by
Jose Valverde
The baseball season is just a couple of weeks old, but early trends have started to develop. A number of notable former Tigers are already struggling mightily, making those fans loyal to the Olde English D thankful that the scuffling is taking place safely outside the walls of Comerica Park.
Jhonny Peralta (St. Louis Cardinals)
The former performance-enhancing shortstop for the Tigers has yet to display much of anything during his time in the Show Me State.
Amazingly, it took Peralta until his 38th trip to the plate in 2014 to register a hit that was not a homer. And he only has two of those.
He finally started hacking his way out of this early season slump yesterday, rapping two clean base knocks to send his batting average soaring into triple figures. Having said that, the .111 clip that Peralta currently owns is good for dead last (out of 203!) in all of the majors for qualified hitters.
So for those of you who attributed Jhonny’s sudden mid-career power surge to his healthy appetite for steroids, give yourself a gold star for the day. You were right. For now.
Our former slugger is squeaky clean at the moment, and as a result, he’s back to having the body of Deivi Cruz coupled with the limited pop of David Eckstein.
No, the Tigers do not currently possess a future hall of famer at short, but at least through the season’s first couple of weeks, Mr. Peralta has not been missed.
Curtis Granderson (New York Mets)
It’s interesting to think how Granderson’s career might have played out differently had he remained in Detroit for the duration.
As a Tiger, Grandy was an extra-base machine. He topped the league in triples in consecutive seasons. He had a perfectly respectable 20-25 HR/year power stroke. He would swipe about that many bags, too.
Then he put on the Yankee pinstripes and immediately transformed into the modern-day Dave Kingman. Granderson crushed 80+ long balls over a two-year period in New York. The only problem was that he also struck out like a gabillion times in the process.
This ridiculous hit-or-miss style reached its apex in 2012 when Granderson swatted 43 taters and whiffed on an unimaginable 195 occasions. Keep in mind that the most K’s amassed by any batter prior to the year 2000 was 189 by Bobby Bonds (1970).
Trying to reverse his career course, Granderson hopped the subway over to Queens and is now the starting right fielder for the NY Metropolitans. The early returns have been less than stellar.
Thus far, Curtis has amassed a single homer and three ribbies, while sporting a Rob Deer-ish batting average of .159. At least they aren’t using him in the cleanup spot.
Oh wait, they are? Well, good luck with all that.
Jose Valverde (New York Mets)
In addition to ex-Tiger Granderson, the Mets have also installed former gas can extraordinaire Jose Valverde as their closer. I’m not sure who’s doing the majority of scouting for this club, but you’d think one of them might have realized Papa Grande stopped being an effective major league pitcher like 1,000 days ago (that’s approximately three years).
In trying to catch lightning in a bottle, the Mets have trusted Valverde to finish their ballgames. True to form, he’s done nothing of the sort.
Protecting a 6-3 lead Saturday night, the big man got two quick outs, then just as quickly allowed a pair of base runners. Sauntering to the plate was none other than noted Valverde-killer Raul Ibañez, who despite turning 71 years old earlier in the day, was still inserted as the Angels’ DH.
It remains unclear exactly what pitch was called next, but Valverde decided he was just going to rear back and throw his trademark, “Low-90s heater, tailing right back over the middle of the plate, just a little bit above the knees, to allow for a perfect launch angle, sending the ball on a moon-grazing flight to the very last row of parking spaces in the stadium’s outer lot.”
In other words, Ibañez hit the ball very, very, far.
The Mets did manage to steal the game back in 13 innings, but that doesn’t get Papa Grande off the hook in this space.
You try to figure out how in the world any big league club can continue to let this short-arming pitcher ruin their eight innings of hard work -- but I guess there are just some things in life we are not meant to understand.
Like the age-old question...why did they force so much Steenburgen on us in Back to the Future III when the Fox-Lloyd chemistry was all we ever needed?
Again, sometimes there just aren’t any answers. Just questions.
Thankfully, Valverde the Home Run Serving Machine is someone else’s problem now.
Prince Fielder (Texas Rangers)
We are approaching the “10% complete” portion of the MLB schedule and Prince Fielder is yet to knock a ball over the fence. And he’s hitting under .150. Yikes.
Prince is also bizarrely wearing #84 for the Rangers this year. It goes without saying that the uniform gods never appreciate such random and unappealing gestures.
Chris Webber joined the Pistons in 2007 and similarly decided to don jersey number 84. The added numerical weight seemed to make the already immobile Webber just a little more brittle.
During the conference finals, Cleveland designed its entire offense around making sure Webber was involved in every pick-and-roll situation. Long story short, the Cavs won the series in six and LeBron James donated half of his playoff bonus check to C-Webb, enclosing a note that read, “Couldn’t have done it without you, pal.”
So it probably wasn’t the best idea for Fielder to fiddle with his digits.
And while Son of Cecil will obviously not remain at a goose egg in the HR department for long, it isn’t a stretch to say his baseball-playing prime could now be in the rear-view despite being only about a month shy of his 30th birthday party.
In 2011, Fielder whacked 38 round trippers. There was a sharp decrease to 30 in ’12. Then, a mere 25 last year.
Even with the built-in advantage of now playing 81 games in homer-happy Arlington, Prince is gonna have to get cooking soon if he wants to reverse that discouraging trend.
That, or change his uniform number back to something much less silly.
