When the Tigers made a deadline deal with the Seattle Mariners this season, Tigers fans let out a collective groan and couldn’t help but conjure up repressed memories of Jarrod Washburn, the overrated Mariners lefty that single-handedly lost the Tigers the division in 2009. Okay, not single-handedly (the Tigers actually were 4-3 in his 7 starts), but he was really bad. Washburn was 1-3 himself, which only begins to help indicate just how bad he was in the Old English D. In all, Wasburn finished with a 7.33 ERA over 43 innings and had plenty of Tigers fans never wanting to see a trade with the crappy-for-a-reason M’s ever again.
Then the Tigers, in the midst of a heated division race as the deadline neared, traded for Mariners’ righty Doug Fister this year. Fister had a 3.33 ERA with the Mariners, worse than the ERA Washburn had before getting traded to the Tigers. Fister’s ERA wasn’t the stat that was deceiving, though; it was his win-loss record, which was an astounding 3-13. Even though wins are only useful to an extent, plenty of Tigers fans were immediately turned off by the fact Fister was so unlucky with the Mariners, that his curse had to transfer over to the Tigers, who have been cursed in their own right and known to, well, kind of suck after the all-star break in recent years.
Fister’s first three starts did nothing to assure fans that history wasn’t about to repeat itself. Fister had a 6.16 ERA over his first 14.2 innings (albeit two runs came in a rain-shortened two inning outing) with only five strikeouts. Opponents hit .369/.382/.890 off of him and, of course, his stuff looked flatter than a Don Kelly fastball.
But he’s been brilliant in his last four starts (3-0), getting nice tail on his two-seamer and real sharp break on his 1-to-7 curve. Over his last 29.2 innings, Fister has a 0.91 ERA and 31 strikeouts opposite just two walks. In two of his last three starts he retired the first 13 batters of the game and had a perfect game through six innings in one of those starts. In his subsequent start, he struck out a career high 13 batters in eight innings vs. Ubaldo Jimenez, the Indians’ highly touted deadline acquisition who the Tigers were rumored to be after long before Fister’s name was ever a consideration.
In all, Fister is 4-1 with the Tigers and has a 2.64 ERA in 44.1 innings; he has 36 strikeouts and has walked just three batters. 12 strikeouts for every walk. Remarkable.
Ubaldo Jimenez for the Indians? Not nearly as good — he has a 5.27 ERA in 41 innings with 46 strikeouts opposite 14 walks, and the Indians are 3-4 in his starts. The Tigers are 5-2 in Fister’s.
Surprisingly, if the postseason were to start tomorrow, the 6-foot-8 Fister would probably be the Tigers’ No. 2 starter. That says a lot for the guy who was supposed to shore up the back-end of the Tigers’ rotation at the deadline.
