It’s been a little over a week since the Tigers were swept by the Giants and now the talk is about what they’ll be doing next year.  They’ve already said that Delmon Young, Jose Valverde and most likely Gerald Laird are gone and one of their pursuits is going to be locking up Anibal Sanchez.  Since I didn’t write at all during the final months or the playoffs, here’s my condensed synopsis.

1)  The Giants are a good team.  While we shouldn’t have gotten swept, the opinion that the Tigers were heavy favorites shows how the little things can tip the balance of a series.  The Tigers have some flaws and neither the Oakland Athletics or the New York Yankees exposed those flaws.  The Giants did.  While the Giants were running down balls hit into the outfield gaps, Delmon Young was throwing the ball into the ground.  While the Giants were taking pitches and waiting for something good to hit, the Tigers were flailing away.  And the Giants have a really good rotation as well.  The Tigers pitched well but the difference seemed to be that approach at the plate.

2)  Imagine taking a week off of work and then the day you get back you lounge around all day.  Your boss asks you WTF and you say that you had too long of a lay off and you’re just not feeling it.  Rest is a good thing.  Everyone got to nurse their wounds and we also got to reset our rotation.  This whole “we were off for to long” is an excuse I’m not buying.  These are professionals and baseball is their job.  If you say “I had too long of a break” you probably shouldn’t be playing.  With that, it’s more a creation of the announcers and then Leyland didn’t help things either.

3)  Leyland is back for another year.  While he drives me nuts, I don’t really see them hiring someone better so he’s fine for now.  What worries me is the Tigers have this two year window where they’ll have Fielder/Cabrera/Martinez and with Max Scherzer becoming a free agent, the Tigers best chance to win may be next year or the year after.  Having Leyland at the helm doesn’t make things any easier.

4)  The Tigers need help in this order.  Bullpen and then outfield. I could live with a shuffling of Avisail Garcia, Brennan Bosch, Quintin Berry and Andy Dirks but that’s a lot of roster spots to be tied up on outfielders.  The problem is that none of those four have shown yet they can get it done as an everyday guy.  The bullpen we just need some arms.  While they should go out and get a couple of decent set up men and just forget the closer thing, it’s not going to happen so I just hope they don’t overpay too much.

Now it’s time to take a peek at the Lions.  I was over at SportsBettingWorld.com and I couldn’t find the Lions 2013 Super Bowl odds but at this point, they’ve probably fallen quite a bit since the start of the season. At least they’re playing better now.

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