Anyone else now officially freaked out about Dontrelle Willis?

With one week to go, Jim Leyland says his team isn’t ready.

Okay, we get it. The Tigers bullpen is to the team’s championship aspirations as an anvil is to a skydiver.
But what, pray tell, if it’s not?
I, for one, refuse to buy into the bullpen as Achilles’ heel conspiracy theory, and here are three reasons why:

Healthy starters
Dave Dombrowski
Zach Miner

1. Healthy starters. Among the many problems last [...]

Three quick hits:

This past weekend my wife and I traveled to Indian Wells, Calif., to watch the second round of the Pacific Life Open tennis tournament.

When you take away the two-hour line to park and the gale-force winds, we had a great time watching some big-name players including Lindsay Davenport, Ana Ivanovic, Carlos Moya and [...]

How time flies. It was 18 years ago Saturday (Jan. 12) that the Tigers traded right-handed starter Jeff Robinson to the Orioles for catcher Mickey Tettleton. (Somewhere I have Robinson’s autograph on a bleacher-seat ticket stub.) 
No one really knows how long Joel Zumaya will be out — perhaps all season. If that’s the case, and [...]

There have been lots of thoughts percolating around my head lately. Now that I’ve cleared my driveway of snow for the third time today, it’s time to get those thoughts out to the masses.
Brandon Inge
If you recall prior to the 2004 season Mr. Inge acted like a petulant little child when the Tigers signed Pudge [...]

I was in Portland, Ore., meeting with clients this week but was able to sneak away for my first visit to Powell’s Books flagship store. (One word: Wow.)While I was waiting in line to buy three baseball books — including the hard-to-find “No Big Deal” by Mark Fidrych and Tom Clark — I snapped [...]

PORTLAND, Ore. — As we all warm ourselves by that roaring hot stove, savoring yesterday’s blockbuster and thinking about the holidays, let’s not forget the boatload of trades the Detroit Tigers have made on December 4ths of the past. According to the Tigers 2007 media guide, the team has completed seven trades on Dec. 4, [...]

Are you kidding me?When Mike first broached the possibility of Dave Dombrowski’s blockbuster this afternoon late this morning by forwarding me Fox Sports’ Ken Rosenthal I thought it must’ve been some posturing and cheap talk.When I nosed around ESPN.com and saw Peter Gammon’s blog entry saying there was some validity to it I let my [...]

I certainly don’t remember when the Detroit Tigers dominated the home page of virtually all of online sports news sites. Maybe when they won the ALCS last year?As of this writing, the Tigers are baseball news tonight. I set up a dedicated page on The Daily Fungo that shows you how the trade news appeared [...]