Rain interrupts a good story

With Clayton Kershaw  scheduled to face off against Miggy Cabrera it had the trappings of a good story. In 2006 the Tigers had a choice to make in the draft and they went the safe route picking the safe high ceiling College pitcher, thus leaving Kershaw for the Dodgers.

The Dodgers armed with the best pitching prospect in baseball could have dealt him as part of a package to get Miggy Cabrera. Instead the Tigers used the number one pick of Andrew Miller to entice the Marlins and bring Miggy to Detroit.  The points against going all out and acquiring Miggy back in November were his contract status and his weight.

Both of those were put to rest when he signed a multi-year deal with Detroit and went on a conditioning program during the winter. Detroit then made the smart move and put him at 1st base.

If the Tigers had drafted Kershaw, would  they have traded him for Miggy? As we head into late June on one of the more pathetic displays of offense, did the Dodgers make the right decision and not meet the high demands of the Marlins? Miggy has not been producing at the same rate he produced for the Marlins but does any one really doubt that he is not going to rake and continue to make his case for the best young hitter in baseball?

I don't know what Ned's options were but back in November but the value of Loney was probably as high as it ever was going to get. One of the options I had put out there was to make Loney the centerpiece of the deal and move Miggy to 1st base.

None of this happened and so on Sunday we got to see our Kershaw dueling against their Miggy but because of the rain we got only two at bats and they were both won by Kershaw.  The rain probably cost the Dodgers this game as Kershaw looked like he was going to pitch his 2nd best game of his young career. Instead we got Park after the rain delay and as Andrew has been telling us for 3 months, the pixie dust finally ran out.

Other then Kershaw pitching it was hard for me to feign much interest in this game. Torre is putting out a lineup that recalls the days of 2005 when Jason Philips, Mike Edwards, and other quadruple A players got way to many starts. Just as Tracy left Choi to rot on the bench, it looks like Joe Torre is going to let LaRoche rot on our bench. The difference is that Joe Torre has more options and is not using them. When you play in Detroit and you only use Young as a DH in one game and don't use LaRoche in any of the games and put out the likes of Maza and a very struggling DeWitt and a very struggling Pierre you handicap a team that is already having trouble scoring runs. I have no faith that Torre even feels Pierre is struggling. DeWitt has been moved up in the line to the 2 and now 3 spot as he works his way toward Hu territory for the month of June.

If you don't see me writing much for a while it will be because I hate to go negative day after day, but right now just about any game story is going to have negative connotations because of the choices being made by this ill-equiped GM and Manager. 

I still believe this team has enough talent to compete in the weak West but only if they put their best team forward, and I haven't seen that happen. Joe Torre has been a piece of work this year and is exactly what I expected. His time has come and gone and while Ned does a lousy enough job on his own, now we see what happens when the owner gets involved. Injuries are certainly a part of this problem, but no injury is keeping LaRoche, Young, and Kuo being used in a way that is detrimental, if your goal is to win.  Cashman had to trade Proctor because Torre would not stop using him long after he was capable. Ned needs to learn a few things from Cashman and take Proctor away from Joe.