Fire Al Avila, Please

The Detroit Tigers stink. To high Hell and back. Since starting the season 6–6, the Orange and Blue have lost 16 of their last 18 games, gone 23 innings without scoring and been shut out six times. Sunday, against the Yankees, José Ureña pitched a three-hitter and still lost, 2–0, because the Tigers only managed two hits off Yankees’ pitching.

During this horrid stretch, the team has scored fewer than three runs in all but three of their losses. You can’t win baseball games in 2020 like it’s 1968.

1968, that glorious year (at least for baseball) when pitchers like Bob Gibson, Luis Tiant, Don Drysdale, Catfish Hunter and Denny McLain ruled the game. McLain won 31 games, the last pitcher to do so and Gibson’s 1.12 Earned Run Average was the modern-day record. Both likely never to be broken.

Yet, Gibson won only 22 games that season. The Cardinals, despite having Lou Brock and Curt Flood running the bases and Orlando Cepada and Tim McCarver hitting, Gibson lost nine games. Why? Because St. Louis couldn’t score to save their lives. They were the defending World Series champs and couldn’t score. Gibson, who died last year, often said, “I had to throw a shutout every time out. The team would score five runs for Ray (Washburn), but could barely scratch out two runs for me.”

That year, only Carl Yazstremski hit .300 in the American League. Just four players in the National League managed the feat. Drysdale pitched 58 and 2/3rds scoreless innings, yet the Dodgers finished below .500 that season.