By Jonathan Thomas
DetroitSportsRag@GMail.com
September 17, 2014

Okay. This is obviously parody. That noose was OBVIOUSLY made for Jamie Samuelsen’s head. It would never fit around Matt Dery’s dome.

By Jeff Moss
DetroitSportsRag@GMail.com
September 17, 2014

Lynn Henning is (was?) a deacon at his church. I have no idea what a deacon at a church does — as I avoid places of blind worship like the plague — but I am guessing being a liar isn’t one of the job qualifications.

But for about the 1,263rd time since this website was created, we caught the Detroit News baseball writer in another whopper.

Here is a Tweet from the senile scribe from August 20, 2014:

This message was in response to Tigers fans’ excitement that they might have been getting a new Cuban centerfielder for the stretch run. “Mr. Imperfect” wanted to rain on that parade with “authorit-ay.”

Now, keep in mind the key phrase, “no matter who signs him.”

Anyway, Rusney Castillo is playing centerfield for the BoSox this evening. As I type this blog post, he is 1-for-3. I’m not sure how Castillo is managing to play in The Big Leagues THIS EVENING when the postseason is still two weeks away, but I am sure this imbecile has SOME explanation, right?

OH. That was the Tigers’ organizational view. Uh-huh. Of course, my “minions” or “cult followers” quickly jumped on that inconsistency so Henning tried to distract the “Diaper Rash Gang” with his comment that the Red Sox aren’t playing a playoff game tonight.

[Editor's Note: Diaper Rash Gang? Where the FUCK does he come up with this shit??!!!? Does he have a 1959 Book of Insults?]

Right. Because Castillo is ready on September 17th to play in MLB, but wouldn’t have been able to do so in two weeks for a Tigers team desperate for a centerfielder.

Pull this leg, Lynn. It plays “Jingle Bells.”

But Henning wasn’t finished. Check out this awesome Tweet ……

@GOYA_BEAN_FTW @JeffMossDSR Message to our resident bin Laden cell: this isn’t the post-season. But you didn’t know that.

— Lynn G. Henning (@Lynn_Henning) September 18, 2014

OK. Now I am being compared to Al-Qaeda by this washed-up hack. I will have to add this to the DSR Insult Wall of Fame — right next to Terry Foster saying I am a “Hitler-like figure” and Chris “Officer Barbrady” McCosky labeling me a PARASITIC SOCIOPATH.

Osama bin-Laden killed nearly 4,000 people on 9/11. I try to keep the Detroit sports teams and media in check in a somewhat humorous fashion.

Yeah, I can see the comparison. TOTALLY.

Hey, Lynn, stop lying, making things up and saying UTTERLY STUPID SHIT and there will be no reason for my fellow Jihadists to bother you.

Finally, stay tuned for the next DSR post where a Detroit media member compares me to Charles Manson. And threatens to call the cops.

I am not kidding ……

By Jeff Moss
DetroitSportsRag@GMail.com
September 18, 2014

While I would love to live in a world where the Tigers, Red Wings, Lions and Pistons were managed properly, winning a proportionate number of world championships while the collective media in Detroit that covers them actually did THEIR JOB ….. well ….. that ain’t the planet we reside on.

If truth be told, front office blunders, poor play on the field, ice or court and dereliction of duty by the reporters and broadcasters in Motown is precisely what drives new readers to my Twat feed and to this websight™ (Five-Tool Imbecile T-Fos).

Chaos is good for the DSR. The inept performance of the Tigers players and their Mimbo Imbecile Ivy League manager over the last two days brings traffic to this Mos Eisley of Motor City online sports pages.

In my professional life, I earn a living when policyholders suffer losses through fires, tornadoes, hurricanes, floods, sewage backup and a variety of other calamities. Likewise, this hobby of mine thrives when the entire town is on the verge of a nervous breakdown due to the latest Joe Nathan performance or Don Kelly start.

And Tuesday night was a perfect storm of Detroit sports diarrhea, with the Tigers losing to the Twins after J.D. Martinez had apparently saved his team from an embarrassing defeat with a three-run bomb.  Afterwards, things got a little dicey on Twitter with me performing my normal duties of leading the parade of distaste and bitterness.

The thing is, I can’t control all (or really any) of my followers and sometimes they get a little carried away when trying to bite my schtick. I can’t feign shock about this any more than Howard Stern could regarding the creation of a cesspool of bile known as the Stern Fan Network message boards.

So when a crude Tweet popped up in my “Mentions” I just shook my head and thought, well … some young kid went a little over the line. Before I get to that particular Tweet though, a little context.

After B[r]ad Ausmus, Nathan and Ezequiel Carrera snatched defeat from the jaws of victory, I went on a tirade mocking the sort of queries the eunuch Tigers beat writers usually pose to Surfer Boy after a game.

Before I get to my mocking Tweets of these castrated eunuchs, here are some ACTUAL questions that were asked of Mimbo Brad after Sunday’s game ……

What is the significance of the sweep of Cleveland?

Your take on Justin Verlander’s performance?

By Jeff Moss
DetroitSportsRag@GMail.com
September 22, 2014

I was on the Sports Brothers show with Ryan Schuiling and Ray Bentley on 107.3 in Grand Rapids this morning to discuss the Tigers weekend series, the Joakim Soria disappearance and Ned Yost vs. Brad Ausmus. Also, I snuck in a tribute to Eric the Midget Actor.

By Justin Spiro
spirojus@gmail.com
September 24, 2014

Out of the loop on Detroit sports? The DSR has you covered! Here is the latest edition of, “This Week’s Detroit Sports Radio Topics”!!! These are real sports topics discussed by the city’s finest sports radio hosts the past week.

Is it OK to drink or eat something in the checkout line before buying it? (Stoney & Bill, 97.1)

Who has the best bread? (Benedict & The Whale, 97.1) 

What is the weirdest thing your pet has eaten? (Stoney & Bill, 97.1)

Would you hook up with a woman with 3 breasts? (Benedict & The Whale, 97.1)

If you could attend any concert, what would it be? (Benedict & The Whale, 97.1)

Would you give up your favorite hobby for a million dollars? (Benedict & The Whale, 97.1)

What are the best guy movies that women just don’t understand? (Stoney & Bill, 97.1)

Have you ever taken your woman to a strip club? (Stoney & Bill, 97.1)

Do you know your kids smoke pot? (Stoney & Bill, 97.1)

Which foods are the manliest? (Jamie & Wojo, 97.1)

The man who has 100 orgasms a day. (Drew & Marc, 105.1)

What is the longest you have waited in line for an iPhone? (Drew & Marc, 105.1)

The boys interview Elvis Presley’s last girlfriend! (Drew & Marc, 105.1)

These were just a few of the hottest Detroit sports radio topics from the past week! We are grateful for the hardworking broadcasting talent in town, who engage their audience with thoughtful sports discussions each and every day.

(Did we miss any riveting Detroit sports radio topics from the past week? Let us know! spirojus@gmail.com)

By Jeff Moss
DetroitSportsRag@GMail.com
September 24, 2014

As I begin to type this column, the Tigers have defeated Chris “Bushnell” Sale in the crucial series finale and the Cleveland Indians are leading the Kansas City Royals 3-0 in the bottom of the third inning.

So why am I so angry? Why am I as despondent as I have been all year about this Tigers team? Well, let’s just say you are on an airplane flying from DTW to Las Vegas cruising at an altitude of 35,000 feet in smooth air. There’s nothing but blackjack tables and affordable “Hollywood 9″ prostitutes in your near future.

The caveat being you know the pilot is suicidal and has plans to crash your Airbus into a mountain at any moment. Would you be relaxed or sitting on pins and needles trying to figure out a way into that god damn locked cockpit?

Well, in my nightmarish scenario, the captain of that airplane is Brad Ausmus and I am sorry if I am not jumping up and down and grabbing my asscheeks over a potential two-game AL Central lead.

Because, after what I have witnessed over the past few days, the AL Central title is the only thing this team is winning if Ivy League Surfer Boy Mimbo Imbecile is allowed to retain his grip on the control yoke.

There are only four games left in the regular season and, incredibly, we are still at a point where Joakim Soria is being used in a non-essential role. This would be borderline insane if the Tigers had the bullpen of the 1997 New York Yankees. Breaking news ….. they don’t.

A team that was so desperate for late-inning relief at the deadline that they traded away their BEST starting pitching prospect (Jake Thompson) AND their TOP reliever in the system (Corey Knebel) for the dominant Soria has basically treated him as if he were carrying the Ebola virus.

Soria can’t get a sniff as the closer or even as the primary set-up man even though the gentlemen who are currently holding down those roles are total puke garbage. Joe Nathan has completely lost his fastball velocity due to old age and puts so many men on base that he is more traffic guard than relief pitcher at this point.

And Joba Chamberlain? Well, not to go all Dennis Green on ya, but he is who we all thought he would be after an excellent first half. Since the All-Star Break Chamberlain has been awful, posting a Nathan-esque 5.32 ERA.

Soria not being allowed to steal ONE of those TWO jobs from these losers? That would be like the President of ABC telling Leonardo DiCaprio there were no lines for him in a “Growing Pains” reunion show.

This behavior by Ausmus is so insane that I still can’t believe it is occurring. How outrageous is this managerial malpractice? Even a man who has made an entire CAREER of being dead wrong about EVERYTHING gets it …..

Again, and it must be repeated: How the Tigers (Ausmus and his bosses) continue to tempt disaster by their Nathan stubbornness is amazing.

— Lynn G. Henning (@Lynn_Henning) September 24, 2014

You’ve got to go with Joakim Soria as closer. Simple. Obvious. An imperative.

— Lynn G. Henning (@Lynn_Henning) September 24, 2014

Instead of making the PAINFULLY OBVIOUS decision, the Tigers have relegated Soria to humiliating mop-up duty. In the last 10 days, Soria has entered twice with the team trailing by at least two runs. Today he pitched the ninth in a 6-1 game.

What’s next? Sentencing him to 100 hours of community service at the Capuchin Soup Kitchen?!??!?!??

The best part about Soria’s Wednesday afternoon janitorial services was that it CLEARLY was only the THIRD-worst move Ausmus made that day with the division title hanging in the balance.

[Did I mention that Soria had an incredible easy, 1-2-3 ninth inning that included a wicked 68-mph off-speed pitch that has Dayan Vicideo STILL shaking his head?]

This shit-for-brains manager actually started Bryan Holaday against Chris Sale even though …..

1) Chris Sale is the best left-handed pitcher on Earth not named Clayton.

2) Bryan Holaday entered the contest with a .395 OPS versus SOUTHPAWS this year. .395. A slash line of .157/.195/.200. That is HISTORICALLY awful.

3) Bryan Holaday stinks defensively. In fact, the only run the White Sox scored on Wednesday came after this abomination air-mailed a ball into right center field on a stolen base attempt by JOSE ABREU. Ya know, the fleet-footed, 6-foot-3, 255 pound Cuban version of Vince Coleman.

4) The last time the Tigers faced a lefty starter, rookie James McCann started and had two hits in the first game of the hyper-important Royals series last weekend. Detroit scored TEN runs that evening. Oh and the kid who supposedly can’t start because he isn’t familiar with the team’s pitching staff also caught a Verlander gem.

In what fucking world do you start a guy with a THREE-NINETY-FIVE OPS vs. lefties against Chris “Nikon” Sale?!?!??!?!?!?!

And bat Holaday SEVENTH ahead of Rajai Davis who this season is absolutely annihilating left-handed pitching. The guy who batted ninth today has a .381 OBP and .558 slugging percentage vs. LHP.

And he batted NINTH. Because why would you want a dude with speed and a .381 ON BASE PERCENTAGE hitting in front of Miguel Cabrera and Bo and Luke Martinez??!?!?!?

Brad Ausmus is so [Trout] damn sabermetric averse that he makes Jim Leyland look like the love child of Bill James and Keith Law.

Every single castrated member of the Detroit Sports Media should be focusing on this subject on a daily basis. Instead they get distracted by nonsense like Sale beaning V-Mart when that won’t have any real life consequences until next spring when these two teams meet again.

But what do you expect? This is a town that provides airtime to two sub-humans on the team’s FLAGSHIP station during mid-days who don’t know how to calculate WHIP!!!!!

I shit you not. Benedict (Doug Karsch) and the Orca (Scott “The 40+-Year-Old Virgin” Anderson) couldn’t figure out what the stat meant.

We aren’t talking about SIERA or even OPS. We’re talking about WHIP. The fucking definition of the stat is in the ACRONYM.

W(alks)
H(its)
I(innings)
P(itched)

These two rocket scientists were confused about Joe Nathan’s WHIP. Ya gotta believe me. I am guessing they are also totally confused about the stated goal of the N.A.A.C.P.

Or how about retired columnist Bob Wojnowski? How can you expect him to opine on any of this when he can’t even grasp basic facts about this pennant race. Just take a gander at this Tweet from last night ……

I would love for this slob to explain how the Royals game had ANY impact on the Tigers clinching a WILD CARD berth. It was a Mariners loss which had just occurred that mattered.  This guy actually calls himself a SPORTSWRITER.  He understands that KC is in the same division as Detroit, right?????

And if that isn’t bad enough, there have been multiple BLOGS written recently defending Brad Ausmus,
including one by the pathetic website “Bless You Boys.”

The crux of that holocaust of an article?? Well, Ausmus is basically doing all of the same things that Leyland would have done — and Leyland was great — so why are you people so upset?

Yep, after listing off a litany of mistakes that Ausmus has made in 2014, this cockbag went with the “Yeah, Kim Jong-un is an oppressive dictator who feeds his own people to swine, but he really is no different than his dad, Kim Jong-il” rationale.

And that wasn’t even the most offensive portion
of this trash. This was actually posted in the “article” ……

Instead, they have seen a manager make all the classic managing moves: particularly moves that infuriate the intellectual corner of Tigers fandom (which I’m happy to say resides right here at BYB).

The intellectual corner of Tigers fandom?!?!?!?!? Are you effing shitting me with this?

Let’s take a gander at SOME of the comments made by the “intellectual Tigers fans” in that particular community lately:

By Jeff Moss
DetroitSportsRag@GMail.com
September 26, 2014

Nine months ago today Michigan State Spartans linebacker Max Bullough was suspended by Mark Dantonio before the biggest game of his entire career. And until this afternoon, the mystery of WHY Bullough was suspended had gone unsolved.

We went though the NFL Combine, the NFL Draft and Bullough signing an eventual practice team deal with the Houston Texans without discovering the nature of his transgression, which cost him a chance at playing in the Rose Bowl.

Joe Rexrode of the Detroit Free Press never uncovered the real story. Matt Charboneau of the Detroit News didn’t bother to tell us why a member of MSU’s football royalty wasn’t allowed to play in a game that had been a lifetime dream of the Spartan defensive standout.

Even though the number of people who knew why Bullough was given the harsh punishment had multiplied exponentially since that Boxing Day announcement as he obviously had to spill the beans to every NFL team during his interviews at the combine in Indianapolis.

Until now, all we knew for sure is that Bullough’s suspension wasn’t related to an NCAA violation thanks to a Freedom of Information Act request.

So why did Max Bullough miss the Spartans BCS victory over the Stanford Cardinals?

Well, thanks to the DSR’s East Lansing connection, we can now let you in on the secret. Max Bullough was suspended by Dantonio at the REQUEST of his family. As you probably know, Max’s father Shane was a linebacker at MSU and his grandfather Hank lined up as a guard on the Spartans 1954 winning Rose Bowl team.

Why did the Bullough Family ask Dantonio to suspend Max for that HUGE game? It would appear that the week before Christmas, an intoxicated Max got into a fight with a former high school teammate (who was also inebriated) with the former teammate being on the business end of an incredible beating.

The source went on to say that the Bullough’s paid the medical bills of the ex-teammate (not sure if a cherry was put on top of that sundae or not) and did everything within their power to make sure it didn’t get into the press. The price for Bullough was missing the Rose Bowl game and one wonders if Dantonio would have taken this action without the family’s prodding. Especially given Dantonio’s fairly lax style of discipline. (Like about 99% of Division I football coaches.)

The bizarre part of this story is the truth is fairly innocuous. Kids (especially drunk athletes) get into these sorts of fights all the time. Why not come clean instead of letting the Internet Message Boards run rampant with stories of steroid abuse or something of the Brendan Gibbons variety?

So that’s the story. It’s not very sexy but now ya know. We will update you further when we find out where Jimmy Hoffa was buried and why Adam Oates was traded by the Red Wings.

By Jeff Moss
DetroitSportsRag@GMail.com
September 27, 2014

Nine months and one day ago today, Michigan State Spartans’ linebacker Max Bullough was suspended by Mark Dantonio before the biggest game of his entire career. And until this morning, the mystery of WHY Bullough was suspended had gone unsolved.

We went though the NFL Combine, the NFL Draft and Bullough eventually signing a practice squad deal with the Houston Texans without discovering the nature of his transgression, which cost him a chance at playing in the Rose Bowl.

Joe Rexrode of the Detroit Free Press never uncovered the real story. Matt Charboneau of the Detroit News didn’t bother to tell us why a member of MSU’s football royalty wasn’t allowed to play in a game that had been a lifetime dream of the Spartan defensive standout.

All the whole, the number of people who knew why Bullough was given the harsh punishment had multiplied since that Boxing Day announcement as he obviously had to spill the beans to every NFL team during his interviews at the combine in Indianapolis.

Until now, all we knew for sure is that Bullough’s suspension wasn’t related to an NCAA violation, thanks to a Freedom of Information Act request.

So why did Max Bullough miss the Spartans BCS victory over the Stanford Cardinal?

Well, thanks to the DSR’s dental connections, we can now let you in on the secret. Max Bullough was suspended by Dantonio because Bullough’s problem with alcohol had become a major issue.

Our sources state that all of this came to a head right before Christmas when Bullough drunkenly drove his car into a parked vehicle on campus.

Furthermore, this had been the fourth or fifth time that Bullough had gotten into trouble because of alcohol; Dantonio was fed up and thus issued his devastating punishment.

It was Dantonio’s belief that Bullough was an alcoholic and the only way he could get through to him was by taking away the most important thing to him …… playing in the Rose Bowl.

Yes, we are fully aware that we reported just yesterday that Bullough had been suspended because of getting into a fight with an ex-high school teammate — a tale that emanated out of Traverse City from Bullough’s high school baseball coach.

But that story is not true. This one TOTALLY is. Trust us. Check back with the DSR for any further “developments.”

By Jeff Moss
DetroitSportsRag@GMail.com
September 28, 2014

Nine months and two days ago today, Michigan State Spartans’ linebacker Max Bullough was suspended by Mark Dantonio before the biggest game of his entire career. And until this morning, the mystery of WHY Bullough was suspended had gone unsolved.

We went though the NFL Combine, the NFL Draft and Bullough eventually signing a practice squad deal with the Houston Texans without discovering the nature of his transgression, which cost him a chance at playing in the Rose Bowl.

Joe Rexrode of the Detroit Free Press never uncovered the real story. Matt Charboneau of the Detroit News didn’t bother to tell us why a member of MSU’s football royalty wasn’t allowed to play in a game that had been a lifetime dream of the Spartan defensive standout.

All the while, the number of people who knew why Bullough was given the harsh punishment had multiplied since that Boxing Day announcement as he obviously had to spill the beans to every NFL team during his interviews at the combine in Indianapolis.

Until now, all we knew for sure is that Bullough’s suspension wasn’t related to an NCAA violation, thanks to a Freedom of Information Act request.

So why did Max Bullough miss the Spartans BCS victory over the Stanford Cardinal?

Well, thanks to the DSR’s pharmaceutical connections, we can now let you in on the secret. Max Bullough was suspended by Dantonio because it was discovered that Bullough was abusing Performance-Enhancing Drugs.

Our sources state that all of this came to a head right before Christmas when Bullough came out of the locker room for a Rose Bowl practice, turned green and burst right out of his uniform.

We even have photographic evidence to support this claim ….

Yes, we are fully aware that we reported just yesterday that Bullough had been suspended because of a drunken hit-and-run accident on campus and the day before that we exclusively told you that Bullough was banned for getting into a fight with an ex-high school teammate — a tale that emanated out of Traverse City from Bullough’s high school baseball coach.

But those stories are not true. This one TOTALLY is. Trust us. Check back with the DSR for any further “developments.”

By Jeff Moss
DetroitSportsRag@GMail.com
September 28, 2014

I am not sure if you are sick of reading articles recapping Detroit News baseball revisionist history writer Lynn Henning’s pathological thoughts, but I am sure as shit sick of memorializing these inane takes for posterity.

Truth is™ (Deanna Bentley), I ignore 98% of this man’s drivel whether he spouts it in his columns, during radio interviews or on his favorite sewage delivery service of choice ….. Twitter.

But even though I am trying to juggle watching the Tigers play in a crucial game and Lions vs. Jets while keeping track of my wagers at Belmont Park — I can’t ignore today’s Henning nonsense.

You’d have to read this Tweet to believe it. While INSANELY continuing his “Can’t Judge the Doug Fister Trade Yet” World Tour, Mr. Imperfect spewed the following absolute lie on the TwatBox:

In WHAT WORLD does this has-been (never was) actually believe Doug Fister was the Tigers’ fifth starter, EVER!?!?!?!?!?

Umm, hey, ya nut, who started Game 4 of the ALDS last season with the Tigers’ season on the LINE?!??!!? Was that Rick Porcello or Doug Fister? Yep, with the team on the brink of elimination, Jim Leyland turned to FISTER against the A’s when trailing 2-1 in the series!!!!!

The guy whom Lynn Henning thought was the team’s fourth starter? In FIVE games, he pitched ONE inning out of the bullpen.

I actually felt bad for this old man; I was starting to believe he is suffering from early-onset Alzheimer’s. But then Henning went one step further and proved that this isn’t dementia, he is just a really dumb fucking guy.

Porcello was a better pitcher than Fister a year ago? By which measure?!?!?!?

In 2013, Doug Fister had the superior ERA, WHIP, FIP, xFIP, WAR (Fangraphs and Baseball-Reference), opponent’s OPS …….. Oh, what the fuck is the point?!??!?!?! This man clearly has a cognitive disconnect.

But Henning wasn’t done …..

Yeah, Leyland had no number designation. He just let Fister start in the ALDS and ALCS while Porcello was relegated to bullpen duty. No depth chart at all there.

Then when Henning was getting bombed by various Tweeters, he went to his typical M.O.

First, with some lame dig from his 1959 Book of Old Man Insults:

Then, his favorite past time: accusing EVERYONE on Twitter who thinks HE is a dumbfuck of being ME …..

Hahahhahaa. Hey, dipshit, I have two accounts. @JeffMossDSR, and one where I LURK to follow all of the imbeciles in the Detroit Media who have blocked me. By last count, that was like 40+ dolts. I don’t Tweet from THAT account because if I did and got blocked by someone, I’d have to create an ENTIRELY new lurker account.

And I don’t have time for that because most of my time is spent dealing with your CRAZY opinions.

Listen, cunt, I am only going to explain this to you once. When I want to get in touch with you, I will email your ignorant ass. These other people who are contacting you are not me. They are either individuals who have never heard of Jiffy Myst or followers of mine who also believe you should be institutionalized.

Thousands of people follow me on Twitter. Thousands of people read articles like these. I don’t have to waste my time telling you that you are a moron because, thankfully, others do it for me.

And trust me, if I WERE to create a fake account to contact you, it wouldn’t have a HORSE RACING TWITTER AVATAR!!!!!!

I am not Mansoor. Or @BrickTamland, @Stoney16  @johnfloto, @yoyomo007 or @stephen_soviar either.

That would be like you trying to hide your identity with a fake Twitter account utilizing this picture ….

Go get your boy, @TonyPaul1984.

Yeah, that isn’t me either, Lynn.

Oh, and one last thing. Doug Fister is probably going to finish in the top five of National League Cy Young voting this season after posting a 2.41 ERA, a 1.08 WHIP and a WAR of 4.6.

In other words, if ALL of the National League teams converged and formed ONE TEAM, Doug Fister might be the FIFTH STARTER on THAT squad.

Ya know, the guy the Tigers traded for a situational lefty who can’t even help them in September of THIS year and the Robbie Ray Experience — the loser southpaw who gave up four earned runs in one inning pitched last night

Shrivel up and die, AARP Boy.

By Jeff Moss
DetroitSportsRag@GMail.com
September 30, 2014

The Detroit Tigers are the most talented overall team in the American League playoffs. They are the best built to win a short postseason series due to their combination of starting pitching and middle of the order bats.

So, why do I have zero confidence this team is going to utilize their inherent October advantages and make it to the World Series where I believe they’d face Doug Fister and the Washington Nationals in a matchup that would most likely be the tipping point for my life expectancy?

Well, it’s not Rajai Davis’ injury. Nor is it even the mediocre bullpen, which has caused constant trouble for the last six months. Hell, I am not even concerned about Andrew Romine as the starting shortstop.

Nope, the biggest impediment to the Detroit Tigers returning to the World Series is the man who on Tuesday decided that starting Justin Verlander over David Price in Game 2 at Camden Yards was a capital idea.

B[r]ad Ausmus. I mean, the PLAYOFFS haven’t even commenced yet and Surfer Boy Imbecile Ivy League Mimbo is ALREADY putting his team behind the eight-ball.

If there was one issue I wasn’t overly concerned about heading into the Tigers’ series with the Orioles, it was the starting rotation alignment. To say it was a no-brainer for Ausmus to go Max Scherzer/David Price/Justin Verlander/Rick Porcello would be an insult to both Sean Hannity and the Scarecrow.

The reasons for Max and Price to go back-to-back are countless; I can’t believe I even have to address them in this space. Of course, you could just stop with THEY ARE THE TEAM’S TWO BEST STARTING PITCHERS.

The most obvious reason that Price should be the Game 2 starter is that he would be available for EXTENSIVE usage for a Game 5, if necessary. The single biggest advantage the Tigers have over the Orioles is in a potential winner-take-all matchup. Detroit could go with a 1-2 punch of two of the Top 5 starters in the AL versus ….. Chris Tillman.

Call me bi-polar, but on a team with a bullpen stable of lefties named Phil Coke, Blaine Hardy and Kyle Lobstein it might be nice to have DAVID FUCKING PRICE available on his regular rest.

And please spare me any nonsense of Verlander’s previous ALDS history (he hadn’t lost four miles off his fastball last October) or this asinine rationale that Verlander gives up fewer homers than Price and that is why he should be starting the second game in Baltimore.

The difference in home runs allowed per nine innings between JV and Price this season is .14. In their respective careers, Price has allowed .83 per nine and Verlander .79. And who do you think is the better pitcher TODAY?

Point. One. Four. It’s irrelevant. And that’s before you consider Price spent the first four months of this season pitching his home games at Tropicana and a preponderance of his ROAD games at Fenway, Yankee Stadium and Camden.

Do you know the best way to ensure that an opposing batter doesn’t hit a dinger? BY STRIKING THEM OUT. And there is absolutely ZERO comparison between JV and Price this season when it comes to punch-outs.

Price led the American League in strikeouts with a K/9 of 9.82. Verlander had BY FAR his worst season ever in this category with a 6.95. THIS IS HUGE.

In a comparison with Verlander, for an additional inning per game, Price doesn’t allow the opportunity for a home run to be hit. Or for a fielder to make an error. Or for a ball to find a hole.

And yet, because of some bizarre anomaly in 2014 where we have seen Price give up a few more home runs, this dolt manager decides to give deference to a dude who, as of a few weeks ago, looked like he might not even be in the Tigers’ playoff rotation!!!!

I am literally in shock over this choice. When Ausmus has FOUR DAYS to make a decision he can’t get it right, so how can anyone have confidence in this moron when split-second maneuvering is necessary?

I have written more words on the Joakim Soria situation than George R.R. Martin has dedicated to high fantasy so I am not going to rehash that lunacy right now, but I will say this.

At the trade deadline, Dave Dombrowski dealt Austin Jackson; Drew Smyly; the organization’s best infielder prospect (Willy Adames); their top starting pitching prospect (Jake Thompson); and their potential future closer (Corey Knebel) for a starter who you just pigeonholed into a needlessly limited ALDS role and a superior reliever who can only pitch in the SEVENTH inning when the Tigers are up by four runs or fewer.

It’s fucking insane. This team should be easier to manage than a modern Boeing 777. Nobody in the postseason can match their 3-4-5 hitters. We haven’t even mentioned that the team has the 2013 AL ERA champion as another potential weapon in the bullpen (who isn’t being used appropriately, either) and I am pretty sure they are the only team to employ the last three Cy Young Award winners in the AL.

(When have the Tigers ever entered the postseason with all of their big offensive contributors firing on all cylinders? In September, Miggy’s OPS was 1.118, V-Mart’s was 1.094 and J.D. Martinez had a 1.005 on-base plus slugging percentage. That’s. Real. Good.)

The first pitch hasn’t even been thrown and this boneheaded decision will surely be a precursor for premature defensive replacements; Don Kelly starting in center and batting sixth; and useless bunting  with the number two offense in all of baseball.

I knew I would have to be sedated during this postseason run with Jim Leyland, Jr. at the controls, but I honestly didn’t think I would need to start popping valium 48 hours before Tillman’s first pitch.

Verlander over Price?

WHY?!!?!?!?!?!?!???!

And for all of you imbeciles who question my obsessive Man[ny]-love for Acta, well, chew on this …….

@JeffMossDSR Price.

— Manny Acta (@MannyActa14) October 1, 2014

Yep, didn’t want THAT guy. I mean, who would desire a manager who makes decisions based on math and logic?

By Jeff Moss
DetroitSportsRag@GMail.com
October 1, 2014

From time to time it would be nice to just post some random nonsense on the DSR as opposed to 2,000 word diatribes railing against Brad Ausmus or Martin Mayhew or Ken Holland.

Today we are debuting a new feature we like to call “Some Random DSR Chazerai.” If you aren’t familiar with the word “Chazerai,” it is Italian for garbage or trash.

And, away we go …….

Ryan Ermanni Gets Bombed By A DSR Reader

Yesterday, homophobe and defender of disgustingly racist friends on Facebook, Ryan Ermanni of Fox-2 was up in Ann Arbor covering the “Fire David Brandon Rally” at U of M.

During the live remote a DetroitSportsRag fan spotted him and decided to disrupt his broadcast in true Joey Boots fashion.

Unfortunately, Ermanni was talking over an overhead shot so you didn’t get to see the DSR loyalist bomb “Owning” Ermanni, but if you listen really closely you will hear Mihir Bhatnagar yell “Jeff Moss”, “DetroitSportsRag” and “Fafafooey.”

The last reset is something in code at the end that’s indicative of the mentioning of the name of a certain radio talk show host.

Anyway, here is the video!!!!

Oh well, next time we will try to get better sound. The DirtSpurt has an ongoing audio problem.

It doesn’t seem Ermanni was too thrilled with our prank.

Melissa Moss Meets Lindsey Hayes

Mihir’s run-in with Ermanni wasn’t the only DSR interaction with a Fox employee yesterday.

My wife, Melissa, bumped into Fox Sports Detroit anchor (and my Detroit sports media crush) Lindsey Hayes at the Kona Grill in Troy last night.

After two glasses of wine and severe iMessage harassment from me at home, Melissa went up to Hayes and told the tall blonde that her husband was a big fan and asked if she could take a “thumbs-up” picture with her. Melissa didn’t tell Lindsey who she was married to though. SMART GIRL!!!!!

So here is the pic:

Well, at least I got the photo. There was no progress on my other request.

Yeah. No response to the ménage-à-trois. Just a picture of my beagle who turned 13 yesterday. Happy Birthday Chili!!!!

Oh and there was no Bar Mitzvah for Chill Dog because I wouldn’t make any child of mine suffer through Hebrew School and private Torah lessons.

And he is a canine.

Never Forget: Rich Eisen is a Creep

I thought this would be a good time to post a Twitter exchange between DSR co-founder Gregg Schultz and noted piece-of-shit U of M elitist Rich Eisen from back in 2011 over currently embattled Wolverines head coach Brady Hoke.

You see, Gregg loved Rich Rodriguez and Eisen hated him because, ya know, Eisen is a douche bag U of M snob. So, when Hoke had success in his first season in Ann Arbor (with RichRod’s players) the NFL Network anchor was obnoxious about it.

That led to the following two Twat exchanges …..

@gtserg9191 oh, OK! Sure: defense got 18th takeaway, one fewer than all last year. We’re so much better w Hoke it’s not funny. Be angrier!

— Rich Eisen (@richeisen) October 15, 2011

@gtserg9191 you’re not going to bait me. Congrats to Michigan State!

— Rich Eisen (@richeisen) October 15, 2011

Fuck that asshole. Anyway, that led to this exchange a couple of weeks ago:

@DmikeoUnchained @gtserg9191 I’ve blocked less than 10 people in almost 5 years. Apologize? You jest. — Rich Eisen (@richeisen) September 17, 2014

Well, it’s good to know that Eisen has only blocked ten followers in five years. And that 20% of this EXCLUSIVE group consists of the founder and co-founder of this websight™ (Terry Foster).

And now for your entertainment, here is a story about Rich Eisen getting busted by his wife for flirting with news anchor Alycia Lane.

And Finally ……..

Not to diss Doug Fister, but anyone who watched him in 2013 saw apart from his rising WHIP that he wasn’t the same pitcher. Not as lethal.

— Lynn G. Henning (@Lynn_Henning) December 3, 2013

By Jeff Moss
DetroitSportsRag@GMail.com
October 6, 2014

I am a huge mark for movies that begin at the end and then work their way back to that final scene over the next two hours or so. And I don’t care if it’s a classic film like “Pulp Fiction” or an average time filler like “Confidence” — I am a total sucker for this bit of storytelling chicanery.

The reason I am bringing this up today is that if you were to produce a movie of the 2014 Detroit Tigers season, you’d HAVE to go all Quentin Tarantino and begin with the following scene ……

The Tigers on the verge of elimination. Down 0-2 in the ALDS with a runner on second base, nobody out and needing at least one run to extend the season into extra innings. A franchise with an approximate payroll of $165 million, the Tigers’ season is hanging in the balance …..

….. and BRYAN HOLADAY AND HERNAN PEREZ are being called upon by B[r]ad Ausmus to salvage the season. Seriously, imagine for a moment that you knew NOTHING about the 2014 Detroit baseball team and, before the opening credits even rolled, this is what you were dropped into.

With lefty Orioles closer Zach Britton on the mound, the narrator explains to the audience that the Tigers backup catcher had a .380 OPS vs. southpaws in 2014. And when that loser predictably couldn’t lay down a bunt and struck out, the next potential savior was a weak-hitting middle infielder who only had FIVE at-bats in the major leagues this season!!!!!

How did we get to THIS point???? What could have transpired over the last 11 plus months since their last postseason debacle — at Fenway Park — that the Tigers’ fate was being determined by Holaday and Perez?

And there’s the rub. ALL of this could have been avoided. There was no reason the 2014 season had to end like this. Almost ALL of the contributing factors to the Tigers’ elimination yesterday were inflicted by either Dave Dombrowski or Ausmus. It’s why neither should have a job with the organization when this team heads to Lakeland in February.

How could a team with the last three AL Cy Young Award winners, Miguel Cabrera, Victor Martinez and a gift from heaven in the body of J.D. Martinez get swept by a Baltimore team that was missing Manny Machado, Matt Wieters and Chris Davis?

I mean, Dombrowski has the unmitigated gall to whine about a depleted team because he lost the services of Jose Iglesias, Andy Dirks and Bruce Rondon? Buck Showalter was managing a squad with arguably 60% of its best offensive contributors watching from a suite.

The reckless malpractice from Detroit’s GM and his idiotic, hand-picked field boss is the STORY of this season and it is why this recent era of Tigers baseball will likely end without any World Series jewelry.  It’s the most devastating waste of talent, funds, competitive advantage and fan support we have ever seen around these parts.

Where do you even begin with the atrocities of Dombrowski and Ausmus? It would be easy to begin with the Doug Fister travesty of last December but I have already written 25,000-plus words documenting that holocaust and I don’t have the energy or the inclination to add to that total.

[Of course, I would be remiss if I did not mention Fister's NLDS gem earlier today where he out-dueled San Fran's Madison Bumgarner in typical Doug Fister fashion: 7 innings pitched,ZERO runs allowed, WHIP of 1.]

But let me just point out that a team that just got swept by a debilitated Orioles squad largely due to their anemic bullpen and bench production probably could have used SOMETHING in return for one of the Top 15 starters in all of baseball.

Or how about this? The Tigers gave up approximately 653 runs in the eighth innings of this particular ALDS. Can you imagine trading Fister and neither Ian Krol nor Robbie Ray are able to provide ANY relief in the 8th during the ensuing season?

Let me put that in a little context for you. This past JUNE(!!!!) in the MLB Draft, the cute-as-a-button Kansas City Royals drafted pitcher Brandon Finnegan 17th overall.

Finnegan has already made two postseason appearances for the Royals, assisting them in knocking out the Angels. In 1 2/3 innings pitched, the [for now] CONVERTED STARTER has yet to allow a run and actually picked up one of K.C.’s three wins.

I am going to spell this out for you. 184 days after the Tigers acquired Krol and Ray, the Royals DRAFTED a 21-year-old kid who is contributing mightily out of their ‘pen. I mean, Finnegan was ostensibly in Sociology 201 when he found out about the Fister abortion and yet he is getting huge outs for the Royals while Ray and Krol DID NOTHING TO CONTRIBUTE!!!!

[Finnegan is ALREADY a more productive bullpen draftee than ANY of Dombrowski's failed assets of recent years. In just FOUR months, he has already surpassed Chance Ruffin, Ryan Perry, Kevin Ziomek, Andy Oliver, Cody Satterwhite, Scott Green, Luke Putkonen, Cole Green, Kevin Whalen and Brett Jacobson. I am sure I am missing some of the other "major-league-ready arms" "Divot Chin Dave" has been bragging about for years, but I figured that partial list was depressing enough.]

And how about that bullpen, folks? Like, who could have forecasted the Joba Chamberlain collapse? We are only talking about a guy who, in 2013, had an ERA of 5.64, a WHIP of 1.74 and a predictive FIP of 5.64. That was the dude who was pigeonholed into the 8th inning after a good first half of the season; it ended up being a total disaster post-All-Star break when Ausmus failed to realize Chamberlain’s first half was an anomaly.

Even when Dombrowski attempted to fix the awful bullpen, his imbecilic manager refused to accept the gift. The absolute mishandling of Joakim Soria is so unforgivable that it defies belief.

After acquiring the consensus best available reliever at the deadline, the Tigers proceeded to use him like a Broadway understudy for the remainder of the season, pretty much wrecking him in the process.

You will never be able to convince me that Ausmus didn’t injure Soria in Toronto on August 9th when — after not even WARMING UP Soria for days — the neophyte manager RUSHED him to get ready during another Joe Nathan meltdown.

After bailing Nathan out of a jam in the ninth inning, Soria attempted to go back out for the tenth. He wouldn’t be seen again for another month, but was lights-out in September. His September ERA of 1.35 and WHIP of .45 still couldn’t get him promoted to the role of set-up man or closer though.

And then came October. After not pitching for EIGHT days, Soria was total puke garbage on two separate occasions when trying to clean up someone else’s mess. That someone being the guy he should have replaced weeks prior as the go-to 8th inning guy (Smelly, Stinky, Unshaven Chamberlain).

Would the reliever whom Dombrowski acquired in exchange for his 3rd- and 5th-best prospects in his organization been more effective if he had pitched in ANY of the three weekend games against the Twins during the final regular season series?

Would the games in Baltimore have ended differently if Soria had been allowed to start a clean inning instead of inheriting Joba’s crap sandwiches? I have no fucking clue but it sure would have been nice to find out.

But the Joakim Soria debacle wasn’t even the biggest bullpen travesty during the postseason. That would be the team’s handling of Anibal Sanchez — which totally cost them Game 2 at Camden Yards.

Between Nathan, Chamberlain and Ausmus’ abandonment of Al Alburquerque as a late-inning option, it was abundantly clear to ANYONE watching this team recently that the Tigers weren’t going anywhere in the playoffs without Sanchez playing a vital role as a reliever.

Since Dombrowski refused to step in to ensure Sanchez was available for multiple inning appearances, what did Ausmus do? Even though there were MULTIPLE occasions to get the 2013 AL ERA champion some work, he pitched Sanchez ONCE in the final week of the season.

Then the Mimbo used Sanchez’s lack of thrown pitches as an EXCUSE as to why Sanchez couldn’t have AT LEAST pitched the eighth inning on Friday afternoon after allowing ZERO base runners in two innings of work while striking out a pair.

In other words, Ausmus CREATED the situation in which Anibal was only allowed to throw 30 pitches that day and then used it as a crutch when the shit predictably hit the fan.

Oh … and this might be a good time to mention that limiting a starting pitcher to a pitch count of around 30 after missing seven weeks is total bullshit in the first place. Because the Detroit sports media is too lazy to do this sort of research, I have done it for them.

Here are just a few examples of game logs of starting pitchers who missed SIGNIFICANT time and then returned sans rehab appearances:

The Yankees have quite the investment in Tanaka. Between the posting fee with his team in Japan and his seven-year contract, the Steinbrenner brothers are on the hook for 175 MILLION DOLLARS.

Anyway, as you can see in the above graphic, Tanaka missed 75 days. In his first game back he threw 70 (!!!!) pitches. Sanchez missed only 49 days — for you sabermetric geniuses, that’s 26 fewer — and was limited to 30 tosses!!?!??!?!?!?

Did I mention that Sanchez only had a pectoral issue, while the Yankees were afraid that Tanaka needed Tommy John surgery??!??!?!?! What the fuck!!!

Now, here is the 2013 game log for Jered Weaver ….

As you can see, Weaver missed 52 days (3 more than Anibal) and, without a rehab assignment, threw 86 pitches in his FIRST start off the Disabled List!!!!

I could seriously go on all day listing examples of starting pitchers not being treated like Stage-4 cancer patients when coming off of injuries, but I will only provide one more.

Here is the 2013 game log for potential 2014 AL Cy Young Award-winner Corey Kluber ….

Kluber missed 33 days of work and, in his first game back, he went five innings and threw 64 pitches.

Meanwhile, Sanchez was limited to 14 pitches in his first relief appearance back and then, somehow, could not pitch the 8th inning of a crucial postseason match-up because ….. WHY? I have no god-damned clue why.

The Tigers’ season pretty much ended because of that non-sensical decision.

Of course, it wasn’t over until Sunday afternoon when Holaday and Perez failed to score J.D. from second base — not that anyone could have predicted the Holaday strike out or the Hernan double play.

Oh wait, yes, pretty much ANYONE could have predicted that disaster. On September 4th, I wrote an article warning Tigers fans that a situation could occur in the postseason where we needed a catcher to get a hit off of a tough lefty reliever and there wouldn’t be anyone on the roster to deliver due to Ausmus’ stubborn refusal to play James McCann.

(Click to Zoom)

Yep, James McCann wasn’t on the playoff roster because he couldn’t be trusted to handle the team’s starting pitching. Even though in the last game he started, McCann caught a Justin Verlander gem.

It wouldn’t have been a “smart baseball move” to have McCann up against Britton with the season-saving run on second base instead of Holaday — even though McCann’s OPS vs. lefties in Toledo was .879!!!!!!!

And no one is comparing Eugenio Suarez to either Cal Ripken, Jr. or an in-his-prime Nomar Garciaparra with the bat, but why the hell was Hernan pinch-hitting in that situation and not Suarez? Perez had FIVE at-bats in the majors all season long and his biggest contribution came from sitting on the damn bench.

Self-inflicted wounds. When comedian Artie Lange attempted to kill himself a few years ago, he downed a gallon of bleach; stabbed himself nine times in the gut; and slit his wrists. The suicidal Baby Gorilla laughs at the self-inflicted damage Dave Dombrowski and Brad Ausmus caused this past year.

This season was a total clusterfuck from the moment a high school kid Tweeted out that Fister had been dealt to the Nationals and the misery and aggravation couldn’t have ended in a more perfect fashion — with these two scrubs deciding our fate.

For that reason alone, Dombrowski and Ausmus should be shown the door and a new era should begin. I am sick and tired of hearing about Dombrowski’s supposed brilliance and how he “won the trade deadline” again. Fuck that. Stop owning the Central and July 31st and win a WORLD SERIES with all of your inherent advantages.

Yes, thanks to their FANS who have shown up at Comerica Park in droves through tough economic times and have religiously tuned in to Fox Sports Detroit in record numbers only to be inundated with the grills of the Bernstein Bearisters, the Tigers have been able to outspend the rest of their divisional competition.

In 2014, Detroit had a $70-million payroll advantage over the Royals — and that was BEFORE we traded for Soria and David Price at the deadline while Dayton Moore did nothing. (And wouldn’t the Ned Yost-led Royals winning the World Series before we do be the final ignominy in a decade of humiliations?)

In 2013, the Tigers had a $25-million payroll advantage over the next AL Central squad; in 2012, it was $38 million.

We have collected Cy Young winners and MVP candidates like a hoarder at an estate sale and yet we have ABSOLUTELY NOTHING TO SHOW FOR IT. And please, save me the bullshit about being competitive for a decade and being SPOILED for not enjoying the run.

Sorry, I stuck with this team when they stunk with Cecil Fielder and Mickey Tettleton but were fun to watch and I didn’t give up on them when they lost 119 games in 2003. Hell, I went to the last few games of that genocidal season against the Twins.

I will watch them if they are good or bad because I am a diehard fan of this organization. Being “competitive” draws in the fans who didn’t know this team existed until Magglio Ordonez and Ivan Rodriguez came aboard.

I WANT TO WIN A WORLD SERIES after 30 years of waiting. And if that means being terrible for a couple of years, so be it. I find nothing soothing about this decade-long V.I.P. room-lap dance from our baseball team; it has resulted in the biggest blue balls in the world outside of Big Mouth Smurf.

And speaking of the Smurfs, how about that pile of human excrement Danny “Gargamel” Knobler? You might remember “The Knob” from his days covering the Tigers for Booth Newspapers or his stint at CBSSports.com before he got pink-slipped.

Well, he has now been relegated to near-obscurity working for ESPNNewYork, but he did have time to insult Tigers fans over the weekend with this complete and utter bullshit ….

Amazing how Tiger fans have turned into entitled Yankee fans. Season is disaster unless they win World Series.

— Danny Knobler (@DannyKnobler) October 3, 2014

We’ve become entitled like Yankees fans? The season is a disaster if we don’t win the World Series? We haven’t won a god-damned ring in 30 years, you cockbag!!!!!

The Yankees have won FIVE championships since Bill Clinton was elected President …. the SECOND TIME and WE are entitled?!?!!?!?! If you were born in 1980, you probably have ZERO recollection of the ’84 World Series and yet at 34 years old you are “entitled” according to this fuckstick — a man whose wife is supposedly one of those Asian mail-order brides.

Yeah, we’re entitled. And “Little Orphan” Annie was spoiled by Mrs. Hannigan. As DSR #2 Justin Spiro Tweeted, you can’t spell “entitled” without TITLE and it’s been longer than a generation since we’ve won one.

And now our LAST best chance to win a ring has passed without a title. The future is hazy at best with the precarious health of Mike Ilitch being an unknown factor when it comes to budget; Max Scherzer almost assuredly leaving town; Victor Martinez’s status in doubt; and $60 million of payroll being allotted annually to Miggy and JV while they age.

For all of the great things Dombrowski has done in Detroit, he has still failed to accomplish the one bucket-list item Mike Ilitch desired more than anything. And this isn’t an Oakland A’s fan crying about Billy Beane failing to win a World Series on a shoestring budget while having to reinvent the wheel every season.

No, Dombrowski was brought here 12 years ago by Ilitch to win a WORLD SERIES. Not to get embarrassed by a lesser Cardinals team in 2006; blow the division in 2009; get humiliated by the Giants in 2012; witness his bullpen cost the franchise in 2013 and then do nothing to fix that major issue again the next season.

He’s had more than enough time to fulfill his mission and has not been able to do so despite having every advantage at his disposal. So what can we expect from him when his budget is reduced; he is hamstrung by two $30 million-a-year contracts and the Royals are a credible threat?

It’s going to take creativity to keep the Tigers relevant; how can we count on an executive who couldn’t solve the most fixable issue in baseball — the bullpen — to navigate these troubled waters moving forward?

A $70 million-plus payroll advantage over the still-alive Royals and your Achilles’ Heel (again) was the BULLPEN. Not the offense — which was second in all of baseball — or the armada of Cy Young starters. THE BULLPEN.

The engineers of the Death Star — who left the most powerful battle station in the galaxy susceptible to a Rebel Attack because of the THERMAL EXHAUST PORTS — scoff at Dombrowski’s continued failure to address this issue.

This team has failed miserably in the area of drafting players who can walk in and contribute with team-friendly, pre-arbitration-eligible deals. And it’s not like ANY of the prospects Dombrowski dealt for Miggy, Fister, Sanchez, etc. have panned out elsewhere, meaning there MUST BE a systemic issue among the Tigers’ minor league affiliates.

Or, going back to the Brandon Finnegan example, it would appear that Texas Christian University does a better job of preparing prospects for the major leagues than does anyone in Lakeland, West Michigan, Erie or Toledo.

How much more corroboration do we need that this current management team cannot properly train minor league prospects or evaluate high school and collegiate talent before calling it a day? It’s been TWELVE YEARS!!! Arapahoe County prosecutors have less evidence against “Dark Knight Rises” theater gunman James Holmes, for Christ’s sake.

Dombrowski’s final failure in Detroit should be his refusal to intervene in September when his overwhelmed rookie manager stubbornly wouldn’t play McCann or Tyler Collins; or replace Joba with Soria and finally not giving Sanchez extended work in TWO blowout losses against the Twins.

You will notice I haven’t spent ANY time in this article discussing possible ways to fix this team. First of all, it’s too soon. I am so fucking pissed off and spent from this season that I have no energy to start discussing potential James Shields or Andrew Miller signings.

And what would be the point anyway? How much time did I waste suggesting ways to fix the 2014 team, including starting David Price in Game 2 — which almost assuredly would have meant the Tigers would still be alive right now.

Look, it would not be the first time that Olympia Sports fired a very successful General Manager because he couldn’t win the big one. Just ashhhhhkkk Bryan Murray about hissshhhh failure to acquire a big-time goaltender when he washhhh the GM of the Red Wingsshhh.

Go out and find a sabermetrically-inclined Jewish nerd General Manager in the mold of Andrew Friedman, Jon Daniels or Theo Epstein; hire Manny Acta to manage this team; and give Pedro Martinez the pitching coach gig.

Or keep doing what you are doing, Ilitch Family. Because who wouldn’t want to be SPOILED with the label of being a modern day version of the early-90s Buffalo Bills; the late-90s Cleveland Indians; and the current version of Mitt Romney.

Enough is enough.

I could go on and on about the misery this team’s management and players inflicted on us, from Dombrowski’s awful decision to not qualify Jhonny Peralta because god forbid if he accepted a one-year, $14.1 million deal for a WAR of 5.8; to Andrew Romine’s refusal to take an off-speed pitch for the team on Sunday; to this team getting completely shut down by BUD NORRIS, but what is the freaking point anymore?

And of course, this column will get mocked by the dolts who have bought into the Dombrowski narrative that is constantly spun by the national and local media and the Uncle Tom blogs like “Bless You Boys.”

I mean, how can you fire a GM who has won the AL Central four straight times and reached the World Series twice?

Ask yourself this ………

Is there any fucking way the Red Wings GM could go TWELVE seasons without winning a CUP and keep his gig?

If you answer that question “NO” — which is the CORRECT ANSWER — ask yourself why the man’s baseball team should be any different.

By Jeff Moss
DetroitSportsRag@GMail.com
October 8, 2014

It has been well established that 97.1 janitor/talk-show host Dan Leach is an insane human being. I mean, what grown adult calls himself “Dan the Man”; attends U of M games (a school he didn’t attend) wearing face paint; or has a Twitter bio that states he has a “huge heart, undying passion for sports and beautiful women?”

Dude has a fucking BLACK BELT in lunacy.

Need proof? Check out some of his Vines and Tout videos ….

Or check out the time the DSR Catfish’d the guy.

I am NOT saying this guy must do a lot of coke, but George Jung is jealous of his alleged supply. No, seriously, I am not making any accusations at all. Maybe he just likes to down Red Bull with gallons of Starbucks chasers. Who knows?

Anyway, this goofy dolt posted on Twitter the following text message conversation he had with some friends the other day:

First of all, there was no need to post this exchange. It wasn’t funny or interesting at all. But the best part is when he ORIGINALLY posted that screen grab, he mistakenly included the cell phone number of one of his friends.

So, I Re-Tweeted this dummy’s mistake and a few DSR followers called Leach’s friend and left voice-mail messages asking why the hell he associates with such a moron.

One of my followers even went a step further and texted this dude named Jesse Bernstein and asked him why Leach would send out his cell number to Leach’s nearly 4,000 followers.

Here is that exchange. Notice that I removed Jesse’s cell number because I am a lot smarter than Leach. And obviously a better friend ….

Welp!!!! I guess I don’t have to say alleged any longer. His friend Jesse Bernstein confirmed it for us!!!!

By Jeff Moss
DetroitSportsRag@GMail.com
October 8, 2014

My official position on collegiate sports has been posted on this websight™ (Terry Foster) plenty of times in the past. I really don’t care about the NCAA for many reasons.

Here is a partial list:

1) I believe college athletes are taken advantage of by the schools they represent. They should be PAID for risking severe injuries that can debilitate them for the rest of their lives. Is there anything more distasteful than Tom Izzo and Nick Saban living in mansions while these inner-city “students” have to scrounge up money for Taco Bell?

2) I went to Eastern Michigan. We suck at sports. Like, really, really bad. The only time we are in the news for athletics is when one of our football players gets murdered for wearing nice clothes. The damn program needs to be contracted.

3) Because I went to EMU, I feel really gross for caring too much about Michigan. If I wanted to be a diehard fan of the Wolverines I would have studied in high school. Or went to class at EMU and attempted to transfer down Washtenaw Boulevard. I didn’t.

The closet I came to U of M was waiting in line at the Tower Records store on University for Guns ‘N Roses Use Your Illusion I and II albums at midnight the night they were released.

There is nothing worse in this world than Walmart Wolverines who dedicate their entire life to the University of Michigan. Even ISIS members don’t post a picture of the Block M as their Facebook photo. Seriously, these people are awful and yet they aren’t even the WORST portion of that fanbase. That title goes to the actual alumni who believe “Michigan Man” means something other than Bo Schembechler not wanting the basketball coach at Arizona State to guide the Wolverines in the NCAA basketball tournament.

4) When the Wolverines are playing football I am usually betting on horses and not even paying attention to the game.

Look, my default school IS Michigan, but I support them from afar and really don’t care too much. Really, my main interest is rooting against Michigan State just to piss off my sister.

Anyway, last Thursday night I found myself rooting harder than I ever have in my life for a collegiate sports event. It might have had something to do with the ten Jack Daniel’s and Diet Cokes I had ingested, but I was cheering on Arizona football and Rich Rodriguez like my life was on the line as they defeated the Oregon Ducks.

Why? Because I like RichRod. I believe he got royally screwed over at U of M by Lloyd Carr and his minions which led to his firing. I mean, this poor guy was vilified in Ann Arbor while the beloved Lloyd Carr was sabotaging the program. Unless, of course, you think instructing recruits to attend class in Columbus instead of Ann Arbor isn’t treason.

And I am not going to get into that entire history today — just read John U. Bacon’s book, “Three and Out,” in which you will learn that RichRod was railroaded out of town by the Carr contingent and his weasel cunt henchmen Michael Rosenberg and Mark Snyder.

Hashtag Never Forget™ (Justin Spiro.)

As someone who really doesn’t care about college football, Arizona being ranked #10 in the country while a thousand students are marching in Ann Arbor for David Brandon’s dismissal is about as blissful as it gets.

I couldn’t have written this script any better unless there were a scene where former kicker Brendan Gibbons is being sexually assaulted by a 500-pound woman with horrible acne.

Anyway, why am I bringing this up today? Because of this great article by Ted Miller on ESPN.com discussing RichRod’s unbelievable coaching job Out West while Michigan continues to implode.

Yep, while Brady Hoke makes a total buffoon of himself — in a fourth year Rodriguez wrongfully never received — Rodriguez has the Wildcats in the playoff picture with a bunch of freshman and sophomores in key positions.

In a week that has seen Jim Schwartz’s defense stifle Matthew Stafford and the Lions at Ford Field, culminating in the Lions’ ex-head coach getting carried off the field, THAT hasn’t even been the biggest revenge dagger thrown by a former gridiron coach in this state.

This quote by RichRod even tops that Schwartz victory ride on the shoulders of his defensive players:

There was a lot of stuff [at Michigan] that people don’t know went on that we didn’t even know was going on — some BS, some non-football related stuff. It became more about the drama than it did about football, which is the opposite of what you’d think you’d get at Michigan. Had Bo Schembechler been there, I probably wouldn’t have had to deal with some of it.

We still thought, with all the BS that was going on, all the things that were happening — it looked like some people were trying to sabotage their own program that were working for the university — all that stuff we went through, we still thought we’d be OK by the time we went to Year 4 or 5, that we were going to have a chance to compete for championships. But guess what? We didn’t get to Year 4, we didn’t get to Year 5. That was the most frustrating part about it.

And I am sure some Michigan fans who still despise RichRod are reading this article and mocking my love for the former West Virginia head coach because the Wolverines’ defense sucked while he was here.

Miller addressed this in his ESPN ard:

While many would start with “fit,” as in the folksy Rich Rod is a far better fit in less patrician Tucson than in Ann Arbor, the more substantial Point A addresses Rodriguez’s most unambiguous failure at Michigan: defense. While Rodriguez was unable to hire his defensive coordinator at West Virginia, Jeff Casteel, at Michigan, he was able to lure him to Arizona. Casteel took over a unit with a severe talent deficit and made it respectable. No Pac-12 defense improved more from 2012 to 2013 than the Wildcats, and holding Oregon to 24 points at home — the Ducks scored 46 versus defensive stalwart Michigan State — is a major achievement.

Yep, defense. While Hoke was given a seven-figure budget to hire a defensive coordinator, RichRod was put on an austerity program.

Imagine a company hires you and another new employee at the same time and you both get a car allowance. Except the other dude gets $75,000 and your stipend is $25,000. And then you get ridiculed because you could only afford a Ford Focus while the other guy is driving around town in a Lexus convertible.

Actually, that analogy doesn’t go far enough. The Lexus IS C would also have to be a freaking LEMON for that comparison to work.

So here’s to RichRod continuing to rub Michigan’s nose in it. I know where I will be Saturday night at 10:30pm. Watching the Wildcats take on USC on ESPN2 and desperately rooting for Arizona’s “Basketball on Grass” offense to further humiliate Cardboard and Lousy Tomato Sauce Boy.

And the best part is there aren’t any horse races running that late to distract me from enjoying the aerial show put on by Anu Solomon, Nate Phillips, Austin Hill and Cayleb Jones.

Now, you will have to excuse me. I have to ask my Webmaster to remove the Wolverines logo from the DSR main page and replace it with this ….

By Jeff Moss
DetroitSportsRag@GMail.com
October 9, 2014

While preparing for the fourth evening of shiva to mourn the death of the 2014 Detroit Tigers, I just happened to notice that my second-favorite sports team in town begins its season tonight.

Yep, the Red Wings will be back on the ice tonight as they square off against the team (the Boston Bruins) that unceremoniously knocked them out of the playoffs just a few months ago in a five-game massacre.

And guess what? I really don’t give a fuck. After spending the last six months following the Tigers like a mental patient every single night only to watch them get eliminated from the postseason over essentially a long weekend, I don’t have the energy to get back on that horse again.

And even if the Tigers were still alive in the playoffs — and hadn’t rendered the last 180 days of my existence meaningless — I still wouldn’t be able to get too excited about the 2014-15 Red Wings.

Why? Well, imagine the Tigers arrived in Lakeland in February with Torii Hunter still stumbling around right field; Joe Nathan as the closer; Joba Chamberlain as the set-up man; and every potential offseason free-agent acquisition treating Detroit as if it were Ground Zero for the ebola virus.

LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, that is your 2014-15 Red Wings squad!!!!! I mean, when the most exciting offseason news is that your organization broke ground on a new arena in a bankrupt city that can’t really afford one, well, there isn’t a lot to celebrate.

When the Bruins disposed of the Wings in the first round last April, I didn’t expect the organization to make any drastic moves to prepare for this season, but at the very least, they SHOULD HAVE:

A) Either amnestied or attempted to trade the albatross known as Johan Franzen. After his gutless 2014 postseason there was absolutely no excuse for this loafer to return to Detroit. The Mule is the poster boy of recent postseason failure and his annual cap hit of nearly $4 million until 2020 (!!!!) is onerous.

B) Parted ways with the human turnover machine, Kyle Quincey. The Wings equivalent of Don Kelly/Ryan Raburn/Brandon Inge/Phil Coke was an unrestricted free-agent, so his departure SEEMED to be a no-brainer.

C) Said goodbye to Dan Cleary — a man who played EIGHTY minutes on the team’s power play in 2013-14 without registering a SOLITARY point. Not even a goal off his ass or a meaningless second assist.

D) Signed at least ONE right-handed shooting defenseman, whether it would have been Matt Niskanen, Dan Boyle or WHOMEVER!!!

E) Said goodbye to Jakub Kindl and/or Brian Lashoff and STARTED the season with some combination of Xavier Ouelett, Ryan Sproul or Alexy Marchenko as the team’s third defensive pairing.

F) Let injury-riddled backup goalie Jonas Gustavsson take his tender groin elsewhere and opened up the starting goalie competition between Jimmy Howard and Petr Mrazek, which would have been won by Mrazek — the franchise’s best goaltender.

So what did Ken Holland do? The exact OPPOSITE of everything I just mentioned!!!! He kept Franzen; handed a $8.5 million deal to the “Medical Examiner”; brought back Cleary out of BLIND LOYALTY; Austin Jackson’d on the free-agent market; sent all of their young defensemen back to Grand Rapids (against the advice of Mike Babcock, mind you); and never gave Mrazek a legitimate chance to win the job.

And if all of THAT wasn’t bad enough, did I mention that Holland received a FOUR-YEAR extension a season after making a buffoon out of himself with his “Men’s League” and “Kids Aren’t the Answer” soundbytes; predictably, Pavel Datsyuk was injured during the team’s FIRST exhibition game; and the franchise’s most anticipated prospect since Keith Primeau skated for the Niagra Falls Thunder missed the entire preseason with a fractured tibia.

Yep, if this miserable summer wasn’t awful enough, we never even got a chance to watch Anthony Mantha play in exhibition games,which might have been a good thing since, you know, there was zero chance the kid would have made the Opening Day roster with stalwarts like Cleary and Stephen Weiss ahead of him on the depth chart.

And speaking of charity, I haven’t even mentioned how the Red Wings DID waste their remaining amnesty — on Jordin Tootoo. And what a debacle that signing was from day one.

After the Wings were eliminated by Nashville in the postseason a couple of years ago, Holland signed this loser to a THREE-YEAR deal worth FIVE POINT SEVEN MILLION DOLLARS!!!!! Even though the lousy pugilist was a healthy scratch for the Predators during that series. Against DETROIT.

But Holland had to have this guy. And even though there was ZERO market for his services, Holland gave him that three-year deal anyway. Predictably, the guy stunk. And instead of wisely using that amnesty on Franzen (because Holland couldn’t use it on Weiss due to the fact that his terrible deal was inked AFTER the lockout), he did Tootoo a FAVOR by amnestying the former Mr. Kellie Pickler.

Yep, Holland didn’t want to see “good guy” Jordin Tootoo rot away in Grand Rapids all year, so he amnestied him. And the Devils just signed him to a one-year contract for $550,000. Just a tad less than the ONE POINT NINE MILLION Holland gave him. For three seasons.

Between Cleary and Tootoo, I am not sure if Holland is running an NHL franchise or a non-profit organization.

And this is the General Manager who just received a four-year extension from the Ilitch Family. Ya gotta believe me.

So here we are just hours away from the puck dropping on another Wings season and almost nothing has changed since April.

At this point in my ard where you are probably guessing I am going to wish death on several people; scream in all CAPS that we are all doomed; and call for everyone’s firing.

But after seeing the film “Gone Girl” last night, I am going to totally flip the script halfway through and be a little more positive than that.

[Editor's Note: Congratulations go out to David Fincher. who actually accomplished the feat of making a movie MORE disturbing than the one where Gwyneth Paltrow's decapitated head ends up in a box at the end.]

Even though Holland completely fucked up another offseason, there are things to be excited about this coming year

Henrik Zetterberg is healthy. Datsyuk’s injury is minor and he should be back within a week.

Gustav Nyquist won’t have to wait until the biggest bar night of the year to make his 2014-15 debut.

Riley Sheahan, Tomas Jurco and Tomas Tatar are all regular members of the lineup and are starting in the opener instead of either toiling away with the Griffins or eating popcorn in the Joe Louis Arena press box.

Babcock finally has decided to play the best players instead of being loyal to a bunch of worthless slugs; it’s just a matter of time before Ouelett replaces one of the blue-line bums and we can always root for an injury to a defenseman who doesn’t wear #55 or #65 in order to get Sproul to Detroit.

And if this team could put up 93 points last season with the wrong roster for two months and with limited contributions from 13 and 40 due to injury, there is no reason to believe they can’t surpass 100 this season and make the playoffs. Again.

Especially if Mantha heals properly and gets called up and the “Defenseman Kids are the Answer” get the same opportunity the forwards received in 2013-14.

You know how there are times when you are dating a girl who you aren’t 100% attracted to, but you focus on one of her assets during sex so you can get through it?

Well, that is how I will be treating the 2014-15 Red Wings season. I am going to direct my attention to Danny DeKeyser, The Two Tomas’s, Nyquist and the other youngsters while ignoring Quincey, Franzen, Cleary and Weiss.

Yep. This is your slogan for the 2014-5 Red Wings: “Focus On Her Nice Boobs and Not Her Wretched Teeth.”

Hey, it beats “Get Your Red On.”

Jeff Moss
DetroitSportsRag@GMail.com
October 13, 2014

Earlier this week, it was announced that former Detroit Free Press sports columnist Mitch “Condescending Baggins” Albom had been nominated by the Michigan Sports Hall of Fame for induction into that severely compromised museum.

Yes, an institution that once honored the WORST owner in the history of professional sports (William Clay Ford, Sr.) with enshrinement DURING the Matt Millen Holocaust is now considering the candidacy of a journalist who infamously wrote a story about an NCAA tournament basketball game BEFORE it occurred.

And if that transgression wasn’t bad enough to disqualify him from employment and induction (he should have been fired and probably would have been in this age of Twitter, social media lynch mobs, Deadspin, etc.), his “glory” days include spending several hours with former Red Wings head coach Jacques Demers without detecting the guy was ILLITERATE and famously writing a book about the “Fab Five” where he chronicled Chris Webber’s MONEY struggles.

(Even though Webber had taken hundreds of thousands of dollars from booster/bookie Ed Martin and almost everyone in Ann Arbor at the time knew C-Webb was living in the relative lap of luxury and not struggling to buy a freaking pizza.)

If Frodo Albom is inducted with the 2015 class and fellow nominee Sergei Fedorov doesn’t receive the requisite number of votes, the DSR will sponsor a protest of the induction dinner. That’s not a joke. I don’t care if I have to hire dayworkers to carry signs referencing Jason Richardson and Mateen Cleaves.

Myst Tangent: Kalamazoo’s own Derek Jeter is also on the ballot. Do the morons who run the MSHOF actually think “Jeets” will show up for this event? I mean, I might as well start a “Jeffrey Moss Hall of Fame”, induct Margot Robbie for her work in “Wolf of Wall Street” and invite her to the gala reception in my master bedroom.

If Albom’s once-promising career hadn’t already been compromised by the above humiliations, the last few years of his Freep output surely should have disqualified him.

Not that the guy is REALLY a sports columnist anymore — he hasn’t written ten sports columns ALL YEAR — but between his lowest-common-denominator attack on sabermetrics; his embarrassing “Brady Hoke enjoys steak, so he will be a good head man at U of M” article; and his attack on Starbucks baristas, Albom has become a parody of himself.

Hell, that pedophile actor from “Seventh Heaven” has done less to damage his legacy than Frodo has over the last few years.  Albom CLEARLY doesn’t watch sports anymore because he is too busy saving the people of Haiti and writing death-obsessed novellas for housewives with dried-up vaginas.

That is fine, but don’t come down from your lofty perch as America’s Foremost Expert on Dying, the Afterlife and Father Time to lecture us about the Detroit Tigers — a team you clearly BARELY followed this season — like you did in today’s paper.

Yep, this douche bag had the audacity to pen an article stating that Brad Ausmus should remain the Tigers manager. If “Condescending Baggins” watched ten Tigers games before the postseason, I will eat my laptop.

Let’s review some of the drivel Albom produced in this uninformed piece of garbage ……

Uh …. yeah … ya death obsessed Keebler Elf, we HAVE been bitching about Ausmus’ bumbling all season long. If you hadn’t been in Port-au-Prince hanging out with Wyclef Jean and Sean Penn, you might have witnessed the Ivy League Imbecile idiotically playing small ball with the second-most potent offense in baseball; not realizing Bryan Holaday had a reverse platoon split; totally mismanaging the bullpen ALL YEAR; not comprehending the double-switch in the National League ….

Oh fuck, WHY AM I EVEN BOTHERING? Does anyone reading this think Albom knows what a reverse platoon split is or who James McCann is??!?!!?!??! There is a better chance of him knowing all of the words to “If I Was President.”

The best part about Albom’s ignorant defense of Ausmus was that he unwittingly provided us the SMOKING GUN of why the Surfing Mimbo should be shit-canned……

 Those six paragraphs are so beautiful on SOOOOO many levels.

First, Ausmus admits that he wasn’t worried that Anibal Sanchez might reinjure himself and that is not why he was on some asinine and arbitrary pitch count. I already debunked the entire “injured starter coming off a seven-week layoff” myth earlier this week with ample amounts of evidence anyhow.

Nope. Ausmus pulled Sanchez because he wasn’t sure the 2013 AL ERA champion could get through the 8th inning — even though the guy was LIGHTS FUCKING OUT in the 6th and 7th!!!!

It gets worse. Ausmus then admitted to his obsession with his relievers getting a “clean inning” as a reason he pulled Sanchez. So he brings in Joba Chamberlain (who stunk up the joint the night before and had a 4.97 ERA and 1.50 WHIP after the All-Star break).

“Now I gotta bring the next guy out with men on base.” 

Of course, that fat, unshaven sloth Chamberlain was the only one who was given this supposed benefit. The shutdown reliever Dave Dombrowski acquired in exchange for his 3rd- and 5th-best organizational prospects (Joakim Soria) never earned that respect.

Why Soria was brought to Detroit at the deadline to be treated by Ausmus like he was Cosette to Joba’s Eponine is something that Ausmus and Dombrowski refuse to explain. And not only has it confounded the Tigers’ fan base, it continues to baffle both Soria and his agent.  Only the sight of Soria performing a rendition of “Castle On a Cloud” would pacify me at this point.

He wasn’t sure what he would have done differently? That comment should get him tarred, feathered and fired before the sun comes up Monday morning. He isn’t sure what he’d do differently?

Ausmus isn’t SURE WHAT HE’D DO DIFFERENTLY?!?!? Yeah, and if they weren’t dead, the flight crew of Air France Flight 447 would probably say the same god damn thing.

For starters, how about getting McCann and Tyler Collins some at-bats in September so you could have had a functional bench in the ALDS instead of Hernan Perez, Don Kelly and Holaday?!?!?!?!?

Or better yet, how about pitching Soria during the last weekend of the season against the Twins so he didn’t go EIGHT days without throwing a competitive pitch?

Or, I know this is crazy, but maybe, just maybe, keeping Anibal in Game 2 after mowing down the six hitters he faced while fanning two??!?!?!

This dolt doesn’t know what he would have done differently? I mean ……

And “Condescending Baggins” wasn’t the only Detroit media member who wrote a horrific column after the humiliating ALDS sweep. The DSR’s favorite punching bag, Chris “Officer Barbrady” McCosky also infuriated our editorial staff with this abortion of a piece on Monday.

If you are new to the DirtSpurt, you might not know that McCosky’s existence is probably a reason this place exists in the first place. We have quite a history with this lughead which includes this rebuttal to his attack on the DSR in his FIRST column with the Detroit News to the following Tweet where he basically threatened to kill me ……

For those who asked: I don’t respond to parasitic sociopaths. But if the fool pesters my son on Twitter ever again, hell’s coming.

— Chris McCosky (@cmccosky) August 11, 2011

I am TERRIFIED. What are you going to do, Chris? Take me for a ride in your car down Pontiac Trail?

Why the blood-thirst? Are you fucking KIDDING ME, ya shitbag? This team has been one of the favorites to win a WORLD SERIES for years and they haven’t got it done. Or really come close.  

And they JUST came off a sweep in a series where they were favored and where competent management could have swung the pendulum in our direction and this LUNATIC doesn’t understand the fury?

And can someone explain to me why this know-nothing is writing about the Tigers? I thought we were rid of this POX when Josh Katzenstein replaced him as the Lions beat writer for the News and now we have to read his horrid baseball takes?

And I hear he might be angling for Tom Gage’s job when that relic retires which would be an absolute travesty. McCosky is a joke in this town. I had MULTIPLE members of the Detroit media (his supposed brethren) email me to ask when I would be taking Barbrady to the woodshed for this atrocity.

He isn’t respected by his supposed comrades because he had a long history of being too close to the Detroit Pistons management while parroting every Joe Dumars talking point and he got beat on every major Lions story by either Tom Kowalski, Dave Birkett or whomever was his competition at the time.

I mean, who is protecting this guy at this point? His union? Didn’t this motherfucker cross the picket line when the two major dailies were engaged in a prolonged labor dispute? But I digress ……

This was a constant theme in Albom’s column as well. Al ABQ couldn’t have pitched in those games because he isn’t strong enough mentally. All of his success comes during mop-up duty and garbage time.

Well, I could go to Baseball-Reference and refute Myth Albom and the police chief of South Park, Colorado, but I will just leave that up to McCosky’s co-worker at the paper …..

Al-Al pitched in high-leverage situations 29 times this year, and put up his best numbers. Has playoff experience. Shoulda been out there. — Tony Paul (@TonyPaul1984) October 6, 2014

Well, that is kind of embarrassing now isn’t it? To get called out by a co-worker. And who — oh-by-the-way — SHOULD be Gage’s replacement as the paper’s Tigers beat writer if Gage ever accrues enough Marriot points and frequent flyer miles to live until 263 and calls it quits.

Okay, we are being told by a sufferer of depression that we aren’t allowed to be saddened by ACTUAL EVENTS like investing years and years obsessing over this team only to see them get embarrassed in the World Series …. TWICE … lose a excruciatingly painful Game 163, get eliminated by a substandard Red Sox team due to a flawed bullpen only to come back the next year and get swept in the ALDS to a team without Manny Machado, Matt Wieters and Chris Davis because of …. ya know … a flawed bullpen.

This is a man who, in the pages of the Detroit News , admitted he can’t get happy over anything — including his children — but WE can’t get the blues that we are probably only days away from the KANSAS CITY FUCKING ROYALS playing in a World Series against one of the two teams that humiliated us in the Fall Classic in either 2006 or 2012!!!!!!!

And speaking of your son …..

Hey @Rmccosky you and your dad @Cmccosky both fucking suck!!!!

— Jeff Moss (@JeffMossDSR) October 12, 2014

Oh, no!!!! Here comes HELL. Maybe Mitch Albom can chronicle Chris McCosky bringing Satan’s Lair to my front door and pen a novella about it!!!!!

And if I am going to write an article about the Detroit Media’s atrocious handling of the Tigers’ season ending prematurely, I would be remiss not to mention hipster douche bag Anthony Fenech of the Freep and his co-worker, Drew Sharp.

You might only know Fenech from thought-provoking Tweets like the following ……

When you pull out a pretzel rod and it’s not salty enough so you put it back in.

— anthony fenech (@anthonyfenech) September 23, 2014

Sitting here thinking and “Salvador Fenech” could work for my first-born son.

— anthony fenech (@anthonyfenech) September 21, 2014

It’s 50 Shades of Gorgeous today.

— anthony fenech (@anthonyfenech) September 8, 2014

… but he took time from these earth-shattering missives to write his own AWFUL Tigers column as well. Here is just a taste of his ignorance:

I mean, the guy was dead-on RIGHT until the point he said, “OK, just kidding.” Fucking imbecile.

He is a winning player? What does that EVEN MEAN? Do you know what Torii Hunter is right now? A man who will turn FORTY YEARS OLD next season and who by every metric imaginable is the WORST defensive outfielder in all of baseball.

His WAR in 2014 was .4 and I can’t imagine it getting any better when he is celebrating the 2015 season by co-starring with Paul Rudd and Leslie Mann in a bad Judd Apatow movie.

If anything, Hunter is only a DH only at this point in his career and the Tigers better re-sign the one they already have on their roster.

And then, of course, there was typical Sharp idiocy in his weekly Freep chat ….

Can you imagine? This bald, stuttering fuckface is STILL derisively calling Fister “Cy” after he just completed a season in which he put up a 2.41 ERA, a WHIP of 1.08 and a WAR of 4.5.

And Fister then followed that up with a postseason outing in which he threw seven innings of shutout ball thus extending the Nationals’ season another day.

And while ESPN was Tweeting out this little nugget ….

…… Sharp was mocking Fister for being unable to start EVERY game of the NLDS between D.C. and San Francisco.

Fuck, I have written over 2,200 words dissecting the egregious coverage of the Tigers exit and haven’t even mentioned Lynn Henning’s name or Gage’s “Miggy was Mean To Us” article.

And that is TRULY the bane of our existence. Not only do we have to get tormented during six months of underachieving baseball with poor management, we then have to suffer the indignity of being told we are stupid for questioning these people and that we are just over-reactionary dunces.

Meanwhile, in Los Angeles (not exactly Philadelphia, New York or Boston) the media is questioning whether or not GM Ned Colletti should still be in charge of the Dodgers.

Even though his teams have qualified for the postseason five of the last nine years; he drafted Clayton Kershaw; signed Yasiel Puig; and stole Hanley Ramirez from the Marlins, there is buzz that he should get replaced by the Rays’ Andrew Friedman.

In Detroit? We get told by a part-time sports columnist who cares more about adapting his latest maudlin novella to the big screen and who doesn’t even take the time to watch our city’s baseball team during the regular reason that we don’t know what we are talking about.

And Debbie Downer McCosky wonders why we are furious?

What fucking reaction SHOULD we have?

By Jeff Moss
DetroitSportsRag@GMail.com
October 13, 2014

On Monday night, Jeff Moss and Justin Spiro discussed the future of the DetroitSportsRag and bitched about the Tigers 2014 season and what to expect in 2015. LISTEN TO IT!!!!!!

By Justin Spiro
spirojus@gmail.com
October 14, 2014

Earlier this afternoon, Detroit Sports 105.1 dolt Denny Kapp Tweeted out major props to fellow 105.1er Matt Dery. What exactly did “The Count” do to garner such praise from his colleague at the “If a tree falls in the woods…” station?

Here ya go!

How nice of Denny K(r)app to offer high praise to his co-worker. And even nicer of the official 105.1 Twitter account to re-tweet the message of commendation!

The problem is, this “great catch” was made by about 50 outlets 24 hours before Dery mentioned it. It blew up Twitter. The Free Press, Detroit News, Lansing State Journal, and MLive were just some of the news sources talking about Michigan State’s status as national title favorites.

This was a relatively big story in the Metro Detroit area. Last night, on the DSR Podcast, Jeff Moss and I discussed the Detroit Tigers press conference that is taking place this afternoon. Could you imagine if someone Tweeted, “Major props to @DarkoStateNews and @JeffMossDSR for pointing out Dave Dombrowski is speaking to the media this afternoon!”……??????

I am not sure which is worse, the fact Kapp had somehow not heard this story yesterday or the fact he heaped praise on Dery for unearthing a gem as rare and unseen as the sun at the equator.

To his credit, Dery quickly deflected the praise and pointed out the fact that he was merely discussing what had been widely discussed 24 hours earlier. Or? He re-tweeted the praise and offered no further clarification.

This town sucks, dawgs.

By Jeff Moss
DetroitSportsRag@GMail.com
October 14, 2014

Well, I guess I should be flattered that in the course of one calendar year, I have single-handedly altered the security at press conferences for both the Detroit Lions and the Tigers.

You might remember that earlier this year, the Lions completely changed their credential-checking procedure for the Jim Caldwell introductory presser out of fear that the DSR might infiltrate Ford Field.

Well, as evidenced by today’s events, the Tigers have done the same exact thing. They obviously didn’t want a repeat of me sneaking into the Joe Nathan press conference and asking a totally legitimate question about the abortion known in Detroit as the “Doug Fister to D.C. Deal.”

Last year, I just showed up for the Nathan shindig, waltzed into Comerica Park and took a seat next to John Keating and waited for my turn to query “Divot Chin.”  That wasn’t happening for today’s eulogy season-ending conversation with reporters about the 2014 season though.

And just like last fall, I wasn’t trying to sneak in to ask any embarrassing “Stuttering John”-like questions. I just wanted answers to the following ….

• Why do you still have a job while Ned Colletti just got replaced in Los Angeles by Andrew Friedman?
• Why didn’t James McCann play in September? Ya know, since you didn’t have a catcher on the roster who could hit either Andrew Miller or Zach Britton if his life depended on it?
• Why wasn’t Joakim Soria used properly from the minute he got to Detroit?
• Are you embarrassed that Brandon Finnegan (a 2014 draftee) is a valuable southpaw in the Royals pen during this postseason and ya got NOTHING from Rob Ray and Ian Krol?

So, I showed up at the Montcalm entrance of Comerica Park, set off the metal detector (it was my Macbook Pro; I am a liberal and don’t own a gun) and proceeded to the front desk to tell security I was there for Dombrowski’s spin session.

I was directed to the team’s director of media relations, Kate Ready, who was lying in wait for me. I mean, she was Kate READY for Poor Jiff Myst, I tell ya!!!!

I tried to get video of this interaction with Ms. Ready but I am much better at writing twisted articles about our professional sports teams than I am at videoing encounters so you are primarily getting the audio here (and an accidental closeup of Kate’s chest).

Stay tuned for special cameo appearances by Tony Paul of the Detroit News and Bernie Smilovitz from WDIV though ……

When it became clear that I wasn’t getting in, I decided to channel the spirit of the great Benjy Bronk and went into “Moss Coma” with the whole “You aren’t Letting Me In Because I am A Heeb” bit, but that jig was up when Smilovitz pranced right in.

Welp, that’s one fewer case for the Anti-Defamation League to investigate!!!!

I was pretty bummed by the whole experience and really pissed that I forgot to ask Kate if the Tigers would validate my parking. That’s three dollars I will never get back.

On my way out of the parking lot though, I spotted Drew Sharp walking into the wrong door for the presser. He was about five minutes late and I quickly pulled out my iPhone and recorded what can only be considered a highlight of my career …..

If you are wondering what I am talking about in regards to Sharp and Justin Verlander’s no-hitter in Toronto, you can click here and also here.

(Interestingly, that Sharp episode was cause for a “re-birth” of the DSR.)

It was a fun day at Comerica Park after all.

While writing this article, I asked my sister to show my eight-year-old nephew these videos; she refused on the grounds that I wasn’t a good role model.

When will I catch a break? Oh well, I’ll be back soon with some comments on both the Dombrowski press conference — which ended up being a total abomination — and the absolute idiocy of Tom Gage in today’s Detroit News.