Graziano: Slow Detroit Tigers could be just a bunch of ‘homers’

“Almost lost Detroit, that time.
Damn near totally destroyed, one time
Almost lost Detroit”

Only a week ago, these Tigers were thought by some to be a team that could score 1,000 runs in 2008.

Now, 1,000 runs is a preposterous prediction that has been hysterically (and incorrectly) made about Yankees teams in recent years. Only two teams have scored that many runs in a season since 1936, only one since 1950. So after scoring 10 in their first four games (putting them on pace for 405), the Tigers aren’t exactly on a fast-track to that kind of offensive immortality.

Even if they were, their pitching is paper-thin after Cy Young candidate Justin Verlander and could doom them to an October of watching playoff games on TV. But watching the Tigers struggle to score against the likes of Brian Bannister and Zack Greinke called to mind a late-spring conversation I had with a scout who’d recently seen Detroit play.

“They look real slow,” said the scout, requesting anonymity because of the protocol that prohibits members of his profession from publicly discussing players on other teams. “If they’re not hitting home runs, it’s going to be tough for them to do much in terms of manufacturing runs, because it’s all station-to-station.”