At Home Plate - For the Tigers, it's now about respectability

For the Tigers, it's now about respectability

Written by Jonathan Leshanski (Contact & Archive) on October 28, 2012

The Tigers must be experiencing déjà vu. Of course last time they saw this happen, they were the team with the upper hand, and the team struggling to get a single run across the plate was the New York Yankees.

In the ALCS the Tigers pitchers tamed the bats of the Yankees, embarrassing what was the second most productive offense. The Tigers were nowhere near that good, but they were respectable.

At least until now.

Now they find themselves on the wrong end of a similar situation and in line to face the best pitcher on the Giants staff in Game 4 of the World Series. No doubt the Giants are thinking sweep, and in truth so are the Tigers.

Right now the Tigers aren’t about playing to win the World Series, that’s improbable. The more reasonable goal at this point is to get some respectability back, and not to get swept. Thinking about winning will have to come after they beat first Matt Cain and then hopefully face off against the beatable Barry Zito in a Game 5.

Getting to Game 5 is a longshot, especially if the team can’t manufacture more than three or four runs in Game 4. If they did they’d match or surpass their total offense for the series.

Cabrera needs to find that long ball swing

Photo by Keith Allison, used under creative commons license.

There is no mystery as to what the Tigers need to do. They really need Miguel Cabrera and Prince Fielder, neither of whom have come close to hitting their own weight, to ideally rediscover the long ball, but failing that to at least start getting some hits. They’ll also need some from the secondary players if they are going to get out of the starting gate and maybe win a game.

That’s the simple recipe for success -- although they’ll need Max Scherzer to pitch a decent game too. If the offense stays at the same level, he’ll have to show that flash of the ace brilliance he occasionally exhibits and even then it might not be enough.

Simple enough. Score runs and maybe they can think about Zito and Game 5. If not, they’ll be saying sayonara by the end of the night.

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