Jim Leyland: Dream Maker.

It's funny, I was sitting here just earlier today hoping I could come in and run my mouth (or fingers, I suppose) about how incompetent of a manager Jim Leyland is. You know, just hoping for back-to-back crushing, walk-off losses to the Anaheim Angels of Los Angeles, California of the Northern Hemisphere, Milky-way.

And hopefully we do it in awesome fashion, too. Like a wild pitch to allow in one run. A walk. A clean single to right to tie the game.

But here's the kicker: The bullpen doesn't get charged with those runs, they go to your starting pitcher who had his best start of the season and got rewarded by an early departure!

Surely this just wasn't possible though. I'm dreaming up nonsense that no manager would put his team or fan base through. Nope, no way, no how.

But, Jim Leyland is a dream maker. He's like the Make A Wish Foundation for Detroit Tigers fans across the country that are just aching to see what new and inventive ways a team can lose a baseball game. Jim Leyland, who I've dubbed "Hunches" in my second post in this blog ever, is just so clutch at coming into a game where he's not needed and snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. To put that big, fat cherry on top, he manages to pull off the unthinkable: the back-to-back walk-off losses.

Did you see the game? Yeah? You want to relive the agony of the 8th inning of the Tigers loss to the Angels again in this paragraph or two? Okay, let's go:

Jeremy Bonderman had been cruising. 7 innings, 4 hits, 7 strikeouts versus just 1 walk. And his pitch count was in phenomenal shape at just 77 pitches. And coming off another heartbreak just 24 hours prior, that's a big deal to save the bullpen.

So, the 8th inning starts with Reggie Willits, who just pinch-hit for Brandon Wood, singling through the left side of the infield. Next up is Sean Rodriguez who singles to left field as well. 2 on, 0 out, but neither ball hit very hard at all. Bonderman's throw just 4 pitches in the 8th inning. After a coaching visit to the mound, Bonderman faces light-hitting Maicer Izturis. He sacrifices the 2 pitch he sees to advance the runners to 2nd and 3rd with 1 out and Gary Matthews, Vladimir Guererro, and Garrett Anderson due up who had combined for just 2 hits in the ball game. Bonderman can surely handle that.

But, see, that's where Jim Leyland gets you. After 83 pitches, 53 strikes, 7 strikes outs, 1 walk, Jeremy Bonderman ready to face the 2-3-4 hitters for the Angels, Hunches strolls to the mound to make the move. Surely he's bringing in the lefty to turn Matthews around as you wouldn't just bring in another righty because Bonderman isn't tired at all, nor getting beat up with a couple of hard line drives. And like a Hitchcock movie where you don't know what's coming next, Francisco Cruceta strolls from the bullpen.

Cruceta makes Matthews look foolish. Then, the trouble begins. A wild pitch during the Vlad at-bat scores the first Angels run to make it 2-1 and the run is charged to Bonderman. Then, Vlad walks, and Garrett Anderson lines one into right field to tie the game at 2 and the run is charged to Bonderman. After some heart stopping moments, a fly out to Matt Joyce off the bat of Casey Kotchman with the bases loaded ends the 8th inning.

The 9th inning drags on with the top half ending on the Golden Sombrero securing strikeout for Matt Joyce, as Ervin Santana throws 113 pitches over the full 9 innings because Mike Scosia knows what he's doing, and the bottom of the 9th starts. Aquilinio Lopez, the Tigers most effective reliever all year long, is, of course, saved and used in this spot which makes about as much sense as jumping into a bath tub with a toaster. You obviously wouldn't want to use your best reliever in the highest leverage situation of the baseball game or anything. That kind of logic is poppycock. Poppycock I say!

Lopez doesn't have it. He finishes with 10 of his 18 pitches for balls in a sequence of events that I don't even have the heart to recap. Suffice it to say that the scuffling Gary Matthews pulls the trigger to end the misery for what have to be the two most draining losses by a combined two runs in recent memory.

Is this loss squarely on Jim Leyland? Yes. The offense clearly should not be scuffling this much, but Ervin Santana was equally as good as Jeremy Bonderman was (and would have been, most likely). I can give them the pass. That said, the job of a major league manager is to motivate and put his team in the best position possible to win a baseball game within the realm of the rulebook.

That would include, but is not limited to:

- Not pulling your starting pitcher after 80-something pitches and 7 innings -- especially when he's dealing all night long and the victim of two weak hits.

- Learning from your mistakes on yanking pitchers too early when there is no reason for it to happen. Somewhere, Nate Robertson is having Vietnam-like flashbacks.

- Going to anyone but your most effective reliever in the highest leverage situation of the baseball game.

- Continually batting your DH who's got the shoulders of Bea Arthur 3rd in your lineup, day in, day out until a pulled oblique tears him from your grasp.

But, apparently a nice silver mustache gets you a multi-million dollar job, a bad smoking habit, free first class travel, and the ability to punch an entire fan base of a team in the stomach, at the same time. On back-to-back nights. In the first two games of a west coast road trip. In a very disappointing season.

Oh, how good it must be to have that sort of job security. There's countless UAW workers who'd love to have such job security.

UPDATE: Jim Leyland in the post game on the move to yank Bonderman: It was a "no brainer. No Brainer."

I don't make this stuff up, folks. I cannot write a line that says so much, in so little.