Thank Goodness for JV and Grandy

Photo: Ronald Martinez (Getty Images)

I put off writing this game recap in case a trade was made, and lo and behold, it pays to be patient. First, the game. Justin Verlander is probably the pitcher you want to stop a losing streak, but even he had quite a scare in the fifth inning. I don’t know what happened there, but he sure got mad after giving up the runs. It was really the offense perking up a bit that stopped the slide. The Tigers still left a lot of men on base, but there were so many baserunners that it didn’t really matter, and Curtis Granderson led the way with his two home runs. Miguel Cabrera found his RBI stroke, sort of. He had some of the wackiest hits in this series. I think the hardest hit ball off his bat was the one that Marlon Byrd made a diving catch on. Meanwhile, we have a definitive answer on Carlos Guillen: He simply can’t hit right-handed at the present time. In a blowout game, this isn’t an issue, but I’m sure it’s something that opposing managers will exploit for the rest of the season.

Well, the fans were clamoring for a trade, and they finally got one this morning. Jarrod Washburn is now a Tiger. Personally, I’m surprised that after the Mariners demanded either Phil Hughes or Joba Chamberlain from the Yankees, they’d settle for Luke French and Mauricio Robles. I don’t know anything about Robles (in fact, I’d never heard of him prior to today). Luke French made some nice starts for the Tigers and may become an effective 4 or even 3 starter, but he’s no Joba Chamberlain. Now, here’s hoping that Washburn can maintain that 2.64 ERA that he’s had all year. There’s still discussion about whether a trade for a hitter could still happen given the fact that the Tigers didn’t exactly sell the farm for Washburn. If there is, I probably will not do another update before tomorrow.

After an off-day, can the Tigers continue the offensive resurgence against the Indians? The Tribe has been playing better recently, including a very dominating sweep of Seattle last weekend. They just traded away Cliff Lee, who was scheduled to start for them tomorrow (though the Tigers had already beaten him three times this year; given that, I’d rather they trade Pavano away). They have called up Fausto Carmona to start tonight. He has been pitching well in the minor leagues, but even if he hadn’t, I’d still anticipate the Tigers having a tough time against him, cuz, well, they always do. The Tigers do have Edwin Jackson going for them tonight. He had to battle his way through Chicago’s lineup, but only gave up three runs. Let’s try to cut down on the walks, though, okay? He has already beaten Cleveland three times this year.

Yawn

This’ll probably be a short post today, as I don’t have a lot of things to say about last night’s game. That’s not to indicate disgust or depression or anything like that. I just can’t come up with a lot of things to say. The backbreaker in this game was that after the Tigers scored three runs, the Rangers immediately came back with four. And the floodgates opened with their #9 hitter. Meanwhile, from an offensive standpoint, you can’t really say this was about squandering a whole lot of opportunities, because, well, they didn’t have many of those. In fact, there were really only two good opportunities. The Tigers cashed in on one, not on the other, and really didn’t do anything for the entire rest of the game.

I spent today out and about and then on the phone for an hour, so it feels to me like last night’s game happened five weeks ago and that tonight’s game won’t happen for another five weeks. And when you’re in dire need of having your pitcher throw a shutout, I suppose Justin Verlander is a good choice to have on the mound. Perhaps asking for a shutout is hoping for too much, but Justin’s already thrown two at Ranger Ballpark. However, he’s not as dominant on the road as he is at home this year. Scott Feldman will start for the Rangers. He’s had himself a nice year, as have several of the Rangers’ pitchers. He’s got a really good earned run average. The Tiger hitters will have their work cut out for them. Again. No Inge tonight, as I suppose Leyland wants to give him tonight off ahead of the off-day, and Thames is in left field instead of Thomas. Magglio continues to be in the lineup, which I suppose brings me back to my reasonable proposal. It seems that Jim Leyland is thinking along the same lines I was. Maggs hasn’t been spectacular, but he’s okay, I suppose. He’s not been hitting nearly as many ground balls as he had been.

You're Getting a Lump of Coal

Can we finally be rid of the stupid Christmas in July promotion? At any rate, I think Luke French pitched decently, and probably would’ve had a better line had it not been for a couple errors/defensive mistakes (For some reason, the Tigers haven’t played good defense behind Luke French, although Polanco made a nice play on a line drive that he turned into a double play). Tigers’ pitching as a whole did not walk anybody. Meanwhile, as far as the offense is concerned, well, where’s Pudge when you need him? I mentioned that the Tigers had had their way with Jarrod Washburn in recent years, but I neglected to mention that Pudge (who owns Washburn) provided a lot of the damage. You can’t really point towards failure at scoring opportunities, because there really weren’t that many opportunities (I’m not sure Granderson’s triple counts, because with two outs, you only get one chance to score him). Ironically, through the last turn through the rotation, the only win came on the one night the pitching was kinda crappy.

Now we’re all knotted up at the top of the AL Central with the White Sox coming into town, so this weekend’s series could be very good or very bad. We’ve got a full slate of baseball today with the doubleheader. And the White Sox are coming off of Mark Buerhle’s perfect game (Anyone else not want that to happen?), which means that Hawk Harrelson’s head isn’t even gonna fit into the press box. What I’m kind of astounded by is that Buerhle’s perfect game came against the Rays, who have a good offense anyways and in particular possess speed, speed, and more speed. You’d think one of them would’ve managed a piddly little infield single at some point (especially since Buerhle gets lots of ground balls). At any rate, though, that means we will not have to see him in this series. For Game 1, the Tigers will face Jose Contreras. Contreras is normally a punching bag for the Tigers, but in his first start back from the minors back in June, he absolutely shut them down, which had all of us in fits. However, he proceeded to rattle off several good starts after that, almost halving his ERA in the process, so maybe it was not a fluke. He has not been quite as sharp recently. Justin Verlander was sharp in his last start, but not sharp enough, as the Tigers only scored one run. The White Sox are one of his two “problem” teams, though he got a complete game win against them at U.S. Cellular Field in June, outdueling Jon Danks. Carlos Guillen is back, too, after going 3-for-4 (all singles) in Toledo last night. He did not play the whole game, but the Mud Hens had a 10-run third inning and the Syracuse Chiefs had position players pitching for them for the bulk of the game. Guillen still can’t play the field or bat right-handed, so for now he’ll be a left-handed DH. Josh Anderson has been DFA’d, but I do hope he clears waivers and gets sent to Toledo. He would be a very useful call-up in September as a late-inning pinch-runner. I will try to do a recap of this game before the second game starts.

[Cutsey Pun Headline Deleted]

Considering that the Tigers are in New York, the home of Broadway, I had the perfect pun all set and ready to go, but considering the latest news on Zumaya, it would be inappropriate for me to use it. Zumaya said he felt something pop in his shoulder while pitching last night, and now he’s on his way back to Detroit for an MRI. Here we go again. Now, he says the pop happened when he threw ball four to Swisher, so it was late in the inning, long after he gave up the home run to Teixiera, but I can’t help but wonder if there were any warning signs at all (which brings me back to the old adage of not pitching hurt). The generalized feeling on the blogosphere is that considering all the complaining, criticism, and declaration that Zumaya could never be an effective pitcher again, no one seriously wanted this to happen. For what it’s worth, Zoom says the pain is in a different part of his shoulder from where the stress fracture was. At this point all we can do is hope this isn’t as bad as it sounds. As far as the rest of the game in a nutshell, well, Luke French kind of got in and out of trouble all night, but I suppose he pitched effectively enough. The Tigers had ten hits but only three runs, which isn’t very efficient. Phil Hughes just made them look bad, and I don’t like that. On a somewhat lighter note, I think I may have found the root cause of the problem:


Where Dick Cheney goes, bad things tend to follow.

I’m writing this post now instead of when I get back from work because it’s a freakin’ day game today and it’ll probably be two-thirds of the way over before I get home. And it’s a battle of aces. The last time Justin Verlander faced the Yankees, it started off that dominant stretch that he went through in May and early June. It would be so totally awesome if this start could set off another dominant stretch for him. He’s been a little more human as of late, but he is coming off a really good start against the Indians. CC Sabathia has already lost to the Tigers once this year but pitched well, and he tends to pitch really well in the second half. He’s coming off a somewhat rough start against the Angels. Hopefully we’ll get news on Zumaya sometime today (and hopefully it’s good news).

Hey, We Beat Zack Greinke!

Photo: AP

I can’t give you a lot of firsthand insight into this game, because by the time I got home from work, it was the bottom of the eighth inning and there were two out. At any rate, from what I’ve heard, Luke French did a decent enough job. Billy Butler solved him almost immediately and he fell behind a few hitters, but you can sometimes get away with that sort of thing when you’re facing a normally below average offense like the Royals (and yes, with the injuries they’ve had, I would classify the Royals’ offense as “below average” rather than “underachieving,” like I did with Oakland). It looks as though the bullpen turned in a strong performance, capped off by Rodney’s perfect ninth. Meanwhile, the offense didn’t manage a whole lot against Royals’ pitching (which, against Greinke, is to be expected), but they were able to manufacture a few runs (and take advantage of some mental lapses by the Royals’ defense), which they did with great success early in the year but hadn’t done a lot of lately. As I’ve said before, I don’t find small ball to be that entertaining, but it’s nice to be able to do it, cuz that’s usually the only way you’re gonna beat guys like Zack Greinke, and with the Tigers’ pitching staff being reasonably strong, you can eke out a few wins that way. By the way, Brandon Inge’s bat seems to have gone quiet over the past few days, but he’s still got that defense. And he made Web Gems last night. Nothing like a little free publicity.

Before last night’s game, Jim Leyland announced that the newly called-up Clete Thomas will form one half of a left-right platoon with Magglio Ordoñez in right field. While I can’t say I’m happy about the decision from an “uneducated fan” perspective, from an “educated fan” perspective, it makes logical sense, and I can’t come up with any rational argument against it. As of right now, Maggs hasn’t provided Leyland with much incentive to not make such a move, and judging by his (brief) comments, Maggs knows and understands this. And from the perspective of a general manager, it provides Dave Dombrowski with the chance that Maggs won’t reach enough plate appearances for his option to automatically vest (simply because the vast majority of people in this world are right-handed), and it’ll give the Tigers an opportunity to resolve this contract problem without things getting (too) ugly (This is why I hate contract negotiations). Now, it still might not work. The plate appearances thing will largely be dependent on the schedule (For instance, last year the Tigers went through a stretch of two or three weeks without facing a lefty, while on the last road trip this year, five of the nine starting pitchers they faced were left-handed). For the record, currently the White Sox and Indians both have three lefties in their rotation, while Minnesota has two and Kansas City has one. Also, if Clete Thomas struggles or gets injured, then what do you do? Still, I like Magglio a lot, and it’s sad that they’ve had to resort to something like this. I went through something very similar last year when Leyland decided to alternate Pudge and Inge behind the plate, and I came up with what I deemed to be a very reasonable proposal then and I think that proposal fits well now: It’s up to Magglio to play his way back into the lineup more. If he gets hot and starts mashing lefties, then Leyland should give him the chance to start a little bit against righties (maybe against some that he’s had good numbers against, at least to start out with). And then see how it goes from there. In Pudge’s case, he got hot almost immediately after the alternation started, but that whole thing ultimately lasted about two weeks at the most, because Brandon Inge ended up on the disabled list shortly thereafter, so Pudge became the starting catcher again by default. I’m not sure if he would’ve been given that job had that not happened (he DID earn it, though, no matter what anyone else says), but it is worth noting that Pudge did catch most games even after Brandon returned, right up to a few days before he got traded. I understand that the contract situation complicates matters a little more in Magglio’s case (meaning there’s a lot less wiggle room), but I still think it’s a reasonable proposal.

Okay, with the heavy roster analysis stuff out of the way, I’d like to mention a couple of oddities about the last two games. First, remember the second game where a guy sitting behind the dugout caught a large bat shard one-handed while talking on his cell phone? He was at the game last night, too. I noticed him in one of the crowd shots during the ninth inning. Also, I forgot to mention this in the last post, but right before Polanco hit the two-run homer, Bruce Chen struck out Granderson and the Royals started jogging off the field thinking it was the third out. That is the third time in the last two weeks that a team has lost track of how many outs there were. It happened to the Dodgers, and then later in the week it happened to the Red Sox (that was the game in which the Red Sox blew a 10-1 lead in the late innings).

The Tigers are off today, and tomorrow night starts the last series before the All-Star Break. It’ll be against the Indians, who will likely be kind of limping in (although as I write this, they DO lead the White Sox 6-2 in the second inning). The Indians have a good offense, much better than the Royals (and with some of the Tiger pitchers having issues with the Royals, that might be a problem). Their pitching continues to be a major issue, although the Tigers will be facing their two most effective starting pitchers in this series (at the same time, they are sending THEIR two most effective pitchers out there as well). There seems to be some confusion as to whether the Indians are starting Cliff Lee or Carl Pavano tomorrow night, but the majority opinion seems to lean towards Cliff Lee, so I’ll go with that. The Tigers have beaten Lee twice this year, although they didn’t exactly knock him around either time (and both times, he was just plain outdueled by Justin Verlander). Lee’s only 4-8, but he’s got a really good earned run average, so he must not be getting a lot of run support. The Tigers will be sending out Edwin Jackson, who also doesn’t get a lot of run support, and based on who he’s up against, he probably shouldn’t expect much for this game, either. Two pitchers who don’t get much run support? Something’s gotta give. And the Tigers may be off today, but I am not. I will be at tonight’s Mud Hens game, and hopefully I’ll have a full report for you tomorrow. By the way, you still have about an hour left to vote Brandon Inge (and his running mate, Shane Victorino) into the All-Star Game. They were both leading their respective leagues as of two o’clock, but not by much, so now is not the time to be complacent. Keep voting!

Sleep Is Overrated

Photo: AP

When I got home from work, it was a little after 9:00 and it was the fifth inning (though I did know the score because I was able to follow the game at work), and though I’m not naïve enough to believe a 5-run lead is safe at the Metrodome, I didn’t really expect that I would be in store for four more hours and eleven more innings of baseball. And they were some of the most nerve-wracking innings I’ve ever sat through. I can’t give a lot of insight into Luke French’s performance, since I watched most of it on ESPN GameCast and only saw the tail end of his outing on TV. Leyland said he was rusty because he hadn’t pitched in 10 days, but I’m a little bit surprised he didn’t let French try to get the final out of the fifth to qualify for the win, even though there were a couple runners on. Meanwhile, can Zach Miner not pitch for the rest of this series? I don’t know why, but every time he’s taken the mound at the Metrodome this year, he has not pitched well at all. Also, why is it that the Tiger pitchers cannot throw strikes to Nick Punto? He has drawn a ridiculous amount of walks in the season series, and almost all the walks have led to Twins rallies. The guy’s hitting .210 and has almost no power. At any rate, the rest of the bullpen put up a valiant effort (especially Zumaya, who hopefully will suffer no ill effects), although Dolsi didn’t exactly wow me (nothing new there). It’s not like they had a choice, though. He was the last pitcher in the ‘pen, and they had Galarraga warming up. Now, on any given day, I prefer Galarraga to Dolsi immensely, but in this situation, I’m glad it didn’t come to that, because that would’ve totally screwed up the rotation (not to mention Galarraga’s struggles against the Twins). However, Freddy Dolsi’s gotta make a better effort to learn the signs. I could be wrong, but crossing up your catcher three or four times in three innings seems a tad bit excessive.

I missed the early offensive outburst (although the Laird home run happened just as I got in my car), so as they went through all those innings deadlocked and unable to do anything against the Twins’ bullpen, I couldn’t help but wonder if they might have chased Kevin (not Kyle) Slowey a bit too quickly. Still, seven runs should be enough to win. Every Tiger that appeared in the game (be it starting, pinch runner, or pinch hitter) got a hit at some point. Cabrera came closest to drawing the collar, as he only went 1-for-8 (that’ll tank your batting average). Miggy may not have had a sterling night at the plate, but it was Polanco who drew the most abuse. He struck out three times (exceptionally rare for him), and then fouled a ball off his manhood (I’m sure every male watching that just cringed). He had the last laugh though, as he delivered not one, but two RBI singles, one in the fourteenth and one in the sixteenth (R.A. Dickey gave up nine hits in three innings). It was a brief but rather ironic night for Magglio, who lined into a double play instead of grounding into one (He just can’t win, although part of that was the fault of Raburn and some bad baserunning), then later coming up with a groundball single for an RBI (at this point, I don’t care that it was a ground ball; Magglio needed that). By the way, here is another reason why I am unhappy that Maggs cut his hair: I’m having tremendous difficulty recognizing him if he’s not the main focus of the camera shot. In the past ten days, I have mistaken him for Raburn, Cabrera, and Chad Durbin.

Today, the boys are on big Fox for a late-afternoon game (not the “A” game, but I prefer Mark Grace to Tim McCarver anyways). They’re probably counting on Edwin Jackson to give them some innings today (lots of them, preferably). Edwin Jackson is probably looking for his mates to give him some run support. He hasn’t made many bad starts this year, but his only outing against the Twins was one of them, although he was pretty much cruising until the seventh inning, when things kind of imploded. His career numbers against the Twins are not good. Meanwhile, he’ll be facing off against the same pitcher as in that matchup: Francisco Liriano. Liriano was struggling for most of the season (though you couldn’t convince the Tigers of that; they can’t do anything against him), but his last two starts have been really good. Even though the ‘pen was emptied last night, it’s in better shape than you might think. We probably won’t see Zumaya or Dolsi for the rest of the weekend, but everyone else should be good to go. As you would expect, neither starting catcher from last night will be behind the plate today. Mauer is the Twins’ DH, while Laird gets the day off and Dusty Ryan will start. Your Mood Music for today: Well, it is the 4th of July. I was torn between two pieces of music, but I figured I’d extend them over the holiday weekend, since there is no way I’m going to be able to get my slideshow done before tomorrow (Look for it in September). At any rate, enjoy some Neil Diamond with your barbecue and baseball game today. Happy Fourth!

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.”