Wednesday, June 11, 2008

The sad demise of Dontrelle Willis

It's so hard to not like Dontrelle Willis.

He has that wonderful old-fashion motion, an upbeat personality and, hey, he grew up about 10 minutes from us!

But while this Bay Area native has the support of the casual fan, the same can't be said for Detroit faithful.

Allowing eight runs in an inning and a third in Monday's loss to Cleveland earned the lefty boos from Tigers fans. He walked five and threw 64 pitches recording four outs.

And now he's been sent down...to single-A!

Willis' Rookie of the Year win in 2003 was the start of what many thought would be a fantastic career. And when he went 22-10 in 2005 coming in second in Cy Young voting, he was among the game's best pitchers and a star in the making.

But a 12-12 2006 and 10-15 2007 led to four poor starts in his first year in Detroit. And now he's back to the minors. Can he turn it around? Or will we not hear from the D-Train for a long time?

And while he's in just the first of a three-year, $29-million contract, things could be much, much worse.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Even before clicking on the "much, much worse", I knew what was coming. Oh, the pain of a Giants fan.

Anonymous said...

yes the contract is a lot worse, but zito's at least pitched well enough lately to keep him in the majors.

GMoney said...

Don't forget that he likes to get DUI's...such a redeemable quality.

Anonymous said...

Dontrelle is a winner and will be back. He doesn't know how to fail. gmoney that's a cheap shot. Everybody makes mistakes, even you. But nobody knows who you are, so your safe to take a shot at someone else? Dwillis, we got your back!!!! Hip from the A