News and Notes: 3.10.11

– That’s two days in a row now that young Tiger hitters have come up to the plate in the bottom of the 9th as the tying or go ahead run, both times with the bases loaded, and then watched 3 straight called strikes hum by.  (Worth on Tues, Sizemore on Wed).

Fangraphs had an interesting post on the Tigers’ rotation a few days ago.   The author, Ben Nicholson-Smith, questions DD’s decision to add depth to the starting rotation.

– 40 IPs for Zumaya might be a little much, as it looks like he won’t be ready for the opener.  We’ve seen this before.  Beck posted some of Leyland’s thoughts about heading into the season without Zumaya in the pen.

– The Cabrera video has been released.  I’m staying away from it, but it’s big news today.

10 thoughts on “News and Notes: 3.10.11”

  1. Well in regards to the Fangraph’s article bashing DD on this one, I’m going to go against my natural instincts and actually defend DD on this issue. I totally don’t agree with the Fangraph’s perspective as I think that if there is anything positive to gain from what I consider DD’s total incompetence and mismanagement of this franchise, that it is at least encouraging to me that he has supplied this team with a very generous amount of pitching talent and resources overall. I think our team is highly suspect on offense and in bad standing, but I think our pitching resources as a whole are potentially extremely dangerous. If our pitchers pan out as favorably as DD hopes they do, then even with our terrible offensive efficiencies, we can win the World Series through dominant pitching.

    All I want to see happen at this point is for the team to scrap BOTH relieving AND starting talent AND farm talent even so that we can boost our offensive holes. If we do nothing, then the last thing you are gonna hear me gripe about is our pitching staff in any area. Our pitchers could end up sucking, sure that can happen to anybody, pitching is a tricky thing in baseball that can sometimes totally turn out incredibly lucky or unlucky for you, and regardless of what our actual pitching does, without knowing the future I believe that we have a really solid infrastructure there of projected ability and contribution. So I totally have DD’s back on what he’s done on the pitching end, and I’m against him on every other aspect of baseball management other than that. Terrible article and perspective by Fangraph’s, they don’t get it.

  2. Oh and Danny Worth is baseball garbage, shouldn’t have a shot to be on this team, along with Clete and Kelly. Forget about arguing about that, it’s not a big issue and I know nobody wants to hear about those guys, but it was brought up and every time those guys are mentioned I just feel like renewing my objections to have them involved. I’ll take an Andy Dirks or anybody less valued than that even in place of any of those chumps.

  3. Is it just me or does anyone else wonder if there is some kind of vendetta against Miquel Cabrera? Why is all this stuff coming out now … a week or more after the drinking incident, for which Cabrera has appologized … not to mention the remediative arrangements that have been taken to keep him on the wagon. Or is this about money? Is this some kind of shake down????

    1. It’s just the way the world works, there is no system in place to ensure transfer of perfect information and things like this there is a time delay before stuff comes out. It’s not like the night of the arrest the officers are going to come on the Internet and divulge all the details. Heck Bernie Madoff was involved in the most extravagant financial scam of all-time and there still hasn’t been any adequate justice or resolution to that whole mess and apparently there’s a lot of information associated with that whole ordeal that is still not known. How can a guy involved in a multi-billion dollar publicly known crime somehow keep things hidden still? It’s just the way business and politics and justice work in this world, and that is a system of which is sickly inefficient, illogical, and inadequate. And until the leaders of this world stop being incompetent, ignorant, and greedy; we are always going to see a flow down to every other aspect of life that is cluttered with BS and misinformation and less than acceptable reconciliation.

      So to answer your question, who knows? Miguel Cabrera is a wealthy and prominent figure and with that comes a lot of competing parties/interests that all have different motives and us common folk are always left not knowing absolutely for sure what goes on behind the curtains of those that have the power in this world and ultimate control of how things play out.

  4. All of you must remember the unwritten but much followed law that simply sez that news from Yankee Universe and the Red Sox Nation must dominate any AL MLB news. If there is any positive news outside of these two havens it is simply discounted or mentioned once and then back to discussions about these teams; meanwhile any negative news elsewhere is promoted. That’s why blog like this are needed and well visited! As a test, how many Yankee or Red Sox spring training games have been on the MLB channel this Spring? Apologies for my sarcasm as it is Spring and we should look forward! And I do hope that Miguel can get the help needed to solve any problem as he is much too talented (and important for the Tigers).

    1. Damn Yankees.

      Damn Tigers, who should be the team that is mentioned instead of the Yankees when people say that phrase if we weren’t so incompetent at running our team. They Yankees would have no chance of matching our legacy as they don’t know how to efficiently spend money for wins, we should be able to win as many games as them spending much less money, or win a ton more games than them spending the same amount of money. All it takes is high level intelligence, what’s the freaking problem? Oh yeah, the ownership. And now we have Illitch as a threat to buy the Pistons, grrrreat.

      1. A few months ago Illich wisely punted on his Pistons acquisition plans.

        Tom Gores (MSU grad and former Flint, MI resident) will be the next owner of the Pistons – the announcement will be made at the end of the regular season, and a long overdue thorough house-cleaning will ensure shortly thereafter.

        1. Yeah I would say it was wise for Illitch to pass, because the Pistons are like a train wreck and the price seemingly is lower today than it was a few months ago. Whoever buys the Pistons is going to have a really sweet deal because it’s a depressed franchise that could easily be a gigantic money maker in the right hands for somebody who knows what to do with it.

          Illitch knows he doesn’t understand basketball management strategy and thus he has to gamble, cause all he can do is try to hire somebody that does get it, and he has no way of qualifying who would be good at it or not since he’s not mentally equipped to understand this kind of arena. He could get lucky and hire a good GM like he did with the Red Wings, or he could get unlucky like he did with the Tigers, to him it has to look like a coin flip since he would have no way of being sure of what he’s doing when he makes those hires. Tom Gores is in the same boat, otherwise if he was sure he knew what to do then he would have jumped on it by now because of the massive ROI that would be so obvious if he already had the right solutions figured out.

  5. Thought I’d share this- “Ernie Harwell’s Audio Scrapbook” – 4 discs of Ernie covering the greatest moments in baseball
    is only $12.00 today (includes shipping!)
    here’s the link:
    http://www.groupon.com/r/uu1214946

    and when you’re on the site, go to “Appleton, Wisconsin” …
    it’s only available today 3/15!

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