Jim Leyland, It's Time to Stop the Babying the Detroit Tigers

The Tigers have fallen from grace just as fast as they had climbed up to it. It seems like yesterday that a much worse Tigers team was heading to the World Series.

That has come and passed.

With acquiring both Miguel Cabrera and Dontrelle Willis, it seemed the Tigers were going to be the team to beat.

In the eyes of many people they had surpassed the Boston Red Sox and the New York Yankees with the greatest lineup in baseball.

The power and offense was supposed to be amazing, and the pitching got even better with Dontrelle. They already had a great ace pitcher in Verlander, the vet in Kenny Rogers, and rising prospect Jermey Bondermen.

Where is that power? Where is the pitching?

The team is horrible, and the offense doesn't exist.   Before the season really even began they had been shut out more times than they had all last year.

Verlander has only on a couple of occasions given up less then four runs in a game.

And what is the response of the feared Jim Leyland? "Our offense has been blah. That's all I can say. I'm not mad at them. I'm not down on them."

Maybe its Leyland's age or the fear of upsetting the supposed greatest lineup in baseball, but it seems Leyland has gone soft.

Remember back at the beginning of the season when it was reported Leyland ripped into his team? Their record was 3-10.

I guess that is the boiling point—not the fact that your team didn't win a game for the first couple of weeks of the season, was the last team in the MLB to get a single win, or ,not to mention, was also the last team to win back to back games.

It's time to stop saying everything is going to be ok and that there is a lot of time in the season. The longer we say that, the closer to the end of the season we get.

These players need to get a complete wake up call.

It seems that they think the next person in the lineup will do their job.

Leyland needs to lay into them and show them he is in charge. They are terrible and they need to be treated that way. There needs to be booing in the stadiums, and people need to stop showing up.

It pains me to say it, but as much as I was looking forward to the begining of this MLB season with the great team that we were going to have, I can't wait for it to end.  I was counting down the days until opening day—now, I am back to counting down the days to the end of the season.

It's already over if we don't stop babying this team.

Of course the New York Giants became the first team ever to win a Super Bowl starting 0-2. Sports don't have a set path that they follow and its never exactly the same, so there is hope.

But, we as Tiger Nation need to wake up and stop telling ourselves and our team that the season is long and we are going to pull it around. We stink and that is that. Lets just hope they wake up.