Merciless

This past weekend, we got our largest snow fall of the season.  It's the middle of April.  We got close to twenty inches dumped on us just after the snow from the actual winter was starting to melt away.  It was a weird random storm that just popped up and crushed everyone's dreams of the start of Spring.  We had a few days of mid forties weather.  The sun had been out.  What remained of the snow was that nasty grey stuff that everyone hates but are deep down happy to see because that means that Spring is just around the corner.  

As the snow accumulated throughout the day on Saturday, I kept looking out the front window and wondered where this was at the start of Winter.  Sure we had snow, but it was definitely late arriving.  When you think of Minnesota in December you automatically start to think of huge snow banks and kids sledding and canceled school.  At least here in the Twin Cities, it was cold no doubt, but the snow just didn't seem as bad as it was a few years ago.  At Christmas time, there was just enough snow on the ground to make it feel like winter.  There wasn't much of that magical Christmas feel to it.  

When you look at a calendar and see that it is April and then take a peek outside and see close to two feet of snow fall over the course of a weekend, it feels like a merciless winter.  As much as I love winter, it left a defeated feeling in the pit of my stomach.  I thought that I was done shoveling snow until later in the year, but I had to go out a couple of more times to clear the driveway and sidewalk.  It wasn't that nice light snow that you occasionally get either, it was heavy and wet.  The kind of snow that hurts your back after shoveling it for an hour straight. 

But still, when I looked to our front yard and saw that smooth clean look of freshly fallen snow, I still had a thought of how beautiful it looked.  I didn't shovel the front walk until Sunday afternoon, and every time I looked out the front window Saturday night, the snow brightened the evening.  It reflected the moonlight and the street lights.  It reminded me of why I love the winter so much.  Even if it was the middle of April. 

Slogging Through

At the end of December I made both the smartest and dumbest decision I have made in quite a while.  I decided to tackle one of the longest most in depth novels ever written: War and Peace.  I say smartest decision because it is such an engaging book.  There are such wide swings in topics in the book that it feels like at times I'm not even reading the same book.  I also say it is the  dumbest decision because it is such a long book.  Everyone knows that.  I have taken one small break in reading it just because I needed to read something different.  It was like a palate cleansing. 

A post shared by Michael Litzner (@melitzner) on Dec 20, 2017 at 8:15pm PST

It has taken me just about four months to get 671 pages of my copy.  It is 1444 pages.  Still a long way to go.  My goal is to get through the book before the end of the year.  As it stands, I should be finishing up with it some time in October.  I have been getting through the book seemingly in twenty page chunks.  There are times when I can only get through ten pages and other times I look and I've read twenty five or thirty.  It all depends on the writing.  

Let's Get Bold

Around this time each year, I feel like this blog turns into a baseball-centric blog.  I get that itch to watch this sport that I love.  Today is Opening Day across the board.  Well, mostly.  The Tigers game has been postponed due to rain, but there are still plenty of games to watch.  The Twins game is on later this afternoon, so I'll still hear the crack of the bat and the thump of the glove.  We all know the Tigers are rebuilding, but that doesn't mean we can't be excited about the team.  There is less pressure to win a lot for the team.  Most everyone has come to terms with what the Tigers are doing.  So I get to have a little fun with some predictions for the Tigers.  I no longer have to wonder if they're going to win the division or make it past the first round.  For now anyway.  So here we go.

10 Bold Predictions for the 2018 Tigers season:

• The Tigers will go 72-90
• They'll finish fourth in the division ahead of Kansas City
• Jeimer Candelario will hit .270 for the season 
• James McCann will hit 20 home runs
• The Tigers will send two players (Castellanos, Fulmer) to the All Star game
• Joe Jimenez will end the season as the team closer and save 15 games
• Dawel Lugo will end the season as the every day second baseman with Dixon Machado moving to shortstop
• Both of those predictions will happen because the Tigers will trade Shane Greene and Jose Iglesias before the trade deadline
•  Miguel Cabrera and Victor Martinez will both hit 25 home runs
• Ron Gardenhire will be ejected 7 times

 

So Your Team Is Terrible. Now What?

As a way to cope with the fact that the Detroit Tigers are going to be terrible for the next few years, I have been looking for reasons to be excited about the team.  This is something that the fan base hasn't had to deal with in over a decade, and I'm sure that other fans have dealt with this.  When we lived in Kansas, Royals fans were desperate for something resembling a winning team.  That didn't happen until we moved, but I remember some co-workers being excited about the minor leaguers that they had in the farm system.  Those minor leaguers are the ones that led the team to the World Series.  So that was cool.  

• Find a different team to watch for a couple of years.  Here in Minnesota, the Twins are starting to become relevant.  At least within the division and in the Wild Card.  They won't go much further than that, but at the very least they'll be playing meaningful games throughout most of the season.  It is difficult to deal with the fact this team is within the same division as the Tigers, but they're going to be on my television.  

• Dive into the farm system.  The farm system is the future.  There is still a ways to go for the fans to be excited about the players in the system, but it's the future.

• Relive the glory days.  This is a dangerous practice because when you actually see the record that the Tigers are going to have this year, it'll cause brain hemorrhages.  If you want to live in a nice little bubble, go nuts.  Only for those who are not ready for the fact that your favorite team is going to be struggling through the year.  

• Just suck it up and deal with it.  Embrace the pain and self hate you will deal with when watching a team struggle.  It'll make you bitter and angry, but you'd come out just fine.  It'll make the future, when they win more than seventy games, that much brighter.  

• Go watch a game in person.  Whether it is at the major league level, AAA, or some random independent league go to the ballpark.  Embrace the experience.  Get outside and enjoy the weather.  The sounds of the game, the smell of the ballpark, the warmth of the sun on your face can make you forget about how your favorite team is sitting in the basement of the division.  

A 6th Option

While my mind is on the Detroit Tigers, I thought of something the other day that makes me wonder if it would be a smart move.  In an effort to put less stress on the arms of the current pitching staff, would it be advisable to move to a six man starting rotation?  By all accounts, the prospects that the Tigers have won't be ready until 2019 and 2020.  And in some cases, even as late as 2021.  That is two, three, and four years that the pitchers will have on their arms for throw away seasons.

Teams work with a five man starting rotations.  During the course of a season, on average, guys are making about thirty starts.  The work horses of a team, the top two guys, will throw two hundred plus innings.  The magic number for a starting pitcher each game was once one hundred pitches.  Absolutely there are going to be games that a starter gets pulled early or could throw seven or eight innings.  There are going to be games when he is efficient with his pitches and games when he will struggle.  If you look at an 'average' year and called it thirty starts, one hundred pitches per start, and two hundred innings, that is three thousand pitches on a guy's arm.  I know it is not an exact science, and there are always going to be disabled list stints ans skipped starts.  For the sake of this argument, if you take just the top two guys (in the Tigers' case Michael Fulmer and Daniel Norris) that is a ton of mileage on your future rotation anchors for years that mean nothing.  By 2021, that can be close to nine thousand pitches thrown. 

IF, by chance, the Tigers wanted to do something crazy and throw in one more pitcher into the rotation, that could have a great impact on the guys that are up in the MLB right now.  A sixth man would drop an average year from thirty starts down to twenty five (again, a basic average).  That is five hundred fewer pitches each year.  Not only is it fewer starts and pitches each year, it is also an extra day rest and recovery.  Saving these arms for when the younger players are ready to make an impact could make the difference when it comes to a playoff run.  I know more goes into a starting pitcher's year than basic numbers I just happen to throw out, but can you imagine a pitcher's career being elongated one or two more years just because of something small like adding one extra starting pitcher for just two or three years. 

Would something like this work?  Most starting pitchers condition themselves to be ready to throw every fifth game.  Would changing your routine by one day make a difference?  Could these guys adjust to something like that?  Another idea that has been floated is 'bullpening'.  The main idea is that starters go three or four innings then the game is turned over to the bullpen.  Some teams are starting to build super bullpens where they add shut down guys.  It use to be a team would have a guy for the 7th, 8th, and 9th inning in a set role, now you see relief pitchers in all kinds of different innings.  Yes, this would limit starter's innings, but if they know that they are only going to be out there for four innings, won't they just go out and throw as hard as they can?  Empty the gas tank as it were.  I think the idea of bullpening is maybe a little more dangerous to the starters because of that.  They'll throw harder in a shorter period of time than they would if their starts were longer. 

Maybe we'll see a team here and there try something like this for a short period of time.  Maybe coming out of Spring Training there are a couple of guys fighting for that last rotation spot and the manager wants to see them duke it out for a few more weeks.  However, I don't think this is something that will catch on.  It wouldn't last all season.  I like any idea that could help preserve someone's career whether it is having a six man rotation or a super bullpen when relievers are coming out in the fourth inning.  If a guy can go out there and throw for one more year because he has pitched fewer innings in the past, wouldn't an idea like this be kind of worth it?  Besides, all it takes is one pitch for a man's career to be over.