
illustrations by Samara Pearlstein
Was anyone in the world surprised by the ‘news’ that Joel Zumaya and Carlos Guillen will not be with the team come Opening Day? Of course not. The only way this would have been surprising is if both of them were bright-eyed, bushy-tailed, and sound in every limb. That would have been truly shocking.
Zoom has soreness in his elbow (the one that shattered so horri-memorably last season), Guillen has some sort of shenanigans surrounding his knee. They will rest, and maybe the inflammation will go down. At that point they will come off the DL, play a few games, and promptly get injured again. So It Is Written.
Let us remember that I already have an entire cat-egory for Carlos Guillen’s surgically repaired knee, and the only reason I don’t have one for Zoom is because there are too many body parts involved.

Will Rhymes has (at least temporarily) beaten out Danny Worth and Scott Sizemore for the starting job at second base.
This is a positive decision from a Roar of the Tigers viewpoint, so I can only hope the Tigers stick with it, and that Will Rhymes continues to wear his hair long. If he decided to start wearing his socks up too, that would pretty much make things perfect. Oh, also he should continue to hit the baseball in a useful manner. Really, though, this is a good thing. Danny Worth is freaking difficult to render in Terrible Cartoon form, and Scott Sizemore just always looks worried. Not when he’s wearing baseball jerseys that defy the mind and eyeballs, but at most other times: worried. WHAT DOES HE KNOW THAT WE DON’T?
Anyways, I feel safer with Will Rhymes. How can you mistrust the second base-defending skills of someone capable of remaining so calm when he’s about to get his face ripped off by a werewolf?

He is also obsessed with Chipotle burritos. OBSESSED. He can talk about them for a disturbingly long time.

Phil Coke is going to be the fifth starter whether we like it or not, but the Tigers don’t actually need five starters to begin the season. The way the schedule is staggered will let them get away with just four until they get to the weekend of the first home series. So that’s an extra 8 games where Coke gets to hang out in the bullpen with all the other relievers who thought they had gotten rid of him. NOPE.

I watched the Mets game that was on FSND the other day, and Phil Coke said some things during his interview.
–“I felt like I was throwing like a little girl there for a while.”
–On how he knew things were going well in some sort of simulated game situation thing: “[It was just] about hearing a lot of foul language from the guys, ’cause I was throwing a lot of heaters down the middle.”
–On starting the season in the bullpen: “I get to hang out with my boys, man!”
–On not being able to run in from the bullpen to psyche himself up for an appearance: “Coming in like a bull from a china shop.”
–On whether he considers himself a ‘personality’ in the bullpen: “Ah, you guys say that. People are gonna believe what y’all tell ’em.”
Rod Allen: “That’s right!”
–On what he’s going to do now that he’s out of the game for the day: “I’m gonna go kick up my feet, put my hands behind my head (demonstrating), put my feet up on the coffee table and go watch some boob tube.”
Rod Allen: “You got a real nice lifestyle!”
He also recently said the following, after a bad outing:
“It was weird,” Coke said. “It was one of those days. Very rarely does this ever happen to me: I could hear everything today.”
…
After the bat slipped out of the hands of Lance Berkman and into the Tigers’ dugout twice — once in the first inning and again in the fourth, when it struck infield coach Rafael Belliard in the arm — Coke admitted his concentration was affected.
“Once my focus was interrupted, I was garbage,” Coke said.
George Sipple/Detroit Free Press
Fifth starter, ladies and gentlecats: psyched out by crowd noise. I’m not saying this is necessarily going to be an issue during the season, but it is a thing that happened in real actual life. Panic at the level you deem appropriate.

You know how sometimes during a broadcast Rod will just start to lose it, and Mario will continue to doggedly attempt to call the game, but you can totally tell that he’s one wrong word away from cracking up himself, and also he knows Rod is being distracting and incredibly unhelpful but he can’t get mad because Mario just can’t stay mad at Rod? You know what I mean. Anyways, I always imagine it like this. Noogies.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY PAPA GRANDE! Jose Valverde turns 33 on March 24. Put on a pair of glasses, squat down, bug your eyes out as far as they will go, and scream at the top of your lungs to properly celebrate.

The end.