don’t think that Kansas City in first place thing is going to continue all year.

We will be lucky if this team is 500 by the all-star break.

If that’s true, then this was never a playoff team to begin with. If they’re the 95 win team everyone expected them to be, then they should get back to .500 much sooner than the All-Star break.

I know everyone is giddy about this game, but I think everyone will be back in the dumps if they lose tonight. It’s a big deal for them to string together a nice 8 out of 10 or something similar to make up the lost ground quickly.

“He’s hit a home run off him [Wakefield],” Leyland said. “I like home runs, and he’s hit a lot of them.”

By the way, the Beantown announcers pointed out something I was unaware of — I assumed Renteria’s lost season in a Sox uniform was based on his lack of offense — according to them, however, Renteria’s main failure at Boston was not due to lackluster offense (although it was down somewhat from carreer numbers) but completely sub-par defense. When Renteria doubled, they specifically mentioned that his approach at the plate was reminescent of his approach when he hit at Fenway in a Sox uniform. Then they pointed out he made 30 errors and came unglued defensively, implying defensive production was what drove him out of town on a rail, not a lack of offensive production.