Sticky this.

Wee Cardinals off to a 2-1 start... And Pujols 5 for 10 with 3 walks. Please, for the love of christ, keep this up.

Go Rays.

Towles is the hand-standing, homerun hitting man.

lol Detroit. How the "mighty" have reverted back to 2003.

Let's go Reds!

Losing streaks? Snell doesn't do that!

I am not a fan of Jose Valverde.

Well when you like double your payroll to have last year's Marlins team what do you expect

Hey, I'm not pissed. Detroit sucking makes me able to laugh at the Detroit bandwagoners up here.

It's a long season. Remember how the Yankees started last year? Detroit will still make the playoffs, and probably with an impressive record.

Not saying they wont. But every time since at least 1999 that they've started 0-5, they've ended well under .500 for the season. And the way they're playing, on both sides of the ball, it's kind've embarassing. Saturday I remember was terrible for them, 6th inning, White Sox up 5-3 or something, and the White Sox had a total of 3 hits. The pitching is terrible right now.

No team in the history of baseball has started the season 0-7 and made the post season. They are a bit overrated, their starting pitching staff outside Verlander is terrible and so is their bullpen. Their starting line up is OLD outside of Granderson and Cabrera. I think people might be fooling themselves if they expect Ordonez and Renteria to put up numbers similar to the ones they had last year considering their ages.

People who used to wear Tigers uniforms =/= Tigers today. I hate how people act like because it's the same team name, history is doomed to repeat itself, despite the fact that NOBODY from the 1999 Detroit Tigers is still with the team.



Bonderman and Willis aren't bad pitchers. Willis just had bad luck last year. He's got a better defense playing behind him this year, and that should help. And despite his age, Kenny Rogers is still a competent starting pitcher.

I'll give you that they're overrated and over-aged, but I guarantee the Tigers will make the postseason on at least a wild card this year.

Bonderman has never had a season where he posted an ERA under 4.00 or a WHIP under 1.20 and has only pitched 200 innings ONCE in his career. He has very poor mechanics and it wears him down the longer he pitches through a season. Last year was not a bad luck year for Willis, all his stats since 2005 have been getting worse (earned runs, strike outs, IP). He is basically a two pitch pitcher who has benifited heavily from his deceptive wind up which isn't that deceptive anymore. He gave up 8 walks in his first appearance this year. The move from the NL to the AL won't benifit him that much either. Rogers is serviceable but thats about it at this stage in his career. I wonder if he can stay healthy the whole season too.

A lot of the Tigers players value is bloated from their run at the World Series. Sure they will pick it up but I still think the Indians are the better team in the division and will win it because of their better pitching staff and an offense that is just as good as the Tigers.

Yeah but you gotta look at their lineup. It's early year and they aren't hitting yet. Cabrera, Polanco, Rodriguez, and Renteria are all batting 200 or worse. I mean there best hitter is freaking Clete Thomas. Give em some time to warm up.

im not gonna read all of this

detroit has good pitching and a powerful batting lineup
they are just sucking rrreeeally bad, and playing shitty - and no one can figure out why

other than a bad bullpen

let's have hope for grandersons return to be quick
he plays like a kid, then they all play like a kid
he'll be stealing bases and tigers will be speedy and energetic

i believe this team can't get their offense going w/o him
and i also believe this team needs rodney and zumaya more than they think

atleast thats what i hope

but until then tigers need to start making plays on their own

Woo Cardinals 6-2 start!

tigers won last night

1-7 baby

Tigers are going to struggle, I know it's a long season but still...they have the Indians in their division. (Both are in the bottom two spots at the moment..)

So they aren't guaranteed a spot within their division because I think the Indians will come out of there. And the Wild Card spots are hard to get in baseball, especially when the Yanks or Boston normally obtain one of the spots.

Go Reds! WHAT WHAT!

I never said either of them were aces, simply above average. I'll give you that Bonderman tends to wear out as the season progresses, but Willis is better than you give him credit for.

Willis' DICE, (Defense-Independent Component ERA) which is made up of defense-independent factors like strikeouts, walks, homers, innings pitched, and hit by pitches, was 3.91 last year, rounding to the nearest .01. Compare this to an accepted ace pitcher, in this case I'll use Josh Beckett, who's DICE last year was 2.84, and you'll see a sizable difference in Beckett's favor. But compare him to, say, Josh Fogg, who's a pretty average pitcher and has a DICE of 4.97 and you'll see a large difference in Willis' favor. He's no ace by any means, but he's a far above average pitcher, and Detroit's D will help him turn it around this year.

Also, just for kicks, Bonderman's DICE last year was 3.95

If you'd like, you can check my math. The formula for DICE is

3 + [13HR + 3 (BB+HBP) - 2k]/IP, where HR = home runs, BB = walks, HBP = hit by pitch, k = strikeouts, and IP = innings pitched. I got my data from baseball-reference.com.

Thats cute but neither of them broke the top 50 in pitcher vorp last year, and Willis didn't even break top 100. Tracshel was ahead of him last year. Willis was plain god awful last year. His FIP era was in line with his regular ERA which isn't good for him.

Sabermetric buffs aren't projecting him to be anything more than a no. 5 this year, I don't know why you are. Josh Fogg is way below average, hes never thrown 200 innings in his life and has only thrown over 100 strikes in a season ONCE. His quality of work would make him a 6th starter.

None of that takes into account Bonderman's season splits. He falls apart in the second half, hes not a reliable pitcher and probably one of the most overrated pitchers out there, even in his break out season.

Bonderman is league average, Willis is at below level.

Certainly the Tigers will turn it around, but I don't see them winning the division. Where the wild card ends up at is anyone's guess at this time. No matter how it pans out though, its usually a game different in the AL, not 7.

Tell that to the '07 Mets.

1-8 baby!

Jose Guillen has had his steroids related suspension over turned as owners and players have agreed to a stricter drug testing

edit:

and just like that Dontrelle Willis is out of the game in the first inning, like I've been saying, don't expect much from this guy this season.

Eat that fucking Wang boston. 2 Hitter. Should of been no hitter.

Sample size. One bad outing does not equal a bad season.

his first game was great

also tigers still won :$

7 walks, 3 runs in 5 innings is great? He had two walks and no outs before he hyper extended his knee in this one. The reason why this last outing was bad is because it will probably cost him another outing. He is obviously having some mechanical issues that are carrying over from last season.

Motherfuck Boston and all their faggoty fans.

I'd be more mad at Borowski than Boston for that. Cleveland has three great pitchers in their pen who could close out games with two to three run leads yet they have one of their worst doing the job.

"Manny took such a pretty swing," Red Sox manager Terry Francona said.

What a fucking faggot.

"And OH-EM-GEE I love his hair" swooned Francona.

Manny does have a sweet swing, brah.

Who gives a shit if Francona says his swing is "pretty?" Manny is the most entertaining player in baseball.

Here's a cool article about relief pitching and closers.

http://baseballprospectus.com/article.php?articleid=2603

I guess it kinds of refute my point about Joe Borowski, but Joe was skating the edge last year with the amount of people he was putting on base in alot of those save situations he converted. The fact he is tossing his pitches 4 miles under what they usually is not a good sign either, especially when your fastball tops out at 88 mph. When your stuff is not that good in the first place, 83 mph fastball is going to get you into alot of trouble and it has for him so far this season.

I think you should at least want your closer to have an ERA somwhere in the mid 3s and a WHIP hovering around 1.1

They expanded on the premise of this article a lot in the 2004 book "Baseball Between The Numbers." BP does some really neat stuff if you're into baseball analysis.

I have to agree with the idea behind this article, too. What's the point of only using your most elite bullpen option in only a few situations? What happened to closers like Goose Gossage and Roy Face (a truly elite bullpen pitcher who should be in the HOF by any standards) who would come in and close games by pitching about 3 innings of work when the starter fizzled? You'd think at least a few teams would use this strategy, at the very least statistically inclined teams...pitchers like Huston Street and Mariano Rivera and Jonathan Papelbon could do a lot more than they do.

5-10 baby!

That Boston game was retarded, but the Mets won again.

Hay look! The Tigers won a couple games finally!

Reds starting to suck again....

Am I the only one midly impressed by Lohse of the Cardinals? .77 ERA in 4 games. Only thing against him to me is him only having 10 SO. But still, he's throwing the pitches to get guys out.

Damn CC is pitching like shit. Maybe all those extra innings pitched are starting to catch with him? Probably not since his velocity isn't down. Maybe he is suffering from Brad Lidge syndrome after getting lit up in the playoffs.

Yea he's solid, but it's still early to be getting excited over low ERA's. But the Cards are playing pretty sick right now. Really impressed with them in the NL



Hah, CC is a bitch. Fuck cleveland.

Yanks are getting rocked.

Holy fucking epic, 20+ inning game.

ive been watching since the seventh
its what nl baseball is all aboot

Colorado wins in 22.

Wow.