Old Demons Return

Alas, Armando Galarraga’s struggles against the Twins continue. The Twins came out of the chute very aggressive against him, which certainly surprised me (I think it surprised him, too), because part of his problem in the past had been the inability to throw strikes to Twins hitters. This time he was much better with throwing strikes, but the two walks he did give up cost him (and sometimes you can have games where you only walk one or two and all those walks score while the other team walks six or seven and none of them score). I had also said that the two big problem players for him were Mauer and Span. He was able to neutralize Mauer for the most part. He still had no answer for Span, and neither did anyone else on the pitching staff. Span either scored or drove in the first five runs of the game. The killer for Galarraga was the walk to Nick Punto ahead of Span. Galarraga sounded rather frustrated with Punto after the game (Who wouldn’t be?), as well as angry at himself. At least Punto had to work him for that walk (and the full count pitch sure looked like a strike to me). Fu Te Ni came in next inning and walked him on four pitches. I’m thinking Galarraga was yanked a little too early. At the very least, I maintain he would’ve done a better job in that inning than Ni did. Things got totally out of hand once the bullpen came in. And so we never did find out what would have happened if a save situation arose.

I had said that Nick Blackburn was struggling, but I failed to look at his game logs. If I had, I would have qualified that more strongly that he was actually just living up to his normal tendencies of pitching well at home and struggling on the road. In his lone home start in June, he pitched very strongly, giving up only two earned runs in seven innings against the Braves. All his bad starts this month had been on the road, so the fact that he didn’t give up a whole lot to the Tigers’ offense really isn’t that surprising. They had the one inning where they scored three, and they tacked on kind of a meaningless run later, but that’s it.

Today is the day game rubber match of the series, and Andy Oliver will make his second big league start. It’ll be interesting to see what he can do now that there’s at least a bit of a scouting report on him. Also, the Twins’ lineup is dominated by lefties, but a lot of them can hit left-handed pitching real well. The Twins will start Kevin (not Kyle) Slowey. He beat the Tigers back in May despite giving up three home runs (they were all solo shots). Two were to Miguel Cabrera and the other was to Alex Avila (which makes me kind of surprised that Avila’s not in the lineup today, but I’m not going to make a big fuss over it). Magglio is the DH today, and that’s probably a good idea because he wasn’t moving real well in the outfield last night. Other than that, it’s a fairly regular lineup.

Hopefully, THAT'S Out of Your System Now

Well, that was a huge pile of lost cause (and this’ll be a short post because I have to go to work soon). I only got to see Verlander for what seemed like a brief cameo (which sucks, because I’ll miss his next start entirely). Then the rain came, and when that was over, a parade of relievers who couldn’t get Mets batters out started. Jay Sborz let nerves get the better of him in his big league debut. I know people like to rag on Brad Thomas, but I don’t think he was given enough time to warm up properly. Fu Te Ni wasn’t hit as hard in terms of contact, with the exception of one or two hits, but they got enough bloops off him to make his line worse than Thomas’s. The offense did come close to making this thing at least a proper slugfest, and they did deny Niese what should have been an easy win. I do wish people would stop complaining about Gerald Laird hitting second. It probably wasn’t the greatest idea in the world (although he did come up with an RBI single), but it’s done, it probably won’t happen again (or rarely will, if it does), and it is certainly not the reason why they lost last night.

Tonight, it’s Jeremy Bonderman’s turn to try his luck against the Mets (and hopefully last night gave both him and Armando Galarraga some insight into how NOT to pitch to the Mets). He pitched very well against the Nationals in his last start, especially in the later innings. He hasn’t seen the Mets since 2007, but he did beat them then. Five of the Mets have seen him before, and the only two with significant plate appearances against him (Alex Cora and Rod Barajas) haven’t done that well (though Cora has hit a triple against him). The Tigers, in turn, will face the knuckleballer R.A. Dickey, who has been really good for the Mets this year. He’s 5-0 and his ERA is under three. And he’s only walked 12 batters, which is an amazingly low total for a knuckleballer. The Tigers have put up good numbers against him in their past meetings. Four different Tigers have homered off him (Maggs, Inge, Guillen, and Cabrera). It’ll be interesting to see if the switch-hitters in tonight’s lineup (Guillen and Santiago) opt to bat right-handed against Dickey (since a lot of switch-hitters like to bat on the same side of the plate that the knuckleballer is throwing from to help them stay back on the ball, and I know I’ve seen Guillen employ this tactic before). However, I’ve also heard that with knuckleballers, that pitch is either dancing or it’s not. If it’s going good, hitters don’t stand a chance. If it isn’t, the pitcher’s gonna get knocked around.

Too Many Walks

I’ve been trying to think of some sort of introductory sentence, but I just can’t come up with one, so let’s just get with the recap. This was the first time I got to see a Max Scherzer Tigers start from the beginning. He seemed to do a good job with the exception of pitching to Vladimir Guerrero. Alex Avila helped out by throwing out a couple runners (he’s caught 3 runners now, and all three have been with Scherzer on the mound, which is kind of weird). He then took back one with a balk/error when he touched the ball with his mask (He said after the game that he lost his balance and used his mask to balance himself and the ball happened to roll into it, but if you look at the replay that’s clearly not what happened; he was definitely trying to scoop the ball into his glove with his mask). The bullpen walked too many people, though, and that proved to be their downfall. Unlike a lot of the other bloggers, I don’t have that much of a problem with keeping Ni in the game for the bottom of the ninth. He was pitching to the bottom of the order and the bullpen’s been taxed recently, so I’m sure Leyland wanted to make as few pitching changes as possible (The command issues in the previous inning were there, but the free pass to Guerrero looked to me like an unintentional intentional walk). Ni committed the cardinal sin of walking the leadoff man in the ninth, a rookie making his major league debut. The next two moves were dictated by that: A bunt and an IBB. No sense in bringing Perry in for that. I did wonder why they didn’t go after Garko, since Cruz is a better hitter, but Ryan Perry gave no indication that he would’ve thrown strikes to either of them. And when he got ahead to Elvis Andrus, he threw a terrible 0-2 pitch that Andrus was able to line into right for a game-winning hit. By the way, was Jim Leyland really pissed last night and didn’t talk to the media? I haven’t seen a single solitary quote from him in any of the news stories I’ve read. As another aside, the lefties in the ‘pen have all walked way too many this year. And don’t think that Daniel Schlereth will come to the rescue in that regard. He’s walked eight in 8.1 innings at Toledo (and the Mud Hens have their own problems right now).

Considering the Tigers’ bad numbers against Harden coming into the game, I wasn’t surprised that they didn’t do much against him. They finally chased him in the fifth due to a lot of walks and Cabrera’s two-run single. Then they couldn’t do anything  against the bullpen until they got to Neftali Feliz, who is regarded as a superstar in the making. They had an excellent approach against him. Don Kelly struck out but it took seven pitches. Ramon Santiago also made an out but he had the key at-bat of the inning, battling Feliz for thirteen pitches and basically wearing him down, setting up the heroics of Jackson, Damon, and Magglio. None of them hit the ball especially hard, but it was good enough to briefly tie the game. Plus, the Tigers combined to make Feliz throw 31 pitches, which means he probably won’t be available tonight. Brennan Boesch had a successful debut at the plate, with two hits, but needs to work on the baserunning a bit. He didn’t tag up on a play he should have, and then got doubled off with the bases loaded in a key moment.

Tonight’s game will send Dontrelle Willis to the mound. He pitched the best he’s done all season on Monday but still got the loss. Texas is the only team he’s beaten as a Tiger. As a matter of fact, he had a really good start against them in that win, throwing a one-hitter. That was at Comerica Park, though. I’m not sure if being in Ranger Ballpark (much more home-run friendly) will make a difference. Most of the Rangers, obviously, don’t have much history against him. Ryan Garko’s gotten him pretty good in their brief meetings (3-for-6 with a home run, a triple, and 6 RBIs). Scott Feldman was supposed to start last night but he was sick. He didn’t do too well in his last start, which was against the Yankees, lasting only 2.1 innings. He was the Rangers’ best pitcher last year, winning seventeen games. His ERA against the Tigers is over eight, and when they saw him last year, they knocked him out pretty early. Most of that historical damage must have come from former Tigers because there’s nothing eye-popping about the current crop (I do remember Granderson hitting two home runs off him). There’s a couple guys with decent enough numbers. Cabrera’s 2-for-5 and Everett is 3-for-8. Everyone who’s faced him has at least one hit against him except Gerald Laird (but that’s 0-for-2, which is pretty meaningless). I’ll be at work until 9:00 tonight, which means I’ll miss the beginning of the game.

On Hold

And so, we must wait a little bit longer (whether that ends up being one day or another 22 years, I’m not gonna say). I don’t have a lot of insight on this game. I was only able to listen to the first two innings and the ninth inning (though I was able to sneak out of lab once to check the score). Hey, things were going good when I left for lab. The Tigers had just taken a 1-0 lead. How was I supposed to know that Nate Robertson was about to give up three in the following half-inning? I can’t really comment on Nate, but from what I’ve heard, he was not as good as he was at the Metrodome, but better than he was in Chicago. Casey Fien and Bobby Seay? Maybe not so good, especially with Bobby Seay. I don’t know if it was rust or if the pectoral strain is still bothering him (It also doesn’t help matters that Denard Span owns him anyways). This is nitpicky, but after the Orlando Cabrera bases-clearing double, WHY would you ever pitch to Joe Mauer with first base open and two out? I know they had a righty in the on-deck circle, but I’d take Gomez over Mauer any day. Then there were the hit batter fireworks and subsequent ejections. Apparently, Jose Mijares took matters into his own hands when he wasn’t supposed to, because Ron Gardenhire was none too pleased with what happened. None of the Twins seemed to blame Bonderman for retaliation. I don’t know why Laird got ejected. Still, if there’s a positive to be had, it’s that this game featured some strong pitching from Ryan Perry, Fu Te Ni, and Armando Galarraga (Talk about rusty; he hadn’t pitched since the last game of that Royals series; I certainly hope they’ve gotten the elbow problems cleared up). By the way, by now you’ve probably seen the circulating video of Joe Mauer tipping pitches to Jason Kubel against Verlander (and I’m amazed that that video is still up on YouTube). I actually thought it was fascinating to be guided through how teams do that. And it’s not something I have a problem with. I’m not happy that it was done against the Tigers, but it’s not cheating and every team does it. Our guys do it, too (I caught Pudge tipping off Sean Casey once a couple of years ago, and I’m sure the current Tigers steal signs as well).

And so this has come down to the final weekend, which means it’s time to beat the White Sox. Minnesota has the Royals at the Metrodome, and while they do face Greinke tomorrow, the other two pitching matchups heavily favor the Twins. Meanwhile, the Tigers have a tougher task against White Sox pitching. First up is Jake Peavy, who blanked the Tigers last week. Hopefully, the fact that they’ve seen him so recently will allow them to scratch out some runs against him, or at least get him out of the game in a reasonable amount of time to have a shot at the Sox bullpen. I took a closer look at the numbers, and they’re actually uglier than I thought, although it’s too small a sample size against most hitters. Polanco is the ONLY Tiger that hits Peavy well (8-for-13). Cabrera can’t touch him (2-for-19 with nine strikeouts). Inge is the only Tiger to have homered off of Peavy, and he and Everett are the only ones with RBIs off him. Like I said, there are several Tigers who are 0-for-3 or 1-for-3, which is pretty meaningless until they get more ABs against him. He has also never faced Gerald Laird, Ryan Raburn, Marcus Thames, or Clete Thomas. Meanwhile, Edwin Jackson is coming off a loss to the White Sox last Sunday when they scored five off him (that seems like it was weeks ago). He’s going to have to be better than that if he wants to outduel Peavy. He actually got through most of the game with little trouble except for the sixth, when the White Sox bunched several extra base hits against him. And the fifth run was an inherited runner that scored because Fernando Rodney isn’t good in non-save situations. I’ll be at work tonight, but that doesn’t mean the Tigers shouldn’t win on my account.

Not Quite Enough

This was kind of a peculiar game in that it lent totally different perspectives regarding media vs. bloggers. If you listen to the bloggers, this is one of the toughest losses of the season. If you listen to the radio, it’s a loss that may be the start of something good. At any rate, Edwin Jackson did not have a lot of command, something that you can’t get away with against the Red Sox. Fu Te Ni was probably the most effective pitcher the Tigers used. He did give up a home run to Jason Bay, but it was one of the worst-hit home runs you’ll ever see (I seriously thought it was a popup to shallow left when it came off his bat). The offense DID show more life than it normally does on the road. Polanco in particular seems to have heated up, and Magglio had a really good night at the plate. The fact that Adam Everett was not pinch-hit for in the eighth inning has caused a lot of debate online. I agree that you’d probably want someone better at driving in runs in that situation, but it’s not like the alternatives were that attractive. Raburn and Santiago are far more likely to strike out than Everett (plus, Leyland probably wanted to save Raburn in case he needed to pinch-hit for Guillen later), and Leyland has explicitly said that Avila is off-limits as a pinch-hitter.

Tonight, Rick Porcello tries to maintain the momentum he’s built from his last couple starts, which have been good. He did not fare so well against the Red Sox back in June. This’ll be even harder than that. This was supposed to be John Smoltz’s spot in the rotation, and the “win at all costs” side of me really wishes that it still was. In his career, Smoltz has a 10.32 ERA against the Tigers, and that was BEFORE his struggles this year. Alas, it’s not to be. Instead, the Tigers will face Junichi Tazawa, whom they themselves were interested in during the offseason. Tazawa took the loss in relief during that extra inning game at Yankee Stadium, but he’s put up some real good numbers at Double A. I’m at work tonight, but considering how long Red Sox games tend to be, it may only be the fourth or fifth inning by the time I get home.

Who Needs Air Conditioning?

With all the swinging and missing that was going on by Tiger hitters, you’d probably be sufficiently cooled off at the ballpark last night (by the way, if they tried, I’m sure they could come up with a longer name than “Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum”). Fourteen strikeouts make for an excellent imitation of the hometown Mud Hens (who, as a team, have struck out over 700 times, including a game where Ian Snell struck out 13 Mud Hens in a row recently). Contact was elusive, for some reason. I just don’t remember Brett Anderson throwing that hard back in May (and Comerica Park’s gun tends to be a little hot). He IS highly thought of in their organization, and he’s obviously got a really good fastball (or so it would seem), but he HAS struggled this year, and the Tigers beat him before (though, as I said, it’s tough to say that he pitched horribly in that start, given the sheer number of errors that the Oakland infield committed behind him; still, he did give up nine runs). I suppose we’ll make the final judgment on this when we see what he does in his next start. Meanwhile, Rick Porcello started off okay, but with him not lasting deep into games in his recent starts, you figured something like this was coming. This game also featured the debut of Fu Te Ni, who seemed to impress just about everyone on the blogosphere, despite the long home run he gave up to Ryan Sweeney. As usual, the BYB Game Thread was jumpin’, but this made me laugh. Sad, but funny. Not to mention a terrific Photoshop job.

Tonight’s another late night for Tigers fans (which is fine, since I work and normally would miss the first few to several innings, but tonight I’ll be able to work a 5-hour shift and not miss a pitch should I so choose). Armando Galarraga, well, didn’t have a by-the-book quality start his last time, but he did win, and could just as easily be around a .500 record right now if he had gotten more run support in his starts. Now, during that stretch, he had had somewhat promising outings, only to follow them up with more struggles, so winning his last time out doesn’t guarantee anything. However, the last start was more encouraging to me because of the reasonably low hit totals, only one walk, and five strikeouts, and he threw several good-looking pitches (also some more of those different-looking pitches that aren’t effective, so he’s still got a ways to go). He did not have a good start at all against the A’s last month, as he got charged with five runs in only 2/3 of an inning. He’ll be opposed by another lefty, Gio Gonzalez, who, like Brett Anderson, is highly thought of but has struggled. The Tigers saw him once last year and hit him pretty well (including a grand slam by Gary Sheffield for the 250,000th home run in MLB history), but at this point, I have no idea what to expect. Your Mood Music for tonight: I thought that Styx’s “Just Get Through This Night” would be fitting, considering that it’s both a late night for us fans and because this is a big start for Galarraga. And you’ll notice that I’m the one who uploaded the song, but that’s because I couldn’t find it on YouTube. This is NOT the slideshow I’m planning for Friday. Also, bear with it, because the beginning of the song is really quiet.

Inge to the Rescue Again

Photo: AP

Maybe the Tigers left Weekend Mojo back in Detroit by accident, and Fu Te Ni kindly brought it with him when he made the trip to Houston (I’d make a joke about losing it like you lose your luggage at the airport, but the Tigers have their own plane so that joke wouldn’t really work). At any rate, it took until the ninth inning, but Brandon Inge came up with the big hit. And the Tigers had been down to their final strike when the strikeout-prone Marcus Thames managed to work a walk, and Inge made Valverde pay for that walk, hobbled as he was (Hopefully, it’s nothing that’ll keep him out of the lineup, cuz right now he’s too valuable both with the glove and with the bat). At any rate, I really didn’t see this game (other than watching a couple of innings on the MLB.tv archives). It was over with before I got home from work. I lucked out and DID have an Internet connection, but it was on a computer that didn’t have any sort of Flash player, so I ended up on the auto-refreshing boxscore/play-by-play on Yahoo Sports (I was also able to listen to an inning and a half on the radio while I was at lunch). In some ways, though, I’m kind of glad I did not get to watch this game, because happy as I am about the Tigers’ win, it would’ve killed me to see Pudge be the last out (I did hear that it was a hard groundball, though, so at least he gave Brandon Inge somewhat of a challenge). And hey, at least with this series over, I can be rid of the mixed feelings I was battling all weekend (Well, Friday and yesterday, at least; I don’t really care about Humberto Quintero). By the way, I said I had more thoughts related to my slideshow, but they’re kinda long, so I’m going to save those for Friday’s post, since Thursday is an off-day.

Yesterday also featured a bunch of roster moves. First up, Nate Robertson was placed on the DL and Fu Te Ni was called up to replace him. Apparently, Nate’s got a mass or cyst in his elbow that is pressing up against his ulnar nerve, causing numbness and tingling in his pitching hand. So why did he wait so long? You’d think that after, oh, his second or third ineffective outing he’d go to the trainers and say that his fingers were numb and tingling. Apparently he learned nothing over the last two years from such struggles as those of Kenny Rogers, Jeremy Bonderman (twice), Joel Zumaya, Fernando Rodney, and Todd Jones: Don’t pitch hurt. You’re not effective if you pitch hurt. Also, they decided to make a change in the rotation and swap out Alfredo Figaro and Luke French. French will start on Friday in Minnesota, but he will apparently be available out of the bullpen for the next day or two.

Well, Interleague play in 2009 has come to a close for the Tigers, at least (I know there are still one or two makeup games to be played elsewhere), and though the boys didn’t fare as well as they have in years past, I still say that it beats having to play the Red Sox and Yankees more. Anyways, it’s back to the realm of the DH and onto what has been the Tigers’ favorite division so far this year: the AL West. The Oakland Athletics are last in their division (by a good margin), and they got swept by the Tigers back in May. However, the Tigers have generally not played well in Oakland over the past couple years. At any rate, it’s a late-night affair, and Rick Porcello gets the ball tonight. He ended up with a no-decision his last time out. He hasn’t lost since that game against the Red Sox, but he maybe hasn’t been quite as sharp as he was in May. He’s been throwing more pitches in fewer innings, but so far, he’s been able to limit the damage. The A’s HAVE seen him before, so there is the question of whether or not adjustments will be made, either by Porcello or by the Oakland hitters. He’ll be opposed by Brett Anderson, whom the Tigers beat back in that series in May. He probably pitched better than the numbers would indicate, though, because the A’s infield made four errors behind him (That was that wacky game where the Tigers hit two grand slams and Edwin Jackson pitched three more innings after a rain delay that lasted over an hour). Hope you’ve got the caffeine ready. Your Mood Music for tonight: Oh, how ‘bout some good old-fashioned headbanging? Let’s go back to the early ‘90s and Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit.”