BASEBALL / ROSS NEWHAN : At This Pace, There May Be No Taming These Tigers

Can this Detroit Tigers powerhouse be stopped?

“Sure,” Manager Sparky Anderson said from Arlington, Tex. “Good pitching will stop us, but there’s not enough good pitching. Thirty percent of it is good these days and 70% of it is also-ran.”

Anderson knows about also-ran pitching. His Tigers have produced enough of it in the last few years.

Despite leading the majors in home runs in each of the last three years, a feat last accomplished by the Brooklyn Dodgers of the ‘50s, the Tigers had two losing seasons and a 238-248 record.

Last year, they scored a major league-leading 791 runs and gave up a major league-leading 794, losing 23 games in which they scored five runs or more.

Anderson vowed to reduce that by 10 this year, but the Tigers have already lost five games in which they scored five runs or more while powering into the American League East lead with an average of 7.6 runs a game through 21 games.

The Tigers hit 29 homers in that span, scored 20 runs in a game twice, also had scoring binges of 17 and 16 runs, and were on a pace to challenge major league records with 1,242 runs and 240 homers.

“Turn your head and we’ve got five runs,” veteran infielder Alan Trammell said.

The productive comeback of Kirk Gibson, who was batting .400 with 15 runs batted in through Thursday, has merely strengthened an often all-or-nothing lineup that struck out 899 times or more each of the last four years.

Anderson contends that the strikeout is better than a double play and he isn’t going to tamper with the hit-or-miss swings of Rob Deer, Cecil Fielder and Mickey Tettleton.

“We’ll be in the top three again in runs,” he said. “Our offense is plenty good enough (to win the division title). If we can keep the (earned-run average) to four or a hair under, we’ll be in it all year.”

The 1992 ERA was 4.60, worst in the majors. The ERA through 21 games this year was 3.82, the league’s fourth best.

The Tigers signed three free-agent pitchers--Mike Moore, Bill Krueger and Tom Bolton--then added David Wells after he was released by Toronto.

“We’re much better, and we’re going to get better as we go along,” Anderson said of his pitching.

Bill Gullickson, who won 34 games for the Tigers in the last two years, is expected back soon from knee and shoulder rehabilitation and will join a rotation of Moore, Wells, John Doherty and either Bolton or Mark Leiter.

Anderson said he hopes to make two moves soon that will improve his middle relief, but this is still a team that must do it with power.

How does the former Cincinnati manager compare it to his “Big Red Machine” of the ‘70s?

“This team just hammers at you,” Anderson said of the Tigers. “That team could beat you with both speed and hitting. You might stop one, but not the other. I’ve never seen a team with the dual attack we had in Cincinnati, but I’ve never seen scoring like this before either.

“I mean, the Reds would score six, seven, eight runs occasionally, but to score this many runs this often, never this . . . never.”

ATLANTA BURNING

The tomahawk chop is suddenly coming down on the heads of the Braves as they continue to waste effective pitching by their touted rotation.

The familiar fan chant has given way to frequent boos, angering many of the players on a team that has won two successive pennants.

Said Ron Gant: “We’re frustrated, too. We’re all frustrated. We’re not robots. The fans should stand behind us and give us an incentive to win instead of booing us and making us feel worse than we do.

“They’re obviously empty-minded. They’re obviously front-runners.”

Atlanta was the only major league team with an ERA under 3.00 through Thursday.

However, half the lineup--Terry Pendleton, David Justice, Greg Olson, Mark Lemke and Gant--ended April with batting averages of .230 or worse, with the seemingly overweight Pendleton at .165 and Justice at .157.

The two had struck out 43 times in 187 at-bats as the Braves led the majors in stranded runners and averaged 3.2 runs a game through an 11-13 April, with only the Dodgers and New York Mets hitting worse as a team.

Amid the struggle, Manager Bobby Cox, knowing he will lose Deion Sanders to the NFL Falcons in July and, believing he is obligated to give his regular outfielders the playing time they need to emerge from their current struggles, refused to alter Sanders’ part-time status despite his .281 start and catalytic talent.

Agent Eugene Parker questioned that thinking, contending that the Braves were punishing the fans and the team by punishing Sanders, who was ultimately put on the disqualified list when he notified the team that he would not be returning from his bereavement over his father’s death last Friday.

The Braves say the door is still open to him, but without a full-time baseball commitment the lineup is likely to stay closed.

What’s that about cutting off your nose . . . ?

MARINER MISHAP

The Seattle Mariners had been doing an impressive job of weathering the absence of American League batting champion Edgar Martinez and 17-game winner Dave Fleming, but the loss of Chris Bosio may prove insurmountable.

“Injuries are part of the game, but when they keep occurring to key people, it gets difficult,” Manager Lou Piniella said. “You don’t replace a Chris Bosio, you just don’t.”

Bosio suffered a broken collarbone in a collision Tuesday night with Jeff Treadway of the Cleveland Indians. A 16-game winner with the Milwaukee Brewers last year, Bosio had stretched a scoreless streak to 17 innings in his first start after a no-hitter against the Boston Red Sox.

Fleming, who won 17 games as a rookie but has been sidelined all season because of elbow tendinitis, is expected to start May 12. Martinez, sidelined from the start because of a hamstring pull, won’t be back until late May. Bosio was considered a leader on the mound and in the clubhouse.

“We’re going to miss him every fifth day and in every other way, too,” closer Norm Charlton said.

COMFORT ZONE

Wade Boggs left Anaheim last Wednesday night with a .300 batting average--familiar turf for the five-time American League batting champion who hit .259, 86 points below his career average, in 1992, the last of his 11 seasons with the Boston Red Sox.

Now employed by the previously hated New York Yankees, Boggs, 35, says he is capable of winning a sixth batting crown.

“Everything is back to normal,” he said. “I’m happy, contented, relaxed. The game is difficult enough without having to play for someone who doesn’t want you, and that’s the impression I got from the Red Sox in spring training of last year.”

Distracted by the contract situation, a loss of vision--he’s a mere 20-20 now--and some back problems, Boggs endured his first batting slump since his senior year at Tampa’s Plant High.

His new three-year, $11-million contract is a big part of his revitalized outlook, he said. A third year was the key to the deal. Both the Red Sox and Dodgers stopped at two years.

“The Dodgers had signed Cory Snyder and were interested in Tim Wallach,” Boggs said. “They had other things working and didn’t have to go the extra step.

“It wasn’t a big deal. I mean, it really didn’t matter to me where I played. The important thing was the three years of security. When you get to the point where you’re going to change teams, where you realize you’re not going to spend your entire career with the same team, it doesn’t matter where you go. It’s basically just another team.”

BLOWUP

The phone-throwing, desk-clearing, expletive-laced tirade by Kansas City Manager Hal McRae in response to a postgame question of a second-guess nature by a radio reporter last Monday night was ugly but uncharacteristic.

Frustrated by the Royals’ poor starts of the last two years, and believing he has always been fair and patient in his dealings with media and players--who do not demonstrate the same intensity and break-up-the-double play-at-all-costs toughness he did--the accommodating McRae said he simply lost it, is sorry about it, but in some ways feels better because of it.

McRae said he understands now he has to be true to his convictions, has to manage his time better and can’t be everything to everyone.

General Manager Herk Robinson said he didn’t condone the incident but thinks McRae will emerge with a more realistic and mature approach, adding that his job wasn’t in jeopardy.

It has been written in some publications that McRae really doesn’t want to manage, doesn’t want to be in the position of managing his son, Brian, and would prefer to be a batting coach again.

“That’s just not true,” said a man who knows McRae well. “Hal burns to be successful at managing and would never quit on it because he knows, in time, he will be successful and that he can’t give up one of the few managerial opportunities belonging to a minority.”