Jim Leyland makes mistake with Chance Ruffin

kellmellus50 · Post #1 » by **kellmellus50** » Thu Jul 28, 2011 12:32 pm

Tuesday, July 26, 2011
So, with the game on the line, and no room for error, Leyland makes the only possible decision. He calls out to the bullpen and brings in Chance Ruffin.

Wait. What?!?

Nothing against Ruffin, but he had never thrown a pitch in a major league game before Monday night. So Leyland eases the rookie into his career by putting him in a bases-loaded situation against a team that is chasing the Tigers for the division lead. of coarse you guessed it he gave up a double and the tigers lost another game because of leland.

http://blog.mlive.com/ottoman-empire/20 ... uffin.html

leland is the reason the tigers could miss the playoffs and lose the world series if they ever get that far.

TSE · Post #2 » by **TSE** » Thu Jul 28, 2011 4:05 pm

It was a little insane. Leyland went all-in with a wild card hand and it blew up in his face. I applaud that he's at least trying. Albeit kind of an unconventional call-up and plug-in situation, but at least it was interesting television to watch. If we aren't going to compete in a seriously focused fashion, and if we aren't going to properly trade around all the players in our system that need to be moved to reconfigure this team, then I'd rather Leyland do anything he can to pull wild cards out and make attempt to utilize them. As far as I'm concerned, we have nothing to lose and only extra luck that we desperately need to possibly gain.

The problem with this one wasn't so much that it didn't work out, but that we shouldn't as a team have to be in this position where we need to gamble on a young guy prematurely in a situation like this. We should already have a better solution, and we already should have a better O+D to have produced a better score leading up to that moment, that's the illness here that needs to be addressed. It's the treating of the problem at the root and not the application of a bandage to the exterior of the problem that we should be worrying about.

If we stand pat with the status quo and the guys we have and would traditionally expect to play, then we would certainly we walking into the postseason with an unqualified and unsubstantial crapshoot draw at winning the WS. Sure we could still do it, but our odds aren't distinguished, and only an x-factor that can be potentially derived from multiple wild card plays can have a shot to change that, that is if we don't follow up with some really creative and ingenious final trades before the deadline, which is what I'm praying for every day.

kellmellus50 · Post #3 » by **kellmellus50** » Sat Jul 30, 2011 1:31 pm

Tigers made late-night move to call up top prospect Jacob Turner

TSE · Post #4 » by **TSE** » Sun Jul 31, 2011 2:24 am

But will he still be on the roster after a couple hours or will he get traded? lol i'm not sure