First of all the Yankees are the winningest team in baseball for over a decade. Whether or not the fans in NY judge that a success is immaterial to your argument that their brand of baseball doesn’t allow for winning.

As for the “defense wins championships” business, whatever. Outscoring your opponent wins championships. There’s more than one way to do it. Lee showed this earlier this season at Detroit Tiger Tales.

The Tigers problem, or their chief problem was not that they ignored pitching. It’s that they left themselves with little depth and the pitching significantly underperformed. For Verlander and Robertson and Willis all to pitch as bad as they did was unforseeable. The Tigers hurt themselves by leaving the ranks very thin, a problem compounded by the complete ineffectiveness of Yorman Bazardo, the lack of progress by Virgil Vasquez, and the frayed shoulder of Jordan Tata. All were “depth” guys heading into the season.

The injuries and age that caught up with Bonderman and Rogers were not surprises. But when all 5 members of your rotation are largely ineffective, there is only so much contingency planning you can do.

i now understand the root-cause of my weak-ass mini-golf game.

Doc,

I don’t think Nicklaus was including mini-golf when he made that profound statement way back when, but who really knows. Personally, I would chalk a fair amount of dismal mini-golf scores up to the majority of the patrons involved being in a state of inebriation(present company excluded of course)

I would have said 20 expected for Verlander, but his is a very unique and strange situation, don’t you think? The gods were just against his this year, although he shouldn’t be excused altogether for his lack of control, which is mind boggling.

They should work on throwing strikes earlier in the count, I would argue. From what I have observed, at least in the AL central, is the competition is much more effective at getting ahead in the count, thus maintaining control. It’s frustrating to watch even Galaraga start out 0-2 on a hitter, then fall to 3-2, have the guy fight off the next few, then eventually get walked. As a manager myself in the past, the two things I stressed the most to avoid were walks and called third strikes.

Why do these teams have consistent starters? Because the glove guys create outs, that’s why. Top 10 teams in defensive efficiency: TB-CHC-TOR-OAK-MIL-BOS-NYM-PHI-HOU-ANA. The common thread? All of those teams have winning records (sans Oakland – and they have zero offense). By contrast, the Tigers are 23rd. Of course your pitching will look like dookie if they have to keep getting 4 or 5 outs per inning. I will say, however, that as a group the pitching staff should collectively work on throwing strikes to help their cause.

in an effort to pick a fight with just about everybody today, i wanted to make a couple observations. i think you may be too critical of DD for reasonably expecting more than he got from the starting rotation. i’ll attempt to be conservative when listing my “expected” wins, but this will be highly subjective.

(Pitcher, actual wins – expected wins = differential)

Verlander: 10 – 15 = -5
Willis: 0 – 10 = -10
Rogers: 9 – 10 = -1
Robertson: 7 – 10 = -3
Bonderman: 3 – 10 = -3

i think this was the assumed starting rotation going into the year, obviously we got a number of wins from Galarraga so i don’t know how to factor that into things. i guess what i’m saying is that DD and the coaching staff must have gone through plans A, B, C and beyond but the loss of so many expected wins from starters was more than they could deal with.

i now understand the root-cause of my weak-ass mini-golf game.

i am no closer to understand my over-use of hyphens.

That’s not a faulty product. That’s a calculated risk. They didn’t forget about pitching, but they were counting on more than what they got from what they had. It happens.
It’s a risk that any winning GM today would tell you is a bad risk. It’s really pretty simple. Look around at the teams w/the best records. I would argue that good pitchers are more consistent on avg. than, say, 4-5-6 sluggers accounting for 10-11 runs day in and day out. There are always exceptions, but just about every single team making the playoffs this year has at least 2 consistent starters in their rotation, a decent, consistent set up man(or two) in the pen, and a really good closer. How many games did the Tigers pen blow this year to teams where the hitter hit his first home run of the year, or his avg. was dismal?

They’re winning because their pitchers don’t walk anybody and the offense has hit remarkably well with RISP.

Those seem like core fundamentals to me. The point I was attempting to make is, if you have to pick one key aspect of the game of Baseball in order to win, it is pitching. Just like it’s defense in Football, and putting in Golf. Ask any expert of each respective sport and I am sure they will agree. And it seems painfully obvious to me at least that part of scoring more runs than your opponent includes holding a lead which you obtain to begin with. Do people like Rodney, Farsnworth, Rapada, Seay, Zumaya and the rest of the pen emit the impression that they are up to this task w/consistency? I think not, and that should have raised a major red flag.

DD basically thought that he was going to blow away the rest of the AL w/his so called superior offense, leaving no plan b, and it backfired on him. You have balance, and more times than not, this type of dismal upset season never happens.

And as for the Yankees, you do realize this is the first year since 1993 they haven’t made the playoffs and that the team basically prints money right?
It may be quite a measure of success for 99% of the markets in baseball, but in NY, not getting to and potentially winning the world series is a crushing blow and inexcusable. I think the important thing to remember is taking the Yankees showboat roster into account and how their outdated view of what a winning team is comprised of, compared to the more balanced TB Rays, AL Angels or CHW of the league.

If the Tigers had hit starters as they’d hit relievers (and the converse), they’d have scored 825 runs now, or 30 more than actual. If the Tigers had hit all pitchers as they had relievers, they would have scored 884 runs now – 89 more.

In essence, then, our valiant Tigers refused to be shut down by those pesky bullpen guys. Bring ‘em all back, I say.

On the other side, without charging runs to the reliever who let inherited baserunners score, Tigers starters gave up .139 runs per PA and the relievers .123. If runs allowed to score by the bullpen but charged to the starter were added to the bullpen total, I’m pretty sure the numbers would be reversed and maybe then some.

So… if the starters had been at .123 and the pen at .139, in terms of runs allowed BY each only, the Tigers would have allowed 800 runs by now, 29 less than actual. If the whole staff had then pitched at the starters’ pace, they would have allowed 764 runs, 65 less than actual.

Thus (ha!), the Tigers’ Hyper-Pythagorean (Best Of All Possible Worlds) record is currently 90-67. Hey, they’re on the cusp of hyper-clinching the hyper-division! With better* hitting and same crappy pitching, they’d be 83-74 (3rd but still not eliminated). With better* pitching and same good but not really that good hitting, they’d be 81-76 (and only last night knocked out of the race).

* Within reason, as defined (sort of) above

Three guesses as to what the Tigers’ Sub-Pythagorean (Worst Of All Possible Worlds) record is. Hint: It starts with 71.

I saw where Mike Schmidt sent a email to the Phils telling them to concentrate on the small things, one pitch, one extra base, moving the runner, all which lead to bigger things. One pitch, one hit here & there and the Tigers season could have rolled with confidence into what we expected. Instead it just kept slipping downhill.

Caberra will be the Tigers next hall of famer and will lead this team into the future.