Posts tagged Miguel Cabrera at FanHouse

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Before the season started, the Detroit Tigers were the popular pick amongst baseball fans and experts alike as the eventual World Series champion. After adding Miguel Cabrera to a potent lineup that already included hitters like Magglio Ordonez, Gary Sheffield, Carlos Guillen, Curtis Granderson, and Ivan Rodriguez, there was talk that the Tigers would score 1,000 runs this season.

Who knew they'd need to? Though most people were aware that the Detroit bullpen would be a problem area, I don't think anybody thought they would be as bad as they have been in 2008. So now here we sit on August 7th, and the Tigers find themselves in a tailspin.

After building up some momentum in recent weeks to get back into the AL Central race, the Tigers have now lost six in a row to fall three games under .500. They're also on the verge of being swept by the division leading Chicago White Sox and falling 9.5 games out of first place, which could effectively end any hope they have of playing this October.

So will the Tigers pull the plug on their season tonight, or are they going to rise up and start mauling people again? Find out after the jump.

While I don't think the Red Sox are seriously considering trading Manny Ramirez anywhere, the fact they've come out and said they would think about it has been more than enough for teams to come calling. There have been rumors that the Red Sox are having conversation with the Phillies, Dodgers, and most surprising of all, the Florida Marlins.

Considering that the Marlins spent the last off season shipping Miguel Cabrera and Dontrelle Willis north to Detroit instead of paying them, it's somewhat surprising that they would want to add Manny's contract to their payroll, but according to Ken Rosenthal the idea isn't that crazy.

Manny to the Marlins? The idea, first reported by SI.com, is not as wacky as it sounds.

The chances of the Red Sox trading Manny Ramirez remain slim, but executives from at least one rival club in touch with Boston are convinced that the Sox are intent on purging their left fielder.

Okay, so while that probably hurt like hell, I in no way feel sorry for that Orioles fan who just took a foul ball off his face. The guy stood there staring at the ball as it was in the sky coming towards him, then saw as the ball began to come down above him.

Now, maybe he never had to take physics in high school, and never had the laws of gravity explained to him. Maybe he thought a giant gust of wind was going to come and blow the ball away. Or maybe he just had a lot more faith in Miguel Cabrera's ability to catch the ball than he should have.

Did you see the glance he gave Cabrera afterward? It screamed, "What the hell, dude? Why didn't you catch that?" Of course, the look quickly morphed into "It hurts! It hurts! I want my mommy!" Seriously, how dumb do you have to be to stare at a baseball coming right for you and never try to catch it or at least get out of the way?

After watching "The Wire" on HBO for so many years, I knew the Baltimore public school system had it's flaws, but I had no idea things were this bad.

(An extra baseball glove to Busted Coverage)

Our MLB editor provides weekly dispatches from major league games in Notes From the Clubhouse.

With 64 games to go, the ledger is even for the Detroit Tigers. They leave Baltimore at 49-49 -- no small feat considering they were nine games below .500 at the end of May. Still, Jim Leyland's club has a long way to go to live up to the lofty preseason expectations placed upon them.

The Tigers trail the Twins by six games and the White Sox by 6 1/2 in the AL Central, and with the way the Rays, Red Sox and Yankees are playing, the wild card probably isn't an option. Resurrections aren't unheard of in the three-division era. Just look at the Phillies last year or the 2005 Astros, who were 36-41 on July 1, but ended up qualifying for the playoffs.

But those teams had horses and they had a bit of magic too (or mojo or just good fortune, whatever you want to call it). The Phillies had an irrepressible offense led by Jimmy Rollins, Chase Utley and Ryan Howard and won 13 of their final 17 games. The Astros had a formidable three-headed monster in Roger Clemens, Roy Oswalt and Andy Pettitte and they won games 8-6, 12-8 and 7-6 down the stretch when they weren't stifling opposing teams with their pitching.

Unfortunately for Leyland, it doesn't look like this edition of the Tigers has the horses or the spark to mount a comeback.

Obviously the fantasy season is past the halfway point, but you gotta work with me here. There aren't any games that count for the next few days, so it's the perfect time to formulate these teams. Unlike the actual All-Star game, there are different parameters for judging who makes the fantasy All-Star team. Value matters. For example, Hanley Ramirez is obviously the best fantasy player in baseball. He was a high first round pick in every draft, though, so he's not really exceeding expectations.

There's a reason you make the fantasy All-Star team this way ... owners don't win leagues by drafting Hanley Ramirez first overall. You do, however, win your league by loading up on value picks like Josh Hamilton and Geovany Soto ... while you lose your league by taking some of the big names I'm going to list on the "bad" team.

I've named each team after their backstop. Why? I felt like it.

Let's have fun.

TEAM GEO (these are the fantasy All-Stars)

C - Geovany Soto -- You can convince me that you thought Geo was a top ten catcher and that he'd hit 20 home runs coming into the season. You can't convince me that you had him top three and on pace for almost 30.

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.

While the failures of Dontrelle Willis in 2008 have been well documented here at FanHouse the last couple of days, it turns out not everything is going horribly awry in Detroit for the Tigers. After all, Willis was basically just a throw-in (a $27 million throw-in, but a throw-in nonetheless) in the deal the Tigers made to bring in Miguel Cabrera, and after he got off to a slow start to the season, his bat has been catching fire as of late, as have been the other bats in Detroit's lineup.

Cabrera hit a walk-off home run in the ninth inning to give the Tigers a 2-1 win over the White Sox this afternoon, and help complete a sweep of the AL Central division leaders. The win was Detroit's fifth victory in their last six games, and they've crept to within striking distance of the White Sox, moving to within eight games.

Of course, even though the Tigers offense is starting to come to life now that the weather is warming up, the real key to whether or not the Tigers are going to make a run is still, and always will be, their pitching staff. Which is why they have to be happy with what they saw in their three games against the White Sox.

The trio of Nate Robertson, Justin Verlander, and Kenny Rogers combined to go 23.1 innings while allowing only five runs, 16 hits, and three walks (Verlander's performance being a work of art on Wednesday night). This against a team that had been averaging over eight runs a game during a seven-game win streak. It's only been six games, and the loss of Jeremy Bonderman isn't going to help, but if the Tigers pitching can keep this up, their offense will put runs on the board (it's just too talented not to) and Detroit may just get back into this thing after all.

When the Tigers traded for both Miguel Cabrera and Dontrelle Willis in the offseason my initial reaction to the deal was about the same as everybody else: holy crap this team is going to be unstoppable. That being said, my fear of the Tigers had a lot more to do with their offense once they placed Cabrera square in the middle of that lineup, and not so much to do with the addition of Willis.

After seeing the way Dontrelle had struggled his last two seasons in Miami, going 22-27 after a 22-10 campaign in 2005, I wasn't exactly convinced he was going to revert back to his old form in Detroit. The Marlins rode him like a horse while he was there, and I didn't think adjusting to the American League was going to be very easy for Dontrelle. Which made me think that the contract extension the Tigers soon signed him to was a mistake.

Well, the season didn't start off very well for the Tigers or Dontrelle (or Miguel either, but I have a lot more faith in him turning things around) as he walked seven batters in his first start of the season against the White Sox. Then in his next start, also against the Sox, Dontrelle hurt his knee delivering a pitch after walking the first two hitters of the game and was placed on the disabled list.

Then, after recovering and rehabbing in the minors, Detroit brought Dontrelle back as a expensive arm out of the bullpen, and in his only outing he walked two in one inning of work. It was such an improvement over his previous performances that it earned him a spot back in the rotation.

Remember when the Tigers made that huge trade for Miguel Cabrera and Dontrelle Willis, and Tigers fans everywhere began putting aside money for World Series tickets? Seems like a long time ago, doesn't it? As we're all well aware of at this point, the Tigers kind of suck this season. Cabrera has switched positions due to his lack of mobility, and he's not exactly tearing the cover off the ball either. Dontrelle has been on the disabled list for a while now, and has struggled with his control in three minor league rehab starts.

So the question is, now that Dontrelle is just about ready to rejoin the Tigers, what the hell are they going to do with him? Willis' agent thinks that Dontrelle will be taking his old spot in the rotation.

"I'd imagine that he's going back into the rotation, but I haven't heard anything definitive," said Willis' agent, Matt Sosnick. "He felt like he threw the ball well and that his body felt good."

Yes, well, I don't care how well he thinks he threw down in Toledo, he didn't throw as well as the kid who replaced him in the rotation, Armando Galarraga. In a season that's been filled with nothing but frustration and disappointment for the Tigers, Galarraga has been a lone bright spot.

Armando has started six games for Willis, and he's 3-1 with a 3.06 ERA and 0.99 WHIP in those starts. In other words, he's been the best starter Detroit has had. Dave Dombrowski and Jim Leyland aren't saying what their plans are for Willis when he returns, but if they include taking Galarraga out of the rotation, they deserve a swift kick in the nuts.

Like many White Sox fans this past offseason, I wasn't very happy with the moves the White Sox did/didn't make. They missed out on Torii Hunter. They missed out on Miguel Cabrera. They missed out on Aaron Rowand, Kosuke Fukudome, and just about anybody else who they thought they were going to get.

It was during this time that I would often make the joke with my friends or other Sox fans, "But we got Carlos Quentin! Get your World Series tickets now!" Yes, I spent a lot of time this winter making jokes at Carlos Quentin's expense, but now over a quarter of the way through the season, the only one laughing is Quentin.

He's been carrying the White Sox. Just ask his manager.

"Oh, he has carried this ballclub,'' manager Ozzie Guillen said. ''A kid without that much experience in the big leagues batting third and having the kind of two months he has had, I never thought that was going to happen. I didn't expect this kid to be carrying the ballclub. We needed help, and he gave us help.

''We hit the lottery with him.''

After hitting his eleventh home run of the season on Sunday afternoon, Quentin is now hitting .301/.415/.589 and trails only the juggernaut that is Josh Hamilton for the AL lead in RBI's with 37. Those are better numbers than any of the other players the Sox had targeted.

And to think, he wasn't even supposed to be on the team.