pug marks, Feb. 23

photo illustration by Samara Pearlstein

It’s been ages since we last had a pug marks post, hasn’t it? Let’s see if we can manage to pug mark things that aren’t Traitor Damon.

pug mark 1
Carlos Guillen is just fine with a DH role. Which is good, ’cause, uh, it’s what he’s going to be playing. Logic, the composition of the lineup as it stands right now, and Guillen’s baseball-elderly body would all seem to make this an easy decision. It’s only an issue because of an interview Guillen did back in October, where he said things like this:

“I’m not trying to make big trouble,” Guillen said. “I know we’re coming off a tough year. I just want to make everything clear and prepare myself for the next year, because I don’t know what [the Tigers are] going to do.”
…
“I’m happy with the organization,” Guillen said. “We have great players, great fans. But I think the best way I can help my team is on the field.”
Jason Beck, DetroitTigers.com

Now he’s saying things like this:

“I’m very happy,” Guillen said. “We had a good conversation this morning.”
…
“I made a mistake,” Leyland said.

That made a point with Guillen.

“I’m happy he understands,” Guillen said.
Jason Beck, DetroitTigers.com

It’s not surprising that Guillen wants to play every day, and it’s not really surprising that he had some trouble imagining himself happy in a reduced role. He is after all a professional baseball player, which means that in his little baseball player heart he believes he is 22 years old and made of adamantium. So it took some time and some pointed front office communication to get this through, but it sounds like everyone got there in the end, and that’s the main thing.

pug mark 2
Our very own Lee of Tiger Tales has done a book! A WHOLE BOOK, YO. It’s called Beyond Batting Average and it has numbers and words and things in it.

It ALSO has drawings in it! Because Lee was concerned that numbers and words might be kind of boring for some people, he wanted inky doodles to break up the tedium, so he asked me if I would terribly mind making some appropriately inky contribution. Of course I agreed, for great baseball justice and moderate lulz. Here’s a preview to whet your appetite:

Lee also did a wee interview about the book with BYB, which can be found right over here.

pug mark 3
The G-Money situation is resolved. For now. He’s pleading no contest to the charges, and in exchange will have to attend anger management classes, which is probably a good thing anyways. Maybe we should have all the Tigers attend with him. You know, to be proactive.

pug mark 4
Relatedly, sort of, Dane Sardinha has been arrested for driving drunk. He’s with the Phillies now, but he was ours just recently, and in light of the Cabrera and G-Money incidents it seemed worth a mention.

I don’t know what, if anything, MLB is doing to address the drinking culture of the players, but it’s starting to look more and more like they need to do SOMETHING. Also, people who drive drunk are the scum of the earth, so if all Tigers can please remember that they make more than enough money to pay for a cab from now on, that would be swell.

pug mark 5
Bobby Seay has been shut down for a few days. He’s got bursitis and tendonitis (read: swollen bits) in his throwing shoulder. The team doesn’t seem to think it’s a huge deal, but they’re taking the Better Safe Than Sorry and Without Bobby Seay When You Need/Want Him approach.

pug mark 6
Some interesting spring visuals, via Roger DeWitt/hueytaxi:

–When did Ramon Santiago get so jacked?
–The Bondo tattoo situation is even worse than we initially thought. The tribal bicep route, Bondo? Really?
–Behold the new svelte Zoom.
—Max St. Pierre lives!
–If Phil Coke keeps this look during the season, he’s going to make himself much easier to cartoon. Do it, Phil, do it!
–Magglio’s hair report: still tragically short.
–Ryan Perry really needs to kill the chin strap thing he’s got going on right now.
–One of the first photos of Max Scherzer I’ve seen. Gorgeous, fierce, flawless, etc.

pug mark 7
Oh, fine, one Traitor Damon pug mark. Please take a look at Mr. Dombrowski’s shirt at the ‘Hey we signed this dude for real’ press conference. STRIPED PERFECTION. That shirt is everything my cartoony mind has ever dreamed of for our GM.

Dane Sardinha rides the Rocky dinosaur

illustration by Samara Pearlstein

I think this is the first dinosaur-related post on RotT that wasn’t in some way referring to the Spazzosaurus. A landmark occasion!

For the first time EVER this year the Tigers have been OVER .500! I am so consumed by excitement that I do not even know what to do with myself. Over .500, why, that means…. that means that we win MORE than we lose. Did that seem like a possible thing at the end of May? No. No, it did not. It took the death of Jeremy Bonderman to energize the Tigers to this point. Of course that was an unfortunate event but at least something good has come from the senseless tragedy.

There were many good things today. There was Kenny, whose pitching was solid after the 2nd inning and whose fielding was, let us not put too fine a point on it, WICKED HOT. When he covered first on that play where Miggy had to field the ball between first and second and so Kenny had to make a big first baseman-style stretch with his back foot on the bag to get the out? That was hot. And when a ball was hit back at him going 500 mph and he stuck his glove out as cool as you please, plucked the screaming linedrive from midair, and flipped it to the infielders like, hey, ain’t no thang? That was also hot.

I am not usually the kind of blogger who goes all squee! on Kenny Rogers, but if you did not squee at those plays, it is probable that you do not know how to squee at all.

And then we got two scoreless innings out of Freddy Dolsi, and the Rollercoaster earned his name once again by completely forgetting about his previous outing to get a perfect save today. This is why he is Rollercoaster Jones. He can give up 709 runs one night, something that would completely traumatize most pitchers to the point where they’d have to go back to double-A to get over it, and he can carry on like it never happened. This should be the only thing that people mean when they talk about the Closer Mentality: the pitching-specific amnesia. I know that people talk about bulldogs and crocodiles and other tenacious things when they talk about closers too, but I’ve never seen someone bulldog their way past a bad outing. What would that even entail? Peeing on a tree stump? Biting the neck of an umpire until it snapped?

A moderate amount of hitting accompanied these pitching marvels, but really the best bit was the one illustrated up top: Dane Sardinha, ridin’ that purple dinosaur. Mr. Sardinha got his very first big league hit against the fairly hapless Rockies pitching. I say ‘fairly hapless’ because not only did DANE SARDINHA, a dude who has basically never hit at any level, get a hit off of them, but it was a TWO-RUN TRIPLE. Nice way to get your first hit, for sure, although if he ever does it again I will have to do a happy little jig of utter disbelief.

Oh, and Magglio is on the DL. I know it seems kind of extreme, given the fact that Sheff played through his oblique injury for a while, and Inge did the same, but truthfully this is what SHOULD have been done with both those guys. Sheff would have been DLed long before he was if only he wasn’t so stubborn, and Inge would have been DLed long before he was if we had had another catcher. Hopefully the prompt DL designation of Maggs will let his oblique heal more quickly than Sheff’s and Inge’s.

Tomorrow the Tigs return to games against the non-imaginary league, although they’ll be in the Metrodome, which is probably at least partially imaginary. Arrrrrrmando goes up against Glen Perkins, whose name makes it sound like he should be working in a cubicle somewhere. It’s at 8:10 because it’s in one of those fake timezones people keep telling me about. Lies, all lies. Go Tigers!