Good teams with bad starts

There is a stat all over the internet right now which goes like this:

"Only two teams in the history of baseball have started the season 0-5 and made it to the playoffs."

I've seen it on mainstream sites. I've seen it on blogs. I saw it posted on one message board multiple times. It's an interesting fun fact (well, not really very fun for Tigers fans) but what does it really mean? The problem with the stat is that not that many teams (even bad ones) start off the season 0-5. Thus, we have a small sample size. The fact is many good teams get off to poor starts. You need to look no further than a few past Tigers teams to see that. Consider this:

• On May 11, 1987, the Tigers were 11-19

• On April 27, 1935, the Tigers were 2-9

• On April 30, 1908, the Tigers were 3-9
  

And we all know that those years turned out pretty well for the Tigers. If you need more recent examples, you only need to look to last year:

• The Yankees started out 9-14

• The Rockies started out 18-27

Both, of course, made it to the playoffs. This is not to say that people shouldn't be frustrated or disappointed by the Tigers bad start. The point is that getting off to a bad start and still having a great season is not all that not unusual. Personally, I'm not worried about the record or the lack of hitting. They will hit. I am somewhat concerned about the pitching but that concern was there even when they were 0-0.