Here comes competition

So, Jim Leyland, any thoughts about facing Daisuke Matsuzaka tonight?

“I don’t give a [expletive] about him,” the Detroit Tigers skipper told the Detroit Free Press. “I’m not getting into all that. I could give a [expletive] less. It’s another pitcher. We’re playing Boston.”

Thanks, Jim.

As Leyland so eloquently and accurately pointed out, the Tigers are playing Boston, starting tonight against Matsuzaka, who’s coming off a dazzling outing against the awful Blue Jays. Detroit, on the other hand, is picking up right where they left off last October, with the second-best record in the American League, trailing only the Red Sox.

Don’t look now, but there’s some actual competition arriving at the Fens over the next seven days. The Tigers, 23-13, are here for four, followed by the Atlanta Braves, back on track after a down 2006 with the second-best record in the National League (24-13).
Thank goodness for the Tigers and Braves. If there is a downfall to this 25-11 start by the Red Sox it’s that we still will have to endure countless contests against AL East brethren, none of whom seems willing to put up any sort of fight against the running-away Sox. It’s now an eight-game lead over Baltimore and New York, and approaching the time, perhaps even by Memorial Day, when even the most cautious observer concedes the race is over. Heck, Johnny Damon even hinted as much. Have fun, Rog.
The Blue Jays are an injury-ridden disaster. The Devil Rays are up-and-coming, but not quite there. The Yankees are an expensive joke that gets more laughable by the day. And the Orioles are, well, the same nondescript squad they’ve been for the past decade, it seems, although yesterday certainly adds a new chapter to their futility.
You have to go back two seasons to find a team that had even as much as a six-game lead in their division on May 14. The Chicago White Sox led the Twins by that much in 2005, with a 27-10 mark en route to a 99-win season. Those Sox eventually won the World Series, holding off a late charge by Cleveland to win the AL Central, a challenge that many opined gave them the extra spark they needed to roll through the postseason.
It repeated as a popular theory one season later, when the St. Louis Cardinals were forced to hold off the Astros in the NL Central, gasping onto the division title with 83 wins, the adversity of having to hold off Houston bandied about as the reason they were able to surge past the competition for the World Series title.
Putting it in cruise control is one thing, but what are the odds that such a benefit makes things, say, a little too laissez faire in the clubhouse? Adversity creates character, after all, and any kind of normalcy can tend to make even the brightest aspects of any one team a bit too everyday. Too early even to genuinely start thinking about this nonsense? Fair enough.
Still, there’s something to be said about the overall benefaction of playing teams that don’t, you know, stink. All due respect to the Blue Jays, Orioles, and Yankees but … actually, forget it.
Enter the Tigers, who despite their hot start are no shoo-in for a postseason spot, what with the Indians, White Sox, and Twins sure to be breathing down their necks all summer. They’ve lost fireballer Joel Zumaya for the next few months, and Red Sox batters won’t have to deal with Jeremy Bonderman, who missed last night’s start with a blister, which the Tigers apparently haven’t taken to calling an “avulsion” lest Tigers fans flip out and start jumping into Lake Michigan in a panic of misfortune.
It’s somewhat fitting that the Tigers and Braves come to Boston in back-to-back series. After all, it is the Braves’ long-term plan of building a winner through the young pitching of their farm system — resulting in 15 straight division titles — that the Tigers most resemble. It’s a plan admired by many, though not carried out to the fascinating degree that Dave Dombrowski has managed in Detroit, where one of the best fan bases in the game has been revitalized.
That seemed much the plan in Boston as late as last summer when Theo Epstein said “no thanks” to trading away prospects like Craig Hansen in a pennant race that would become a lost cause. The safe assumption was that the Sox were going to compete on the basis of their farm system, stockpiling arms for long-term divisional dominance.
Then they went and spent gobs on Matsuzaka, JD Drew, and Julio Lugo and instead became the Yankees, who, in turn, have been kind enough to become the Raiders, an expensive irrelevance.
Right. Mid-May. Duly and obligatorily noted.
But as far as the late waning days of spring go, these next seven days offer up some killer competition for a team that, with all due respect to the Brew Crew, looks like it could be baseball’s best running away.
Getting ahead of ourselves? Probably. That’s why we love teams like the Tigers and Braves — to bring reality back to the ballpark for a short while. Because God knows nobody in the Red Sox’ own division is going to stand up and, to quote Jim Leyland, give a [expletive] about it anytime soon.