Ozzie Guillen said he would rather be playing the Detroit Tigers than the Cubs this weekend, and why not? He gets all the gossip he needs on his crosstown rivals while the team his White Sox battle for atop the American League Central remains largely a mystery.
The Sox swept the Tigers in a three-game series April 10-13 and haven’t seen them since. Detroit, meanwhile, had won 20 of its last 29 games entering Saturday, briefly moving to the top of the AL Central.
New manager Jim Leyland has gotten most of the credit for the Tigers’ emergence. But he hasn’t been winning with mirrors. He has a surprisingly deep roster that combines experience with the promise of youngsters like center fielder Curtis Granderson (an Illinois-Chicago product) and pitchers Justin Verlander and Joel Zumaya.
Cleveland manager Eric Wedge says it’s easy to see why the Tigers are better than the ones that averaged 100 losses over the last five years.
“The difference is obviously their pitching,” Wedge said after Detroit swept the Indians at Jacobs Field. “That has been the separator.”
He’s right, to a point. The Tigers were eighth in the AL with a 4.51 staff earned-run average last season, and entered Saturday with a 3.28 ERA, best in the majors.
Their starting rotation had improved from 10th in the league to first in ERA, with four of five starters between Mike Maroth’s 2.18 and Nate Robertson’s 3.50. Jose Contreras (1.41) and Mark Buehrle (2.92) were the only two White Sox starters who could have fit in that group entering Saturday–although, yes, it is easier to pitch at Comerica Park than U.S. Cellular Field.
That’s why it’s just as impressive that the Tigers entered the weekend averaging 1.42 homers per game, the best mark in the AL. They were scoring 5.0 runs per game, an increase from 4.5 a year ago.
Ivan Rodriguez earned a World Series ring as the backbone of the 2003 Florida Marlins. Carlos Guillen played shortstop for the 116-victory Seattle Mariners of 2001. Magglio Ordonez helped the White Sox win a division title in 2000. Kenny Rogers has pitched in the playoffs for three teams and was with the New York Yankees in 1996 when they started their World Series run.
Rogers was an especially astute pickup by Tigers GM Dave Dombrowski. He gave him another chance after the unfortunate clash with two television cameramen that left Rogers as a marked man in Texas. The payback has been seven wins in nine starts.
With more consistent pitching, the Tigers have begun catching the ball better (as often happens). They ranked 15th out of the 30 big-league teams last year in defensive efficiency, a Baseball Prospectus statistic that measures the rate at which balls in play are converted into outs. They were first in that category after last Sunday’s games.
Will they have staying power this season? It’s still too early to know, but history says they are a lock for at least their first winning season since 1993. The Elias Sports Bureau reports they never have been this far above .500 and finished with a losing season. The last time they were above .500 after 40 games and finished with a losing season was 1954.
You only have to go back to the 2003 Cubs to find a playoff team that had lost 90-plus games the previous season. The arrival of manager Dusty Baker clearly was a catalyst. Ditto the late-season maneuvering of GM Jim Hendry.
Detroit owner Mike Ilitch is promising Dombrowski the flexibility to make significant moves at midseason. So far the Tigers haven’t had holes to fill.
Dept. of You-Never-Know
It has been an interesting time for unlikely events, as Seattle reliever Emiliano Fruto knows. Fruto, promoted from Triple-A Tacoma, worked 3 2/3 innings against the Los Angeles Angels after arriving in Anaheim only about 20 minutes before the start of last Sunday’s game. He had gotten the call late the night before.
“I called my mom in Colombia to tell her I was going to the big leagues, then I went to bed,” Fruto said. “But I couldn’t sleep.”
He picked up the save in his first major-league outing.
Sometimes you have to hang with ’em. That was the case for Phillies reliever Geoff Geary, who was steamed when he was optioned to Triple A after working 13 straight scoreless innings. He was recalled a day later when Julio Santana went on the disabled list and got a victory last Sunday, his first day back with the Phillies.
“The hardest thing is to realize there are some things you can’t control,” Geary said.
Sometimes you can’t lose, like when Cleveland beat Kansas City 5-0 on a day the Indians had only three hits. Sometimes you can’t win, like when Texas had 17 hits and still lost to the Yankees 14-13, failing to protect leads of 9-0 and 13-12.
Whispers
Former Bulls GM Jerry Krause, who went to work for the Yankees a couple of years ago, has moved across town as a scout for the Mets. . . . Talk about a great trade. With Boof Bonser replacing Kyle Lohse in the rotation, the Twins now are featuring three pitchers they got from San Francisco for A.J. Pierzynski. The others are Joe Nathan and Francisco Liriano.
The last word
“I played with three summer teams at the same time, three games a day. My mom and dad would shuttle me from game to game. Change unis in the car. He’d say, `I’m not going through this if you’re not going to play the game hard and play the right way.'”–Phillies kamikaze (and center fielder) Aaron Rowand, who says he learned his all-out approach from his father.
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progers@tribune.com
