The 2013 Houston Astros were widely regarded, before the season, as being potentially the worst team in baseball—ever. They were picked by Sports Illustrated to seriously challenge the 1962 Mets (40-120) and the 2003 Tigers (43-119) for ineptitude.
In this space every Monday, I will chart the Astros pace versus those of the ’62 Mets and ’03 Tigers after the same amount of games.
2013 Astros: 12-32
1962 Mets: 12-32
2003 Tigers: 9-35
Last Week: 3-4
This Week: at Cle (5/21-22); MIN (5/23-26)
So, What Happened?
Toto, I don’t think the Tigers are playing Houston anymore.
The Tigers are 6-1 against the Astros, and 23-19 overall. MMM will save you the math. That’s 17-18 against the rest of baseball.
Not ridiculous, but maybe a little troubling?
Last week was a microcosm of sorts. The Tigers went 2-1 against Houston, 1-3 against the rest of baseball. Correction—the best of baseball.
Gee, those Texas Rangers can hit, eh?
The Rangers looked at the Tigers’ glorified starting rotation and gave a Texas-sized laugh.
The Rangers scored 29 runs against our boys last weekend, and that’s numbing, considering Justin Verlander, Anibal Sanchez and Doug Fister combined pitched about 11 innings in their starts.
That’s impressive hitting.
Before the horrid weekend in Texas, the Tigers beat down the Astros twice more before finally losing to Houston on Wednesday afternoon, when the Stros managed two runs in the top of the ninth to win, 7-5.
Oh, and some guy named Cabrera hit three home runs on Sunday night, each more impressive than the previous one. The Tigers still lost in one of the most frustrating games MMM has ever watched.
To make matters worse, the Tigers fell out of first place. The (gulp) Cleveland Indians are in the catbird’s seat, by two games.
Hero of the Week
MMM was struck by something FSD’s Rod Allen said during a recent broadcast.
Allen said he was chatting with Tigers legend and Hall of Famer Al Kaline. Allen asked Kaline if he’d seen anyone like Cabrera—whether teammate or someone Kaline played against. Now, we’re talking 60 years of MLB (Kaline debuted in 1953).
Kaline flatly told Rod that no, he’s never seen anyone who can do the things with the bat that Cabrera can do.
MMM thinks that if someone like Al Kaline puts you in a class by yourself, then that’s saying something.
MMM is making Miggy HotW largely for his three-homer effort on Sunday, but he had a good week other than that. Heck, Miggy always seems to have a good week, eh?
Cabrera went 12/28 (.429) with four homers, seven RBI and seven runs scored.
Just another week at the office.
Cabrera’s performance on Sunday night was amazing.
The third homer, especially—a pitch that jammed him near his wrists, yet was driven over the CF wall—was jaw-dropping. The ESPN announcers, Orel Hershiser and John Kruk, were beside themselves.
“Aw, heck, he’s just better than everyone else. Let’s just go with that,” Kruk said finally.
Miggy is, and he was again for the Tigers last week.
Honorable mentions: Don Kelly (for filling in admirably in CF and knocking a homer); rookie RHP Evan Kelly (two strong outings in Texas).
Goat of the Week
Where would you like MMM to start?
There was suspect fielding, bad pitching, and questionable decisions—and most of that happened in the seventh inning on Sunday night alone.
It wasn’t the greatest of weeks.
MMM is going to name, as a trio, Verlander, Sanchez and Fister as co-Goats.
The Tigers’ Big Three of Four (don’t forget Mad Max Scherzer) simply didn’t get it done against Texas. They didn’t come close to slowing the Rangers down, and JV and Fister had leads with which to work and let their respective games slip away.
Ugly starts from those three guys.
The bullpen, as a result, got drained, and thank goodness for Monday’s off day, to allow those arms to rest.
Look, the big boys have to be the big boys and they have to take the heat when they don’t get the job done. Verlander, Sanchez and Fister let the Tigers down, big time, in a “measuring stick” series.
Under the Microscope
MMM is too lazy to pore over the archives, but this week may be a first.
Justin Verlander, meet the microscope.
Twitter and MLive’s comments section are aflutter with worries about JV. Is his velocity down for a reason? Why have his last two starts been so bad? Is he going south?
MMM would like everyone to exhale, but still thinks Verlander should be scrutinized.
Why?
Well, the last two starts have been rough. Thursday’s was downright ridiculous.
Plus, the storied fastball seems to have abandoned Verlander, mainly from a command standpoint.
MMM thinks that Verlander gets too amped up sometimes, and the much-ballyhooed match-up between JV and Texas’ Yu Darvish on Thursday qualifies as one of those “big games” that sometimes gets Verlander to do too much.
He overthrows. He walks guys (walked in TWO on Thursday). He throws too many pitches. He gives up hits on 0-2 counts. And so on.
That’s what happened on Thursday, and JV wasn’t all that sharp against Cleveland the start before that.
His ERA jumped from 1.93 to 3.17 after the debacle in Texas. He is 4-4.
MMM doesn’t think it’s necessarily alarming, but still enough to place JV’s start on Wednesday UtM.
Besides, MMM is curious to see how Verlander’s countenance is in his first start after his Texas-sized meltdown.
Upcoming: Indians, Twins
Back to the AL Central salt mines this week.
Wait—are those the Cleveland Indians in first place? Do MMM’s eyes deceive him?
Yes, the Tribe is hot. They are 17-4 in their past 21 games, and have surged from 8-13 and last place to 25-17 and first place.
But we’ve seen this before, haven’t we?
The Indians have been a pretty good April to June team in recent years. But when the temps get hotter, the Tribe gets colder.
Their second half collapses are well-noted.
But for now, with some new players, the Indians are enjoying a great run. And they host the Tigers in a two-game mini-series this week.
MMM doesn’t think Cleveland has the horses to stick around all summer, but who the heck knows?
Tigers starters: Scherzer, Verlander.
After the quick trip to Cleveland, it’s back to the good side of Lake Erie for four games against the slumping Twins at CoPa.
The Twinkies have lost five straight and have sunk to the depths of the division at 18-22.
Joe Mauer’s 15-game hitting streak was stopped Sunday against Boston.
The Twins were stopped several games prior to that.
For about 35 games, the Twins raised some eyebrows with their .500 play and their general nuisance they were causing in the division. Now, they are back to being the team most thought they were prior to the season.
Remember, this is a team that didn’t even settle on who was in their five-man rotation until AFTER spring training, and didn’t name an Opening Day starter until less than a week before the game.
But Mauer is back to the Mauer of old. He’s batting .342 and he has 17 doubles. But he is striking out once every four at-bats, which is not like the Mauer of old. Still, .342 is .342.
The Twins’ bugaboo is their starting pitching. No one in the rotation has an ERA lower than 4.66, and three of their starters have ERAs of 5.85-plus.
Tigers starters: Porcello, Sanchez, Fister, Scherzer.
The Tigers need a big week. Yes, it’s May, but the team is wobbly now. They are 4-8 in their last 12 games, and the Indians are feeling good about themselves. As Mickey Redmond would say, time to “get ‘er goin’.”
That’s all for this week’s MMM. See you next week!
Ten years ago last month, Charlie Rogers stood in front of the media, wearing a Detroit Lions baseball cap and proudly holding his brand new Honolulu blue and silver jersey with No. 1 on the front, signifying his status as a first round draft choice.
There were smiles all around. President Matt Millen smiled. New coach Steve Mariucci smiled. Chairman Bill Ford Jr. smiled. Lions fans all over the country smiled.
It was a giddy time.
The Lions felt like they were on to something. The year prior, the team drafted their quote-unquote franchise quarterback, Joey Harrington, from Oregon.
Now they were adding Rogers, out of Michigan State, to be the franchise receiver.
Finally—a real quarterback and receiver tandem!
Harrington proved himself to be a bust, a nice young man but without the intangibles needed to be a winning professional quarterback. The Lions did him no favors, never able to surround Harrington with bona fide talent. Within three years, the Lions pulled the plug on the Harrington Era.
Rogers was a bust too, maybe one of the biggest in NFL history. But his problem wasn’t lack of talent. It was lack of moral character and decency.
The Lions, as usual under Millen’s leadership, failed to do their due diligence before drafting Rogers. Had they done some digging, they likely would have learned about Charlie’s skeletons at MSU. The failed drug tests, for one—Rogers failed one each year at MSU, it came to light years later. And, some MSU folks said, Rogers wasn’t exactly the hardest working player on the team.
But Rogers was loaded with talent. In his last season at MSU (2002), Rogers won the Paul Warfield Trophy as the best college wide receiver in the country. He was a unanimous first team All-American.
It never came close to happening for Rogers in the NFL.
Rogers was released by the Lions just before the 2006 season after two seasons cut short by injury and one cut short by multiple violations of the NFL’s substance abuse policy, resulting in suspension. His NFL career consisted of 15 games played and 36 catches, for 440 yards and four TDs.
In 2008, Rogers was arrested for assault and battery of his girlfriend. In a separate incident, he violated probation, testing positive for the pain killer Vicodin. In 2009 he was arrested in Novi for drunk driving. Less than a year later, Rogers was arrested again, having passed out drunk—again in Novi.
It was easy for those of us not connected to Charlie Rogers personally to smirk and shake our head at his misadventures. No matter how many times he got arrested, Charlie Rogers was still known as “that NFL bust.” He wasn’t a person—and that was the problem.
Rogers didn’t have an inner circle of friends who gave two you-know-whats about him, once his NFL days were done. He had tons of “friends” when football was his world—a world that he, at times, appeared to have in the palm of his big hand.
But when the football was in the rearview mirror, Rogers’ posse evaporated. They moved on to other folks on whose coat tails they could ride.
Charlie Rogers was troubled, but worse than that, he was alone.
Lacking a support group of sorts, Rogers kept getting into trouble.
In 2010, Rogers was ordered to return to the Lions $6.1 million of the $9.1 singing bonus he received in 2003. A judge agreed with the Lions’ contention that Rogers’ drug use equated a breach of contract.
In December 2011, Rogers was pulled over in Saginaw. Police found an open container of alcohol in his vehicle. That incident is still without resolution. Possible charges are pending.
Throughout all of these misadventures, Charlie Rogers was never helped. No one took Rogers in. No one reached out to him. He wasn’t a star football player anymore, so screw him—that seemed to be the attitude.
Today Rogers is approaching his 32nd birthday (it’s May 23). He has no future to speak of. He never earned his degree from MSU. He is perhaps unemployable.
No one said it better about Rogers, than Rogers himself.
In an interview in August 2009 with ESPN’s Jemele Hill, whose journalism roots include Detroit, Rogers said, “I got a little greedy. The girls played a part in it.” Then, even more astutely, Charlie added, “I fucked up. Point blank, simple.”
Ten years after Rogers’ drafting into the NFL, there’s another former Lions receiver battling demons.
Titus Young was a 2nd round draft choice of the Lions in 2011, out of that pass happy program, Boise State. Like Rogers, Young exhibited some troubling behavior in college. And, like in Rogers’ case, the Lions chose to ignore it.
At Boise State, Young was suspended for most of his sophomore season for fighting with a teammate.
Young was the 44th overall pick in the 2011 NFL Draft. His off-field behavior scared some teams off. It didn’t scare off the Lions.
Young is in a downward spiral right now. He keeps getting arrested. Last summer, Young punched teammate Louis Delmas in practice and that started the spiral as a Lion.
Young ran wrong routes on purpose in a game against Green Bay last season, it was charged. He was causing trouble for his coaches in practice and during games. The Lions finally benched him.
Young took to Twitter in January and got into spats with fans on social media. The Lions released him the day after the Super Bowl. The St. Louis Rams, another franchise not known for smart decisions, claimed Young. But even the Rams had second thoughts and released Young nine days later.
This month, Young has been arrested three times, for alleged violations ranging from drunk driving to theft to resisting arrest. Last week, Young’s father said that his son has a severe mental disorder and needs help.
It’s not about football anymore for Titus Young. It’s about life, and his ability to survive it. It should be pointed out that Young is the father of a nine-month old baby boy, Titus Jr.
Again we smirk and shake our heads at Young’s personal life, as we did at Charlie Rogers’.
Rogers never got any help. Young’s father’s comment gives hope that Titus can get some help and support. Maybe there will be a personal posse that will gather and help Young battle his demons.
Charlie Rogers is 32, broke, and has no future. The world that was once his oyster is now his living hell.
That’s nothing to smirk about.
