Single A Champions

It’s the last week of November, get out the tequila, you know what time it is! What's that you screamed at your computer screen? Yep, you nailed it, the release of the annual ranking of baseball prospects!

No real surprises here in the Tigers top 5. Cameron "megajesus" Maybin top's the list followed by the good doctor, Andrew Miller. Brent Clevlen comes in at 3rd. And, I'm sure all of 4 of my readers are extremely upset with me that I didn't include a "Clevlen Rocks!" joke here. I'd apologize, but I really wouldn’t mean it. That show made me upset. This just reminded me how much I hated Whose line is it anyway?....Serenity now... My main man Jair "mcnair" Jurrjens is #4 with Jordan "the hata" Tata rounding out the top 5.

If I had to place a value on a 1-10 scale of each of how important these prospects are to the Tigers organization, this is how I’d do it. Tata-7, Jurrjens-8, Clevlen-7, Miller-9.5 and finally Maybin I’d give a 14.

In other random news, Sheffield continues to brag about giving noogies to Abreu in the Yankee’s lockeroom, and Casey is back for another year. You’d really think that signing a 1^st baseman would emit a reaction from me, but I’m amazingly numb to this whole thing. Casey was a wang-tang disappointment for the season, but he really was the only good player on the Tigers this World Series. Besides Rogers, who pitched with pine tar on his hand which the media basically equated to pushing elderly women down flights of stairs.

Going into this off-season, I really would not have been opposed to moving Guillen to 1^st and picking up a 3B and moving Inge to SS. The production Guillen gives you at SS is pretty sexy, but the amount of errors he committed were bogus and I worry about his range with his knee. With him at 1B, this really isn’t a concern whatsoever. Inge has terrific range at 3B, but the SS has more balls hit to him so it might be prudent to take advantage of his range and arm strength and move him to SS. Plus, Inge’s #’s are pretty sub-par for a 3B. There are many upgrades available. At SS, his .253 average and 27 Hr’s still make for a pretty above average SS. Well, maybe next year. Guillen is solid fundamentally, and he was healthy all of last year, so I look for some improvement to his consistency.

It’s the end of November, so I feel it is now safe to assume that the Tigers roster will remain completely unchanged in the next 5 months. So, I feel it’s the perfect time to introduce the starting lineup if I were manager.

1. Granderson
2. Polanco
3. Guillen
4. Sheffield
5. Ordonez
6. Rodriguez
7. Monroe
8. Casey
9. Inge

My projected Leyland lineup. Logically it makes zero sense. But this seems to be how his twisted brain works.

1. Rodriguez
2. Monroe
3. Sheffield
4. Casey
5. Ordonez
6. Granderson
7. Guillen
8. Polanco
9. Inge

Sadly, this is the kind of nonsense that I doodle during all of the expensive classes I go to. Yes, I create hypothetical lineups and I draw pictures of me on the Tigers robbing homeruns in center field. Don’t judge.

Buck up, 124 days until opening day and 92 days until we mervin the Phillies.

Tigers Acquire Pedro Cerrano

When I found out the Tigers traded for Gary Sheffield I ran around the house in a frenzy. The only way I can describe it would be comparing it to the Ultimate Warrior running into the ring and annihilating Randy Savage and then doing the legendary Warrior Spaz out in the middle of the ring. In a sense, Sheffield reminds of the Ultimate Warrior. Both have been accused of steroids and both are at their absolute best when you make them angry.

The Sheffield batting stance bat wiggle has scared me shitless for the last 14 years of my life. It has also inspired little league baseball players across the nation to have absolutely horrific batting stances. This trade provides us with arguably a top 10 hitter that is universally feared to bat in the middle of our line up. In his last 3 healthy seasons he hit no worse then .290, 121 Rbi's and 34 Hr's. Wa wa wi wa! He also provides a rock in the middle of the lineup that is patient at the plate and finished in the top 10 in MVP voting in his last 3 years. His injury was completely fluky last year, and he has been cleared to be healthy going into next year. If you remember during game 4 he hit 4th in the "most feared lineup of all-time" for the Yankees.

A lot of haters have been upset with who we gave up for Sheffield. We gave up arguably our best pitching prospect not named Andrew Miller in Humberto Sanchez and also gave up two single A pitchers most notably Kevin Whelan. If you are a goober like me, you'll remember Sanchez had arm trouble last year and was unable to finish the year. Also, he is a large man and some doubt that with his chunkiness he'd ever be healthy for an entire year. He is a great talent, no doubt, but a) he's unreliable right now and b) there's a 99.5% he won't play in Detroit next year. Also, as long-time depressed Tiger fans we've really only been able to be excited about our prospects in the last decade. We over value them way too much. Unless you started being a Tigers fan last year, you have no idea how many prospects failed miserably. Everyone isn't Zumaya or Verlander.

Our lineup is getting pretty fogeyish; the time to win is now. We traded ZERO major league players and added Sheffield. His presence in the middle of the lineup should allow all of our players to see better pitches and should help us out top to bottom. With Jair Jurrgens, Tata and Miller providing depth, we will be alright.

Verlander won ROY, Leyland won coach of the year. In other news, water is still wet.

Smoke on the Walker is most likely to be an Oriole in the next couple of days, and the Tigers are rumored to be involved with many potential free agents/trades. People actually being somewhat excited to play in Detroit for the first time in my lifetime is literally setting this up to be one of the more sexy off seasons of our lifetime.

Here is your bonus for reading all of this mindless dribble. http://youtube.com/watch?v=SNEd4KH_A4s

136 days until opening day.

2ND PLACE!

First off let me apologize personally to all my loyal readers, all 7 of you. I know after the World Series ended you've been on this website refreshing it every 5 minutes only for my drab, depressing World Series preview to pop up. Well, good news, I'm done pouting and ready to accept reality.

After punching a hole in a wall in my house after game 4 and literally almost having man tears come down my face as I was dressed as Master Splinter during a Halloween party at my house during game 5...I feel like I'm almost ready to embrace the off-season. Almost. First off, I want to give a hearty wag of the finger to the Tiger's World Series performance. It's incredibly bittersweet that the Tigers played their two worst weeks of baseball during the last week of the regular season and the World Series which cost us a division and world championship. 5 errors in 5 games by the pitchers. I felt like my heart got mcgahee'd. This was simply one of the stupidest championship performances I've ever seen.

Now, that I've once again needlessly depressed myself yet again, I'm starting to twitch uncontrollably at the thought of 2007. Our pitching should be as good if not better then this year. With Don Slaught "wanting to spend time with his family," hopefully Leon Durham will be promoted and we can learn one of the basic rules of baseball, that is taking a pitch and swinging at the pitch you want and not being at the mercy of the pitcher every game. One of the most important off-season moves was already made, and that was re-signing Dombrowski to a 4 year extension. Even though I still might want to judo chop him for the 2003 season, he has proven that he is one of the elite GM's in all of baseball. I mean, we traded an attempted ax murderer for the future ALCS MVP. That's smarts.

This off-season is going to be to be sexy. So far, we've been rumored to be acquiring Barry Bonds, Manny Ramirez, Daisuke Matsuzaka, Carlos Lee, Alfonso Soriano, Frank Thomas, Adam Dunn, Aramis Ramirez, Mark Teixeira just to name a few. We are also rumored to be trading everyone not named Zumaya, Verlander and Guillen. So, this might actually be interesting.

146 days until opening day, Go Tigers.