(First off, an apology for having completely up and bailed on this thing for the better part of a month, but the time just hasn't been there of late. Hopefully now I'll actually stick to this thing for more than a few days, now that I've completely abandoned what few readers stumbled across it in the first place. So I'll kick off my long-anticipated (?) comeback by putting a wrap on the Tigers' season before I move on to... God-only-knows-what.)
My worst baseball-related nightmare has come true (apart from, perhaps, the Tigers trading Max Scherzer and Miguel Cabrera to the Yankees for Alex Rodriguez and the reanimated corpse of Nate Cornejo): The Red Sox and the Cardinals will be playing in this year's World Series. And for the record, I have no rooting interest and I won't be watching. If I did, though, I'd be rooting for the Cards to stomp the Sox into the ground in a 4-game series in which St. Louis wins every game by at least 6 runs. Why? Because I am beyond fucking sick of this "#teamofdestiny" bullshit being spewed by Sox fans, expecting the country to rally behind Boston because, y'know, karma.
I'm sure I've mentioned it before, but the reason I hate the Red Sox, and Boston teams in general, so much is because of the ignorant, know-nothing mouth-breathers who comprise the vast majority of their fanbase, their illiterate moron of a mayor included. These people walk among us, and it disgusts me. The same people who chant "steroids" every time Jhonny Peralta comes to the plate, having conveniently forgotten that David Ortiz still plays for them. The same people who think Dustin Pedroia should win MVP over Cabrera, Mike Trout, or Chris Davis, not based on stats or facts of any sort, but because of grit, heart, scrappiness, intangibles, and other meaningless tripe of the sort. The same people who won't think twice to run damn near anyone not named Pedroia out of town on a rail and trash the hell out of them, no matter what they might have done for the team, including the manager who led them to their first World Series in 86 years! Up until 2004, they wanted your pity because of some ridiculous 'curse,' and ever since, they've been the most insufferable pricks in all of sports. Moving on to actual Tigers-related business...
It's just the way it works with this team sometimes: when it goes wrong, it all goes wrong at once, and in the most spectacular fashion. Game 6 against the Red Sox, in particular, proves this.
Bullpen meltdown? Check. Completely stalled offense wasting a masterful performance by the starter? Check. Prince Fielder failing miserably at every facet of the game? Check, and check. Where in the hell did he go once the playoffs started? Between baserunning blunders, rally-killing at every possible opportunity, complete defensive indifference, and the comments he made during and after the series, Prince risks becoming the most hated Tiger in this town since Juan Gonzalez. Yeah, he did what Prince always does in the regular season, but a lot is expected from a guy who signed the ridiculous deal he did, especially in the postseason. If he comes back in 2014 and puts all his off-field and on-field struggles behind him, though, he should be able to avoid that fate.
That said, I don't know how in the hell Miguel Cabrera is still walking at this point in time, much less hitting a baseball! Turns out he's got a grade 2 or 3 groin strain, which could potentially require offseason surgery. I know a lot of people were criticizing Jim Leyland for running him out there every day towards the end of the regular season, myself included, but if this is as serious as it appears, then it's highly unlikely that a few more days of rest would have done much good, nor that playing through it did any greater damage to it. The good news is that, if it's checked out and treated very soon, as opposed to trying to rehab it first and having to undergo the surgery anyway, all indications seem to be that he should be 100% healthy to start spring training next year.
As for the bullpen... I tend to question Leyland's obsessive mixing and matching of relievers far more than the general effectiveness of the 'pen. Pulling your likely Cy Young winner after just over 100 pitches in the playoffs, burning through four different relievers over the course of an inning, and not leaving any of them in long enough to face more than one pitcher, tends to mean you don't get the benefit of the doubt. Both times he did this, it led to game-tying or game-winning grand slams. The first one turned the series around, the other put the nail in the coffin.
Finally, looking forward to next season. I don't care what other moves you make in this offseason, Dave Dombrowski. I don't care if you make any other moves this offseason. You can spend the next three months campaigning to replace Bud Selig, for all I care. But please, for the love of fuck, sign Omar Infante to at least a three year deal! I'll address the other potential offseason moves in a post later this week, but I just felt the need to put that out there.
This team has been absolutely frustrating to watch at times, especially for the last month or so, and it's been an absolute joy at others. It feels like this team fell short of expectations, but then again, maybe our expectations were too high in the first place. And even so, look at all they managed to accomplish along the way. We saw possibly the greatest hitter of our generation flirt with a second consecutive Triple Crown, then tell his strained groin to fuck off and continue hitting like crazy. We saw a guy two years removed from winning the Cy Young get completely overshadowed by two of his rotation mates, and saw them all combine to strike more batters out than any other pitching staff in major league history. We even watched them make the playoffs for a third consecutive year, something this team hasn't done in over 100 years.
Certainly it's hard not to be bitter about the way it all ended. But whether you realize it or not, it's a damn good time to be a Detroit Tigers fan. And by all indications, the good times ain't over yet.
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