Though I suppose you could argue Dontrelle Willis was done for the year before ever throwing a pitch this season.
Anyway, as you may remember, Dontrelle hurt his knee back on April 11th when throwing a pitch and had to be placed on the disabled list. After returning from the injury, Willis was used out of the bullpen, but that didn't last too long. Willis rejoined the starting rotation after only one relief appearance for two starts before the team just pulled the plug on him and sent him to the minors. He hasn't pitched for Detroit since.
Now, as the coup de gras of Dontrelle's 2008 season, he's had a setback with his knee injury and will likely be done for the year.
Willis was scheduled to return to Detroit early this week to have his right knee examined, the team said Monday. That is the same knee he hyperextended in April, forcing him onto the disabled list for the first time in his big-league career.
The setback reduces the chance Willis will pitch again in the majors this season.
What's really worrisome here is that I'm not sure Dontrelle will be any better next season after he recovers from this knee injury. After all, I'm not sure his struggles in Detroit can be attributed to the knee seeing as how he walked seven hitters in his first start of the season before ever hurting the thing.
I think Willis is just suffering the effects of being ridden like a horse down in Miami all those years, and I don't know that he'll ever be the same again. Good thing the Tigers gave him that contract extension.
Just when you think things are starting to go right in Detroit, the Tigers take another big blow. Sure, the Kitties are two games over .500 now, have won their last six, and are only five games out of first place, but as I told you yesterday: not all is well in Tigerland.
Cabrera left in the third inning with a "tight left hip flexor," an injury that may or may not knock Cabrera from manager Jim Leyland's lineup. Cabrera had to leave the game after wobbling through some defensive maneuvers at first that appeared awkward and included one of Detroit's three errors.
"He's had this before," Leyland said of Cabrera, who was limping on and off the field in the early innings. The Tigers won't know until today if Cabrera will join Magglio Ordonez (disabled list, strained oblique muscle) as the latest middle-of-the-order bat to vacate the order.
Needless to say, if Cabrera has to join Maggs on the disabled list, it's probably going to temper any talk of the Tigers making a run at the White Sox for a while. The two of them have combined to hit 23 homers and drive in 98 runs in the first half of the season.
If there is any team that's incredibly sad to see interleague play end in 2008, it would be the Detroit Tigers. The Tigers feasted on their senior circuit competition, going 13-5, and have now won 17 of their last 21 games. They're finally over .500 for the first time this year at 41-40, and are within five games of the White Sox in the AL Central.
Of course, before catching the White Sox the Tigers will have to pass the Twins, and it so happens that they're starting a three game set in the Twinkiedome tonight, and play Minnesota four more times next week. It's the perfect chance to climb in to second place. If only they had Magglio Ordonezto help them out.
The Detroit Tigers placed right fielder Magglio Ordonez on the 15-day disabled list with a pulled muscle in his right side on Sunday.
Ordonez pulled his oblique muscle in the third inning of a 7-6 win over the Colorado Rockies on Saturday night.
That's got to be a kick in the teeth for Tigers fans who were just starting to get excited about this team.
Ordonez had his worst month of the season in June, hitting .266/.343/.403 with three homers and 15 RBI, but now that the Tigers are starting a stretch where 19 of their next 27 games are against division opponents, this isn't exactly the best timing. The team has called up Matt Joyce to replace Ordonez on the roster, but it's doubtful he can replace his production.
The upside of doing a Magglio Ordonez impersonation is that it's relatively easy; you just need long, curly black hair and a Detroit Tigers uniform to pull it off and anyone that watches much baseball is going to know what you're doing.
The downside is, who has time these days to stand around in a Tigers uniform and make semi-mock Mags? That would be our good friend Todd Jones, who took advantage of the recent rain delay at Comerica to do his best 2006 ALCS-winning home run impersonation of Ordonez.
Okay, okay. For all my dislike of Jones (for fantasy reasons), I probably need to rethink the way I feel. Because that impression alone should be worth a lifetime of a 3.00 WHIP. Oh, and is there anything hotter than rain delay entertainment right now? Anything remotely close?
In fairness, Brandon Inge is not blaming his inability to properly lift a pillow for the entire extent of the injury that has him headed to the disabled list. The injury has been bugging him for a while, and this just put it over the top. Because, lifting pillows can be a pretty dangerous activity.
Inge said he aggravated the injury moving a pillow for his three-year-old Monday night. He said if not for that mishap, he probably would have tried to continue to play with the injury, which he said has bothered him since he suffered it on June 1 in Seattle.
Told of Inge's account of the pillow, Tigers manager Jim Leyland said, "That's a first."
Yes indeed it is. There are tons of horrible injuries in baseball (meaning stupidly ridiculous ways that the players get hurt) but this is kind of absurd. I mean, sneezing (Sammy Sosa) and Guitar Hero (Joel Zumaya) are at least respectable.
Okay, not sneezing. But if you move your three year old's pillow around and see a vertabrae lying on the ground when you're done, just pull a Vladrad and tell everyone it happened while you were lifting weights or something.
The Detroit Tigers may be playing their best baseball of the season right now, winning eleven of their last fourteen games to move withing six games of the White Sox, but closer Todd Jones and his teammates have something else on their minds right now: San Francisco Chronicle Giants beat reporter Henry Schulman.
While the Tigers were in San Francisco last week, Schulman wrote a column in which he referred to Ryan Raburn as a "scrub" after Raburn hit a home run off of Jonathan Sanchez. Well, Jones writes a column for the Detroit Free Press, and in his latest effort he explains why he and his teammates do not appreciate such remarks.
When we read that, we lost our collective minds.
Henry Schulman just called one of our teammates a scrub.
Isn't that a little harsh? I can't think of anybody who has ever played in the major leagues as a scrub -- not even Bob Uecker.
The Detroit Tigers six-game win streak came to an end last night in San Francisco when John Bowker welcomed Fernando Rodney back to the bigs with a three-run homer to give the Giants the win, but that doesn't mean every streak in Detroit died on Monday night. Marcus Thames took Tim Lincecum deep in his first two at-bats thanks to a hanging curveball and a belt-high changeup, making Monday the fourth game in a row that Thames has gone deep.
Still, that's not the streak I'm talking about. Since June 7th, Thames has gone 7-for-29 (.241) which is very much in line with his .257 average on the season. Of course, his slugging percentage since June 7th is .966 because all seven of those hits have been home runs.
No singles. No doubles. No triples. All Mr. Thames has done lately is plant balls in the seats.
Now what I'm trying to figure out is, how impressive is this? Is it even impressive at all? I kind of has to be doesn't it? Sure he's not hitting well overall, but when he does he's really making it count. He says he's never been on a streak like this, and his manager Jim Leyland says he's never seen anything quite like it either.
Though it could just be that all Thames is good for is hitting home runs, as while this seven-hit streak is rather odd, it's not exactly anything new for Marcus. After all, he only has 29 hits on the season and 12 of those have been home runs.
I suppose the comparison is inevitable. Rick Ankiel was a stud pitching prospect who completely lost the strike zone, stopped pitching forever, and moved to the outfield. Dontrelle Willis is a decent hitting pitcher who's seemingly lost his stuff. One plus one equals two, right? Among other people, Mike Celizic sure seems to think so.
I've got one word for everyone that's drawing the comparison: stop. There have been a million pitchers and pitching prospects that have flamed out over the last 50 years and exactly one of them has become a serviceable player at another position. Rick Ankiel's career arc is so unique it's crazy to think that another pitcher can duplicate it just because he hits well and stopped throwing strikes.
When Ankiel quit pitching, he was 24. Willis is 26. Ankiel had a very public meltdown, elbow surgery, and clearly a mental block to throwing strikes. He wasn't just wild, he was beyond help. When he switched to the outfield, he told the Cardinals in no uncertain terms that he was no longer a pitcher, no matter what the team wanted from him. The Cardinals were nice enough to provide a spot for him in the minors, and that afforded him the chance to turn himself around.
While the failures of Dontrelle Willis in 2008 have been well documented here at FanHouse the last couple of days, it turns out not everything is going horribly awry in Detroit for the Tigers. After all, Willis was basically just a throw-in (a $27 million throw-in, but a throw-in nonetheless) in the deal the Tigers made to bring in Miguel Cabrera, and after he got off to a slow start to the season, his bat has been catching fire as of late, as have been the other bats in Detroit's lineup.
Cabrera hit a walk-off home run in the ninth inning to give the Tigers a 2-1 win over the White Sox this afternoon, and help complete a sweep of the AL Central division leaders. The win was Detroit's fifth victory in their last six games, and they've crept to within striking distance of the White Sox, moving to within eight games.
Of course, even though the Tigers offense is starting to come to life now that the weather is warming up, the real key to whether or not the Tigers are going to make a run is still, and always will be, their pitching staff. Which is why they have to be happy with what they saw in their three games against the White Sox.
The trio of Nate Robertson, Justin Verlander, and Kenny Rogers combined to go 23.1 innings while allowing only five runs, 16 hits, and three walks (Verlander's performance being a work of art on Wednesday night). This against a team that had been averaging over eight runs a game during a seven-game win streak. It's only been six games, and the loss of Jeremy Bonderman isn't going to help, but if the Tigers pitching can keep this up, their offense will put runs on the board (it's just too talented not to) and Detroit may just get back into this thing after all.
Now that we're almost halfway through June and the Detroit Tigers still haven't shown any signs of coming to life this season, it probably isn't that crazy to think that it's just not going to happen this year. Despite all the veteran talent on the Tigers roster, there just haven't been any signs that things are going to turn around. If anything, it seems as though things are only going to start getting worse.
Insiders are speculating that the Tigers might start trading pieces before the deadline. But their pitchers have been awful, and many of their every-day players are stars who recently signed big contracts and are underachieving. To sum up, I'm not sure where they'd begin a fire sale.
Heyman brings up a good point, because while I'm sure the Tigers wouldn't mind dumping some players come the trade deadline, I'm not exactly sure how many parts they have that other teams are going to want.
Though I suppose you could argue Dontrelle Willis was done for the year before ever throwing a pitch this season.
Just when you think things are starting to go right in Detroit, the Tigers take another big blow. Sure, the Kitties are two games over .500 now, have won their last six, and are only five games out of first place, but as I told you yesterday: 
If there is any team that's incredibly sad to see interleague play end in 2008, it would be the Detroit Tigers. The Tigers feasted on their senior circuit competition, going 13-5, and have now won 17 of their last 21 games. They're finally over .500 for the first time this year at 41-40, and are within five games of the White Sox in the AL Central.
The Detroit Tigers may be playing their best baseball of the season right now, winning eleven of their last fourteen games to move withing six games of the White Sox, but closer 
The Detroit Tigers six-game win streak came to an end last night in San Francisco when 
I suppose the comparison is inevitable. 
While the failures of 
Now that we're almost halfway through June and the Detroit Tigers still haven't shown any signs of coming to life this season, it probably isn't that crazy to think that it's just not going to happen this year. Despite all the veteran talent on the Tigers roster, there just haven't been any signs that things are going to turn around. If anything, it seems as though things are only going to start getting worse.
