Way back in April, ESPN’s Power Alley had the Tigers ranked 27th. The little comment they included for the Tigers was:
If there’s a worse pitcher in the bigs than C.J. Nitkowski please point him out to us
At the time I thought that was a little harsh. Unfortunately CJ has lived down to this expectation. It is pretty sad when on a team as bad as the Tigers, one player stands out as the worst. Before getting shelled again today, CJ had allowed 78 (not counting 7 intentional walks) baserunners in 45 1/3 innings pitched. How does this guy stay with the team? Because the other left handed bullpen options are Heath Murray and Matt Perisho. It speaks volumes about the lack of direction this team has when you build a park like Comerica, and don’t have the foresight to have some left handed pitching.