Detroit News columnist Lynn Henning has been covering the Detroit Tigers since, well, before I was born. Henning is generally more open with his opinions and observations than most other writers in the pool of Tigers baseball writers, which tends to bring Henning and his work a lot of fan interest, and a share of detractors.
Hennings was generous enough to spend some time chatting with me on Thursday afternoon, covering topics from the 2012 Detroit Tigers season and this weekend's Tigers-Orioles series, the American League Central race, the possibilty of Tigers trade scenarios involving Prince Fielder, Miguel Cabrera or Alex Avila, Twitter hecklers and - of course I had to ask - the Justin Verlander/Kate Upton romance.
There's a lot of fodder to digest, so talk back in the comments below.
PART TWO
The Tigers haven’t seen the Orioles yet this year - what do you think of the resurgent Baltimore team?
I like them a lot and have all season because they’re finally getting some things straight. People have been waiting for how many years for this team to get back to something like it was in its heyday, and there was no reason for it except Peter Angelos meddled so much with the front office that they never could put a plan in place. This is really gonna be a tough team for the Tigers this weekend.
They can certainly hit, but it’s always been a club that has had good young arms that never developed into anything.
If they played in the AL Central they’d be the talk of baseball by now, because these guys would have surged into a comfortable lead. But it comes back to Detroit - if the Tigers are going to take control of the division, they can’t come in and flounder around after the All-Star break or they’re gonna be in a bad hole. It’s a team that’s only a little above .500, and they got there by way of the Twins and Royals before the break. When they hit the tough part of the schedule the next couple months here, I’m a little concerned about how they’ll perform against better caliber talent. They seem to have those holes that creep up mostly when they play good opponents. Against good teams your bad spots tend to flare up, and the second base spot isn’t getting better any time soon.
It seems the Tigers don’t win consistently against better teams because there are enough weaknesses in the defense, or on the base paths, or with holes in the lineup, that it will cost always them a run here and there in a game.
I’ve been worried about that since the day of the Prince Fielder acquisition, I thought the defense against good teams would end up trapping them, and you see that playing out. When you give up extra outs, now you’re running up pitch counts, getting into the bullpen too early and it’s a chain reaction that we’ve seen too much. Unless they do something about second base, this team is going to be hard-pressed to win the division, or go far in the playoffs, if they don’t get a steadying presence there.
Do you think second base is the biggest need to address, over a corner outfielder that might make a bigger difference in the lineup?
I do, because I think they could catch a break with those corner guys in the second half, particularly Brennan Boesch if he would settle down. And then when Andy Dirks comes back - if he comes back - he’s a potential plus player who can help you two ways. But second base isn’t going away and any time you have an up-the-middle infield position that is so undermanned, you can’t play through that or around it. And I realize the replacement parts are expensive, even Marco Scutaro of the Rockies.
Do you think they’ll go after a guy like Scutaro, who is more of a temporary solution, or do they make a trade similar to the Fister deal last year where they go after a guy like the Astros’ Jed Lowrie who will help you long-term at a position of organizational weakness?
Those longer-term solutions tend to be more do-able during the offseason. So I’d buy your reasoning that they’d make more of a stopgap deal for a guy like Scutaro and then at Dave Dombrowski’s typical Winter Meeting flesh peddling, he tends to come away with the bigger picture answer. That to me is a better solution than doing something now to pay over-value for a guy like Lowrie or the Cubs’ Darwin Barney.
The Tigers set the record for most strikeouts in ever in the first half of a season. Do you think the defense has anything to do with that - that pitchers don’t want to pitch to contact for fear of the defense, or is that just the way the staff is naturally set up, to get strikeouts?
That’s a great question but I don’t think so. What it comes down to is you’ve got power, strike out arms in Justin Verlander and Max Scherzer, and they’re getting their share. They get a little help when Smyly is able to see a team for the first time. He’s a surprise, because I didn’t think he’d pitch this well through the middle part of the season. Really, the pitching has been fine. I wouldn’t have any problems with it going into the playoffs, but they’ve got to do something about the defense, and you can’t have corner outfielders with a .600 OPS.
When you look at the White Sox and how well put together they are this year, I think it makes it tough on Detroit.
Has Chicago surprised you this year? Because it looked like they might be rebuilding. They certainly sent away more big-league talent than they brought back.
They did, and for that reason it was difficult to make a case they were gonna do much. But when you’ve got young arms, particularly when they’re pitching as well as theirs have, you can do almost anything. Now you add Kevin Youkilis at third base where they were getting no production, and you’ve got a pretty good baseball team. I think the Tigers have one choice: play very well for the next 60 days against very tough competition, and you better beat the White Sox head-to-head. If you don’t, Chicago is going to win that division.
This isn’t a case like you had last year with the Indians when you knew Cleveland would probably come back down to their thin and rather synthetic ranks. This White Sox team has substance - a bullpen with young arms, Sale is pitching very well and Peavy throws well, and of course the new kid they’ve brought up, Jose Quintana, is really good. But once you’ve got young guys playing like that, you can steal the division real quick - the Tigers showed that in 2006, and we might be seeing that with the White Sox. They could win this thing comfortably.
| Related: Why The Tigers Should Still Win The Division |
I still think the Tigers are 50-50 because their pitching is good, and if they get a little better at those spots we identified, the Tigers can play well enough to overtake Chicago.
The Indians are tougher than last year too because their pitching has had a year to mature, and they’ve added Derek Lowe into the rotation. They may not be as talented, overall, as the Tigers or even Chicago is, but they’re more complete.
I agree. That could be the team that could maybe have the most to say about this thing because they are going to beat a lot of teams on a lot of given nights, and the Tigers will probably be one of those teams. In the division, you won’t see anything but upside from those competitors. Kansas City is going to get healthier and a little more mature. The Twins, if they get any pitching, are really tough because the lineup can do so many things. To me it just puts the ball in the Tigers’ court. They’ll have to play somewhere around a .570 mark, or .600, or they’re going to be staying home. That’s why I think the next 8 or 9 series, if they don’t play something close to break-even and position themselves for a big kick at the end, they could miss out.
Looking ahead to next winter - last offseason the goal was to get faster, more athletic, better defensively, and then Victor Martinez got hurt and the Tigers ended up instead with Prince Fielder, who plays into their strengths even more, and accentuates the weaknesses. So now you have an imbalanced roster with plenty of talent overall, but talent in the wrong spots. Do you think there could be a trade this winter similar to the Curtis Granderson trade, where you give up a big player to fill a lot of holes?
That’s possible. The one thing people will have to think about as a possibility is seeing Miguel Cabrera getting dealt. You won’t see it soon, but approaching that walk year, which for him will be 2015, they might decide to trade him for a boat-load of talent, ahead of that walk-year. People have to open the option that that could be an important and beneficial trade. By that point they should have some of their own organizational people who can hit in the middle of the order and do a good job, and if you can expand your overall quality, that to me is a deal to watch for.
For this offseason, it depends on whether they make the playoffs. If they don’t make the postseason it would neither shock me if they traded Prince Fielder. The Dodgers would probably want to take on that contract if they could get him, and that would in turn make it possible for Cabrera to go to first, get Nick Castellanos, the hot-shot prospect, at third, and it would drop an important $20 million from the payroll.
I’d keep an eye on those things, not because I think they’ll happen but because the front office could decide those things must happen to get this team in better shape for the long term. The payroll will become an issue, because you’ve got guys like Austin Jackson, Alex Avila, Rick Porcello, Max Scherzer needing big contracts and you just can’t go up to $150 or $180 million. Particularly if they don’t make the playoffs, it would be no major news to me if they dealt Fielder this year and if in a couple years they spun Cabrera off for a big return. Now neither of the deals may happen, or both might, but the front office will have some big decisions to make the next few years.
Click through for Part two of the interview, in which Lynn Henning discusses Alex Avila trade possibilities, Twitter hecklers, and the Justin Verlander-Kate Upton romance.
PART TWO
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