Henning: Changes could be just beginning for Tigers
Detroit — Doctors might prefer that Detroit adopt a new summer game. This baseball thing is stressing psyches and general health.
Friday, as a town and Tigers team contended with a three-game losing streak, a .500 record, and all kinds of angst about what might be ahead, the Tigers got busy making life-sustaining moves, jettisoning bullpen pitchers Joba Chamberlain and Tom Gorzelanny at the same time manager Brad Ausmus was turning his batting order upside down.
Shrewd strategy, it seemed. The rearranged Tigers jumped on the Jays for 13 hits in an 8-6 victory that saw Anibal Sanchez push a no-hitter into the eighth, all to the delight of a big holiday weekend crowd (39,367) that finally could applaud a stumbling home team.
Of course, there were glitches, as might be deduced from an 8-6 score.
Sanchez and normally impeccable reliever Alex Wilson blew apart in a 50-pitch eighth that saw Sanchez lose his no-hitter, and nearly an 8-0 lead, as the Jays scored six times.
More damaging was Miguel Cabrera straining a calf muscle on a fourth-inning romp to second base. Cabrera will be gone for days, and perhaps through the All-Star break, if not longer.
This is the latest effort, it seems, by some occult presence to make 2015 more of a science-fiction script than a baseball season for the star-crossed Tigers.
Decisions must be made. And quickly. Front-office urgency was written all over Friday's moves that banished Chamberlain and Gorzelanny and replaced them with rookie right-handers Drew VerHagen and Jeff Ferrell.
"All of a sudden, it's a different look," Dave Dombowski, the team's president and general manager, said during a press briefing Friday.
Too close to fold their hand
Managerial urgency was at the heart of Brad Ausmus' decision to re-wire his lineup. He moved Ian Kinsler to leadoff and Yoenis Cespedes to the second spot. He bumped J.D. Martinez into the five-hole, welcomed back Alex Avila from the disabled list at No. 6, and dropped Anthony Gose to No. 8, which seemed to go well for Gose, who had a couple of hits. In fact, an entire batting order seemed liberated by the shuffling.
Now, though, Ausmus must re-shape a lineup minus Cabrera. Suggestions are welcome.
Dombrowski has some issues to sort out, as well, although Friday's moves were clear enough. They doubled as statements that a team and its owner, Mike Ilitch, are likely fed up with non-performers.
Expect little to change in July, a traditionally volatile month when Dombrowski overhauls one or more parts of his roster ahead of the July 31 trade deadline.
Cabrera's bad calf makes life rougher but likely doesn't change big-picture plans as Dombrowski launches his annual summer safari for bodies that might, this year, bring a fifth consecutive playoff ticket.
Expect help to come in the form of, yes, a starting pitcher, which the Tigers need not only in 2015, but as they perhaps begin thinking earnestly about 2016.
It's OK to wonder if the Tigers might this time around be buyers or sellers. But there is scant chance they'll give up on 2015. And, as far as these issues can be decided on July 4, they shouldn't.
They finished Friday six games out of first place. They are a game over .500. Neither of those numbers merits folding a season and selling parts in a wholesale re-seeding and rebuilding push.
Questions remain
Dombrowski isn't interested in asking Ilitch to wait a few more years for a new and improved effort at winning a World Series. What he will do, with a team that still has ample talent, is hope a healthier roster, bolstered by another of his July deals, will catch fire in the second half and become one of those late-blooming playoff meanies that can steal the stage.
"I don't think any of us are happy," Dombrowski said Friday, and it was a telling sentence, even if he was quick to say the Tigers' wobbly ways "starts with me on down."
The question is whether a purely clinical analysis of a big league team might lead to one of those clinical moves to change managers.
Clearly, Dombrowski/Ilitch — they operate with mutual agreement in these matters — are ready to do whatever to salvage this season and prove that a $170-million payroll is something more than testimony to a bad investment.
Ausmus deserves no undue responsibility here. But how many times does justice enter into decisions to fire coaches or managers?
This is why the next 10 days, even if they must play minus Cabrera, are critical for Ausmus and for a front office that wants to reassure Ilitch and Detroit's fans that this remains a playoff team.
Ausmus sounded Friday as if he were as ready to go for broke as his bosses.
"I feel like we should be scoring more runs," he said, and not many would argue.
"We should be winning more baseball games than we are," and even more people probably would agree.
The lineup changes worked beautifully Friday. So did Toronto's defense, at least as far as the Tigers were concerned. Three errors helped Detroit to a pair of unearned runs and thank-you cards were all but ordered from Hallmark.
But there, in the eighth, were more signs that this is going to be one weird year in Detroit. Two mostly dependable arms in that battered Tigers bullpen, Alex Wilson and Bruce Rondon, combined with Sanchez to bring back the Jays and bring the lead run to the plate.
Issues remain, both physical and mathematical. Cabrera's strained calf is being further examined. And so are the Tigers' playoff chances should a superstar's bat be lost for extended time.
Figure in any event that Tigers personnel is headed for more alterations in July. The question is whether Dombrowski's impending moves will apply to players only.
Fun, aren't they, these baseball seasons in Detroit? Sometimes an owner, a front office, and a manager, all must wonder, in concert with some fans, if maybe it's time to take up golf and fishing.
lynn.henning@detroitnews.com
Twitter.com/Lynn_Henning