How Do These Things Happen?

Some things to thing about heading into this weekend’s series in Detroit:

Remember when the Tigers were supposed to score 1,000 runs this season? They’ve crossed the plate 507 times in 101 games, meaning if they average eight runs per game the rest of the way out, they’re totally there.

Remember also when the Tigers were 12 games under .500? That was June 6th, and since then the Kittens have gone 28-13. The Sox, over that same stretch, are 23-17. So after all the hoopla about who would easily dominate and who would be the most average team in the American League, we’re suddenly looking at two teams that win a lot of high-scoring games.

One team is counting on a handful of bats to do the heavy lifting because the others have all gone dead, and said team’s pitching has been remarkably hit or miss lately. The other team is exactly the same. This weekend’s set has equal chance to be either the absolute best or miserably worst series of the season to date, and it’s almost sad when one team with such a one-dimensional offense found a way to be 5.5 games up on another team with such a one-dimensional offense. Someone’s going to come out of this looking terrible.

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Can the Tigers make the playoffs? The people of Motor City weigh in. [Detroit Free Press]

Believe it or not, some people want to save the skeleton of Tiger Stadium. [Metro Times]

Finally, your faithful editor will be on the road for this weekend’s series, so it’ll be a solid block of guest writers until Monday. Enjoy.