A Tigger's Tale

Dave Paisley

If you know I'm a diehard Mariner fan, you also know that I'm not in a very happy place right now. Eight-game losing streaks do that to you. In the middle of this streak, the Mariners got pummeled by the Detroit Tigers, of all teams. Thinking back to the start of the season, I remembered the lousy start the Tigers had, and when I checked their record, I noticed that, all of a sudden, they're pushing the .500 mark. Now that's a remarkable comeback.

Detroit was 14 games under .500 as recently as late May, and that's usually enough to bury a team for good. The Tigers, though, have bounced back and just took five of six from Oakland and Seattle -- the cream (albeit curdling fast) of the AL West. I wondered what the secret of their resilience might be, but I remembered my childhood reading. Thanks to A.A. Milne (no, I'm pretty sure he wasn't the founder of Alcoholics Anonymous), we all know the following to be true:

The wonderful thing about Tiggers
Is Tiggers are wonderful things

Well, as I mentioned above, not recently. Since their World Series win in 1984, the Tigers haven't been so wonderful. In fact, most of the time they've been pretty awful. If we take a look at the next couple of lines of the song, though...

Their tops are made out of rubber
The bottoms are made out of springs

...we find a great description of their last few months. Either that or it's a description of the average Little Caesar's pizza. At least the rubber part. So far I haven't found any springs in mine, but surely that's just a matter of time. But on to more of Mr. Milne:

They're bouncy, trouncy, flouncy, pouncy
Fun, fun, fun, fun, fun

Well, they certainly weren't flouncy or pouncy during April of this year, when they managed a measly 6-17 record and were the worst team in the American League by a wide margin. They had the fifth-worst ERA in the AL (5.50) and were dead last in offense with a team OPS of .702. That last number is pretty poor when you consider it means you have a team that collectively hits like a Minnesota Twins backup infielder. Only Juan Encarnacion and Dean Palmer contributed anything meaningful offensively that month.

Of course, you have to factor in that an injury-hampered Juan Gonzalez managed a mere .734 OPS in April, missing most of the first couple of weeks of the season. Gonzalez hasn't really hit his stride all season, missing a chunk of July, too. The distractions of impending free agency certainly can't have helped. Still, when he's played, he's generally been effective.

After a horrible start offensively (.762 OPS in April), Bobby Higginson started to dial in a little offense, too. It probably didn't help him to hear that he was possibly trade bait after the terrible April put paid to Detroit's chances of contending for anything this year. A stellar June (10 homers, 1.153 OPS) helped the Tigers climb from the offensive basement in April to 4th place for the month of June. In fact, here are the aggregate monthly numbers for the Tigers:

Month	ERA	Rank	OPS	Rank	W	L
April	5.50	10	.702	14	6	17
May	5.42	10	.771	10	12	14
June	4.44	4	.824	4	15	12
July	4.56	3	.774	11	15	13
August	3.61	2	.876	2	12	5
Totals	4.76	5	0.786	10	60	61

To continue with more of Mr. Milne:

The wonderful thing about Tiggers
Is Tiggers are wonderful chaps

Phil Garner must certainly have thought that of his pitching staff, who have become progressively better as the year has worn on. Part of that is through dumping unproductive pitching, but they've had some pretty good performances from a ragtag staff most of the year. They haven't always had the offensive backing, though. Here's a look at the starting pitching staff through the year:

Starters By Month	April		May		June		July		August
Pitcher	G	ERA	G	ERA	G	ERA	G	ERA	G	ERA
Nomo	6	2.54	5	8.10	6	5.77	6	4.93	1	1.29
Moehler	3	3.90	3	3.32	5	3.38	6	7.27	4	2.10
Weaver	3	6.00	5	3.86	6	3.89	5	4.19	3	9.39
Mlicki	5	7.20	5	4.11	3	9.20	3	2.79	0	-
Nitkowski	5	7.18	6	7.33	0	-	0	-	0	-
Others	1	43.20	2	7.20	7	5.52	8	6.00	9	3.53

It's interesting to see Hideo Nomo's monthly totals. Apart from that horrendous May, he's been either average or very superior and deserves a much better fate than a 5-10 record. The Tigers did get hurt by throwing scrub pitchers on the mound in the early months -- starts by Nitkowski and Dave Borkowski really hurt. Since then, the inconsistent Dave Mlicki is out of the rotation (on the DL with a chronic sinus infection), as has Nitkowski, to be replaced by the likes of Steve Sparks and Willie Blair, both of whom have seized the opportunity with both hands.

One curious note is that although Jeff Weaver has been pretty decent all year, he has been roughed up in August. However, that 9.39 ERA in three starts this month also comes with a 2-1 record, i.e., lots of run support. Go figure. Meanwhile, Mr. Milne continues his treatise thus:

They're loaded with vim and vigor
They love to leap in your laps

We all know that Juan Gonzalez is full of vim and vigor -- it's what he uses to stare down official scorers to make sure he gets his RBIs credited correctly. Milne was probably thinking about Tony Phillips' days as a Tiger, and maybe even Ty Cobb's era, when he wrote about that jumping into people's laps. I believe Milne was referring to a friendly jumping, though, rather than the assaulting fans kind of lap-leaping. And don't get me started on team mascots invading the personal space of fans... Meanwhile, Milne continues...

They're jumpy, bumpy, clumpy, thumpy
Fun, fun, fun, fun, fun

And we're back to Phillips and Cobb again with the bumpy, thumpy stuff. Of course, the Detroit offense has been bumpy and thumpy of late, firing on all cylinders in August, and helping them in this cruise back to the .500 mark. They'll finish somewhat respectably, but dreams of the wild card spot are pure fantasy at this point. But perhaps we should end this look at the team with the closing lines of A. A. Milne's poem:

But the most wonderful thing about Tiggers is
They're the only ones
Yes,
They're the only ones!

And for that, despite their recent improvement, I think we can all be thankful.

about the author

Dave Paisley's flying like a kite, as he writes and giggles in the night. But do not blight his line of sight, or he'll set you right with his mighty might. Ask to see more of "Horton Hears a Radke" at drdjp@strikethree.com.