Kuzul

There was a time, not all that long ago, when Max Scherzer was about as predictable as the weather.

If you were Tigers manager Jim Leyland, you trotted Max out every fifth day and closed your eyes.

There’s nothing that will turn a manager’s hair gray faster than not knowing what he’s going to get from his starting pitchers from one outing to the next. Leyland didn’t know what he was going to get from Scherzer inning to inning—sometimes, from batter to batter.

Scherzer’s right arm was full of what baseball people like to say is “good stuff,” only he didn’t know how to harness it. His arm was as volatile as nitroglycerin.

The Tigers acquired Scherzer from the Arizona Diamondbacks in the three-team trade that sent Curtis Granderson to the New York Yankees after the 2009 season. The Tigers needed Scherzer as another starter to replace the departed Edwin Jackson.

Scherzer was 25 at the time, and the book on him at Arizona was that he had that good stuff but was rawer than an oyster bar.

Max could strike guys out, but he could also turn the basepaths into a merry-go-round with this control issues. He could have a short and sweet 1-2-3 inning or a 40-pitch frame with more foot traffic than Grand Central Station.

The Tigers soon discovered that the scouting report on Scherzer was dead solid perfect—he was the human roller coaster.

It was Cy Young one day, and Sigh Young five days later.

Scherzer was installed in the Tigers rotation in 2010, and not having seen him pitch before, I thought the young man was trying to throw his arm to home plate, along with the baseball.

Scherzer, at the time, had what is known as a “violent” delivery. His windup was designed to gain power from his legs, which he then used to whip-snap the baseball from his right hand like it had cut him off in traffic.

It was anyone’s guess as to where the baseball was going at that point.

It wasn’t that Scherzer was ridiculously wild. In his only full season with the Diamondbacks, he averaged about 3.5 walks per nine innings.

He just threw a lot of pitches. Like, a ton of them. He was about as efficient as the government.

The Tigers presumably knew what they were getting in Scherzer, which was a big arm who could be a fixture in their rotation, as long as he could be refined. They hoped that he could, one day, be a nice complement to their ace, Justin Verlander.

The growing pains weren’t easy.

Scherzer won 12 games for the Tigers in 2010, against 11 losses. His ERA was a very manageable 3.50 in 31 starts.

But he was one of those guys whose season-ending numbers belied what you saw on a daily basis—and that was a laborious pitcher who averaged just six innings per start and who would frequently have to muddle through innings that were so long, they needed an intermission.

Scherzer kept striking guys out along the way—nearly one per inning in 2010. The strikeouts were nice but they also added to his pitch counts. He didn’t toss a complete game all season.

In 2011, Scherzer started 33 games, and didn’t quite average six innings per start. His ERA ballooned to 4.43—nearly a full run per game higher than the previous year.  But he won 15 games and lost only nine as the Tigers offense was a higher octane brew than in 2010.

In the ALCS against the Texas Rangers, Scherzer had a meltdown in the decisive Game 6 in Texas. The Tigers needed a win to force Game 7.

The start in Game 6 illustrated all that there was to be annoyed with Max Scherzer.

He lasted just two and one-third innings, surrendering five hits and six runs. He walked four, displaying the Maddening Max that had bedeviled the Tigers all season long. If the measuring stick of a starting pitcher is that he gives his team a chance to win, Scherzer failed miserably when the Tigers needed him the most.

The violent throwing motion and the laborious innings were enough, in tandem, to make fans think that Scherzer would never truly be a top-flight pitcher. His elevated ERA in 2011 added to the feeling.

Meanwhile, Verlander was capturing the AL Cy Young and the league MVP awards with his brilliant 2011 season. He needed his Robin to his Batman.

Right-hander Doug Fister, acquired via trade from the Seattle Mariners in July 2011, showed some flashes of being Verlander’s second banana. But Scherzer, by far, had the most alluring arm. He had the nitroglycerin.

Scherzer arrived in Lakeland in 2012 with two Tigers seasons under his belt. In both, he showed flashes of brilliance and flashes in the pan. Consistency had eluded him.

It got worse before it got better.

After eight starts last year, Scherzer was 2-3 with a 6.26 ERA. In the eight starts, he managed to pitch just 41.2 innings. He was averaging almost four walks per nine innings. He issued seven walks in an April start in New York.

Maddening Max!

Then it all came together.

After those first eight starts, Scherzer pitched 146 innings with an ERA of about 3.00, compiling a 14-4 record during that stretch. His stuff was still mesmerizing, but more harnessed. He was more Mad Max now. He was Verlander light—and that’s not meant to be a knock. But Scherzer still hasn’t thrown a complete game in the majors.

Scherzer is 8-0 this season with an ERA of 3.24 and he’s pitching as good as his record looks. He has 100 strikeouts against just 20 walks in 83.1 innings. He is perhaps the Tigers’ true ace right now, as Verlander continues to work through some issues that have knocked him down a notch.

Scherzer’s windup is still powerful, but the arm motion isn’t quite as violent. There’s more fluidity now. The strikeouts keep piling up, but the walks are down. His manager pretty much knows what to expect from Mad Max every fifth day.

If Scherzer was on any team that didn’t have Verlander on it, Max would be that team’s ace, by far.

He might be that, anyway, with the Tigers.

Isn’t that mad?

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He is the quintessential jack of all trades, master of none.

Getting rid of him would be like letting nine mediocre players walk away. But he’s open-minded; he’ll try anything once—and he has.

Don Kelly has done it all on the baseball diamond. He just hasn’t done it all that well.

Ah, but what would baseball be without the Don Kelly’s of the world?

Someone has to be the 25^th man on a 25-man roster. Kelly has spent his entire big league career looking over his shoulder and seeing no one behind him.

It’s been a baseball life lived on the edge…of extinction.

Kelly, the Tigers designated sitter, has been hanging on to his big league job by a thread for so long that it defies physics.

The Tigers drafted him in the eighth round of the 2001 amateur draft. Little did they know, it would be like drafting a boomerang. Every time the Tigers tried to throw Don Kelly away, he kept flying back to them.

Kelly meandered his way through the Tigers farm system, like a rat in a maze, looking for the cheese. He started as a shortstop, but that soon proved to be as significant as saying a chameleon started green.

In the minors, Kelly switched from third base, then second, then first and finally back to third base again. He was threatening to rewrite Abbott and Costello’s act…all by himself.

He could hit a little, but he mainly earned praise because he didn’t strikeout too much. He could also wear more gloves than a room full of jewel thieves.

Kelly made his painstaking journey to AAA Toledo by 2005, one step from “the show.” He was 25-years-old, and usually, by that age, if a player hasn’t made it to the bigs yet, he is considered a never-will-be.

In 2006, at age 26, Kelly again showed up to spring training in Lakeland, gloves in hand. He almost made the Tigers but was sent back to Toledo, a victim of that cliché known as the numbers game.

That’s when the Tigers made their first of many attempts to get rid of Kelly.

They lopped him off the 40-man roster after the 2006 season. His hometown Pittsburgh Pirates, who never met a sad-sack they didn’t like, signed Kelly in December.

With the Pirates, Kelly finally found a big league roster he could crack out of in spring training. He made the team in 2007, managing 27 at-bats. He was a 27-year-old rookie, which is nothing more than being a 14-year-old second grader. After the season, the Pirates cut him.

The Arizona Diamondbacks picked him up, and Kelly played AAA ball for them for the entire 2008 season. Arizona then let him become a free agent.

The suckers they are, the Tigers took another shot on Kelly, signing him to a minor league contract in early 2009, which is nearly eight years after he was drafted.

Kelly didn’t make the team out of spring training, naturally.

But on June 11, 2009, the Tigers needed a replacement for outfielder Clete Thomas and summoned Kelly, who, by this time, had moved from the infield to the outfield.

Kelly’s first game for the Tigers came against the Pittsburgh Pirates, which is one of the three big league teams that had given up on him. In his second game as a Tiger, Kelly knocked in two runs with a single and double.

By this time, Kelly’s glove collection grew to include a first baseman’s and an outfielder’s, in addition to all his infield leather.

Kelly went to spring training in 2010 without a guaranteed job, as usual, but for his first time as a Tiger, Kelly broke camp with the big club. He was the 25^th man—saved from the minors by his assortment of gloves.

His bat? Not such an attraction. But how many teams look for offense from their “utility” man?

Still, it’s a treat to watch the left-handed hitting Kelly in the batter’s box. He has a body that looks like a pair of lawn shears—all legs, which he draws further attention to by wearing his socks like knickers to his knees. His shoulders look like he stuffed two grapefruits under his jersey.

At 33, Kelly still looks like a kid. His cheeks are rosy, and he has a perpetual “aw, shucks” smirk on his face. He looks like he should work for a utility company instead of being a utility player for an MLB team.

Kelly was the model of consistency in 2010 and 2011, batting .245 and .244 respectively. Manager Jim Leyland used Kelly wherever he could—literally. In 2011, Kelly completed his clean sweep of the diamond by pitching and catching within two weeks of each other.

Kelly faced one batter in a game against the Mets, Jerry Hairston Jr., and retired him on five pitches, coaxing a fly ball with a curve ball—a curve ball!

You can have your Babe Ruth. Did the Babe have a career ERA of 0.00?

Less than two weeks later, Kelly came in to catch after Victor Martinez left with an injury and spent six innings behind the plate. Babe never did that, either.

In the 2011 ALDS, in the deciding Game 5 at Yankee Stadium, Kelly found himself in the starting lineup. No doubt he had someone pinch him as he read the lineup card taped to the wall before the game. Folks watching at home probably had a more violent reaction.

You see, as unassuming as Kelly is with all of his flexibility and his nice guy attitude, Tigers fans still have a tenuous relationship with him. They don’t seem to mind him being on the team, as long as he doesn’t play.

And to play in Game 5 of the ALDS against the Yankees? Heaven forbid!

Yet, there Kelly was—the human lawn shears standing in the box against Yankees pitcher Ivan Nova in the first inning. The Tigers had a chance to eliminate the Yankees in Game 4 in Detroit but failed. No one gave them a shot to KO the Yankees in the Bronx.

Kelly swung at a Nova pitch with his all arms, a less-than-textbook swing, and drove the baseball over the right field wall to give the Tigers a fragile but important 1-0 lead. The Tigers went on to win the game and the series.

Take that Don Kelly haters!

In 2012, Kelly lost what little luster he had. He slumped to a batting average below .200 for the season, which fanned the flames of the fans’ furor.

In early August, the Tigers tried to get rid of Kelly again. They designated him for assignment—a fancy way of saying, “Hit the bricks, kid.” As a result, Kelly was lopped off the 40-man roster. A week later, he cleared waivers—apparently no team wanted a nine-glove guy with a career BA of .235—and he was sent to AAA Toledo, rather than accept his release.

A month later, when the rosters expanded, Kelly was back. He was like one of those horror movie monsters that you think had been killed. Amazingly, Leyland put Kelly on the playoff roster and wouldn’t you know it…Kelly hit a walk-off sacrifice fly to win Game 2 of the ALDS. It was a script that even a B-movie producer would have shucked into the trash.

The Tigers still weren’t done trying to get rid of Kelly. After last season, they cut him again, and he cleared waivers…again. In January 2013, he re-signed with the Tigers…again. It was like the Yankees relationship with Billy Martin.

Kelly again went to spring training last February without a guarantee of a job, but he apparently likes it that way. Kelly played his way onto the 25-man squad that went north out of Florida.

Already this season, Kelly, in his usual duty, has come through with some clutch hitting and defense. He stole a home run in Comerica Park with a catch over the fence that rivaled anything Al Kaline ever did.

After that catch, the TV cameras caught Kelly. He had that “Aw, shucks” look on his face. As usual.

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The funny thing about baseball’s unwritten rules is that they find themselves written down eventually.

And, just to be sure, I’ll prove it:

Don’t steal a base when leading by six runs in the eighth inning.

Don’t try to break up a no-hitter with a bunt.

Don’t make the first out at home plate.

Don’t walk the leadoff hitter.

Don’t walk the pitcher, no matter where he’s hitting.

Don’t swing at the first pitch if you make an out doing so.

Swing at the first pitch because it might be the only good one you see in that at-bat (yes, some of these are contradictory).

Don’t swing at a 3-0 pitch, unless your last name is Aaron, Mays, Cobb or Ruth.

Don’t perform a home run trot that takes longer than the National Anthem.

Don’t bet on the Pittsburgh Pirates.

Don’t root for the Yankees.

To name a few.

Oh, but there is one more of these “unwritten” rules, and it’s about to be violated—and right here in Detroit.

Tigers manager Jim Leyland is taking the unwritten rule book and throwing it out the imaginary window.

He’s flipping a bunch of baseball people the bird, and frankly, I love it.

The unwritten rule that Leyland is about to break says that you can’t have “closer by committee.”

The unwritten book says that every team must designate one pitcher, and one pitcher only, to serve as the closer. This is a corollary to the other unwritten rule that says the closer cannot be used earlier than in the ninth inning.

Leyland is trashing this “one closer” unwritten rule. He plans on doing so as soon as the curtain is lifted for the 2013 season on Monday, in Minnesota.

The Tigers experimented with breaking yet another closer-related rule, but that plan has been scrapped.

The Tigers were going to violate the “you can’t have a rookie closer and expect to win a World Series” rule, when they experimented with 21-year-old Bruce Rondon in spring training to be their ninth inning guy.

The roly-poly, cherubic-faced Rondon smiled a lot, but he smiled more than he got hitters out, so he’s being returned to Triple-A Toledo for, as they say, “more seasoning.”

With the cashiering of erstwhile closer Jose Valverde after his playoff meltdowns, the Tigers are now left with the dreaded “closer by committee.”

The unwritten rule says that no MLB manager can dare to consider such a thing without disastrous results.

I, for one, can’t wait to see how this shakes out.

I have been a proponent of my own unwritten axiom, which states that any big league pitcher on a 25-man roster ought to be able to get three outs in the ninth inning.

Call me crazy. Fit me for a straitjacket. Force me to listen to Roseanne sing the National Anthem on an endless loop. I don’t care.

It’s not that I believe closers are overrated. I believe the closer’s circumstances are overrated.

Think about the closer’s job. He starts every appearance with a clean slate—bases empty and nobody out. To qualify for a save, his team can be as many as three runs ahead when he enters the game.

He waltzes in from the bullpen under no real duress. There isn’t a fire he has to put out. In a sport where his bullpen brethren preceding him are often dancing on a high wire with no net, the closer’s job, in comparison, is that of a school crossing guard. He just has to make sure no kid runs into the street and gets clobbered by a Mack truck.

Yet closers are held in such high esteem that the mere thought of a manager calling his bullpen coach in the eighth inning and saying, essentially, “Surprise me,” is thought to be folly.

Shouldn’t any big league reliever be able to get three outs once or twice a week without his world crashing down?

Leyland and the Tigers are about to find out.

When Leyland spoke of closer by committee earlier this week, he wasn’t kidding. The manager named just about everyone in his bullpen when discussing who could close games for the Tigers in 2013.

Which is exactly as it should be.

I have a hunch that Leyland, Mr. Old School himself, is going to have a blast with his closers committee, for as long as it lasts. I think he’ll revel in the freedom—and challenge—of determining who to summon to close games, based on a myriad of criteria.

And if it works, that unwritten rule can be torn up—imaginary paper and all.

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There was Hal Newhouser, Prince Hal, who never got the credit he fully deserved because he had the misfortune of dominating during the so-called “war years,” as if he planned it out that way.

There was Jim Bunning, who’d one day baffle America as a Senate curmudgeon. But before that he baffled hitters.

There was Denny McLain, whose life off the field was as turbulent as a private plane in a storm, but who thrilled for two years with fastballs, the organ and hubris.

There was Mickey Lolich, old rubber arm himself, portly and durable. Mr. Opening Day.

There was Jack Morris. The Cat, who never met a big game he didn’t like, or thrive in.

Then there’s Justin Verlander.

It’s Verlander’s world and we’re all just living in it—and that includes American League hitters.

See Verlander smile, broadly. See him giving TV interviews during games. See him with swimsuit models. See him throw no-hitters, and come close to throwing more.

See Verlander win the Rookie of the Year award. See him pitch in two World Series. See him win the Cy Young Award and the MVP in the same year. See him almost win another Cy Young.

Verlander isn’t a pitcher, he’s a cereal box.

The Tigers haven’t had a pitcher like Verlander, in terms of personality, talent and accomplishment, since…well, they never have.

We are seeing something unprecedented right now. The Tigers have a top flight pitcher, maybe the best in the game today, whose world is his oyster. And there’s something else that may be unprecedented.

Actually, there are maybe 200 million things that could be unprecedented.

Verlander’s contract expires after the 2014 season. Whether the Tigers sign him to a new deal before then or not, it’s likely that Justin Verlander will become the big league’s first $200 million pitcher.

I’m usually not keen on giving pitchers outlandish contracts. Pitchers are high maintenance, delicate creatures. They make their living putting their arms through gyrations that the human arm wasn’t meant to be put through. After every outing, they strap enough ice on their arm to keep a keg of beer cold.

The ink dries on their big contracts and the next thing you know, they’re in the doctor’s office. Then they’re on the disabled list.

The fat contract for pitchers I usually shy away from. But Verlander is no typical pitcher.

I would have no qualms throwing $200 million at him, spread over 7-10 years, even though he just turned 30 years old. And I’d have no qualms even if it was my money to spend, to show you.

I’d have no qualms because Verlander isn’t a typical pitcher any more than was Feller or Koufax or Ryan or Clemens. Verlander is a freak, but in a good way.

Like Nolan Ryan and Roger Clemens before him—power pitchers with howitzers for arms—Verlander has that feel about him. He has that feel of someone who is going to be bringing it well into his 30s, if not into his early 40s.

First, there’s no violent delivery to put unneeded wear and tear on the arm. Verlander’s motion is as smooth as a milk shake and as powerful as a locomotive. The baseball explodes out of his arm with nary a jerk or a snap.

Second, in seven full seasons he’s never sniffed the disabled list, and he’s never had a “tired” or “dead” arm. It just doesn’t feel like he’s ever going to be brittle.

Verlander is going to get his money—somewhere. So it may as well be in Detroit.

But here’s where the fun-loving, the world-is-my-oyster Verlander shows up.

He recently told the press that to be a free agent would be “fun.”

You gotta like a guy who doesn’t mince words.

Of course it would be fun, to be the best pitcher on the planet and have teams lined up, ready to shower you with cash. Who wouldn’t love to be courted and wooed?

That’s not to say that the Tigers won’t sign Verlander to a contract extension long before free agency can kick in, with its temptations and playful wickedness.

Owner Mike Ilitch never met a big star that didn’t make him want to break out his wallet—whether his own player or that of another team’s. That goes for the Red Wings, too. If you could play at the highest level, Ilitch signed you. If you were a member of one his teams, he kept you.

How many Red Wings players did Ilitch let walk away into free agency? Only two notable names pop out—Sergei Fedorov and Brendan Shanahan. And both wanted to leave for different reasons. Fedorov chased crazy money with Anaheim in 2003, and Shanahan felt that the torch should be passed to younger Red Wings when he left for the New York Rangers in 2006.

Other than those two cases, Ilitch has kept his stars in Detroit when it comes to his hockey team. In baseball, he’s done the same thing—while adding to the payroll with players from outside the organization.

So I wouldn’t worry too much about Justin Verlander hitting the free market after next season. Ilitch won’t have that. There will come a time when the owner will yank Dave Dombrowski by the ear into a room and ask his GM, flat out, how much it’s going to cost to keep Verlander in the Old English D. Dombrowski will tell his boss, who will fork over a check, and that will be that.

That check is likely to steamroll past $200 million.

It will be a bargain.

Verlander is nothing like we’ve ever seen on a pitching mound in Detroit. He’s 30 years old and he’s just getting started. He’s pitched in more big games already than most guys will see in a lifetime. His awards and achievements and accolades read like a 20-year veteran’s. He’s funny and good-looking and loves the media.

He also thinks free agency will be fun. Too bad he’ll never get to find out for real.

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The voice would sometimes be hushed, even barely over a whisper. But there was no discounting its sincerity, or its candor.

The slew of microphones would be jabbed into the face of the speaker, and even inches away from his mouth, the words were difficult to pick up.

They were the E.F. Hutton of athletes in Detroit. You remember the commercials.

“When E.F. Hutton talks…people listen,” was the tag line, after the scene played out of a person in a crowded place explaining what their broker E.F. Hutton had to say about a particular issue. Everyone around would stop, dead in their tracks, to hear what E.F. Hutton had to say.

Such it was with Isiah Thomas of the Pistons and Steve Yzerman of the Red Wings.

These were the spokespersons for their respective teams, without question. They were both the captains—also without question. No sound bite was truly representative of the pulse of the team unless it came from Thomas, the brilliant point guard, or Yzerman, the gifted center man. Everyone else’s words were supportive; Thomas and Yzerman’s were the lead.

Neither was loud. In fact, both spoke very softly as a rule. But the words were measured, carefully thought out. The player would sometimes pause and the media, so wise to the speaker’s ways, didn’t dare tread on the temporary silence.

Sometimes the expressions on the faces would be pensive, even funereal. Other times, there would be a smirk and an implied wink. In Thomas’s case, there was often a wide grin, followed by hearty laughter. The media laughed with him.

Yzerman, for his part, had a dry sense of humor—self-effacing at times. Sometimes the joke would go above the media’s heads.

If you wanted to know the real deal about the Pistons and the Red Wings, you listened to what Isiah Thomas and Steve Yzerman had to say.

The peaks of their careers in Detroit didn’t overlap, really. Thomas won championships in 1989 and 1990—some seven years before Yzerman first raised the Stanley Cup for the Red Wings. Thomas had been retired for over three years by that time.

But their playing time in Detroit certainly ran concurrent from 1983 (when Yzerman was drafted and debuted as an 18 year-old) until Thomas’s 1994 retirement. For 11 years, the two functioned at the same time as their team’s “go-to” guys for the press.

Playoff disappointed haunted both athletes. Thomas made “the pass” in 1987 that helped the Boston Celtics overcome the Pistons in the conference finals. He experienced a seven-game, gut-wrenching loss to the Los Angeles Lakers in the NBA Finals in 1988.

Yzerman had to explain away the dreadful first-round loss to the three-year-old San Jose Sharks in 1994, and the stunning four-game sweep at the hands of the New Jersey Devils in the 1995 Cup Finals.

Neither man hid from the cameras and the microphones and audio recorders. There were no long showers, no ducking out the back exit. Both spoke to the media like men, answering all the questions, even when their heart was broken.

Isiah Thomas and Steve Yzerman—two of the most introspective, honest and forthright men to wear Detroit sports colors. Ever.

Octavio Dotel pitches for today’s Tigers. He’s a baseball vagabond; the Tigers are his 13th team, a major league record. His whole career has been lived out of a suitcase. Needless to say, he’s been around a lot of clubhouses, played with a lot of teammates, been guided by a lot of managers. He won a World Series with the 2011 Cardinals.

Dotel made a ripple out of spring training last week when it was learned that he told Yahoo! Sports that he didn’t think Tigers superstar Miguel Cabrera was a leader.

Apparently Dotel had suggested team meetings after some playoff losses last season and was rebuffed by Cabrera.

“You have to step up and say something,” Dotel told Yahoo!. “Miggy’s more about his game. I don’t see him as a leader. He didn’t give me that support. So I didn’t try no more.”

I’ve never been a believer in team meetings, especially in baseball. Seems whenever a team has one—usually to break a losing streak—it gets its rear end kicked all over the field right after.

Dotel backed off from the comments and apologized to Cabrera.

But the value of team meetings aside, Dotel’s comments about Cabrera ring true, but with a caveat.

Where Isiah Thomas and Steve Yzerman were the unquestioned leaders of their teams, the Tigers don’t really have that person—that designee to provide the State of the Tigers on a daily basis.

It’s also unfair to presume that person would be Cabrera.

He’s the Tigers best everyday player, by far—but that doesn’t mean he has to be the spokesperson.

There’s the language barrier for one. That doesn’t help.

Second, Cabrera just isn’t that kind of guy. His leadership is done between the white lines. We don’t listen to what Cabrera says—we listen to what he does.

It’s why I have been, at times, among Cabrera’s harshest critics.

In recent years I have expressed concern over the lack of production from Cabrera when the Tigers have needed it the most. I have complained that his numbers came at the wrong times—that he rarely put the Tigers on his back and carried them, as all true superstars do from time to time.

As recently as midseason of 2011 did I voice these concerns.

Not anymore.

But Dotel is also right, in a roundabout way.

The Tigers don’t have a spokesperson who’s not named Jim Leyland.

Who’s the “go to” guy?

Justin Verlander? He’s a pitcher. No one who takes the field once every five days can be the spokesperson—no matter how good he is on those days.

Austin Jackson? Too young yet.

Prince Fielder? Too happy-go-lucky.

Torii Hunter? Not here long enough.

Victor Martinez? He missed all of last season.

Alex Avila? Maybe, but not yet. As a catcher, he would be a prime candidate, but not yet.

Jhonny Peralta? Omar Infante? No and no.

This doesn’t infer that the Tigers can’t win the World Series without a spokesperson—without that “go-to” guy the media loves who has his finger on the pulse of the team.

But it’s clear the Tigers don’t have such a player on their roster.

Sometimes they come in handy. And sometimes they do help win championships.

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When you think about it, there should be no wonder why the baseball closer has been known throughout history as being the one guy on the roster with a screw loose.

The closer is the guy who has to cut the wires—the right wires—without detonating the bomb. He’s the one who has to land the plane after the pilot and the co-pilot are knocked unconscious. He has to raid Entebbe on a nightly basis.

He has to be perfect. He’s the one player who can deliver 50 times in a row but have them all canceled out by a bad 51^st outing. It’s like if they booed DiMaggio after he went hitless in Game 57.

They say the closer has to have a certain “mentality.” Notice that “mental” is in there.

If you’re going to be the closer, you have to be prepared for going from hero to zero at warp speed. They want to build a statue in your likeness on Friday and want to have it razed on Saturday. They’ll boo you when you enter the game on Sunday and want to buy you drinks following it.

It’s a job that asks, “what have you done for me lately?”—between hitters. You walk the leadoff man in the ninth and there’s a murmuring in the crowd like in one of those courtroom dramas.

It can be the loneliest job in America. You can’t hide on the pitcher’s mound.

These days, the closer doesn’t inherit his trouble, like the guys in the seventh and eighth innings do. The closer enters the game in the ninth inning, the frame pristine on everyone’s scorecard.

If things get dicey, the closer has no one to blame but himself. If the bases get juiced with runners, the closer put them there, nobody else.

No one remembers your 1-2-3 performance from the night before.

Going 1-2-baserunner-3 is barely tolerated. Walk a guy and the fans are yelling that your mother had you out of wedlock.

So you’ll allow the closer his eccentricities. You’ll forgive him, his zaniness. Frankly, you shouldn’t be surprised if they bring him out for his next appearance in a straitjacket.

It’s no wonder that closers have weird hairdos and shaggy goatees, and have their Popeye forearms illustrated with tattoos that make them look like a treasure map. It’s no wonder that they come out of the bullpen with nervous ticks and looks on their faces like George “The Animal” Steele.

It’s no wonder that they have nicknames like… “The Animal.”

Closers look and act like guys who nobody sits next to on the team bus. Even catchers think they’re weird.

Closers have the margin for error of a heart surgeon but don’t get their empathy. They’re expected to be perfect on Opening Day and then improve from there.

You would never place a rookie in such a tenuous position.

Or would you?

The Tigers said goodbye to closer Jose Valverde after last season, following three years of meritorious service that ended like Custer’s. Jose’s last stand came in New York, when he coughed up four runs in the ninth inning of Game 1 of the ALCS, damn near costing the Tigers the game.

Certainly, it cost him his job.

Valverde’s contract expired with the final pitch of the World Series and to no one’s surprise after an uneven year, the Tigers declined to offer up an extension.

So now the Tigers are considering something so mad, so against baseball axiom, that to hear some folks say it, it will either be a stroke of genius or the worst experiment since the Chicago White Sox wore shorts in 1976.

Bruce Rondon is a 22 year-old, slightly tubby Venezuelan with a big moon face, who needs a translator. But that’s OK because so many closers before him have needed translators—and they were American dudes.

Rondon is 22 and regularly throws baseballs 100 mph or above.

They say he has a nasty slider (you always have to put “nasty” before a good slider). He hasn’t stepped foot on a big league diamond. He’s pitched professionally for all of three seasons. He started as a catcher but he wasn’t impressive with the bat, so the scouts and coaches told him to throw away his shin guards and start working on a fastball.

Rondon can’t speak English, per se. He speaks heat.

Rondon, working his way up the ladder last year, pitched for three teams in three different leagues: Lakeland, Erie and Toledo. In none of them could the hitters figure him out. Combined, Rondon (doesn’t rhyme with London, by the way—it’s Ron-DOAN) threw 53 innings and surrendered a paltry 32 hits. He struck out 66, about 11 per nine innings.

Rondon is whiffing his way to the top.

The Tigers, with a vacancy in their closer spot, have eschewed their usual fascination with big names and owner Mike Ilitch’s pizza dough, and decided to toss the keys to Rondon, who was born in 1990—barely (his birthday is December 9).

They’ll give the kid a shot and see how he does at clipping the wires.

Rookie closers, the baseball people say, are for the bottom-feeding teams. They’re for clubs who are “rebuilding.” Peach fuzz, they say, belongs on a closer for a contending team as much as a beard on a lady.

The Tigers are about to experiment. And everyone from top to bottom seems comfortable with it.

Rondon, through an interpreter (in this case, fellow bullpenner Joaquin Benoit) said last week, according to Benoit, “(Rondon) thanks everybody who believes in him. He feels he’s going to contribute and not let anybody down.”

Those are nice thoughts, but already the kid has trouble telling the truth. Of course he’s going to let people down. He wouldn’t be a closer if he didn’t, on occasion.

GM Dave Dombrowski put in his nomination for understatement of the year when he told the media the other day, “(Rondon)’s unproven.”

Yet D.D. says Rondon is the “leading candidate” for the closer’s job. So what if Rondon is 22 and figures to close for the defending American League champs?

“When something bad happens, he’ll get a little wild and overthrow,” Dombrowski added about Rondon, who pitched in 18 games in Venezuela this winter, posting a rather unsightly 4.41 ERA.

Well, something bad will happen, make no mistake.

There will be a blown save, a two-run homer in the ninth or some such catastrophe, and everyone will be looking to see how Ron-DOAN handles it.

How long before he grows a goatee, tattoos himself and dyes his hair orange?

And, how long before the fans cry to get him out of there and try someone else?

Stay tuned.

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September baseball is all-or-nothing baseball. It is baseball that is played either in front of swelling crowds with palpable tension or in a cold ballpark sparsely dotted with paying customers where the peanut vendors are the loudest voices.

September baseball is either rich with meaning, where every pitch is hung on, or it’s merely an exercise of formality, played out because the schedule says so.

September baseball is either “must win” baseball or “must play,” nothing in between.

There is nothing more dreary and sad than baseball played in September when the pennant for the home team ceased being a reality in July, when the games lost meaning after the All-Star break, when the empty seats stretch for sections on end, when hot dog wrappers blow around the field, with people checking their watches more than the scoreboard.

But when it’s done right, when the playoffs are distinctly possible, when the mathematicians say so, September baseball is one of the most exciting, heart-stopping and gut-wrenching months of sport you’ll ever experience.

It’s baseball played with one eye on the pitcher and the other on the out-of-town scoreboard. It’s magic numbers and half games and a trade for a player with two weeks remaining. It’s when even a two-game losing streak seems like an eternity. It’s shouting obscenities when you find out that, out of town, the other guys came back and won with three runs in the bottom of the ninth. It’s when losing a game in the standings is on par with losing big at the casino.

September baseball is also when heroes are made, legends are furthered and legacies are cemented.

The Baseball Hall of Fame is filled with players who lived for September baseball.

It’s also filled with players who, despite their consistent greatness, seem to all have that one season that leaps off the page because of its superlative productivity.

Ted Williams had his .406. Joe DiMaggio had his 56 games. Bob Gibson had his 1.12.

Alan Trammell, the great Tigers shortstop, managed to combine his best September with his best season. Yet, he is no Hall of Famer. Not even close, according to the writers who vote.

Another Hall voting has come and gone. For the first time since 1996, there won’t be an induction ceremony in August. The writers pitched a shutout this year—a no-no of epic proportion. They not only didn’t elect anyone for enshrinement, they snubbed their noses at the three key players whose first year of eligibility had long been anticipated because of their link to performance enhancing drugs: Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens and Sammy Sosa.

The writers sent a message. None of the three exceeded 38 percent of the vote, when you need to appear on at least 75 percent of the ballots to gain entrance to the Hall with a plaque instead of an admission ticket.

Also down in the 30s, percentage-wise, was Trammell, who’s been on the ballot since 2002, but who is gaining about as much traction as a candidate as Herman Cain did for president last year.

There are many theories about Trammell’s Teflon candidacy, but let’s talk about 1987 instead.

That was the year when Tram plunked his best September into his best overall season, at a time when September baseball had all the meaning in the world for the Tigers.

On the morning of September 1, 1987, the Tigers woke up in first place in the American League East, a mere one game ahead of the Toronto Blue Jays. Both teams had 77 wins, but the Tigers had played two fewer games than the Jays and thus had two fewer losses—hence the one-game lead.

September ’87 would turn out to be the most thrilling month of baseball in Detroit since that phenomenal September twenty years prior, when four teams chased a pennant that could only be won by finishing in first place in a one-division league. Despite the Tigers’ recent foray into down-the-stretch baseball (2006, 2009 and 2012), 1987 remains the most exciting.

Trammell was hitting .323 on the morning of 9/1/87—already a phenomenal year for a shortstop, even for 1987, when baseball had long ago shucked the notion of a good fielding, no-hit shortstop as being the norm.

Trammell would play in 33 games down the stretch in 1987, starting with September 1. What he did in those 33 games was Williams-esque; DiMaggio infused; Reggie Jackson-like.

Trammell had 127 at-bats in those 33 games and sprayed 53 hits around American League ballparks, a .418 clip—an average that even Ty Cobb had to admire and look up to.

Trammell slugged seven home runs and smacked 20 runners to the plate. He had 15 multihit games, many with three or even four hits. Of those 33 games, Trammell hit safely in 29 of them, including an 18-game hitting streak when the games were ramped up in tension and importance.

Thanks to those numbers, Trammell lifted his average from the .323 it was on September 1 to a season-ending .343. For a full-time player with over 500 at-bats to improve his average by 20 points in one month is ridiculous. And Trammell did it when every night was a must-win night for the Tigers.

While Trammell was putting the Tigers on his back, his team and the Blue Jays came down the stretch like two prized race horses, neck-and-neck and jockeying for position.

Neither team could manage more than a two-game lead as the schedule drained. However, on the next-to-last weekend, the Jays took the first three of a four-game series in Toronto to forge a seemingly insurmountable 3.5-game lead.

The Tigers won a dramatic victory on Sunday in old Exhibition Stadium, thanks to Kirk Gibson’s heroics—another player who never met a clutch situation he didn’t embrace.

In the final week, the Blue Jays kept losing, even being swept in three games by the horrid Milwaukee Brewers, while the Tigers split four games in Detroit against Baltimore. By this time, the Jays’ lead was sliced to one game, with a season-ending three-game showdown scheduled at Tiger Stadium between the first- and second-place teams.

This was September baseball at its very best: a packed house, shrieking fans and the division squarely on the line. It was, for all intents and purposes, playoff baseball, for whoever came up short in the three games would be going home, while the other team would play into October.

Technically, the three games on the final weekend weren’t September baseball; they were played on October 2-4. But that was no matter; the scene had been set by the 30 days prior.

The Tigers swept the Blue Jays and won the division. In the final week, Trammell went 9-for-27 (.333), as he put the finishing touches on a glorious season—for him and for the Tigers, who started the year 11-19 yet won 98 games and the division.

Trammell’s .343 with 28 homers, 105 RBI, 109 runs scored and 205 hits weren’t enough to win the league MVP that season. In cruel irony, it was George Bell of Toronto who won the award despite a final week in which Bell went 2-for-22 as his team folded like a tent.

And, in the end, Trammell’s career totals of 2,365 hits, 1,003 RBI, 1,231 runs scored and 412 doubles to go along with his .285 batting average haven’t been deemed Hall of Fame worthy in 11 years of eligibility. Not even close, really.

Unlike teammate Jack Morris, who continues to trend upward in voting but who is running out of time (one more year of eligibility before only the Veterans Committee can save him), Alan Trammell’s candidacy continues to be suppressed. There doesn’t appear to be any way that Trammell can come anywhere near the coveted 75 percent needed for election.

But they can’t take 1987 away from him, no more than they can take away Williams and DiMaggio’s 1941 or Gibson’s 1968. For what it’s worth.

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Wax up the sleigh. Check it for flight. Shine St. Nick’s boots. Make sure Rudy’s nose is bright and squeaky clean.

Test the GPS. Gather the weather reports. Check the sack for rips. Tell Mrs. C not to wait up.
It’s gonna be another long night, but then it always is on December 24.

The jolly, old, fat man is set to make his annual trek. Chimneys the world over wait. Fireplaces are about to be pounced on.

Santa has something for everyone, or so they say. Keeping the faith, I’m going to accept that statement as fact. So, with that in mind, let’s see if he can find room in his big, red pack, upon his back—as Andy Williams sang—for these goodies.

For Calvin Johnson, a new NFL record, but more importantly, a football team worthy of his gargantuan talent.

For Matthew Stafford, highlight reels of Slinging Sammy Baugh and Fran Tarkenton, so the kid knows that you don’t have to have perfect “mechanics” to be a winner in this league.

For Jim Schwartz, a general manager who will draft him some defense.

For Rick Porcello, a team who wants him.

For Jhonny Peralta, a new nickname: The Kitchenette, because they say he has no range.

For Torii Hunter, nothing—because he already had his Christmas when he signed with the Tigers.

For traffic lights throughout Metro Detroit, Anibal Sanchez’s timing.

For Alex Avila, health and happiness—and for him, they’re one and the same.

For Miguel Cabrera, the abolition of sabermetrics.

For Tigers fans, also nothing—because they already have their new third base coach.

For Tommy Brookens, the new third base coach, the best of luck.

For the NHL, coal in its hockey boot.

For Mark Dantonio, a quarterback.

For Brady Hoke, a headset.

For Joe Dumars, a slashing, scoring small forward in the draft, because it sure isn’t on his current roster.

For Lawrence Frank, a book on the Pistons of the 1960s—oh, wait, he’s already writing the remake.

For Andre Drummond, the career of Shaquille O’Neal, because Ray Scott told me that Andre reminds him of a young Shaq.

For Greg Monroe, the career of Bob Lanier, because (see above).

For Pistons fans, a new RV, because you can all fit in one.

For George Blaha, some recognition (finally) as a damn good football play-by-play guy.

For Charlie Villanueva, no regrets.

For Tayshaun Prince, a nice twilight so his career will be properly book-ended.

For all of us working stiffs, the longevity of Jim Brandstatter. 

For all of us husbands, Brandy’s marriage, too.

For Cecil Fielder, Prince Fielder’s smile at the next Thanksgiving table.

For Notre Dame football fans, you don’t get anything—your prayers were already answered.

For NHL fans, never Fehr.

For Alex Karras’ legacy, a diabolical plan to gain induction into the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

For Miguel Cabrera, whatever he wants.

For Dominic Raiola, a seven-second delay.

For Ndamukong Suh, peace.

For Louis Delmas, two good knees.

For the two Vs, Vinnie Goodwill and Vince Ellis (Pistons beat writers), a thesaurus to help them describe what they are forced to watch nightly.

For Jerry Green, many more Super Bowls.

For Rob Parker, see Dominic Raiola.

For Mark Sanchez, the hell out of New York.

For Toronto Blue Jays fans, somebody to pinch them.

For Chicago Cubs and Lions fans, a support group.

For Billy Crystal, the only known celebrity Los Angeles Clippers fan, a winner.

For Billy Crystal’s movie career, the same, for it’s as overdue as are the Clippers.

For Magic Johnson, all the success with the Dodgers as he had on the basketball court.

For the San Francisco Giants, the antithesis for Magic.

For Linda McCoy-Murray, happiness with her new man. But he’ll never write like Jim.

For Jim Leyland, we folks off his back already.

For our daughter, anything she wants, because she tamed Oakland University as a freshman like she had ice water in her veins.

For my wife, see Charlie Villanueva.

For all of you who read me every week, a year’s supply of Zantac.

Ho-ho-ho!!!

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They each took their turns, none lasting more than three years, sometimes less than a full season. Each had, in his own mind, a fantasy that he could be the man who would bring relevance back to baseball in Detroit.

George “Sparky” Anderson left the Tigers after the 1995 season, the organization a shambles and the talent as thin as onion skin. Sparky wasn’t getting any help from the scouting guys as he steered the Tigers through the first half of the 1990s before retiring. The decision makers kept rolling the dice on draft day and those dice kept coming up snake eyes. By ’95, the Tigers’ farm system was bereft of Grade A, big league talent.

So it was for the 10 years after Sparky left that the Tigers shuffled managers in and out of town. There was a revolving door at Metro Airport for the baseball skippers.

Sparky managed in Detroit for almost 17 full seasons. He was Detroit baseball every bit as those named Whitaker, Trammell, Gibson, Morris and Parrish.

But after 1995, Sparky was gone and the brass upstairs had a devil of a time finding a suitable replacement. It wasn’t ever an easy task leading the big league impostors that management let wear Tigers uniforms in those days, but ultimately you’re judged on wins and losses, and Tigers managers post-Sparky had a lot more losses.

Finding a replacement for Sparky as manager was Randy Smith’s first task after being named general manager in December 1995. At his introductory presser, I asked Smith cold: did the next Tigers manager need to have big league experience?

Smith, tanned and looking very much the California from where he came, pursed his lips and paused.

“No,” he said, drawing the word out. “I wouldn’t necessarily say that’s a prerequisite.”

It wasn’t. Smith hired Buddy Bell, a decent ballplayer in his day, but with zero, zilch, nada big league managing experience.

Bell’s first season as Tigers manager was a disaster. Bedeviled by the shockingly bad pitchers he was provided, Bell led the Tigers to a 53-109 record in 1996. The team ERA was 6.38. It’s amazing the Tigers won even 53 games.

Bell lasted until the end of August, 1998. One of those hurried press conferences was called, where it was revealed that Bell had been given the ziggy—that Detroit word for coaches being fired—and that one of his coaches, Larry Parrish, was being elevated to manager.

Parrish was another decent big league ballplayer who had zero, zilch, nada managing experience at the major league level. But Parrish would be manager, saddled with that caveat title of “interim,” sports speak for “until we find someone better.”

The Tigers didn’t find anyone better, apparently, because Parrish was asked to come back and manage for 1999.

After an underwhelming year, the Tigers decided they needed to find someone better after all, and dumped Parrish to bring in former Milwaukee skipper Phil Garner.

Garner’s nickname from his playing days with the Oakland A’s and Pittsburgh Pirates was “Scrap Iron,” for his gritty play and tendency to play with his uniform dirty all the time.

Garner had done an OK job in Milwaukee, but he was hardly a blue chip prospect when he arrived in Detroit in 2000, the first year of Comerica Park.

Garner lasted two seasons and the first week of a third, when the new team president decided to sack his GM and manager on the same day.

The president, Dave Dombrowski, hired just five months earlier, gave both GM Smith and manager Garner the ziggy at the same time, booting them both out the door with the Tigers drowning in mediocrity.

Dombrowski named bench coach Luis Pujols the new (interim) manager. The Tigers were going backwards, it seemed. Pujols not only had no previous big league managing experience, he hadn’t even been a decent player.

Pujols finished an excruciating 55-106 season before Dombrowski had seen enough and turned a legendary player into a sacrificial lamb.

Dombrowski canned Pujols and turned the keys of his Edsel over to Alan Trammell, who had the requisite NONE next to the line that said Previous Big League Managing Experience.

But at least Trammell had been a good player.

Alan Trammell had no chance of winning with the sorry excuse for a roster that he had been provided. His hiring, and subsequent naming of Kirk Gibson as bench coach, was a public relations stunt, and no more—designed to attempt to distract the fans from the disgraceful baseball being played.

Trammell lasted three seasons, the first of which was 2003’s 43-119 debacle.

When I asked Randy Smith back in 1995 if previous big league managing experience was crucial to becoming Tigers skipper, I had no idea that the answer would be no for the next decade.

After Sparky hung up his spikes and put away his pipe in 1995, the Tigers went from Buddy Bell to Larry Parrish to Phil Garner to Luis Pujols to Alan Trammell. The Not-So-Fab Five.

Prior to Jim Leyland’s arrival seven years ago, Tigers baseball was wandering aimlessly, devoid of a personality, without relevance. They had fallen behind even the Pistons in terms of buzz.

Leyland, hired by Dombrowski in October 2005, definitely had big league managing experience, though his last taste of it was in 1999, when he did an admittedly poor job in his one year in Colorado.

Six years off rejuvenated him, and Leyland’s relationship with Dombrowski (they won a World Series together in Florida in 1997) didn’t hurt, either. So Leyland took the job, a job which had been a graveyard for managers since 1995.

In the Jim Leyland Era, the Tigers have won two division titles, appeared in three postseasons, and won two league pennants. Yet his approval rating seems to bob around the 50 percent mark; you either love him or you hate him.

That’s the price of relevance. The only worse thing than being talked about is not being talked about, a noted wordsmith once said. If you took the fans’ venom for the Not-So-Fab Five and combined it, it still wouldn’t equal that which is heaped on Leyland on a daily basis.

The price of relevance.

Whether you like him or not, Leyland will be back, managing the Tigers in 2013. It will be his eighth year at the helm in Detroit. Only Sparky Anderson and Hughie Jennings have managed the Tigers longer than that in franchise history.

Leyland hasn’t delivered a World Series championship yet, but people are talking about the Tigers like never before. Certainly more than they talked about them in the decade prior to his hiring.

The Tigers are relevant, and have been since 2006. So do with that what you will.

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There was a time, in the not-so-distant past, when a no-hitter in MLB was so infrequent that you could remember the names of the pitchers who tossed such gems over the past several years.

The moments were recalled on the yellowed newspaper clippings of your memory.

The no-hitters dotted recent history, delicious in their stubborn and insistent rarity of occurrence.

You were sometimes lucky to see one a year. The no-hitter was Armageddon-type headline stuff for the newspapers.

Part of the beauty, too, was how the no-hitter often plucked mediocre pitchers from virtual anonymity and shoved them under baseball’s spotlight, all because for one game, that guy with the losing record and the ERA of 4.86 put it all together.

It’s part of my fascination with baseball—how the game has a wonderful way of occasionally making heroes out of the Walter Mittys who play it.

The list of men who have tossed no-hitters is hardly a “Who’s-Who” of pitching.

The no-hitter was, until recent years, baseball’s version of being struck by lightning.

Emphasis on was.

It was around 1990 when the no-hitter increased in frequency. In the 1980s, there were 13 no-hitters thrown, total. Three years in the decade (1982, 1985 and 1989) were devoid of no-hitters altogether. In contrast, the 1990s had 14 no-hitters by 1991, and a new day had dawned.

But now it’s getting ridiculous.

Check the water in the cooler in the dugout. Better yet, have the pitching arms tested for uranium—or Nolan Ryan.

You ready for this?

Since April 17, 2010, 16 no-hitters have been thrown. They’re getting to be as common as complete games, almost.

Friday night, Homer Bailey of the Cincinnati Reds tossed the latest gem, against the Pirates in Pittsburgh (the same Pirates team that was two outs away from being victimized by Justin Verlander in May, which would have been Verlander’s third no-hitter before the age of 30).

Bailey’s no-hitter is the seventh this season alone, a year that has seen three perfect games.

Bailey fits the bill as baseball’s latest no-hit artist. He has a career ERA of 4.59, so naturally he threw a no-hitter.

But seriously—seven no hitters, in one season? And three perfect games?

Call it the dead-ball era, Part II. Or the return of the Hitless Wonders, with apologies to the 1906 Chicago White Sox.

But more power to the pitchers, I say. It’s rather amazing that the spate of no-hitters have come at a time in the game where strike zones are squeezed more than Charmin. There are a lot of umpires in the game today who make the pitcher pour the baseball over an area the size of a postage stamp.

Yet we are seeing dominant performances almost every night. It’s not just starting pitching that has become filled with Ryans and Koufaxes and Johnsons. Every team, it seems, has a reliever or two whose ERA looks like the price of a newspaper.

Fernando Rodney, our old friend from his Tigers days and the closer for the Tampa Bay Rays, is having the year of his life.

Rodney, from 2007 through 2011, never had an ERA of lower than 4.24. Tigers fans know all too well the trials and tribulations he had as the team’s closer.

This year, Rodney has converted 46 of 48 save opportunities and has an ERA of 0.62, or one-seventh of what he’s been churning out in recent years.

A 0.62 figure isn’t an ERA, it’s pocket change.

It’s a fascinating time to be watching baseball, because offenses are shrinking gradually, like that guy who loses weight but you don’t notice until you see photos of him from three years ago.

Every Major League Baseball season contains 2,430 games, or a few less if rainouts aren’t made up. Let’s take a look at total runs scored since 2006 (numbers courtesy of Baseball-Reference.com):

2006: 23,599 (9.7 per game)

2007: 23,322 (9.6)

2008: 22,585 (9.3)

2009: 22,419 (9.2)

2010: 21,308 (8.8)

2011: 20,808 (8.6)

2012: 20,298 (through earlier this week with a handful of games left per team)

Now, I’m no mathematician or sabermetrics guy, but that looks like a trend to me.

So why the degradation involving those guys swinging the bats?

Well, they’re growing pitchers bigger these days. You see the sizes of some of these hurlers? Put them in plaid and they’d pass for Paul Bunyan. Some of these guys are so tall it’s like being pitched to by a giraffe.

The pitchers are getting bigger and stronger, but the bats are the same size.

Another theory? Teams are promoting players earlier in their professional careers, as a rule. And the pitchers are ahead of the hitters in their development.

The stuff out there is nasty. Sliders dropping off tables like cue balls. Curves bending like bamboo. Fastballs exploding and being applied to the strike zone with a paint brush. Changeups twisting hitters into the dirt like a corkscrew.

The poor hitters just can’t keep up, as the above numbers indicate.

So is the no-hitter being ruined? Is it being rendered meaningless? Are we on the verge of greeting the news of the latest no-no with yawns?

Sixteen no-hitters since April 2010. That’s nearly one a month, on average. And there are a whole lot more that are flirted with—getting as far as the seventh or eighth inning in many instances.

Poor Homer Bailey. He threw his no-hitter and it’s like you want to react by saying, “Put it over there, with the others.”

What can you say? The guy was born 20 years too late to thrill us.

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