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To: SiouxPal who wrote (71857)	6/15/2008 12:46:28 AM
From: stockman_scott	Respond to of 104160

Tigers might give fans a fun summer after all _______________________________________________________________ by David Mayo \| The Grand Rapids Press Sunday June 15, 2008 -- DETROIT -- The Detroit Tigers aren't contending, just playing like it for a week, sweeping their division leaders, beating the slumping Los Angeles Dodgers with a kid who never threw a major-league pitch before, and boosting the state's sagging manufacturing sector with the variety of ways they produce runs. Pile a few more interesting weeks upon the most recent one, and maybe the Tigers will have something. An interesting summer, at the very least. Baseball's most puzzling team has begun to reverse the course. Whether that translates to a meaningful September remains in question. Given how the Tigers started this season of promise, perhaps a meaningful August will have to suffice. Yet here was Eddie Bonine, beneficiary of an offensive breakout for a 12-7 win in his big-league debut, outpitching the Dodgers' Brad Penny and providing much-needed help from Toledo, just when it seemed the Tigers were stockpiling their pitching for a Florida State League title. Ivan Rodriguez had a sacrifice bunt and a stolen base. In the same game. Honest. The Tigers took bases on balls, hit balls off the wall, and hit balls over it. The .500 mark remains six games distant. But the possibility of late-summer intrigue seems closer than ever. During one of the low points in the mid-spring doldrums, I asked Tigers general manager Dave Dombrowski -- who has been skewered for dealing away the future for a present which clearly didn't work the first 2 1/2 months -- which single player's turnaround could have the greatest potential impact. Dombrowski said he didn't think there was such a domino-effect answer, because the problems involved too many players failing simultaneously. That may have been true, though it seems more than coincidence that Kenny Rogers' return to form in his past four starts parallels the Tigers' recent reversal of fortunes. As Rogers has gone the past two years, so went the Tigers. That included when he carried the Tigers all the way to the 2006 World Series, before touching off their downfall against St. Louis with his pine-tar controversy, and when his blood clot bogged down the team last season. The Tigers have won seven of their past eight games. The only loss, Dontrelle Willis pitched, before he was sent, along with his $29 million contract, to Class A Lakeland. Just as he left, the pitching came around. That doesn't make much sense, and certainly isn't how the Tigers envisioned things for Willis -- especially after Miguel Cabrera ate himself from a third baseman into a first baseman, bringing their offseasom blockbuster under scrutiny for the first time -- except that momentum hovers over baseball like no other sport, and Comerica Park is a breeding ground for it right now. For the Tigers, the first hints of upturn started last weekend, with Edgar Renteria's grand slam in a come-from-behind win over Cleveland, then another in the growing string of outstanding pitching performances by unlikely staff ace Armando Galarraga. Willis lost to Cleveland, got sent down, and the pitching stifled the division-leading Chicago White Sox. Nate Robertson won. Justin Verlander threw a four-hitter. Timely hitting arrived, in the form of Cabrera's walkoff home run Thursday against the White Sox. Beyond that, Joel Zumaya and Fernando Rodney are close to returning to the bullpen. And the Tigers have shown a growing penchant for manufacturing runs, such as the third inning Saturday, when they scored on two walks, a bunt and a sinking liner (before an inning-ending double play that underscored the importance of it all), then a six-run fourth which included four runs scored after the bases were empty with two outs. The Tigers took advantage of an interleague showdown to produce runs like a National League team playing in an American League ballpark. For that matter, they produced runs like an actual AL contender. They aren't that, and may not be for a while, if at all. But at least they are showing signs this moribund spring may not extend into summer.