Jerry Green

Tigers failed, but not because of Jim Leyland

Baseball is a game of failures.

It is a game in which three hits -- and seven outs -- in 10 at-bats is considered successful. It is a game in which a concocted statistic, the quality start, is considered successful pitching even when the ballclub fails to have a quality finish from the bullpen and loses.

Failure is finishing in last place. It is making the third out, meekly, with the bases loaded. It is dishing out a walkoff scratch single through the infield.

When a team implodes, collapses and takes a pratfall in a pennant race, it is extreme failure.

And in baseball, it is human nature to squawk and search for a scapegoat when a team fails.

Since the demise of the Tigers -- the failure to hold the seven-game lead in September, the failure to clinch the division title after taking a three-game lead with four games to play -- this is open season for second-guessers. And second guessing -- attacks on the man who makes the first guess -- is an entitlement.

It is an entitlement that we all have. For fans that root for their teams and bleed when their teams fail.

And an entitlement for we the media, who are by profession supposed to be neutral and analytical -- and frequently fail at that.

So let's second guess the second-guessers, amateurs all of us.

Jim Leyland is the guy the Tigers hired to make the first guess.

He is the guy with the bull's-eye on his shirt right near where the Olde English D should be. He is the town's favorite scapegoat -- cast into a category with whichever individual has been the Lions' quarterback for the past half-century and the Red Wings' goalkeeper.

Two good calls

Leyland has been accused of rendering failed first guesses. He is accused by amateur critics who write letters to newspapers with their gripes, by callers to mouthy radio talk show hosts, by jacks of all trades and masters of none who do not understand the logic of his pitching selections.

He has been accused of losing the battle to the pennant playoffs for using the wrong starters in the final week of the season. As first place was vanishing for the Tigers.

Nate Robertson against Minnesota on the day one embarrassing newspaper headline screamed in cheerleading fashion, "CLINCH IT!"

Alfredo Figaro against the White Sox last Saturday, when a victory would have been converted into a playoffs clincher the next day.

Robertson and Figaro both lost.

Therefore, Leyland must be the scapegoat for choosing them to pitch vital ballgames -- on days when more capable starters were not available.

Blame him, rip him apart. Fire the arrows in nonsensical e-mails.

That's what second-guessing amateurs do.

However, what a professional baseball manager, veteran of the World Series and the pennant playoffs, used as his first guess was the record.

On Sept. 20, when the Tigers had a three-game losing streak and were afflicted with the disaster of having lost nine of their previous 12 games, Robertson started in the Metrodome in Minneapolis. Leyland's first guess -- hunch ... whatever -- worked. Robertson beat the Twins. The slide was stopped. Temporarily.

The Tigers won their next three games.

On Sept. 26, when the Tigers' lead had dwindled to two games, Figaro was Leyland's first guess to relieve Robertson in Chicago. Leyland again needed to make a hunch call. Figaro was the winning pitcher over the White Sox.

The names are etched in the 163-game record of the 2009 race in the American League Central -- winning pitchers, Robertson at Minnesota, Figaro at Chicago. In late September, in the stretch, with the first place vanishing -- and the Twins unstoppable, soaring toward the ultimate finish.

So Jim Leyland's first guess was to use the recorded facts that the second-guessers ignore. He started two pitchers in desperation in the final days of the race against teams that they had so recently defeated. On the road.

For those decisions, Leyland is the second-guessers' scapegoat.

No alternative

Last Saturday night, he played Miguel Cabrera, who had been fetched from the hoosegow in Birmingham at 7:30 in the ayem by Dave Dombrowski. Cabrera had been imbibing, a mistake well-celebrated by pundits nationally and locally, presumably all teetotalers.

The second-guessers have scoured Leyland for playing Cabrera that night against the White Sox in a vital ballgame. They justify their criticisms with the fact that Cabrera had a terrible game.

Now riddle me this: Who else might Leyland have played at first base? His proven most productive hitter, regardless of his wasted condition, on a team with production deficiencies? Or perhaps some benchwarmer with pop-out tendencies?

One year ago, the Tigers finished last in their division, 14 1/2 games out of first place. Leyland was criticized by some second-guessers, himself included.

But I doubt if there were many of these complaining amateurs who figured that the Tigers could reach the playoffs this season. I just doubt if there were many who predicted on last April Fool's Day that the 2009 Tigers would occupy first place most of the season, then drop a playoff for the division title. In an extra game. In the Metrodome. In an historically dramatic ballgame. On a scratch single to right. In the bottom of the 12th inning.

"We should have it wrapped up," Leyland said last Sunday evening before going to Minnesota for the one-game-take-all match.

True, they should have wrapped it up days before the season ended. If his batters had hit. If his bullpen had held the other team's hitters.

"I don't know anybody who picked us to win this division," Leyland said.

True again.

Mixed results

Leyland did the best humanly possible by a professional manager with the players he was given. But because baseball is a game of failure, it is imperative that there must be a scapegoat for the Tigers' failure.

"I'm to blame," a Detroit News headline quoted Dombrowski as saying as part of his post mortems to the media the other day.

Yep. I'd agree. As Leyland's boss as Tigers president-general manager, Dombrowski is in charge of providing ballplayers. His sharp deals were credited with the winning of the 2006 pennant. Dombrowski has been in a prolonged slump since.

His trades include the acquisitions of Cabrera and Dontrelle Willis; of Edgar Renteria; of Kyle Farnsworth; of Edwin Jackson and Gerald Laird; and in the emergency of late 2009, of Jarrod Washburn and Aubrey Huff. Gone are Pudge Rodriguez, Jair Jurrjens, Andrew Miller and the still-promising Cameron Maybin.

Jackson and Laird -- and Cabrera, too -- developed into useful acquisitions for the Tigers.

The other deals? They were failures.

Retired Detroit News sports reporter Jerry Green writes a Web-exclusive column for detnews.com every Sunday.