Counting down to Opening Day

With Fu-Te Ni being the star of today's 3-0 shutout over the Phillies, its come time to ask.......Where does this club stand?

Well.....we can go with all the needed cliches' about Spring Training. "Its a small sample", "these games don't count", "wait until the real bullets are flying"....blah blah blah. But at the end of the day we can only look at the games that have been in front of us....we can only look at old stats so often....where are these Tigers and what do we know?

I think we know that there is a good chance that Austin Jackson will patrol CF pretty well and that Scott Sizemore will not be a slow leak in the infield's tire on defense either. These are big developments to me....Detroit's a pitching-based ballclub ostensibly...so you have to have some quality leather work behind them. Losing Polanco's "steady" presence worried some and Granderson's rep was at least being missed by others in CF.

I think we can make a good guess that we'll see more of the "Good Magglio" this rather then "First half '09 Magglio". He's hitting well and all accounts from those on the scene are pretty glowing.

I think we know that Miguel Cabrera and Justin Verlander will again be the pillars everything else is based around. Rick Porcello and Max Scherzer are left to support the Big Two.

I think we know that Adam Everett can't hit much....he didn't need to hit .077 to prove it to us!!

Its becoming evident to me that the Tigers have enough bullpen depth of different varieties that some kind of solid bullpen should emerge in due course. Valverde will get the primetime stat in "saves"......but guys like Fu-Te Ni, Ryan Perry, Phil Coke, Brad Thomas, Joel Zumaya, and Robbie Weinhardt will all be pitching very important innings at various point this year I think.

I believe the soft-underbelly of the Tigers----the back end of the rotation----has a bunch of guys that aren't lighting it up but at least the also aren't getting run off the mound most nights, showing that there might be some level of utility to be garnered there. Nate Robertson might have gas left in the tank.

We don't know how Brandon Inge's knee is going to hold up. Its good he says its achy but not the shooting pain he had last year....at least I'm trying to rationalize that its good.

We don't know, how could we possibly (?), what twists The Curious Case of Dontrelle Willis could have in store for us.

In a division that hasn't had a 90-game winner in two years, I think this club has a shot. Perhaps a sneaky-good shot...we'll see how the cuts come about here in the next few days and see how Leyland and Dombrowski see things. They would not have signed Jose Valverde (no matter my objections!) and Johnny Damon with their collective sights set on 3rd place....they must feel they can compete now, how they structure this 25-man roster to begin the pursuit should be very interesting to take note of in the next week or so.