Detroit Tigers

To say Miguel Cabrera's reputation has taken a little bit of a hit would be an understatement.  Thanks to his well-publicized and well-documented alcohol binge ending in a DUI arrest, Cabrera went from icon to moron in a matter of weeks.

The criticisms are mostly deserved, a little piled on, but very distracting as cringe worthy details continue to emerge.

Unfortunately for Cabrera, modern media has turned the magnifying glass that was on pro athletes' personal lives into a full-blown NASA Hubble Telescope.

Following a meltdown late in 2009, the Detroit Tigers struggled to get back on track in 2010. Once again, Detroit collapsed in the second half and ended the year at 81-81—third place in the AL Central division.

We all know Max Scherzer’s 2010 story. It was a tale of two seasons, to say the least, as we can tell by his splits before he was sent down to the minors and after it:

Every year, a handful of MLB players get really, really lucky.

A few extra seeing-eye ground balls get through the infield, and a hitter best suited to benchwarming looks like a legitimate big-league starter. A good-not-great pitcher benefits from an unusually skilled backing defense and suddenly finds his name popping up in the same sentence as "Cy Young."

One of the greatest innovations of sabermetrics is the ability to measure and isolate the element of luck in players' performances (at least, to some extent).

“Brennan Boesch is an equal opportunity slugger. Right field, left field, centerfield; right handed pitcher, left handed pitcher—it doesn’t matter. He doesn’t just box himself into hitting home runs! Singles, doubles, triples and even a grand slam are all on the stat line of this young rookie’s major league career. The kid is swinging a golden bat right now and for one, I don’t see him stopping any time soon.”

-Andrew Kulha, Summer 2010

One of the most interesting races in baseball should be the AL Central Division.  The Midwestern division isn't the sexiest in baseball, but it's highly underrated. 

ESPN will give more coverage to one Red Sox/Yankees series than they will to the combined seasons of the five teams in the division, but the fans of those teams know it's shaping up to be a great race in 2011.

The baseball was launched into the furthest, most terrifying reaches of Comerica Park, where the only ball caught is on a bounce or scooped up to stop it from rolling.

As it climbed into the June night’s air, you could hear an entire crowd of 17,000-plus gasp, as if they all had been simultaneously slugged in the gut.

If it was possible to read the minds of such a throng, you could do so in two words, only one fit for print here. The first was “Oh.”

The more we learn about Phil Coke, the more Detroiters are going to love this guy.

But the more we learn about Phil Coke, the more Detroiters are going to worry about him.

If Coke, the lefty lifetime reliever who will be in the Tigers rotation this season, was a product, he'd be juice concentrate—and he needs to be diluted with realism.

Even with Miguel Cabrera, don't be surprised when the Detroit Tigers are in last place in the AL Central division after the first month of the schedule. 

The MLB schedule makers have done no favors for a team that has been abysmal on the road the last two years, and the team has one major and a few minor issues to deal with.

Our 2011 fantasy baseball projections will be released one-by-one until the top 100 players have been revealed. These rankings consider past achievements, current performance and expected future results based on standard 5×5 H2H settings.

Much like Zack Greinke, Justin Verlander has given us three very different looks in the last three seasons.