Change I Can Believe In: 2009 Detroit Tigers

The 2008 Detroit Tigers finished in fifth best place in the American League Central Division, receiving the brown ribbon of sorrow for their effort. The Detroit Tigers were like Crystal Clear Pepsi. When it came down to it, this team had no pop, no fizz, no great taste. I think I'm actually convinced the 2008 Detroit Tigers made me dumber.

SEASON STARTS IN 6 MONTHS. CHANGE.

SS/3B

Brandon Inge will be the 3^rd basemen again. Management, apparently impressed with Inge’s .205 avg. and 11 shitbombs will move Guillen to LF. Apparently, Tigers management is willing to overlook this as long as Inge continues to wear his socks high. 

The only way I can justify Inge being on the field is if he our SS. With Renteria likely to be cut loose, even though he did just predict a 2009 WS title here, this leaves us with our biggest hole in our most important defensive position.

Catcher and SS, two positions where I am willing to allow you to hit your weight without me getting hysterical about it. Inge has great range, a great arm, played SS in college, and he also has high socks. At SS, he would have more opportunities for plays and his plus defense would allow more opportunities justifying his existence as a professional athlete.  Keep Guillen at 3rd, he was good there.

C

Dusty Ryan. Sure, He’ll hit .225, but, that’s about .150 better then I’d imagine Dane Sardinha would hit if he was there every day. I think Vance Wilson might be deceased, so, he’s not a viable option 

LF

Jim Leyland loves Marcus Thames. He says that every year, and he rewards his love for him by not playing him. Next year, I hope he’ll platoon with Matt Joyce.

 DH

Gary Sheffield was the cherry on top of this turd cake of a year. He decided he’d bitch about everything, suck at hitting, get paid a lot, and by all accounts just be a douche. BUT, he is swearing revenge on Carmona. Gary is good when mad. So, feel free to boo him and hit him with pitches, it’s for the good of the team. Also, we aren’t going to pay a guy with 499 HR’s to go away, so we are stuck with him. And he might literally murder one of our rivals best young pitchers. I support that.

My batting order

1. Granderson CF
2. Ordonez RF
3. Cabrera 1B
4. Polanco 2B
5. Guillen 3B
6. Sheffield DH
7. Thames/Joyce LF
8. Ryan C
9. Inge SS

I’ll talk more about this later.

188 days until opening day

http://s274.photobucket.com/albums/jj274/scollins243/?action=view&current=Movie.flv

Parallels Between Mighty Ducks 2 And The 2008 Detroit Tigers

(This is an actual t-shirt, you can buy through Grilli himself)

Like most things in life, I can draw direct parallels between one event, and Mighty Ducks 2. The 2008 Detroit Tigers are no exception.

1. THE TIGERS ACQUIRE NEW TALENT. Edgar Renteria, Dontrelle Willis, Miguel Cabrera, Jaque Jones, Denny Bautista.

MIGHTY DUCKS ACQUIRE NEW TALENT. Julie "the cat" Gaffney, Dean Portman, Luis Mendoza, Russ Tyler, Dwayne Robertson and of course Olympic gold figure skater Ken Wu.

Jacque Jones has had a very Ken Wu like season so far.

2. DETROIT TIGERS picked to win world series by Sports illustrated.

MIGHTY DUCKS FAVORITE FOR PRESTIGIOUS JUNIOR GOODWILL GAMES GOLD MEDAL.

Tigers sell record number of season tickets, some question if it's the greatest offense in Detroit history.

Mighty Ducks for some ungodly reason put on cover of Wheaties cereal. Hendrix, their chief sponsor, promises a future of action figures featuring the players.

3. TIGERS BUY INTO OWN HYPE. After starting strong against D2 (GET IT!) Fla. Southern, they coast through spring training with an unimpressive 15-14 record

MIGHTY DUCKS GET COCKY. They beat Trinidad to start off the tournament. Bombay starts attending posh L.A. parties with Kareem Abdul jabar and Wayne Gretzky and dreams of the day that the "Air-Bombay coaching loafer" is sold in stores.

Coach Bombay: Haven't you guys been training in the off-season?
Lester Averman: You know, I knew we forgot something.

In this case, the Trinidadian Junior hockey team is the equivalent to the Fla. souther Moccasins. Tigers beat moccasins 17-4, Team Trinidad goes down 12-1.

Also, the story of Team Trinidad being one of the top Junior hockey teams in the nation is something that is completely overlooked. I mean, I think Canada didn't even make the field. This, and Connie Moreau scoring the first goal against Iceland in the Championship kind of puts the Miracle on Ice game to shame.

4. TIGERS SUFFER HUMILIATING DEFEAT, LOSING TO CHI SOX 11-0

After the game, Leyland tears into the team like only a 145 year old man can and calls out much of the team. Ozzie Guillen, former MLB turd takes great pleasure in beating his rivals.

TEAM USA DOWNED BY TEAM ICELAND 12-1. Led by phenom and ex-city guys star Gunnar Stahl, Team Iceland dominates and embarrasses Team USA. EX NHL goon Wolf "the dentist" Stansson's team overmatches Bombay's squad. Bombay responds with emergence of his alter ego, captain blood, and makes them skate until they aren't HAVING FUN ANYMORE.

5. INJURIES TAKE A TOLL ON TIGERS. Along with numerous other injuries, Granderson starts off the season on the DL with a broken finger. Granderson is the definition of a 5 tool player. And, I mean tool in a good way this time.

ADAM BANKS INJURED. After watching this movie a couple hundred times, i'm convinced Bank's AKA cake eater is the only one with actual hockey talent on the team. All other players have one gimmick move such as skating fast (Luis), slap shot (Fulton), knuckle puck (Russ), Cowboyism (Dwayne), being a whiny bitch (Charlie), etc. Anyways, Banks hurts his wrist after a vicious slash. "2 Minutes?! Vell Vorth it."

Anyways, word is that Granderson took BP today relatively pain free and could play very soon. Banksy wakes up one day and the pain is gone. Crazy, right?

I am eagerly awaiting the Detroit Tigers real life similarity of the street puck game played on the mean streets of Los Angeles. It will probably involve wiffle ball and Clete Thomas beating the piss out of a 9 year old in the suburbs of Detroit after a dispute over if his ball completely cleared the tree for a HR, or simply landed in the tree, thus making it a live ball.
"eating ice cream with the enemy, huh, coach?"

The Tigers have had two great comeback wins against Minnesota (THE IRONY!). I've had the great pleasure of following these games through MLB gameday because Comcast likes to defecate on my soul as often as possible. So, things could start to turn around, and hopefully like D2 ends we will have the Tigers sitting around a campfire as Jason Grilli strums "we are the champions" and Leyland leads the team in a celebratory romp.

Oh, and if you haven't seen Mighty Ducks 2, I apologize for this mess of words. Just for you, and only you, here is Joel Zumaya drinking directly out of keg.

February Baseball

Today is the eve of the Tigers biggest game of the year that does not count and is played against a college team, the Florida Southern Moccasins. Or, as I sometimes call them, Florida Suckern! See what I did there? Now, it's your duty to listen to this. Hah, duty.

http://www.eharwell.com/turtle.wma

(just make sure to yell 2008 really loud at the end)

Todd Jones toes the mound to start off the pretend season. He might go for the complete game, or he might leave in the 2nd inning because we have 6 others already scheduled to pitch. We will see.

Obviously the big off season acquisition everyone is talking about is that Matt Mantei is a Tiger. Recovering from many catastrophic injuries, such as shark bite and a very nasty case of dirt in the eye, he is hopefully a piece of the bullpen that will not ultimately defecate on our souls when it really matters. Brandon Inge stood in the batters box and watched Mantei's stuff up close. Inge described his stuff as "nasty." Since we know Brandon Inge has a rich history of consistent hitting and not striking out, we know complements such as this are rare coming from him.

We also have Denny Bautista. I misread the article that I read when we signed him, and had a minor spaz attack thinking we signed Danny Bautista, the ROCK of the mid 90's Detroit Tigers outfielding core.I also read that Denny Bautista this off season was featuring a 98 MPH fastball and a "knee buckling curve." If we are lucky, he can maybe be as effective as Al Levine.

The Tigers also aqcuired Miguel Cabrera, Dontrelle Willis and Edgar Renteria. We also traded Cameron Maybin, Andrew Miller. So, pretty lame for an off season. Joel Zumaya was also injured when he crashed his motor bike when he was distracted while holding a guitar hero guitar into his flaming house in San Diego as God attempted to smite California. Fernando Rodney also has a bum shoulder right now. But, we our going to win every game 14-10 anyways, so who needs relievers.

Detroits/FlaSoMoc scheduled for a 1:05 start. Or, for my Hawaiian readers, that's a 7:05 am start. The game won't be televised, probably won't be on the radio, and will probably never be talked about, ever. Needless to say, this game is crucial in securing confidence for a long run into Octovember this year.