BATTER UP: DETROIT TIGERS

Counting down the seconds till Opening Day when life begins anew involves providing a "starting nine" of obscure trivia, fun facts, high points and low moments for all 29 major-league teams, and if there's time, the Tampa Bay Devil Rays too! Presenting: The Detroit Tigers.

1. Thirty-dollar Prada bags aren't the only thing that's hot in downtown Detroit: The Tigers have already sold more tickets for this season than they did in either 2002 or '03; that's what making the playoffs for the first time in two decades does. By the way, since when is Prada spelled with a 6?
2. Now, the bad news: Teams tend to regress in the season following a big improvement. If you roll back about half of last year's 24-win jump, that leaves the Tigers with a pedestrian 83-79 record.
3. Didn't they add Gary Sheffield (top photo) to a pennant-winning team that has tons of pitching? Hey, before last year the White Sox added slugger Jim Thome to their '05 pennant winners and it was generally thought they would be a sure thing to repeat, but they went from 99 wins to 90 and missed the playoffs -- with Thome hitting 42 homers and putting up an on-base plus slugging (OPS) of more than 1.000. More on that in a bit.
4. They're loaded with lefties: Tigers fandom counts Michael Moore and Tom Hayden, one of the authors of the Port Huron Statement. Tigers bloggers have also congregated under the banner of DIBS -- Detroit Independent Baseball Scribes -- which also sounds rather seditious. Next thing you know, the U.S. National Security Agency will put a wire-tap on the Tigers' bullpen phone.
5. The Ballad of Les Moss: If you never heard of him, that's the point. Many of the players who matured into stars with the good Detroit teams of the 1980s -- Jack Morris, Dan Petry, Alan Trammell, Lou Whitaker, Lance Parrish -- played for Moss in the minors and he became the manager of the big club in 1979. However, as Eno Talks Baseball tells it, Moss lasted less than half a season -- the Tigers weren't losing, but had a now-or-never chance to hire Sparky Anderson.
   
   Anderson went on to become the first manager to win World Series in both leagues. Moss never got another shot at managing, and he never got to have his picture taken with the Dead Milkmen.
6. What was with the pitchers making all those throwing errors in the World Series? Like the Kennedy-Johnson similarities, Stonehenge and the popularity of Grey's Anatomy, it's one of those things for which there is no answer. It's really amazing, though, that Detroit Lions general manager Matt Millen didn't try to sign any of the Tigers pitchers to play quarterback after they started throwing the ball about as accurately as a half-lit Rex Grossman during the Chicago Bears' bye week.
   
   Man, ragging on Matt Millen and Rex Grossman never goes out of season.
7. Retro Cool Tiger: Lou Whitaker (second base, 1977-95) was born 20 years too soon. The sportswriters of his era never completely got him in the Hall of Fame balloting. Whitaker at his peak was comparable to Ryne Sandberg; he had borderline Hall of Fame stats, but dropped off the ballot after only one year.
   
   Secondly, who knows what Whitaker, who had the rep for being a flake -- remember the time he forgot to take his uniform to the All-Star Game and wore a Tigers shirt he bought at the concession stand? -- would have got into if he was playing today. Would he have worn a portable music player on to the field, like Manny Ramirez? Would he have end up on the disabled list after an all-night Nintendo Wii Madden marathon? Would he show up on Deadspin every week? Almost certainly.
8. Where's Bob Probert and Joey Kocur when you need them? The Tigers had Red Sox had a beanball war on Saturday. The games don't count, but apparently the hard feelings are for real. The first Tigers-Red Sox game is on May 14, by the way.
   
   
   
9. Need-to-know: The Tigers seem destined to continue the Detroit tradition of winning teams that didn't last. Sheffield should help Detroit with its notorious lack of plate discipline but the Tigers didn't need another bat. They needed more pitching, even though they did lead the AL in earned-run average. Why? There's simply no way they can count on getting the same performance from a starting rotation that consists of 42-year-old Kenny Rogers and a bunch of youngsters who may have to take one step backwards this season in order to take two steps forward in the future. Justin Verlander is the only one of the young starters who isn't vulnerable, since he's a fastball pitcher. (Note: This was written before Verlander got lit up for six runs over two innings in his spring training start on Saturday.)
   
   What got lost in the fog of TV hype last fall was the strength of Detroit's hitting (save for the inability to work counts). The Tigers were fifth in the AL in runs scored and every regular was close to a league-average hitter except second baseman Plácido Polanco, who had an off-year before bouncing back to win ALCS MVP honours. They had balanced strength, but that's not sexy to talk about, so no one talked about it.
   
   It should translate into Detroit scoring about the same number of runs in 2007. As for the pitching, everything fell just so last season and it's hard to see that happening again. Don't be surprised if by mid-season, the story with the Tigers all focus on what happened to their young pitchers. With pitchers, success does not move in a straight line.

That's all for now. Send your thoughts to neatesager@yahoo.ca.