MSU Red Cedar Message Board

Texas exposed the Tigers pitching staff big time in the playoffs, both its lack of depth and its lack of talent, starters and bullpen. Other than Verlander, Fister, Benoit and Valverde the Tigers pitching staff was a crap shoot last year, just like they are this year. This will be the case all year.

25% worried.

The problem is that there are so many guys that aren't performing up to the level that was expected. Out of the "key" players (not counting Laird, Santiago or Kelly because not much is needed out of those guys) only Jackson, Dirks, Cabrera, Fielder (though he can still improve), Verlander, Below, and Smyly are performing at or above expectations, and I expect that Jackson, Dirks and Smyly will all come back to earth a little bit.

Young, Avila, Peralta, Boesch (though he is playing better lately), Raburn, Valverde, Benoit, Dotel, Coke, Scherzer, Porcello need to play better. Quite frankly, it's impressive that they're still hovering around .500 with almost half the team underperforming. If several of those guys don't pick it up at some point, there's not really much that Leyland and Dombrowski can do. Leyland has to play somebody and it's just not possible for Dombrowski to go out and replace 5-7 guys midseason.

Benoit hasn't allowed a run in 6 outings, but people like to scream about him for some reason. Was like that last year too, struggled early but was fantastic the rest of the year.

It's because when he does mess up the team usually loses because of it. It's not fair, but I see why it is that way.

You're right on Benoit and Dotel, at this point their failures are sticking out more in my mind, but they've actually been pretty solid.

I never said that I don't expect the underperforming guys to pick it up, I just said that the team needs them to pick it up because there are too many to replace if they don't. I expect that Boesch (he's already heating up), Avila, Scherzer, Porcello, Coke and Valverde will improve. History has shown that Raburn will continue to be pretty bad until August. Young and Peralta are the guys that I'm most concerned will not improve. Peralta's right around .250 which is there he was in 2009 and 2010 with Cleveland. As far as Young goes, I just don't see him getting that much better. 2010 was a career year for him, outside of that he's a guy that will hit 10-13 home runs with a decent average, but rarely walks. He hit .274 with the Tigers last year, but his OBP was still below .300.

If the Tigers are 8-10 games out at mid season, Dombrowski doesn't trade for some bullpen and 2nd base help, Avila is missing 3 games of every ten because of his knees its time to be concerned.

They are not playing good baseball right now. Poor quality at bats for most of the team. Silly errors like Prince dropping a routine throw from short. Too many LOB. Seems to lack the clutch hits that Martinez used to routinely provide. They need to play better over the next month and correct these things or they will be another also ran this season.

Ok - I don't agree at all that a relief pitcher giving up 1 run is messing up, but I get where your coming from.

I agree that he has a lot of room for improvement, but I probably had lower expectations than most for him for the 1st half of the season. Defensively he can't drop throws like he did the other day, but otherwise I'm not too concerned about it, he just needs to be average.

Offensively, he's about where I expected. Guys that switch leagues often struggle early in the first year as they adjust, Cabrera and Pujols are two of the bigger examples, and I expected Fielder to do the same. In April and May of his first year with the Tigers Cabrera hit about .280 with 7 home runs and 30 RBI, right now Fielder is at .294 with 6 HR and 21 RBI with 10 days to go in the month so he's on pace to do about the same as Miggy did. He'll get better as the season goes on and I expect his 2nd half numbers will be much better than his 1st half numbers.

I expected better than 4 errors on catches in a month and a half. Crazy of me.

I would say the level of concern is still relatively low at about 20%. That's only because its still early in the season and also because the AL Central isn't exactly the AL East. I think that the division could be taken with less than 90 wins and I think that the Tigers can definitely do that even with their problems.

That being said, I am concerned that this season is playing out like 2008 season. The Tigers were coming off a good season in 2007 following the WS run in 2006 and had added Cabrera and Renteria. People were talking about them scoring 1000 runs and running away with the division. They ended up scoring fewer runs, the pitching fell apart and then went from second to fifth.

Outside of Cabrera, Fielder, Jackson and Dirks, the rest of the lineup has been awful. Scherzer and Porcello have been inconsistent (and may always be that way), and outside of Dotel and Benoit, the bullpen has a bunch of holes. A lot of the team's early success has been pleasant surprises from Dirks and Smyly. If those guys come back to earth any time soon, it'll be a problem.

Yeah, it's still early and even if things don't change, they should be able to contend for the Central, but a lot of guys will have to start playing a lot better before I'll start thinking about anything more than an AL Central pennant.

Did you really not see how much better Texas bullpen was the Detroit's?