The Pressbox

The Tigers have slipped four and a half games behind Cleveland in the AL Central.

Are they finished? I am not quite ready to give up on them, but it doesn’t look good. That’s a big margin to make up in a little over a month and, worse than that, they show no signs of being capable of going on the kind of a streak that would make it possible.

What an amazing turn of events for a team that was being called the best in baseball at the All-Star break.

I remember writing a column last year that said “magical” was the right word to describe the Tiger season. Everything they did turned to gold. Jim Leyland made all the right moves, players came through with clutch hits at just the right time and the opponents made mistakes that helped the Tigers.

None of that has happened this year. Other than the walkoff home run by Carlos Guillen against the Yankees last week, when was the last time you remember a Tiger coming up with a clutch, game-winning hit in the late innings? It seemed like there was at least one a week last year.

The magic seems to have disappeared.

Jim Leyland has made a lot of great moves since becoming manager of the Detroit Tigers, but his decision to bat Timo Perez in the No. 3 spot Tuesday night against Kansas City baffled me.

I know he has been scrambling since Gary Sheffield went out with an injury, but this hunch did not work. Perez came up in several key spots in the early innings and failed to deliver. He did have a double in the ninth inning, but the Tigers were down by four runs at that time.

I know Leyland doesn’t want to mess with the Magglio Ordonez-Carlos Guillen combination in the No. 4 and 5 spots, but Sean Casey would have been a better choice at No. 3, or he could have moved Placido Polanco to third and let Perez hit second.

When asked about his choice of Perez in the No. 3 hole refused to give his reasons. All he would say was he did it because that’s where he wanted to hit him.

Leyland is a great manager, but he occasionally let’s his stubborness get in the way.

I got an unexpected Saturday night off yesterday.

Because of a power outage at The Evening News printing plant on Huber Drive, we had to get Sunday’s paper done by 3:30 p.m. so that it could be shipped to Adrian for printing.

That meant I got out of work early, but I didn’t have power at my house, either. That didn’t leave many options for the evening.

After taking the family out to dinner, going on a walk and playing Lego with my daughter, I pulled out a battery radio and prepared to enjoy the Tiger game.

There wasn’t much to enjoy.

The game was tight for the first few innings, then Jeremy Bonderman blew up with a four-run sixth inning allowing the Yankees to build a 7-2 lead.

I wrote an item in this blog a few days ago about how Justin Verlander wasn’t acting much like an ace. The same is true of Bonderman. Both of them have been mediocre or worse since the All-Star break.

The Tigers can’t make the playoffs with their two big guns pitching that way.

Is anyone else getting worried about Justin Verlander?

He hasn’t been dominant in quite a while. The Tigers scored eight runs Wednesday night and still lost to Cleveland. That should not happen with your ace on the mound.

Detroit Tiger manager Jim Leyland gambled Tuesday night when he started rookie Jair Jurrjens against the Cleveland Indians.

With an off day on Monday, Leyland had the option of starting Justin Verlander in the first game of the crucial series against Cleveland. Instead, he opted for a kid making his second big-league start since being promoted from Double A.

I must admit I didn’t like his choice.

But Leyland proved he knows a lot more about baseball than I do and Jurrjens showed he might have a bright future.

Jurrjens was outstanding, allowing just one hit over the first six and two thirds innings, then Joel Zumaya, Fernando Rodney and Todd Jones finished shutting down the Indians.

It was a huge win for the Tigers, restoring some confidence and putting them in great shape with Verlander taking the mound Wednesday.

And I think Jurrjens earned himself another start.

I must admit that I had never heard of Roger Goodall before he was promoted to Commissioner of the NFL.

It hasn’t taken him long to make a name for himself.

One of his first jobs was to stomp on troublemakers like Pacman Jones and Tank Johnson. Then, he had the Michael Vick mess thrown in his face. He dealt with that as well as you could expect. This was a no-win for the NFL and Goodall seems to have handled it with a minimum damage for the league.

Just last week Goodall visited Detroit Lions training camp to answer any questions and to make his stance on players who run afoul with the law clear to everyone.

He is not running from problems. He deals with the head-on.

I like his style.

The Detroit Tigers made some bold moves Friday, calling up super-prospect Cameron Maybin along with defensive specialist Ramon Santiago while cutting ties with Craig Monroe and sending Omar Infante to Toledo.

I have mixed feelings about the moves.

Like everyone else, I am excited to see what Maybin can do, but I wonder if plunking a 20-year-old into the middle of the pennant race and having him make his debut at Yankee Stadium is the best long-range move for the youngster. Plus they were asking him to make his debut at a new position (left field instead of center).

And I feel bad for Infante. He has performed fairly well for the Tigers this season. He was hitting .276 and had come up with some big hits. But the Tigers don’t think he can do the job defensively at shortstop and they wanted to have a capable defensive backup with Carlos Guillen hurting.

As for Monroe, he certainly has not performed this season, but I thought the team would at least ride it out for this year. What if Maybin shows he can’t handle it this year? You will have Marcus Thames in left with no reliable backup. It might have been better to let Maybin win the job in spring training next year.

On top of that, it seems that Monroe was a pretty popular guy on the team. You wonder if getting rid of him and demoting a guy like Infante who has done nothing wrong could damage team morale.

After another phenomenal catch bu Curtis Granderson tonight, Rod Allen of Fox Sports Detroit said that Granderson had been playing Gold Glove caliber centerfield for the Tigers this season.

Granderson isn’t going to win the Gold Glove. It takes several years to build the kind of reputation needed to win that award. Guys like Torii Hunter, Ichiro Suzuki and Vernon Wells have been doing it longer.

But Granderson has turned heads with his play in center this season.

Originally it was thought that super-prospect Cameron Maybin was the centerfielder of the future for the Tigers. Granderson may be changing that thinking.

Back-to-back wins over Oakland on Saturday and Sunday did a lot to calm Tiger fans who were on the verge of panic.

But what happens this week will give us a better indication of what direction the team is headed.

After finishing the Oakland series Monday night, the Tigers go on the road for two games in Cleveland, then four in New York. The pitching staff will get a severe test against the Yankees, who have been red hot since the All-Star break.

That’s more like it.

Did Saturday night’s Tiger game remind anyone else of last year?

The Tigers combined timely hitting, a solid effort from a starting pitcher and outstanding relief work to beat Oakland, which had All-Star starter Dan Haren on the mound.

I had been wondering for a while why the Tigers hadn’t dipped into the Toledo pitching staff to shake up the bullpen. They finally did it and Aquilino Lopez delivered in a big way. Fernando Rodney was outstanding for the third straight outing and Todd Jones didn’t even make the hearts of Tiger fans race as he picked up his 31st save.

It was exactly the kind of win the Tigers needed to restore some confidence. Plus, Cleveland lost and the Tigers moved within a half-game of first.