Today's column in the News: That defense is so ____

This week for the Detroit News, I wrote about the Tigers' putrid defense, trying to frame it in the context of a bigger picture. I also made up a nursery rhyme.

The team is obviously hot right now, having won five straight and 19 of their last 30 games. It would appear as if the team *can* consistently outslug its mistakes. Yet that ignores the first two-plus months of the season, where the bats ran hot and cold but the defense mostly ran awful. Can Doug Fister and Rick Porcello, two starters who need help from the seven guys standing behind them in the field, survive and thrive with all the lead gloves back there? Can Gerald Laird get knocked over by a runaway train and suffer no ill effects? Most of all, can the Tigers do anything about this, at all?

Check out the column and tell me what you think.