I visited Comerica Park on Tuesday, June 30th to watch the Detroit Tigers and Cleveland Indians. The game was well attended coming off from the high of the 20th anniversary celebration of the Roar of ’84 and the buzz the current team was generating from it’s two successive nights ending in walk-off home runs. Those games restored some hope and excitement for local baseball fans at a time when the general sport’s public attention begins to shift towards baseball. That evening was another exciting display of offensive prowess and it’s walk-off ending in extra innings contributed even more to the local excitement. My counterpart and I listened to the Team 1270 on our ride back to Lansing and the post-game callers had elaborate visions of grandeur as to how this baseball club maybe able to make a run in the division and compete for the postseason playoffs. I have to admit to letting myself get a little caught up in the frenzy as well.

Three disappointing losses in Colorado to the lowly Rockies in heartbreaking fashion and cold-hearted whupping administered by the Yankees, one has to wonder if when we recollect upon this season if that three walk-off Hr weekend will be it’s nexus and the eventual turning point. The Rockies games exposed the Tiger bullpen for the fraud that it is and also showed that as good as the bats are in the lineup they may not be able to win slugfests when the pitching staff is ineffective. So if the Tigers are about to become “Sellers” as opposed to “Buyers” in the impending trade deadline market here are some things I would like to see happen:
1) I would hope the Tigers will at least top last seasons win totals before shipping off any players that may desirable to other organizations to assist them in their postseason runs.
2) I want to see what the dominant (at Erie at least) Wil Ledezma can do if he returns to the big leagues and has a few starts.
3) I hope they can establish a bullpen stopper who is capable of taking up some of Ugueth Urbina’s slack when he is eventually moved.
4) I hope they continue to see better performances from Carlos Pena and Eric Munson and see similar levels of performance from Brandon Inge and Omar Infante. The future of the Tigers is held in their development and continued improvement.

I don’t want have the tone of this article give the appearance of waving a white flag but the fact being that this team has exceeded our imaginations and yet hovers at it’s best just under .500 one can’t reasonably expect that it will rise above at this point. Factoring the lack of depth within the organization for future development, the pressures on Dave Dombrowski to improve upon it’s lack of big league talent will prevent him from mortgaging the future to acquire players for any sort of stretch run. I hope that Double-D is as succesful in his moves as some of the others he has made have been.

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