August 6, 2007

Tigers’ Offense Returns and So Does The (Abbreviated) Non-Sequiturs

By Mike McClary in Fungoes | 3 comments

ENGLEWOOD, Colo. — Never in my life have I ever experienced such a torturous Tigers vs. Devil Rays game as Monday night’s tilt. (Never, that is, since 1998 when the team came into being.) Making things worse, I had to follow the game on Yahoo! Sports GameChannel.After two mind-numbing days of driving from Phoenix to Denver, I’m ready to forget about I-70 and consider the Tigers’ free fall and momentary bounce-back against Tampa Bay.

  • As Doug articulated last week, the pitching is the Tigers’ main concern. Now that everyone on the staff has strung together successive forgettable outings, I can’t help but think back to an article on ESPN.com a while back. The author (either Jayson Stark or Buster Olney) advanced the theory that the Tigers pitching staff was simply paying the price for pitching deep into October last season. It’s looking like there’s some merit here.
  • How about that Ryan Raburn? And while we’re at it, how about Mike Rabelo? Position players from the farm system making a contribution. Outstanding!
  • For the second straight year the Tigers face brutal month of August. Last year it was quality opponents and a key injury to Placido Polanco in Boston that made August miserable for the team and its fans. This year it’s looking to be much the same story.
  • Long before the White Sox took the Tigers to the woodshed in Chicago two weeks ago and in Detroit this weekend, I said they’d continute to cause problems. Tigers fans can only hope the team’s post-season hopes don’t rely on winning a game at U.S. Cellular Field that last weekend of September. Oy.

Finally, on our way to Denver yesterday we stopped off in Silverton, Colo. for a pit stop. In the Silverton visitor’s center a nice, silver haired man sat at the information desk wearing an immaculate Tigers home cap — fitted, of course.I asked him if he was from the Detroit area and he said, “No, I just like the hat.”Which means he likely doesn’t visit this site very often.Then he added, “Well, that and of course Magnum wore it on the TV show.”Ouch.

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3 Comment(s)

  1. Josh Wallen | Aug 7, 2007 | Reply

    After listening to our most recent roundtable (to see if any of us predicted this most recent slump), I think we all missed the boat on our Tigers surprises. Mike Rabelo deserves ALOT of credit. I almost forgot that Vance Wilson was on this team until they showed him on the list of DL residents. I know I usually point out the negative, so you can all take note of this as it’s probably the last compliment I’ll pay them as we head down the stretch. We now return you to your regularly scheduled programing.

  2. Mike McClary | Aug 7, 2007 | Reply

    Josh Wallen returns!

  3. Ian C. | Aug 7, 2007 | Reply

    What that guy at the info desk didn’t tell you is that he was Tom Selleck.

    Give Tommy a job, Hollywood!

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