Jacob Turner to get another start this Sunday

Baseball is a tricky mistress. One has to base decisions and feelings on more than one start. Detroit Tigers fans are taking to their social media outlets to vent frustration about the decision to give young Jacob Turner another start. Sure the kid got his butt kicked the other day; sure we have yet to see anything overly impressive out of him. However, to really see what this kid is we need to see him at the big league level. No longer can the Tigers afford to have their prized prospect inToledoor anywhere else. He has to pitch in the Majors succeed of fail. Long term it will be better to know what kind of pitcher this kid is now. Personally, I want to see how the kid comes back from a rough outing.

That is the deal with baseball there is no one measuring stick like in other sports. Some days you are not that good (just like Justin Verlander on occasion thankfully not very often). As a professional pitcher you have to have a short memory. Jacob needs to forget about his last start and get ready for his next one. If he comes out and gets lit up again we can discuss what the team should do with him next.

Listening to Detroit Sports radio this week I have heard many say the Tigers are giving away games in a pennant race. That may be, but let us look at it another way. Every team wins 50, loses 50, and it is those other 62 games that ultimately determine how well a team does. Which category should we put the Turner starts in? Are they the 50 this team will lose no matter what? Are they among the other 62? Or can they be among the 50 they win (at least some anyway)?

Ultimately one or two of these starts (if they both wind up being loses) will be the games fans point to say where this team went astray. That is not ever close to being accurate. When the season is over we have to evaluate this team on all 162 performances, on every stat line for every player. For DJC it seems the season went askew when Victor Martinez was hurt, it continued when they singed Prince Fielder, and frankly the issues of this team go all the way back to the first day of free agency last year when the big move was to bring back Brandon Inge.

In the end one, two, or even five stars by Jacob Turner are not going to ultimately decide the fate of the 2011 team, but they could decide what this team does long term. There is a delicate balancing act teams must always keep in mind. How do they maximize the success of the present while not mortgaging the future? For a team with a aging owner and a large payroll the balance between those two things is razor thin.