You're overanalyzing. You can condense our major problems down to one category: pitching. More specifically: starting pitching. If Garland stays the course, Buehrle gets it together, "Big Game" Freddy lays off the doobs and Jose stops tipping his pitches than I think the division, yes the division says I, comes down to us and Twins. If Liriano comes back not the same pitcher, we'll take it. If he comes back with guns blazin then we're screwed...but I say we'll still take the Wild Card

The Tigers looked good today, but they're not the monster they were just a month ago.

all i know is this. the starting pitching needs to get hot right this second. neal cotts shouldnt be brought into any situation outside of mopup. and brian anderson should be playing centerfield every game til they clinch.


and yes friends, they will clinch. soon.

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To be fair to Baines, I'm not exactly sure if the bad baserunning is his fault at all. The first base coach really has very minimal say in when a steal occurs or anything else other than calling a runner back on a pick-off attempt. If you are going to blame any of the coaches for this issue, blame Cora.

Raines should be doing coaching on how to steal second before the games, not in the 1st base box. That's a crazy statement that he could be coaching to steal second during the game. heck even from the bench, he should be able to pick up the pitcher and give some tips to guys like anderson, iguchi, pods to how to steal second.

In all honesty I would prefer Raines at 3rd base coach and Cora at 1st. Let Baines stay in the dugout and help out the guys with what he was good at... hitting.

We're reaching here Panther. There is very little coaching going on when Pods or anybody else is on first. At that point its on the runner to read the pitcher and get a good jump. There's no time for the first base coach to advise in that spot. What's Raines gonna do read the pitcher and yell "go" when he see's the pitcher going to the plate. You have to read that in a split second as a base runner on your own. Coaching is done before the games.