Tough to believe, but the pitchers and catchers have already reported to Florida and Arizona. As you might expect, there’s a lot of excitement at Joker-Marchant Stadium in Lakeland this year given the Tigers’ success last year. I’m really not sure what to expect. After so many years of horrible, horrible teams, I’m a little gun-shy on expecting continued success. That said, it looks like all the elements are in place assuming continued health of last year’s important players, the return of Maroth and the addition of Sheffield. I don’t think the Gambler will have as good a year, given his age, but who knows…In the end, Los Tigres could have a superb year where most things go right and still not make the playoffs due to the competition in the AL Central, which might now be the big’s best division. I’m fine with that, because I have faith in Dombrowski and his plan for long-term success.
If the Tigers are decent to good for a few years in a row, will parents in Michigan have to point to Millen’s Lions and say “This is how bad the Tigers were, but for about 15 years in a row”?
Before I get to some links, I’d encourage the readers to check on the comment # for recent posts, as A-Bo and my hard rockin’ friends have posted comments, but these comments don’t get flagged like a new post.
This isn’t related to baseball, but hallelujah! Michael Irvin won’t be back at ESPN! Not sure this is enough to get me to start watching their pre-game show (umm, Berman), but we’ll see. If you haven’t been paying attention, the former head honcho at ESPN, Mark Shapiro, can be blamed for much of the bullshit changes at ESPN to make it have a pop-culture focus rather than sports first. He left last year to run Six Flags amusement parks (not making that up) and a lot of his dreck has been thrown out the window: see, e.g., the revisions to the ESPN NBA announcing crews and (case #1) cancelling Stephen A. the Shouter’s show.
A couple Gambler stories: revisiting SmudgeGate, no real change, apparently just an AP reporter looking to beat a dead horse driven by a new MLB rule re: smudging (which I thought applied to position players, not pitchers–I think this story might be wrong). Feel-good Freep story on Rogers with some speculation as to his future past the 2007 season.
Early days has Andrew Miller looking good, but still a longshot to make the 12-man pitching staff. He’s only thrown six minor-league innings.