Jim Leyland Swings a Big Stick

There was an article published in the USA Today yesterday about the Tigers and their clubhouse. Former MR pitcher Jason Grilli (traded to Colorado) popped off about the clubhouse being stagnant. Gary Sheffield said the team is too relaxed. Carlos Guillen, suddenly one of the most error prone fielders on the team, has the audacity to insinuate that a team with the second highest payroll in baseball was suffering from unfair expectations.

Look, the Tigers have been inexplicably bad this season. Their level of suck in churning out the American League's worst record has been, in a word, epic. And 2006's magic man, manager Jim Leyland, has had absolutely no answers for it. It's baseball. It happens. Yet, whatever ails the team on the field, one thing you couldn't accuse Leyland of doing is throwing his players under the bus. You don't know what goes on behind closed doors, but at no point this season (or in the last three) has he called out players in the media.

The USA Today article, though, saw him walk right up to the edge. This audio clip (look at the list of audio links on the right of the linked page) of Leyland taking a huge swing at players talking to the press is simply awesome (especially towards the end of it). At several points he just rips Jason Grilli to shreads:

Grilli should worry about Colorado. And if Jason Grilli’d done a better job, he’d still be here. So I don’t wanna hear any weak s**t from Jason Grilli right now either, because he belongs to somebody else.

But he also fires several warning shots across the bow for the rest of the team:

I’m not lookin’ for problems here but I’m a f**kin’ man, I look in the mirror, when I’m horses**t I’m horses**t and right now I’m horses**t and there’s a few f**kers in that clubhouse right now that are horses**t too, and they need to look in that mirror. Don’t look in mine, look in theirs. And don’t look at the f**kin’ guy next to ‘em, look in the f**kin’ mirror yourself. Don’t be pointin’ f**kin’ fingers over here and there… that’s all weak s**t, really [bleep], some of the other s**t I read in the paper today, that’s weak f**kin’ s**t. WEAK.

But that's not my favorite bit. That was saved for this exchange with one of the team's beat writers, Jason Beck (who is damn good at what he does):

What d’you think, Beck? You write a f**kin’ horses**t story, you don’t blame [Detroit Free Press writer] John Lowe, do you?

That comes at the end of the clip and the assembled reporters just flat out crack up at that point. It's gold, Jerry! GOLD! Anyway, Leyland's dead-on ball's accurate with this one. I'm not saying it'll give the team the jumpstart it needs (though they beat the Mariners 12-8 last night), but like "Big Stick" Leyland says, it sure as hell can't hurt. If you have five minutes to kill, listen to the whole audio clip, which can also be downloaded from here.

(A big tip 'o the cap, by the way, to Roar of the Tigers for transcribing all the best kibbles and bits.)

Li'l Brakke, On the Road to the Show

I decided to skip over the franchise mode of MLB '08: The Show and start a Road to the Show player instead. (If you're unfamiliar with this, you create your own ballplayer and start him out in the minor in an attempt to build him up to a major league hall of famer.) I decided to go with a starting pitcher in the Tigers organization and I proceeded to play through all of spring training in a single evening. (Playing out each of my appearances without skipping any.)

Li'l Brakke (like Li'l Penny, only totally different) had a decent spring for the big league club considering he has no skill whatsoever and has a fastball that tops out around 84mph. (I don't like that you have to -apparently- build up your velocity from scratch. I don't think a lot of future fireballers start out in the minors struggling to hit 85mph on the radar gun.) I think I finished out the spring with about a 4.xx ERA. I gave up a metric ton of hits, but relatively few runs all considered and my strikeout to walk ratio was insanely good given my lack of control. (Something like 15:3.)

Once spring training was done I signed a one year deal to be a middle reliever for Detroit's AA club, the Erie Seawolves. At this point the game starts giving you goals to meet in terms of training your player up, like improving your fielding ability. This is done using points accumulated for being successful when playing in games. (Having a low ERA or inducing a double play, for example.) In roughly five appearances I've been having quite a bit of success, including a 2.11 ERA and continued success striking guys out despite not having any pitch velocity to speak of. (I've got a killer 12-6 curve, though, and it's been a monster strikeout pitch.)

You also get emails from your manager that let you know what he thinks about your play and you have the ability to take career actions like retire or complain about your position on the club. I had the option to complain about not being a starter, but I decided to be the patient rookie that I am. In my final game last night I was called in to start the top of the eight inning of a tied ballgame. Five innings later, having not allowed in a run, Erie pulled the game out and I had a glowing email from my manager informing me that I was going to get a shot in the starting rotation. Oh happy day!

Needless to say, I'm enamored with the Road to the Show mode in this game. It's my first experience with it (having not played MLB '07) and it's a wicked amount of fun so far. I was amazed at how much pressure I felt as a middle reliever to come into a game and keep guys in scoring position from making it home. In one game I was called in to a close game with the bases loaded and only one out. I proceeded to strike out the next two hitters and get out of the inning, which had me on my feet cheering Li'l Brakke on. The experience has actually given me newfound respect for the guys with the thankless job of middle relief.

More impressions to come.

DirecTV and MLB HD Price Whoring

I've been back from our Midwest Family Tour for a couple days, but hadn't made much time for blogging since there's been very little to blog about. I think I've gone nearly two weeks now without any serious gaming, which is more than a little disconcerting. I still need to finish Bioshock, so I'm hoping to make some time for that before the week is over. (I think I'm pretty close now.)

With baseball season underway and the Detroit Tigers looking like post-season contenders again this year I had planned to break down and order DirecTV's Extra Innings package. I had the page loaded up and was ready to click on the order button when I noticed that they're doing the same thing with their MLB package that they do with the NFL: putting the HD content on another tier, for which you have to pay extra.

Now $180 for a season of baseball isn't a bad value. It's not a great value, but it's six months of daily baseball at the same price of an NFL package where you'll probably only watch around 16 games. But I'm absolutely sick of DirecTV double-dipping for HD content. I already have to pay an extra $10 a month just to enable HD content, which was fine until they put HD-exclusive channels like UniversalHD, HDMovies and MGMHD into their own separate tier. To tell subscribers of these already expensive sports packages that they've got to pony up yet again if they want to see a fraction of the games in HD, I think that's just gouging. (Something I've told them in a not-so-politely worded letter.) I mean if you order HBO or Showtime, you don't have to pay a separate fee to get the HD versions of those channels.

Fortunately -unlike the NFL, which I'm canceling this year; screw the Lions- I have a choice with the MLB. So instead of going the DirecTV route, I've signed up for MLB.com's MLBTV Premium package. It's $120 dollars and includes a game mix channel (six games at once), MLB Radio (so I can listen to afternoon games at work) and some other stuff. Unlike past years, this year they've got a 1.2MB video feed that's much closer to (non-HD) broadcast quality. Since my PC's secondary display output is hooked up to our video projector, I'm thinking I can watch games all summer long while my wife watches regular stuff on the TV underneath the big screen. (It's an odd setup, but it works.)

As for the Tigers, I can't tell you how heartwarming it is to see this team competitive again. After 20 years of losing Detroit baseball, their incredible regular season and World Series appearance made 2006 just a magical year. In 2007 they had a disappointing finish (considering they had the league's best record late in July), but it was still a fun season of baseball. And with some of their off-season moves this year, acquiring Edgar Renteria, Dontrelle Willis and Miguel Cabrera, this year should be more of the same. Hopefully the pitching holds up because that lineup is just unbelievable.

Tigers Go Crazy

Crazy like a fox!!!

My goodness. Dontrelle "Please, please, please let 2007 have been an off year" Willis and Miguel "I'm just 24!" Cabrera? Wow. I mean wow. The Tigers lineup was already among the best in baseball, now it's just... muurrrderous. (Pun intended.)

Yeah, they had to give up *a lot* to get those two. Maybin and Miller are as close to being sure things as it gets. And Rabelo and the three other farm pitchers are all quality prospects. (De la Cruz in particular has significant upside.) But that's just it, it's still all prospects and the Tigers are getting *young* guys with major league track records. Given that they were already World Series contenders, especially after trading for Renteria earlier in the off-season, this has got to make them favorites.

The amazing thing to me is still that we're talking about the Detroit freak'n Tigers. Four years ago this team lost 119 games. It just blows my mind to even think about this franchise as being one of the elite in baseball. Dave Dombrowski, name your Christmas gift and you shall have it. My first born? A BJ? I don't care. It's yours!