Gammons Gives Hope
By Blake VandeBunte • Feb 26th, 2009 • Category: 2009 SeasonCertified baseball genius, Peter Gammons has an article up on ESPN.com about how a healthy Tigers team can be dangerous. Gammons cites the Tigers injury problems from last year as well as deficiencies on defense and on the mound.
Detroit’s fall last season could be attributed to three categories: pitching, defense and injuries.
Justin Verlander, who made a run at the American League Cy Young Award in 2007, got into bad habits in spring training and finished 11-17. Jeremy Bonderman came down with a blood clot in his right arm and made just 12 starts. Nate Robertson finished with a 6.35 ERA. And Dontrelle Willis could not throw a strike.
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As for the defense, everyone realizes the Tigers had problems last season. Pudge Rodriguez and Edgar Renteria played like old players. The Carlos Guillen-Miguel Cabrera flip-flop also did not work right away.
Now they have what Leyland thinks is one of the best defensive left infields with a healthy Adam Everett and Inge, who is one of the premier defenders at third base.
This is our hope as Tigers fans isn’t it? We all know that the Tigers should get more out of their pitching staff than they did last season. Everything that could go wrong did go wrong in 2008. There’s no way their luck will be as bad in 2009, right?
Gammons also mentions that the Tigers defense is much improved. While it may be difficult to see the upgrades in just watching a game here and there, a teams overall defense cannot be understated. Many balls that were singles through the holes in 2008 won’t get through in 2009. That stuff adds up and hopefully we’ll see that in the win column.
Blake VandeBunte is a posting fiend.
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Mitch “the wild thing” Williams predicts the tigers will win the Central division.