Totally Different Issues This Time

It seems that whenever the Tigers lose a game in which they leave a lot of men on base, it almost inevitably gets followed by a game in which they get dominated and end up with very few guys to strand. If I were superstitious, I’d say it was karma biting them in the ass. All in all, it was a strange night for Alfredo Figaro, and an even worse night for the offense. Figaro had a disastrous third inning in which he gave up a bunch of hits and a bunch of runs (Rod Allen mentioned that all the hits came on offspeed pitches, so make of that what you will). The other five innings he was in there, well…he wasn’t great, but he was okay, I guess. Leyland said that Figaro got aggressive “only after the horse was out of the barn.” Freddy Dolsi finished things up and yes, I know he didn’t give up a run, but he still scares the hell out of me. Besides, between him and Figaro, it looked like the Tigers had a couple of 12-year-olds pitching for them. At any rate, the two of them combined to only give up three walks, which is certainly more acceptable than 7. In terms of the offense, I may as well not give them their own paragraph, because there’s not a lot to talk about. Santiago homered, and Cabrera and Thames each had a single. That was it. I listened to the radio post-game show and watched the post-game show on television as well (hey, I am nothing if not thorough). Jim Price seemed to think that the hitters helped out Paulino immensely, but Jim Leyland’s attitude would seem to suggest that he thought the Tigers were genuinely overmatched. I’m inclined to believe the manager over the radio color analyst, but I will say this: Brandon Inge was taking some really funky swings all night. He also scraped up his arm, likely on that Michael Bourn rundown that took way too long to complete (cue the Benny Hill music).

Well, at last we’ve come to the end of Interleague play, which this year was not as bountiful a harvest for the Tigers. That’s kind of disappointing to me, because I enjoy Interleague play and this year I can’t really use my #1 argument for it (although I could adapt it by saying that if the Tigers are gonna suck against the AL East, which they’ve done so far, .500 against the National League ain’t so bad in comparison). At any rate, Edwin Jackson will be charged with nipping this little mini-skid in the bud. The Cubs made him work to get his outs last time, but he navigated his way out of trouble with minimal damage and it was only Micah Hoffpauir’s home run off Zumaya which denied him the victory. He’ll be up against Russ Ortiz, who I guess is kind of a middle-of-the-road-type pitcher. His earned run average is pretty good, but he’s not overpowering. However, those “crafty” type pitchers have been known to give the Tigers fits in the past. I’ll be at work from 10 to 5, so it’s quite possible (in fact, likely) that I will miss the vast bulk of this game. Your Mood Music for today: I started this slideshow last year shortly after Pudge was traded to the Yankees, and I never finished it. Given that the Tigers were facing him once again, I decided to go ahead and complete it. I would much rather have made a music video than a slideshow, but the video capture software I have leaves the image really grainy (either that, or I have a crappy VCR hooked up to the computer), and I wouldn’t be able to share it for very long, because YouTube would have it taken down within an hour. At any rate, it is not my best work by any means (I am planning another, more complicated slideshow that I will hopefully have done in time for the Minnesota series, but if I don’t get it done, it’ll have to wait until the next time the Tigers go to Minneapolis), and it is perhaps a bit more emotionally charged than it would be if I had started it today instead of a year ago. No, I am not a teenage girl who has to make slideshows of all her favorite people. I’m a filmmaker at heart, so this is my way of creative expression. At any rate, YouTube kinda screwed up the video when it got uploaded, and the transitions are slower than they should be. By the way, I do NOT have a repository of Pudge Rodriguez photos. I have a massive repository of Tigers photos in general from 2007 and 2008 (and a tiny bit of 2006), of which I ended up using nearly every picture of Pudge that I had. I do have an addendum that I came up with while making this slideshow, but as this post is already too long, I’ll save it for the next blog. At any rate, if you’re not a fan of Pudge, you don’t have to watch it. The song is Ozzy Osbourne’s “See You on the Other Side.”