One hot streak doesn’t put together a strong season

As another baseball season is about to hit the history books, the playoff question is, can… As another baseball season is about to hit the history books, the playoff question is, can the Detroit Tigers gut it out?

With three weeks remaining, Jim Leyland’s club’s once-safe lead is down to two games in the hotly contested American League Central. But can the Tigers keep their sizzle going wire to wire?

A baseball team’s streak is like a top 20 hit song. It may crack the top five, but it won’t last there too long.

During the past several seasons, teams such as the Red Sox, Phillies, Reds and Blue Jays have had hot streaks going on. Their fans have learned that they can’t judge their whole season by what happens in June, for better or worse.

In this year’s case, Philly has an MVP candidate who is propelling the team into the thick of the playoff race despite being at the outermost corner of the playoff orbit in June.

The team has been in this situation three times before in the past five years, but each time it has ended up watching the playoffs on television. It leaves Philly fans yearning for consistency, especially with pitching.

For Cincinnati’s part, a playoff berth is long overdue ever since Ken Griffey Jr. returned home in 2000. Injuries to Griffey and others in addition to inadequate pitching have left the Reds’ promising starts to fade into a disappointing season.

Though it has been in the thick of the National League Central and Wild Card races this season, Cincinnati’s October hopes are slowly dwindling, compounded with another Griffey injury.

In the case of the Red Sox and Blue Jays, it would be safe to classify them as hares, albeit the Boston hare is gifted with a lot more speed than the other two.

The Blue Jays made the effort on off-season spending last year to make a run at the Yankees and Red Sox, bringing in names such as Troy Glaus and Bengie Molina. That all seemed to pay dividends when the Jays were in the thick of the playoff race by the All-Star break.

However, after sputtering in July, they have discovered that they are financially handicapped in comparison to the AL East frontrunners.

The Beantown Boomers, meanwhile, are accustomed to storming out of the gate the first two months and sometimes holding onto a division lead by midseason. Yet Theo Epstein did not use his method from 2004 in making moves by the trade deadline, staying put this year.

The Yankees make moves at July’s end each year, and it is always enough to put them in their proper place in October — the postseason.

For the Red Sox, although they usually accompany the Bronx Bombers to the postseason, they prove it’s not how you start, it’s how you finish, leaving Epstein to start contemplating their next advance come November.

For the first half of this season, the Tigers were the most improbable story in baseball. Leyland injected the belief that they could win into this moribund franchise, which usually played for empty seats in the amusement-like Comerica Park.

Now Leyland has to instill poise and character in this team, which is mostly lacking of players with pennant race experience. It is up to veterans Ivan Rodriguez and Kenny Rogers to implement that belief.

Don’t get me wrong, the Twins and White Sox learned to play with poise over the past few seasons, not necessarily by headline off-season moves, but a few swift moves would work.

Both of these teams have gotten off to fast starts in the past and maintained their fire through September.

Maybe it’s an AL Central thing, or maybe it’s just their fortune of not having the Yankees in their division. Only character will imply whether this is Detroit’s turn, or a Cinderella story that became an early midnight, such as the 2003 Kansas City Royals.

But the lesson that Leyland’s Tigers are providing to the Brewers and the Pirates is to believe you can make something happen and then build momentum from early on.

These types of teams with playoff debt have to create the atmosphere at the ballpark, not the fans. If you can play, the fans will come. Hey, Pirates owner Kevin McClatchy, are you listening?