At the time of this writing, the Detroit Tigers had a record of 1-7, good enough for dead-last in Major League Baseball. While the specifics pertain to the Tigers, a team I like to think I know a fair amount about, the notion of it being a long season pertains to all 30 teams.
Six months is a long time. No matter what Colin Cowherd says, and his infinite wisdom will be addressed in a post at a later date), the baseball season is a marathon. It is not a sprint. How a team performs in the first 10 days of the season is absolutely not a barometer for the how the season is going to go. For some teams, you are able to get a pretty good idea of what kind of year the team is going to have, but that is not always the case. I'm sure I wouldn't feel the need to write this if the Tigers had started out 4-4 instead of 1-7, but some very smart baseball people in this area are already starting to hit the panic button. The national media, many of whom picked the Tigers to be the American League's representative in the World Series after the trade for Miguel Cabrera and Dontrelle Willis, have already started to think it is Doomsday in Detroit. They've spouted statistics like "no team that ever started out a season 0-5 has gone to the World Series." Certainly this stat might have some merit, but it is much more arbitrary than "no NFL team to start 0-3 has ever made the playoffs." In baseball, eight games is 5 percent of the season, while in the NFL, 3 three games is 19 percent of the schedule. The Tigers will have 154 chances to turn things around, while the if the Lions started 0-3, I would start thinking about who they would draft the following April.
It's not that the Tigers haven't had problems that should be causes for concern. Through the first five games, Detroit hitters were 5-for-38 with runners in scoring position. The top of the lineup (Polanco, Sheffield, Ordonez and Cabrera) haven't produced yet. At this point, I have to assume (as do fans of all teams that have players who have struggled out of the gate) that these four will eventually perform close to what they've done in previous seasons. It would be unrealistic to expect Magglio to hit .364 again this season (or Polanco to hit .343), but it is safe to expect them to both eventually be right around .300 by the end of the season. If that happens, I think the wins will begin to come in bunches. The bullpen has struggled, but that was a question mark coming into the season, and will continue to be a question until Fernando Rodney and Joel Zumaya return.
There are certainly reasons to be concerned about the way the Tigers have started the year, but the season isn't even 5 percent done yet. I won't start making judgments about this team yet. If they're 5-24 at the end of April, then I will start to panic.
It's not that the Tigers haven't had problems that should be causes for concern. Through the first five games, Detroit hitters were 5-for-38 with runners in scoring position. The top of the lineup (Polanco, Sheffield, Ordonez and Cabrera) haven't produced yet. At this point, I have to assume (as do fans of all teams that have players who have struggled out of the gate) that these four will eventually perform close to what they've done in previous seasons. It would be unrealistic to expect Magglio to hit .364 again this season (or Polanco to hit .343), but it is safe to expect them to both eventually be right around .300 by the end of the season. If that happens, I think the wins will begin to come in bunches. The bullpen has struggled, but that was a question mark coming into the season, and will continue to be a question until Fernando Rodney and Joel Zumaya return.
There are certainly reasons to be concerned about the way the Tigers have started the year, but the season isn't even 5 percent done yet. I won't start making judgments about this team yet. If they're 5-24 at the end of April, then I will start to panic.
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