Comerica Park is just 15 minutes away from my humble little cottage, and the Tigers offer plenty of reasons to make the trip. Miguel Cabrera might be the best offensive player in the league, Justin Verlander is an ace in anyone's book, and Jim Leyland still has some baseball left in him – at least until they decide to remake Chico and the Man. The Tigers love playing in their shrubbery-filled friendly confines; they're a 103-59 team at home over the last two seasons.
Alas, the American League requires a road schedule as well, and that's where Detroit has struggled the last two seasons (64-99). The Tigers also have to figure out their infield (only Cabrera is above league average) and the back of their rotation (Phil Coke is getting a chance to reinvent himself, while Brad Penny is trying to make things work with his fifth team in four years). The Tigers have a shot to win the AL Central if most things fall into place, but the Twins deserve to be the paper favorites for the moment and Chicago has to be respected as well.
Ah, but let's not get too caught up in that real-life mumbo jumbo. We're just in it for the numbers. When in doubt, worry about the make-believe teams first. Priorities, gamer.
Could Max Scherzer be a Cy Young sleeper?
I'll sign up for that. Scherzer's three-year career hasn't been a model of consistency, but if you catch him on the right day, you wonder how anyone ever scores a run off this cat.
The Tigers decided Scherzer needed a mechanical tune-up last May and they sent him to the minors, hoping to find his missing velocity. The fix only took a couple of weeks and Scherzer didn't drop the ball when he returned; his first start back was a 14-strikeout gem against the Athletics on May 30. Scherzer's final 23 starts of the year leap off the page at you: 2.46 ERA, 158 strikeouts in 153.2 innings, .621 OPS against. He did a better job of spotting his fastball as the year went along, and his slider is absolutely ridiculous.
Skeptics will worry about Scherzer's violent delivery, but heck, the guy's made 61 starts the last two years (63 if you count the time in the minors) – this is not a china doll. I don't like pursuing buzzy commodities and pricing growth into the equation; that's a sure way to ruin your team assembly. But I don't think I can help myself in this case – I expect to be one of the late bidders on Mad Max.
Is Victor Martinez the No. 1 fantasy catcher entering the year?
For my money he is, for two very simple reasons. Most obviously, the guy can absolutely rake. But more importantly for our purposes, the Tigers signed Martinez essentially to be a regular DH who also catches now and then. He'll be in the lineup just about every day. He'll be spared the physical wear-and-tear that comes with the burden of catching. And he should get plenty of run-producing opportunities, hitting behind Magglio Ordonez and Miguel Cabrera in the Detroit lineup.
There are other catchers who can probably match Martinez's efficiency this year, but he's going to give us efficiency and volume. Generally I avoid considering a designer backstop in the first quarter of my mixers, but Martinez might make me reconsider that concept for 2011.
How do we explain Rick Porcello's sophomore slump?
For Porcello to be worth something in mixers, we need to see some movement in his strikeout numbers – for his career he's fanned an underwhemling 4.67 batters per nine innings. That's a buzzkill for most 5x5 players, and it just about eliminates Porcello as an ownable commodity in any league that uses an innings cap. Porcello's slider use tripled in his second season, and perhaps that will aid in his growth to become more of a dominant pitcher. I'm open-minded to the idea of a third-year breakout, but he'll have to play his way onto my waiver-wire clipboard – I won't be drafting Porcello in a standard mixer this March.
Will Ryan Raburn hold onto the left-field job?
Raburn has been an intriguing part-time power option the last two years, clubbing 31 homers over 632 at-bats (along with a tidy .285 average). The best chunk of it has come against left-handed pitching (his career OPS drops 108 points against righties) and Raburn's defense has resembled The Benny Hill Show at times, but the Tigers nonetheless are giving him the left-field gig to start 2011. Pinocchio, you're a real boy now.
To keep the assignment, Raburn will need to figure out how to hit in the early part of the season. He's a .213 career hitter in April and a .207 career hitter for May, and if you ask the player, it's no coincidence. "I've never been a cold-weather guy," Raburn conceded earlier this month. "I don't know why. But it's part of playing up here. You just have to figure how to do it."
Who's the starting second baseman here?
There's no shortage of candidates. Carlos Guillen would be the leader in the clubhouse, but Leyland doesn't sound optimistic about the injury-prone veteran being ready for opening day. Will Rhymes hit for a solid .304 average in his 54-game trial last year but offered us no category juice whatsoever (one homer, zero steals). Scott Sizemore could be a 15-18 homer guy someday, but his 48-game stint left us cold as well (.224 average, 40 strikeouts in 143 at-bats). I'm not confident any second baseman in Motown will be healthy enough, or productive enough, to collect more than 400 at-bats this year. If only Linus Van Pelt were real; he's a whiz at turning the double play.
-------------
Mad Max photo courtesy Associated Press
No comments:
Post a Comment