KC 2, Detroit 1: (What) Is Brad Ausmus Thinking?

     The rain delay in last night's Tigers game couldn't have possibly been timed any worse. Not just because it came right as Miguel Cabrera was stepping up to the plate in the bottom of the 9th, but because it gave Brad Ausmus nearly two hours to overthink what he would do next.

     The result was that he made nearly all the wrong moves, and cost the Tigers an important game against the now division-leading Kansas City Royals. There's absolutely no excuse for blowing a game to a division rival in which your starter threw 8 innings of 1-run ball, especially when it was so easily avoided.

     And there's even less excuse for getting out-managed by Ned Yost at any time, ever. And that's exactly what happened last night.

     Let's address the first major issue here: you don't pull your best hitter in the 9th inning of a 1-1 game. When that hitter is Miguel Cabrera, you don't pull him unless he has somehow lost the use of both his legs, and even then you weigh out your options first. And if for some reason you do pull one of the best hitters in baseball for a pinch-runner, you better have that runner do something. Yet, Ausmus never had Rajai Davis attempt to steal, even against a pitcher, in Jason Frasor, who is historically rather easy to steal on. So what, then, was the point of removing your best hitter, for a guy who's not going to steal anyway? I can understand the idea of playing to win in the 9th, but you still have to weigh the risk in switching out Cabrera against the possibility of that at-bat coming back around in the 10th.

     Which, of course, it did.

     And that brings us to the next issue: Hernan Perez shouldn't have even made this team out of spring training, much less been on the team to bat in Cabrera's spot in the 10th with the bases loaded. There's already a light-hitting backup infielder on the roster in Andrew Romine, and he can at least play defense and occasionally get a hit. Even so, there's no way any sane person would use him as a pinch hitter, so why would you use Perez in that spot? If Ausmus were so insistent on taking Miggy out, why not leave Rajai in and move JD to first? It's not like he'd be any worse defensively.

     So, knowing that Perez is going to be batting in Cabrera's spot, why would you have Anthony Gose and Ian Kinsler both bunt? Let's say, best case scenario, you get the runner to third. Perez goes up and does what he did, and you're still down to your last out. And that's assuming that said bunt(s) didn't result in at least one out, at which point Perez's at-bat ends the game.

     And that takes us up to Perez's at-bat. And the question has to be asked: with the bases loaded and nobody out for a rather ineffective Greg Holland, why even allow the worst hitting position player on the team to even swing the bat? If you absolutely must send him out there, tell him he is not to take the bat off his shoulder for any reason whatsoever. And yet, on a 1-1 count, he went swinging, right into a double play. And in doing so, he took the bat out of Victor Martinez's hands, allowing Holland to pitch around him. Imagine how different that game looks if V-Mart comes up with the bases loaded and one out, assuming Perez doesn't take a walk himself.

    Of course, one can't exactly absolve the offense of wrongdoing. JD Martinez has been abysmal at the plate over the last month, Yoenis Cespedes had a couple chances to come through late and failed at both, and he and James McCann both stepped to the plate with bases loaded and failed to produce. So it's fair to say Ausmus doesn't carry all of the blame here. But it's still his job to give his team the best opportunity to win, or as much as one can when the heart of the batting lineup is struggling and your best relief option outside of your closer has all of two months of major-league experience.

     And by any measure, he failed to do that.

     The next two series, with a resurgent Minnesota team and a white-hot Cardinals squad, aren't going to be any easier to face, so this was the Tigers' best chance to gain some ground in their division until they face the bottom-feeding Brewers.

     Let's hope Ausmus has figured out how to use his bench by then.

Prop 1, Round 2: When Scare Tactics Fail, Just Talk Down To Voters

     If you've been following the Proposal 1 debacle for any length of time (or read my last article on it), you've probably become desensitized to the constant threats of falling concrete and overly sensational TV ads about how drivers will swerve into school buses to avoid potholes if you don't approve this, and radio spots about how your young student drivers are at risk and WHY DO YOU HATE THE CHILDREN, which clearly was a message that voters haven't been fazed by, if the polls have been any indication.

     Of course, that might have something to do with the fact that it's hard to deploy such tactics when less than 20% of money raised by the proposed solution actually goes to roads in the first year. Because these roads will kill you if you don't give us more money now, but... eh, we still can wait a couple years to actually fix them.

     And people wonder why Michigan voters are so damn cynical.

     Having failed at that attempt to pull at your non-child-hating heartstrings, it didn't take long for Proposal 1's supporters to end the ongoing doomshow about how deadly our roads are, and skip right ahead to blasting their opponents as uninformed whiners.

     For example, as I started writing this last night, I also made the mistake of listening to 97.1 The Ticket's Eric Thomas, who never found an argument he couldn't reduce to "if you disagree with me, you're just a whiner/moron!" ET started off his show by declaring that those opposed to Proposal 1 are "low-information voters" and giving the sort of insight one would expect from a man who once worked for a year as a traffic reporter in DC and is therefore the preeminent expert on economic policy. Which is to say, the documented fact that Proposal 1 also generates $600 billion in non-road spending was met with "No that's not true. It's just not." And nothing further to back up that point.

     But the worst offender, by a long shot, is this condescending screed by the Freep's Brian Dickerson, who has decided that the problem is not that this bill is needlessly complicated, nor that the state legislature can't simply do the job that we elected them to do, nor that somehow this state can afford $1.8 billion in corporate tax cuts while those corporations are benefiting from the same infrastructure as the rest of us, but is asking voters to accept a regressive tax increase that will hit lower-income taxpayers hardest of all.

     No, according to Dickerson, the problem is that Michiganders are 'bitter, self-pitying whiners' who won't 'take care of their own property.' Of course, if Dickerson were actually paying attention instead of thinking up clever insults like "Michissipians" (whatever the hell that even means) and making strawman arguments about how we the taxpayers refuse to pay our fair share, he'd have known that the issue was never about not wanting to pay to fix roads, but rather not accepting a terribly crafted bill that likely won't fix anything anyway, when better options exist.

     It didn't have to come to this. The House last year approved a plan to fix roads without this additional tax increase, by simply changing how new tax revenue was spent. And with an increase of $4.5 billion in annual spending since Rick Snyder took office, it's not as though there wasn't money to work with. Funny how there was plenty of money to 'fix' the Michigan Business Tax, but none to be found for the roads.

     The idea that Michiganders want roads fixed for 'free' is beyond ridiculous. As though the fuel tax doesn't exist, nor any of the current tax money that's supposed to be used for roads. How can anyone legitimately suggest that it's somehow not the legislature's job to prioritize spending and re-allocate funding as needed? Is that not what they were elected for?

     And the claim that "there is no plan B" if this fails is falling on deaf ears as well. In fact, there's been several proposed alternatives once this mess of a bill is shot down for good, most of which are far better than this travesty. Even the straight fuel tax increase proposed last year sounds infinitely more reasonable than what we're being asked to buy today.

     By the end of today, it appears that Michigan voters will have finally decided that threats, scare tactics, and politicians and talking heads alike lecturing from on high to us like we're children, aren't effective strategies in selling us on their snake oil.

     Maybe now a legitimate solution can be found.