Halfway Home

Rob Sanford

It's hard to believe. but we are already at the halfway point of the season. If I were to be totally honest, at the beginning of the season if you told me the Tigers would at or near the top of the Central Division by now, I would be surprised. I felt the teams pitching would be the teams strong point....but it hasn't worked out that way. The experiement of turning Phil Coke  into a starter has been a failure.....Brad Penny and Rick Porcello are up and down, and Max Scherzer has been the beneficiary of run support but is also up and down. The only pitcher that's reliable at this point is Justin Verlander.....and he's heading into a Cy Young Award type season.

The biggest surprise to me however is the emergence of the Tigers question marks at the start. Brennan Boesch, Andy Dirks, Casper Wells, Victor Martinez, Alex Avila, and Jhonny Peralta have had impressive first half performance. The Tigers still have a major hole at second base....Ryan Raburn is much less than adequete and ....Ramon Santiago is steady, but it wouldn't surprise me to see the club make a move to plug that hole.

The elephant in the room right now is the Tigers financial picture. It's becoming more and more clear the team maybe pulling in its horns and the checkbook isn't as open as it once was. This will have an effect on any move they may or may not make, and signing or retaining players after the season is over.