FanHouse Detroit

Though I suppose you could argue Dontrelle Willis was done for the year before ever throwing a pitch this season.

Anyway, as you may remember, Dontrelle hurt his knee back on April 11th when throwing a pitch and had to be placed on the disabled list. After returning from the injury, Willis was used out of the bullpen, but that didn't last too long. Willis rejoined the starting rotation after only one relief appearance for two starts before the team just pulled the plug on him and sent him to the minors. He hasn't pitched for Detroit since.

Now, as the coup de gras of Dontrelle's 2008 season, he's had a setback with his knee injury and will likely be done for the year.

Willis was scheduled to return to Detroit early this week to have his right knee examined, the team said Monday. That is the same knee he hyperextended in April, forcing him onto the disabled list for the first time in his big-league career.

The setback reduces the chance Willis will pitch again in the majors this season.

What's really worrisome here is that I'm not sure Dontrelle will be any better next season after he recovers from this knee injury. After all, I'm not sure his struggles in Detroit can be attributed to the knee seeing as how he walked seven hitters in his first start of the season before ever hurting the thing.

I think Willis is just suffering the effects of being ridden like a horse down in Miami all those years, and I don't know that he'll ever be the same again. Good thing the Tigers gave him that contract extension.

Detroit Lions fans will be thrilled to know that Mike Williams, the team's 2005 first-round pick who ballooned up to 270 pounds and never contributed anything to the offense, is suddenly taking his job seriously.

Jim Wyatt of the Tennesseean reports that Williams, now with the Titans, is so devoted to his job that he's down to 242 pounds and deflecting praise by saying he's just doing what was expected of him coming out of USC. When someone told Williams he was looking good, he replied:

"I was the No. 10 pick (in the draft),'' he said. "I'm supposed to look like that. It just so happens that I am finally doing what other teams picked me to do.''

Isn't that great, Lions fans? How come high-priced rookies so rarely look how they're supposed to look when they play in Detroit?

The biggest name on the free agent market this summer has found a new home, and it's not a home many people expected him to end up in. As he promised, Marian Hossa did indeed sign a contract for less than market value to win a Stanley Cup. The surprising part? It's a one year deal with the Detroit Red Wings.

In many places this will be spun as "Hossa just wants to win." This is complete and utter horsepucky. Hossa wants to have his cake and eat it, too. Prior to Detroit's one-year, $7.4 million offer, it looked like Hossa's choices were to take a monstrous deal from Edmonton or Vancouver, or sign for slightly less money with a more serious contender like Pittsburgh or Montreal. He seems to have definitely left a seven-year, $50 million offer from the Penguins on the table. Now Hossa gets his shot at the Cup this year, and if it works out he gets his huge payday next year. In the all-time Mercenary Move Hall of Fame, this one is a first-ballot inductee.

As many have already noted, Hossa fits in perfectly with the Wings. He's a great two-way player and this one year deal lets them shoot for a repeat in 2009, then leaves plenty of cap room to deal with Henrik Zetterberg and Johan Franzen, who will be UFAs after next year. In purely hockey terms, it's a great move for Hossa and Detroit. In terms of karma? Hossa's really tempting the universe on this one.

Just when you think things are starting to go right in Detroit, the Tigers take another big blow. Sure, the Kitties are two games over .500 now, have won their last six, and are only five games out of first place, but as I told you yesterday: not all is well in Tigerland.

Detroit had to place Magglio Ordonez on the disabled list on Sunday, and now 48 hours later, they may have to do the same thing with Miguel Cabrera.

Cabrera left in the third inning with a "tight left hip flexor," an injury that may or may not knock Cabrera from manager Jim Leyland's lineup. Cabrera had to leave the game after wobbling through some defensive maneuvers at first that appeared awkward and included one of Detroit's three errors.

"He's had this before," Leyland said of Cabrera, who was limping on and off the field in the early innings. The Tigers won't know until today if Cabrera will join Magglio Ordonez (disabled list, strained oblique muscle) as the latest middle-of-the-order bat to vacate the order.

Needless to say, if Cabrera has to join Maggs on the disabled list, it's probably going to temper any talk of the Tigers making a run at the White Sox for a while. The two of them have combined to hit 23 homers and drive in 98 runs in the first half of the season.

Any way you measure it, Joe Dumars is a successful man. He won two NBA titles as a player, had the league's annual sportsmanship award named after him, won another title as a general manager and has been inducted into the Hall of Fame.

And that's the stuff everyone knows about -- what most people don't know is that for 10 years after retiring as a player he served as CEO and president of a successful automotive supply company he founded. And as a father, he raised a son who just earned a scholarship to play Division I ball.

But for all that he's accomplished, there was one thing missing on his resume: he never finished college. This past May, he finally crossed that item off his list. From William Rhoden of the New York Times:

"Not having the degree was a void that I simply had to fill," Dumars wrote in an e-mail message. "My wife has her master's in education, and we've always stressed the importance of education to our two teenage kids. I just felt if I was going to stress the importance of education, I had to show them exactly how important it was."

So he completed the work. And last month his name was called along with more than 700 other graduates at McNeese State University's spring commencement ceremony. He said that earning the degree, a bachelor's in business management, was one of his greatest accomplishments. That's saying a lot.

I find this amazing: if anything, Dumars is proof that you don't need a college degree to be extremely successful in life, but he valued education so much that he put the time and energy into pursuing a diploma simply for the principle of the matter.

If there is any team that's incredibly sad to see interleague play end in 2008, it would be the Detroit Tigers. The Tigers feasted on their senior circuit competition, going 13-5, and have now won 17 of their last 21 games. They're finally over .500 for the first time this year at 41-40, and are within five games of the White Sox in the AL Central.

Of course, before catching the White Sox the Tigers will have to pass the Twins, and it so happens that they're starting a three game set in the Twinkiedome tonight, and play Minnesota four more times next week. It's the perfect chance to climb in to second place. If only they had Magglio Ordonez to help them out.

The Detroit Tigers placed right fielder Magglio Ordonez on the 15-day disabled list with a pulled muscle in his right side on Sunday.

Ordonez pulled his oblique muscle in the third inning of a 7-6 win over the Colorado Rockies on Saturday night.

That's got to be a kick in the teeth for Tigers fans who were just starting to get excited about this team.

Ordonez had his worst month of the season in June, hitting .266/.343/.403 with three homers and 15 RBI, but now that the Tigers are starting a stretch where 19 of their next 27 games are against division opponents, this isn't exactly the best timing. The team has called up Matt Joyce to replace Ordonez on the roster, but it's doubtful he can replace his production.

A day after they cut Najeh Davenport because of the team's glut of running backs, the Steelers had a scout at ex-Lions' running back Kevin Jones' workout.

There's something said for being thorough, as the Steelers now have another scouting report on Jones to stick into his file. But beyond that, I can't think of any logical explanation for why the Steelers would bother to show up, when 28 other teams didn't.

Jones would be no better than the team's No. 3 running back (behind Willie Parker and Rashard Mendenhall) if he signed, and because Mewelde Moore will return punts, Jones would likely not even dress on gamedays. Even if he's struggling to find a job, some team should be able to do better than that.

There are instances where the Steelers have taken unwanted guys and turned them into something--Charlie Batch is a great example. But in Jones' case, it's hard to think of any reason the Steelers would be interested. Hopefully Steelers scouts are even more thorough when it comes to scouting offensive linemen.

I think Steve Mariucci is a very good coach, one who deserves another chance at running an NFL team. He was successful with the 49ers, and although he was unsuccessful with the Lions, let's face it: Vince Lombardi couldn't win with the collection of stiffs Matt Millen has assembled in Detroit.

So I was glad to see that Mariucci hasn't shut the door on returning to coaching, even though the possibility may be remote:

"The right situation may never present itself again," Mariucci said, "because we've decided as a family not to move anymore. We are back in northern California in our home and we settled back in. I've moved my wife 18 times, and I don't want to move again, nor does she. Our home base is going to be in the Bay Area. It's that simple.

"For me to coach again, it either has to be on the West Coast or I would have to commute."

I'm not even sure what "commute" would mean for an NFL coach. Coaches hardly see their families even when they live in the same city. So if Mariucci is serious about not uprooting his family and doesn't want to be apart from them, his options are basically a return to Cal or the 49ers, or the Raiders, or Stanford. I hope one of those options presents itself.

Former Detroit Lions running back Kevin Jones, a free agent recovering from a serious knee injury, invited the entire NFL to a workout Saturday. Only four teams showed up.

Among those four teams -- the Lions, Dolphins, Packers and Steelers -- the best option might be for Jones to sign a deal to return to Detroit, assuming the Lions offer him one. In Miami, Green Bay and Pittsburgh he'd have almost no shot of rising any higher than third on the depth chart, and third-string running backs who don't play special teams don't have much job security.

In Detroit he'd at least have a shot at the starting job, although the Lions don't seem particularly interested in bringing him back -- they've even given away his jersey number.

Jones once looked like one of the league's up-and-coming young running backs, rushing for 1,133 yards and 4.7 yards a carry as a rookie. Since then he's never had even 700 yards or four yards a carry. At age 25, there's a chance that he's done.

The upside of doing a Magglio Ordonez impersonation is that it's relatively easy; you just need long, curly black hair and a Detroit Tigers uniform to pull it off and anyone that watches much baseball is going to know what you're doing.

The downside is, who has time these days to stand around in a Tigers uniform and make semi-mock Mags? That would be our good friend Todd Jones, who took advantage of the recent rain delay at Comerica to do his best 2006 ALCS-winning home run impersonation of Ordonez.



Okay, okay. For all my dislike of Jones (for fantasy reasons), I probably need to rethink the way I feel. Because that impression alone should be worth a lifetime of a 3.00 WHIP. Oh, and is there anything hotter than rain delay entertainment right now? Anything remotely close?

H/T: LBS