Not Stopping the Bleeding

I know the Tigers struggled on the road last year, but most of those struggles were from an offensive standpoint. There were some ugly blowouts, but for the most part, the pitching staff gave up one extra run, maybe two. Not five or six. I'm not going to get into Brad Penny's performance because I didn't see it, other than to say that it looks like it was better than his first outing (though that's not saying much). To tell you the truth, I was mostly upset that the bullpen blew what would have been a win for Brayan Villarreal (who, by the way, has a REALLY nice slider). Earlier in the day, the Tigers placed Ryan Perry on the DL with an eye infection. I'm hoping it's not pinkeye, which is extremely contagious, but from what I've heard, it doesn't sound like pinkeye. I guess the problem is that there's inflammation and he can't wear his contact lenses. Anyways, until he gets back, they need someone else to handle the seventh inning. Apparently back in spring training Leyland said he'd give Brad Thomas and Enrique Gonzalez the first crack at it should both Zumaya and Perry go down, and that didn't really seem to work. From what he said last night, I gather that he was prepared for the possibility of Brian Roberts getting a base hit, because he said that the killer was the walk to Nick Markakis. And really, the ball that Vladimir Guerrero hit to get the Orioles tied was not that bad a pitch and it wasn't hit well at all but it found a hole (I'm surprised none of the reporters asked Don Kelly what happened in the outfield, because I've never seen him make a throw like that).

I'm also not really going to talk about the offense much, because I didn't see most of that, either. It appears that Alex Avila and Austin Jackson are looking better at the plate (although in Jackson's case, most of his at-bats have looked good; he just wasn't getting any results out of them). With all the griping about the bullpen, I'm surprised that no one questioned why Magglio didn't pinch-hit for Raburn (only reason being that Magglio's more likely to put the ball in play). I'm not saying he should have, but it's not like fans to not question something like that. 

And so it is finally time to open up Comerica Park. It'll be good to see those home whites again. The first opponent on the home schedule is the Kansas City Royals, who are off to a decent start this year. They took three of four from the Angels and then split with the White Sox (although the Royals held a three run lead in the ninth inning with two out and nobody on in their last game, and Joakim Soria proceeded to give up four runs. They tied it in the bottom of the ninth but eventually lost in extras). They have played a lot of extra-inning games already. They'll start Kyle Davies today, who either gets beat up by the Tigers or completely shuts them down. Max Scherzer will have the honor of starting Opening Day. He's looking to bounce back from giving up six earned runs against the Yankees (but still getting the win). And for your Mood Music: It's the traditional home opener song (apologies if the sound is wrong; I can't turn the sound on the computer right now so I have no way of checking). 

Lakeland Day 4: Tigers vs. Phillies (Again)

Well, it was another loss, which I hope isn't the start of a new trend, and I didn't have an epic win like I did yesterday, but I think I came away with a decent haul, getting autographs from Jake Wood (the first African-American to ever play for the Tigers), Will Rhymes, and Ryan Perry. For analysis of the game, head on over to No Run Support. For more pictures, head on over to Facebook. For random observations, stay right here:

• Even though I really don't care for the Phillies (and the fact that there were a TON of Phillies fans at the game was annoying), it was nice to see Placido Polanco again. He even signed autographs for some of the Tigers fans (I didn't get in on that, though, because he didn't sign very many and I was in the wrong spot). 
• Jimmy Rollins is TINY. He might be shorter than Will Rhymes.
• I know I have a tendency to knock Victor Martinez's defense, but I'll give credit where credit is due. He made a real nice play fielding a slow roller up the first base line while Jose Valverde was on the mound. He practically did a somersault in throwing the ball to first, just nabbing the runner. Very nice.
• The other entertaining point of the game came a little bit later. Andy Dirks hit a hot smash back to the mound that got caught in the webbing of the pitcher's glove. Dirks got a base hit out of the deal.
• There's a feature at Joker Marchant Stadium called Tiger Trivia wherein they ask a member of the crowd a trivia question and if they get it right, they win...something (I think it's a hotel stay or free food or something). And the questions are usually super easy. Today's was "Who was the last Tiger to throw a no-hitter?" The general sentiment of the crowd was to ask "Officially or unofficially?" This was followed by a lot of people agreeing with each other that "yeah, it was a perfect game."
• While waiting out by the player exits (which wasn't as great as yesterday because there were a ton of people, so players didn't stop, and I understand why), I met a woman who was a huge fan of Armando Galarraga, so we were able to commiserate (and she is flat-out convinced that he's going to have a huge year and the Tigers will regret trading him; yes, there's a part of me that hopes she's right). I also met a woman who was a huge Pudge fan, so we were able to gleefully reminisce and talk about what a marvelous player he is.
• I don't know where Miguel Cabrera gets the idea that Ryan Perry is quiet. He was chatting up a storm with the fans in the parking lot. Someone asked him if he was a sweetheart, to which he replied "Sometimes." For some reason I overcame my shyness at that point and added, "Not when he's on the mound," which got a smile out of him. I also told him I liked his hair long like it is now.
• And with that, my Lakeland trip has come to a close. It's been an absolute blast, totally worth the expense. Of course, the highlight was meeting Miguel Cabrera. That alone made the entire trip worth it. My next post will probably be from back home in Ohio, so until then, happy baseball!

To End Opposite of Where We Began?

Back in the early part of the season, the bullpen was the strength of the team while the rotation faltered. Now, those roles seem to have reversed. After the hype brought up about the Scherzer, Jackson pitching matchup, they pulled out just about even. Each one didn’t have their best stuff but managed to sidestep major trouble. Their lines were nearly identical. They gave up the same number of runs on the same number of hits. The only difference was that Scherzer walked one more batter. So it became a battle of the bullpens, and the Tigers’ ‘pen wasn’t able to hold onto the lead. I have no insight to give on Valverde, since it looked like the splitter had been working early in the inning and the hits he gave up were on fastballs. And so that leaves Ryan Perry and the hanging slider. I’m not an expert on mechanics, but Jim Leyland’s postgame comments suggested that the hanging slider was well within Perry’s control. He seemed to hearken back to that “lack of urgency” that he thinks Perry has. I’m not sure if that means Perry is too casual or what, but if he wants to remain the setup man, he can’t continue throwing hanging sliders, if indeed that is something he can control.

The offense didn’t fare all that badly against Edwin Jackson. I thought there’d be a bunch of complaints about Don Kelly batting right behind Miguel Cabrera, but I didn’t see any. Still, I’m sure there were some, but Kelly had quite a good day with three RBIs including a two-run homer. The problem for the Tigers was once they got into the White Sox bullpen, they didn’t do anything. Is it supposed to be that easy for a guy who was just drafted (It’s not just the Tigers, though; Chris Sale has been shutting down just about everyone since his call-up)?

The series continues tonight and the Tigers will be facing Freddy Garcia. His ERA at Comerica Park is barely over two and the Tigers usually have a tough time being patient against him. They did get to him for five runs the last time they saw him, but in their two previous meetings, he shut them down. Meanwhile, it’s September, and yet this will be the first time this season that Justin Verlander has faced the White Sox. He hasn’t faced them since game 162 last year. Historically, the White Sox have given him fits, but he handled them well last year. He even had two complete game wins against them. AJ Pierzynski (who is hot right now) has been a thorn in his side in the past, going 14-for-42 (.333) with three home runs and twelve RBIs. Carlos Quentin and Alex Rios also have good numbers against him.

The Drawback of Pitching Duels

It seems the Tigers have fallen into that same trap they were in about a month ago, where they would fight their hearts out but consistently came up just barely short. Max Scherzer was very impressive. For the most part, he mowed through a normally stressful lineup rather easily. Unfortunately, the one lapse he had ended up costing him. For a span of about five batters, the Twins hit absolute bullets. Scherzer escaped with minimal damage thanks to a terrific double play by Austin Jackson, but the one run he gave up proved to be too much. I still think that in this day and age, any starting pitcher who goes nine innings should get credit for a complete game, even if it goes into extras, but I digress. However, Ryan Perry failed to bounce back from his rough outing on Tuesday and ended up losing the game (though, to be fair, he did not get help from his friends; Cuddyer probably would have been out on the stolen base attempt if Alex Avila had made a good throw). Meanwhile, the offense ended up getting the Francisco Liriano that they saw in April, not the one from June/July. It’s hard to tell where Liriano’s effectiveness ended and the hitting ineffectiveness began. There were a couple baserunning mistakes that should not have happened, and potentially that cost them runs as well.

The series concludes tonight, and it’ll be up to Justin Verlander to get the win. Like Scherzer, he was very good in his start against the Blue Jays, giving up two solo home runs as his only damage. He’s had two decent starts against the Twins this year, although he actually pitched better in the game he lost than in the game he won, at least in terms of innings pitched and pitch count. And you can bet that unless Jim Thome’s back is still bothering him, he’ll be in there against Verlander. The Tigers will face Scott Baker, who is coming off a win against the Mariners. I’ve given this spiel before. Against the Tigers, he usually gives up somewhere between three and five runs. Usually. Occasionally he’ll only give up one run or give up a bunch of runs just to shake things up. This is already shaping up to be an odd sort of game. Usually in Minnesota they have a day game to end a series. This is a night game.

Que Lastima

Even I admitted that the odds weren’t good for Detroit in this game, and that’s how it turned out, but I don’t think any of us really labeled a bullpen meltdown as the most likely scenario. Both Phil Coke and Ryan Perry had command problems, and the result was a walk, two hit batters, and then another walk, this time with the bases loaded, before Delmon Young delivered the death blow single. Perry eventually recovered, but it was too late. And it’s really a damn shame, because Armando Galarraga deserved better. That was by far the best he has ever pitched against the Twins. I was really impressed. He looked to be just about in complete control for the first five innings. They did start to center his pitches in the sixth inning, and the wheels almost came off, but after a fortuitous bounce that created a ground rule double and cost the Twins a run, he got the last out and left with the lead intact (I wonder if that’s a fatigue factor, because the same thing happened to him in his last start, and to a lesser extent, the start before that; he’s been able to get out of it every time, though). One other important point is that he didn’t walk anybody, and that’s especially noteworthy because in the past he’s had a lot of trouble throwing strikes to Twins batters. I did read a quote from him where he said he was unhappy that he couldn’t go deeper into the game, but I hope he takes a lot of positive things from this outing and gets a big confidence boost from it.

And I still can’t figure out Brian Duensing. I mean, he could definitely be a solid lefty starter, but I can’t see anything that would support his dominant ERA. The funny thing is that his ERA actually went down after his outing last night because all the runs the Tigers scored were unearned. Still, Casper Wells has looked good over the past couple games. He had three hits last night. Jhonny Peralta also had three hits, which everyone seems to have forgotten about because he struck out to end the game. It was an unusually quiet night for Miguel Cabrera, who got pitched to in all his at-bats (even when there were runners in scoring position), and he only went 1-for-5 to show for it (and that one hit was a single with the bases empty).

Well, if the Tigers are still going to take the series, they have their two best candidates to make it happen. Tonight, it’s Max Scherzer. He was brilliant in his last start against the Blue Jays. He hasn’t faced the Twins since very early in the season, where they knocked him around real good. However, he’s a different pitcher now. Those numbers might mean nothing (or they could mean everything and the Twins are destined to be his kryptonite as well). Meanwhile, Francisco Liriano has been very good as well. He’s also coming off a win, this one against the Texas Rangers. He did give up five runs to the White Sox two starts ago, though. He’s had a strange season against the Tigers. Throughout his career, he has dominated Detroit. The Tigers have very rarely done anything against him. And yet they’re responsible for his worst two starts of the year in terms of giving up runs. They scored six runs off him in six innings at Target Field in late June (that was the game in which Joel Zumaya was injured, and remains their only win in the Twins’ new ballpark). Then at Comerica Park a couple weeks later, they scored seven runs off him in 1.2 innings. Something’s gotta give. Because it’s September, the rosters have expanded and the Tigers have called up Robbie Weinhardt and Max St. Pierre. For Max St. Pierre, this will mark the first time he’s been on a big league roster after fourteen years in the Tigers system. It’s been a long road for him, and that’s an understatement. He’s actually had a decent year between Erie and Toledo, especially when you consider the fact that just about none of the catchers in the Tigers’ farm system did anything offensively.  He hit .274 between the two teams, albeit in only 59 games (he suffered a broken hand that kept him out a while).  With the lefty on the mound, I’m not sure if he would get a start or if Gerald Laird (assuming his back is healthy) will get the call (Laird does not have good numbers against Liriano, for what it’s worth).

It's All in Your Head

I wish I knew more about psychology and that sort of thing, because then I might be able to give a little more insight into how to fix Armando Galarraga’s confidence problems (I am currently reading a book called The Psychology of Baseball, but so far it mostly deals with the unconscious processes that allow a player to hit, pitch, or catch a ball). At the very least, I wish I had a way to give him some words of encouragement or knock some sense into him. I talked yesterday about how he hated the fact that he keeps giving up home runs, and I think that played into what happened last night. He was generally around the strike zone and making his pitches up until the Matt Joyce home run. I think that got him all out of whack and he had control problems for almost the rest of the evening (though his pitches looked a bit better in the fifth, different sleeves or not). He’s generally a person who is not very emotional on the mound, and yet last night there were a couple of instances where he looked very frustrated, yelling a bit and punching his glove, which is uncharacteristic. I think he let his frustration get the better of him and he’s got to figure out a way to get that under control, because sooner or later he’s going to run out of chances, and I don’t want that to happen. Leyland didn’t sound too pleased with him. He also didn’t sound too pleased with Ryan Perry, who allowed two add-on runs right after the offense had cut the deficit to one run. I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the good work done by Brad Thomas and Phil Coke, however. By the way, I did see the new Dr. Rahmani commercial featuring Armando Galarraga. I didn’t realize what it was at first, and when I did, it made me laugh probably more than it should have (It could have been worse. My mom saw the commercial and thought that he was one of Dr. Rahmani’s associates).

The Tiger hitters actually had a good approach against David Price, who had his own issues with throwing strikes. The difference with Price is that he has the luxury of being able to reach back and blow 98 MPH fastballs by people. After some hopeful signs on Sunday, Miguel Cabrera remained firmly stuck in his slump. And Jhonny Peralta seems to have inherited the curse of hitting the ball hard right at people. Still, Ryan Raburn has quietly been having some good at-bats recently (give credit where credit is due). Gerald Laird was 2-for-2 with a walk (same here). And Brennan Boesch is giving little signs of maybe breaking out of it a little bit, this time with an opposite field home run.

After feeling like something bad was going to happen last night (and it did), I don’t really get any strong senses about tonight’s game. Max Scherzer pitches against the Rays since his no-hit bid was so rudely interrupted by Matt Joyce’s grand slam. He did a nice job against the White Sox but came away with a no-decision. Meanwhile, the Rays were supposed to start the somewhat struggling Wade Davis, but he returned to St. Petersburg to have his shoulder examined, so the Rays are calling up Jeremy Hellickson to make the spot start. Personally, I would rather they take their chances with Davis, because Hellickson was very impressive against the Twins. Being a rookie, obviously none of the Tigers have seen him.    

Isn't This Supposed to be the Easy Part of the Schedule?

I’m not going to give a lot of discussion on this game because I ended up missing a lot of it. I went out with my old college chums after the first inning and though we got back before the game was over, I wasn’t really paying that much attention to it. I did see that Scherzer’s velocity was still high, which is good and means that he’s sticking to whatever mechanical adjustment he made. I can’t really comment on anything besides that because Gameday doesn’t give you a good feel for such things (although I seemed to notice a lot of Royals singling on “soft fly balls” and the like, which gave me the impression that a lot of those hits were not hit hard). Meanwhile, Ryan Perry has suddenly gone from being really effective to being really ineffective in the span of two weeks. That doesn’t make sense either, and I can’t give a lot of insight into that either because most of it has happened in games I haven’t seen (though at least it made him get rid of the mohawk). And I can’t say much about the offense or lack thereof either because all the scoring happened on a Brennan Boesch home run that I did not see.

And so tonight is game 2 of this series. Justin Verlander had royally pissed me off on Tuesday because I had heard that his goatee was gone (I like facial hair. So sue me). I never saw him on Tuesday, but I have caught glimpses of him since. It definitely had been gone, but it looks like it’s coming back, and if so, I totally approve. Personal grooming aside, he’s pitched decently in his last two starts but has lost both of them (a lot of that was due to lack of run support). He’s been dominant in his career against the Royals, but this year’s brand of Royals seem to be a good fastball-hitting team that lives and dies by singling you to death, and they certainly seem capable of that. And Verlander throws a lot of fastballs. Meanwhile, the Royals will start Luke Hochevar. He’s had an up-and-down season, but he has pitched two good games against the Tigers this year (and he’s handcuffed Miguel Cabrera, who previously owned him). Again, I’m not sure how much of this game I’m gonna see. There’s more reunion stuff happening tonight.

Then Again, It IS the West Coast

A busy day yesterday prevented me from blogging about Wednesday’s game until now, although I can’t really delve into details since I only saw pretty much the top of the first inning and that’s it. But on the west coast, a lot of times up is down, black is white, front is back, and Ryan Perry is a bad pitcher. For shame, too, because I’ve heard Jeremy Bonderman pitched quite a good game. I caught wind of a 4-1 score in the seventh and thought that this one was in the bag. Apparently it wasn’t. At any rate, I heard we also got a 2-run shot from Magglio, and the rookies had themselves a good time at the plate as well. Someone (I can’t remember who) pointed out that this was a series in which each team’s best hitter was essentially a non-factor at the plate. Miguel Cabrera wasn’t there, and Ichiro went 0-for-9.

And so now the Tigers are finally back home and finished with going to the west coast (and in the minds of most experts, their most difficult part of the season is over with). They aren’t done with the AL West though. First up on this homestand is a four-game series with the Athletics, who scored quite a few runs in their just-completed series with the Orioles. Up until that point, they had not been a particularly good road team. At any rate, the Tigers will have all their starters except Gio Gonzalez, and in turn, they’ll see everyone except Jeremy Bonderman. Tonight’s starting pitcher is Dontrelle Willis (and by unfortunate coincidence, this means you’re likely to hear a lot of bad-taste Gary Coleman jokes, so I’ll spare you). D-Train is coming off a somewhat mediocre start against the Dodgers in which he started out okay but then faltered and hit a batter with the bases loaded. Things snowballed from there. Anyways, he’s faced the A’s once as a Tiger (at least), and walked a bunch of them, if I remember correctly. Other than that, he doesn’t have a lot of history against A’s batters. Just as Dontrelle Willis was once the ace of the Florida Marlins, Ben Sheets was once the ace of the Milwaukee Brewers. He started off this year not pitching that well (as his high earned run average will attest to), but he has been better lately. Six Tigers have faced him before, but only two have more than ten at-bats against him, both guys that spent quite a bit of time in the National League. Adam Everett is 12-for-34 with a double and a home run off Sheets, which is probably why he’s in the lineup tonight. Miguel Cabrera, is, well, 3-for-18 with ten strikeouts. Yikes. Still, it’s nice to see Cabrera’s name in the lineup again. Carlos Guillen is also back off the DL, and so the entire Venezuelan contingent is whole for the first time this season.

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.

One Split Done and One Man Down

Photo: AP

You know, I used to be able to go four consecutive days on six hours’ sleep, but apparently I can’t do it anymore. At least, not if I want to be effective (you try taking an exam on glomerulopathies and Acute Kidney Injury when you’re sleep-deprived and you have a splitting headache). But at any rate, I got the split I wanted, but not without some more weirdness. And that weirdness is that the back end of the rotation did a much better job pitching against the Angels than the front end of the rotation. Verlander just had no command for the majority of his outing, especially with the offspeed stuff. And with the offspeed stuff not working, the Angels could just sit and wait for the fastball, and I think they shortened his night by about two innings with all the foul balls. It reminded me of the Red Sox. There was some more good work out of the bullpen, even though Phil Coke and Ryan Perry combined for an adventure in the eighth.

The offense, meanwhile, flipped the script: They scored a bunch of runs off the starter and didn’t do anything against the bullpen (and forgive me for not going into a lot of detail; I’m so tired that everything’s kind of a blur right now). A lot of the usual suspects (Maggs, Cabrera, Guillen) knocked in most of the runs. Laird and Everett combined to finally get the Tigers a run in the second inning of a game. Unfortunately they lost Guillen as he was trying to score the sixth run (which would have scored). It looked to me like he tripped over third base as he was rounding the bag. He says the hamstring injury happened because he fell down, not the other way around, and both Tom Gage and Jason Beck have reported that he was walking around the clubhouse fairly normally with a minimal amount of pain, so hopefully that remains the case and he only has to serve the minimum stay on the DL.

Thank God, the late start times are over with for a while. The Tigers are now in Texas, where the games start at a much more reasonable time of 8:05 Eastern. They got in at about 6 AM, so there’s gonna be a bunch of tired guys on the field tonight (The Rangers, meanwhile, are coming home from kind of a crappy road trip in which they got swept by the Yankees and lost three to the Red Sox before finally winning last night). Max Scherzer was sent there early, so he should have had a good night’s sleep (I always wonder how that works. Do they charter a flight specifically for him or does he take commercial airlines?). He was decent his last time out against the Mariners, acting as stopper and kind of righting the rotation again. He’s faced the Rangers once, in Interleague play last year, and it was a good start in which he got the win. However, that means that each Ranger has three at-bats against him at the most, and you can’t draw much from that. Michael Young has a triple against him, for what it’s worth (and he gets called Mike Young on baseball-reference). Scott Feldman was supposed to get the start for the Rangers, but he’s been scratched with illness so Rich Harden, who was supposed to start tomorrow night, will start tonight instead on regular rest. Harden is coming off a not-so-great start against the Yankees in which he walked six in 3.2 innings. He’s been tough on the Tigers, although they beat him last year when he was with the Cubs (or, I should say, they won the game he started; they would have beaten him had Joel Zumaya not given up the lead; Ryan Raburn hit a walk-off home run in that game). But the individual batting lines against Harden are not good. The best anyone’s hit him is .273 and that was Carlos Guillen. Oops. The next best mark is .250 (both Inge and Cabrera). Three Tigers have homered off him: Maggs, Cabrera, and Laird (who is not in the lineup tonight as that home run is the only hit he’s gotten in 8 at-bats off Harden to go along with 4 strikeouts). Harden is a lot tougher on righties, so it looks as though Leyland’s elected to go with every lefty available to him except Don Kelly. Brennan Boesch was called up from Toledo to replace Guillen, and he’s being slid right into the five-slot right behind Cabrera. I probably would’ve had Inge or Boesch batting third with Maggs fifth (since he’s the only other one close to Cabrera’s caliber of hitting, he’s the only one who might afford him some protection), even though that in and of itself is not ideal (though things are even less ideal for the Mud Hens right now; they’re so short-handed on the bench due to injuries and callups that they weren’t using the DH tonight and Ruddy Lugo took a line drive off the face from the very first batter of the game tonight and had to leave). And that also means there are a whopping four rookies in the lineup. Yikes.  

You Can't Come Back Every Time

Well, I know I’m tired of being singled to death by the Royals (+ Jose Guillen homer). I only saw the tail end of the game (plus I listened to most of the seventh inning on the radio), so most of my analysis has to be based on Gameday. Rick Porcello really had to work through the first four innings or so. He managed to finally make an adjustment and go six innings, which surprised me. Things kinda fell apart once the bullpen came in, although everyone already knows about the go-ahead sacrifice fly that probably should have been an error on Gerald Laird. To me, it looked like he never caught it cleanly and never had that firm a grip on it. Therefore, even the slightest bit of contact was gonna jar the ball loose from his hands, and that’s exactly what happened. It’ll happen sometimes, and I know he’ll make the play next time the opportunity presents itself, so there’s no use in dwelling on it. Besides, Perry didn’t help matters by giving up a home run to Jose Guillen on an 0-2 pitch. Phil Coke also had his issues, and Eddie Bonine mostly just pitched into some bad luck.

It looked like the Tigers were going to make their comeback against Kyle Davies in the fifth, when he loaded the bases with nobody out. Miguel Cabrera did deliver the tying run, but he did it by grounding into a double play, which kinda killed that inning. Meanwhile, it seems like the only Kansas City reliever that they can’t touch is John Parrish (Huh?). Unfortunately, it seems Trey Hillman has figured this out. Granted, Joakim Soria is no pushover, and he’d be in along with Parrish if Cabrera hadn’t homered off him last week. There’s been some griping about Leyland using Don Kelly to pinch-hit for Everett, but when you think about it, none of the players on the bench were that attractive an option. Alex Avila hasn’t exactly been swinging a hot bat (plus you don’t want to burn a catcher if you don’t have to) and it’s not a situation you want to put Austin Jackson in. I suppose I would’ve preferred Ramon Santiago to Don Kelly, but that’s splitting hairs, as I can’t imagine any of those four having success against Soria. Hell, Soria made Magglio look really bad when he struck him out in the bottom of the ninth.

Around the blogosphere there’s been a lot of griping about the Tigers who aren’t hitting, particularly Damon and Laird. Obviously, Damon’s got a much better track record, but I still think nine games isn’t really a large enough sample size to know anything. As an attempt to put things into perspective, here’s a list of some other guys who are off to slow starts (averages are as of this morning, and I realize that some of them have played already today):
Milton Bradley (.133)
Mark Reynolds (.179)
Chipper Jones (.188)
Troy Tulowitzki (.212)
Yadier Molina (.200)
Carlos Lee (.097)
AJ Pierzynski (.226)
Adam Dunn (.136)
Michael Young (.156)
Victor Martinez (.229)
Mark Teixiera (.097)

Okay, so the Tigers got through their early stretch against the predicted bottom feeders 6-3, which is pretty good (the equivalent of taking two of three each series). Now they have an off-day, and then the sucky part of the schedule begins (seriously, I didn’t realize how crappy it was when I did my schedule feature cuz I separated it by month). They’ll be playing their next twenty games without an off-day, and something like their next thirty-four games against teams that finished above .500 last year (yeah, I’m being lazy today). At any rate, they start out this stretch on the west coast, beginning with a three-game set against the Mariners. The M’s, who were predicted by many to win the AL West, are off to a slow start this year, but I suspect they’ve got better bullpen pitching than Kansas City or Cleveland, so maybe we shouldn’t rely on comebacks in this series. Jeremy Bonderman will start things off for the Tigers. Prior to beating Cleveland on Saturday, his last win was in 2008, and it was against the Mariners. Ichiro (who was off to kind of a slow start himself) hits him well, as does Milton Bradley, but nothing stands out in his numbers against the rest of the Mariners. The starters need to get seven innings (at least) on a regular basis, though. And it’s a bit mystifying why their pitch counts get so high so fast. They are throwing strikes and they aren’t walking guys (the bullpen is walking too many, but that’s a different story). Even Dontrelle Willis has only walked five in his two starts combined (Granted, there have been a couple of untimely walks mixed in there, as Justin Verlander will attest to). To date, none of the starters have had a start where they threw less than 60% strikes. And yet they’re giving up a ton of hits and opponents are having very long at-bats against them by fouling off a lot of pitches. So how do you fix that? In the meantime, the offense has to find a way to rack up five runs or more against an opposing starter and get his pitch count up so that HE’S the one only going five innings. Unfortunately, they’re facing Felix Hernandez so that might be difficult. There are a couple Tigers with good numbers against him. Gerald Laird’s a decent .278 against him (though if Leyland sticks to his pattern, Alex Avila will be starting this game), but Miguel Cabrera bats .545 (6-for-11) and Johnny Damon is at .615 (8-for-13 with four doubles and a home run; he’s the only current Tiger to have homered off of King Felix). As for your Mood Music, well, we’re on the west coast, and that’s where weird things happen. So I’m gonna do the same thing I did last year and give you the Twilight Zone theme. Have fun with your week of sleep deprivation.

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.

We Were Due For Something Like This

I can’t give insight into the very beginning of the game, and this is gonna be a short post anyways. The ironic thing is that as I was driving home, I was under the impression that Jake Peavy was the one throwing the no-hitter. I didn’t really expect Eddie Bonine to seal the deal, because he’s too prone to giving up home runs, and sure enough, that’s what happened. So, he’s beating himself up for the hanging changeup to Gordon Beckham and Brandon Inge is beating himself up for the error. Still, Bonine certainly did a better job than I expected him to. After Bonine departed, though, I am amazed that the White Sox didn’t put more runs on the board, what with Ryan Perry’s wildness (and one interesting thing that’s been pointed out is that the Tigers went entirely with rookie pitchers last night). I am also amazed that they pulled Peavy after seven innings. The guy’s pitch count was so low, he could easily have gone the distance. I don’t know how he could have a pitch count that low and strike out eight. And I know most guys weren’t striking out on three pitches. And it’s harder to manufacture runs when you can’t get a runner to third with less than two outs (Did they even get a runner to third?). If a runner is at second with one out, it’s still gonna require a base hit to score him (outside of something weird happening). And I could be wrong about this, but I don’t think they ever got the leadoff man on either. There were a few instances where they had runners on first and second with one out, but Peavy always got a strikeout or a double play. And it doesn’t help that most of the Tigers didn’t have good numbers against Peavy in the first place (Miguel Cabrera came into the game 2-for-17 in his career against him, and for the most part, looked completely overmatched).

And so we move on to the second game in this series. Nate Robertson is coming off an important win in Minnesota. Can he keep it up against the White Sox? In his career, his ERA against them is over five, and he says the Cell is one of the hardest places to pitch because the fans tend to be obnoxious (his paraphrased words, not mine). Freddy Garcia, who was briefly with the Tigers last year, will be on the mound for the Sox, and he’s done a very good job for them recently. His September ERA is under 3, and he went eight innings in his last start though he took the loss. And, oh yeah, he’s 15-5 against the Tigers, though they haven’t faced him since 2006. Nate’s simply gonna have to outpitch him, plain and simple.

I'm Still Waiting

Due to school/work, I had not seen the “new and improved” Nate Robertson since he’s come off the DL, at least not in a start. I still haven’t seen that version of him. Nate had no command whatsoever. He walked five and the only reason he only gave up two runs is because of the strong wind knocking balls down. Obviously, you can’t say with 100% certainty that the groin injury was the cause of his problems, but you can certainly suspect that. Nate had several problems last year and this year. Walks were not one of them. He had issues with putting hitters away, but those normally resulted in base hits, not walks. At any rate, the injury finally forced him out of the game and brought Armando Galarraga in. Now, I did not want to see Armando in this game, although probably for different reasons than everyone else. He actually looked very good for the first inning and two-thirds that he was in there. However, between the injury and the fact that he hasn’t pitched much in over two weeks, he doesn’t seem to have a lot of stamina right now, and it appeared like he ran out of steam. The line as a reliever is not good, but in and of itself it’s not so bad. He didn’t get a lot of help from his friends. I can’t be sure about this, but on the Barajas home run, it looked like it was gonna stay in the park and Raburn actually knocked the ball over the fence. And the third run scored on the Ruiz home run that Ryan Perry gave up. Ryan Perry has not had a scoreless outing (and by that, I include his own runs and inherited runners that he’s allowed to score) since August 26th, the last game of the Angels series, and even that was an adventure. Jim Leyland was quoted as saying that the add-on runs are killing them, immediately adding that “some guys are getting too casual.” Was that aimed at Perry? At any rate, Robertson had to have an MRI and will NOT make his next start. So who will make it? Obviously, the leading candidates would be Galarraga, Miner, and Bonine, but all three have their issues. Galarraga has already made three good starts against Kansas City this year, but he’s not 100% healthy and is arguably not stretched out enough right now. Miner has the best stuff of the three, but hasn’t been good at throwing strikes recently. And Bonine is the best at throwing strikes, but gives up too many home runs. I suppose a lot of that will be dictated by how the bullpen is used in the rest of this series.

Okay, tonight we need Edwin Jackson to pitch deep into this game because right now the bullpen is out of whack and could use a night off to straighten things out. Because of the day off, he does have an extra day of rest, which is good, since he threw a lot of pitches his last time out. Jim Leyland left him out there long enough to turn a loss into a win thanks to Brandon Inge’s ninth-inning grand slam against the Rays. He pitched a good game against the Blue Jays in his very first start of the year (a start which I did not see, by the way) but was denied a win because, well, Brandon Lyon struggled in April. He’ll be opposed by native Canadian Scott Richmond, who is the lone righty that the Tigers will see in this series. He has struggled recently, just like Tallet, although Richmond’s problem tends to be one big inning. Outside of that, he’s fine. Like his last start. He gave up five runs to the Twins in the first inning, but only gave up one run after that in five or six innings. I’ll be at work tonight (I hate closing on Saturdays), so it’s the late innings for me.

The Streak Ends at Six

I ended up staying at work an extra half-hour, so I can’t give as much insight into this game as I’d like to, but I will say that things started going downhill for the Tigers while I was driving home. There were a couple of key mistakes by the outfielders, and neither Rick Porcello nor the bullpen were able to overcome them. Ryan Raburn misjudged a ball that Josh Anderson hit (I did not see this, but I was in the car when it happened), which eventually led to two runs, and then there was the ball that Billy Butler hit that Clete Thomas probably should have caught though it would have been a difficult play (He seemed to be more concerned with bracing himself for a collision with the wall). Still, Ryan Perry hasn’t been very effective recently. The walks are down (though he did walk one last night), but he’s given up a lot of hits. Bonderman came in and didn’t look bad until he walked somebody, and then Nate Robertson came in, which confused everyone online (He’s still in line to start Friday, though). Meanwhile, the Tigers managed to score five runs off Bruce Chen, which is decent-enough work, and good enough to win on most nights (I did not see any of these runs score). But they couldn’t do anything against Kansas City’s bullpen. The past couple weeks are kind of strange that way. Kansas City has one of the worst bullpens in the AL (outside of Soria), but the Tigers couldn’t touch them, and Tampa Bay has a good bullpen (in terms of ERA), and yet the Tigers scored a bajillion runs off them. Where’s Grant Balfour when you need him?

Boy, the loss last night sure makes you glad Zack Greinke is not pitching in this series, doesn’t it? One would hope that Justin Verlander would be able to get the job done tonight. However, the last time the Royals saw him, they tagged him for five runs (though two of those were unearned, so it still went in the books as a quality start). He is 9-1 in his career against the Royals. He’ll be opposed by Robinson Tejeda, whom you would think the Tigers would have a shot at, but keep in mind that he blanked the Angels (a much better offense) for 5 1/3 innings and has a 13-inning scoreless streak going. He’s got a good arm but walks can sometimes get him into trouble. He is starting in place of Gil Meche. Hopefully, I won’t be detained at work tonight and can get home at 9:00 (largely because of the game, but I also have a Pharmacology exam, and Justin Verlander is as big a distraction as they come).

Losing In a New and Different Way

It’s been quite a while since the Tigers have lost a proper slugfest. I’d like to give a lot of insight into Jarrod Washburn, but you can’t assess what you never see. I was in class during the six-run first inning. I knew it was happening, because I had the MLB At-Bat app up on my iPod, but that just tells you it happened. It gives you no indication of how hard balls were hit or anything. From the reports, replays, Washburn, Leyland, the radio, and some bloggers, every hit the Rays got up until the Peña home run was not hit hard at all. However, the runs he gave up later were on balls that were hit hard (I could imagine how the earlier bloops might lead to that though. You get frustrated that they’re getting hits off good pitches, which leads you to lose your focus, which leads you to make bad pitches). Regardless of that, the evidence seems to suggest that something about the trade itself has caused Washburn to regress. It’s the only variable in the equation. The question now becomes how could the trade cause him to regress? Whenever I try to ask this question, I always get the same answer: “Detroit’s outfield defense sucks and they play in a smaller ballpark.” I just don’t feel like this is the case. The outfielders haven’t really cost Washburn any runs (outside of the crazy ball that Granderson misplayed). No outfielder would be able to get to those balls that were dumped down the right field line for doubles. And as for Comerica Park being “smaller,” it is still a pitcher’s park that is not particularly home run friendly. And Washburn hasn’t given up many wall-scrapers with the Tigers. Most of the home runs he has given up would’ve been out in any ballpark. So I’m not buying that explanation either. At any rate, Ryan Perry was not any better. Which is a shame, because it took a while, but the offense perked up a bit yesterday by scoring seven runs. Carlos Guillen had a huge day, with four hits and four RBIs.

And so the Tigers have to settle for a split, but let’s be fair: There’s a reason why most of us dislike 4-game series, and that is that they are really tough to win (Unfortunately, there is a really big four-game series that’s looming at the end of September). But now, they gotta take care of business against the Cleveland, and that may be easier said than done. The Indians are doing exactly what they’ve been doing more often than not recently, and that is having a really decent second half. Their offense is still good, even without Victor Martinez and Ryan Garko, and they’re starting to pitch a lot better. They are playing especially well against the Central. They have won their past five series against Central Division opponents (and every other team in the division is included at least once in that stretch). The last time the Tigers and Indians met, the Indians took two of three, and it took the Tigers everything they had in order to win the one game. Edwin Jackson starts tonight for the Tigers, and the last time he saw the Indians, they flat-out wore him down to the tune of 115 pitches in four innings. It was a game the Tigers eventually lost in extra innings, so obviously Jackson got the no-decision. He’ll be opposed by Carlos Carrasco, who came over to Cleveland in the Cliff Lee trade. Carrasco will be making his Major League debut, and apparently he’d been putting up really good numbers in the minors. Plus, he was one of the top prospects for the Philles. The Tigers probably won’t have an easy time of it. And since it’s September, reinforcements have arrived in Jeremy Bonderman, Wilkin Ramirez, Eddie Bonine, Casey Fien, Dusty Ryan, and Brent Dlugach. Armando Galarraga will be called back up on Saturday, and Leyland has said they may call up more after Toledo’s season ends. At any rate, it’s time for the Tigers to take care of their own business, because the rest of the Central is undergoing a see-change. Minnesota has gotten hot for the time being (They’ve got an easier schedule than anyone else, but it’ll depend a lot on whether their pitching improves OR Mauer, Morneau, etc continue to overcome their pitching problems), and the White Sox have seemingly thrown in the towel by trading away Jose Contreras and Jim Thome (Geez, I knew they were on the Road Trip From Hell, but I didn’t expect it would actually kill them; I’m still not sure I’m buying it fully, as they aren’t that far back of Minnesota and their pitching is better). Your Mood Music for tonight: This is it. The stretch run. The pennant chase. September. Where we find out if the Tigers can squeeze out 29 or so more good performances out of their pitchers to get them into October, or whether they’ll be outslugged by the likes of Joe Mauer. I would’ve waited to use this song until the final homestand, but I didn’t want to run the risk of having the Tigers fall out of contention and rendering this song meaningless. And so I bring you Europe’s “The Final Countdown.”

It Was a Long, Strange Trip...But You Gotta Be Happy With It

Be honest. Coming into this series, how many of you were of the mindset that it would take a miracle for the Tigers to win one game? Considering that, a sweep was probably near-impossible to start with. Edwin Jackson did not have good control and he couldn’t keep the Angels anchored at whichever base they started out at (And I think Gerald Laird just flat-out got frustrated and that affected his throwing, because while the first two steals were really close, the third and the fifth were bad throws. The fourth steal came on a pitch in the dirt. However, Laird made a nice heads-up play to pick off Torii Hunter at third to close out an inning). The funny thing is none of the steals really led to a run. The game also featured a strong bounce-back outing from Ryan Perry (sans hair), although he needs to not just assume time has been called (Brandon Inge bailed him out big time). Meanwhile, the offense never really got much going against Saunders outside of the Everett home run and the inning where the first two reached, only to run themselves into a double play with Miguel Cabrera striking out on what was probably ball four. Brian Fuentes made things interesting in the ninth by hitting two (nearly three) batters (hope Laird’s knee/shin is okay) and throwing a fastball right down the middle to Adam Everett (according to Gameday, Everett, and Leyland), but do you really think Everett would hit two home runs in one game? Even the west coast isn’t THAT strange. But hey, after the way this team has been playing on the road, a .500 trip is certainly acceptable (It is what you shoot for, after all). It just happened the opposite way of what you would think it would.

And so, we say goodbye and good riddance to the west coast for the rest of the season (and maybe make a sadder goodbye to the AL West; the Tigers did good against them this year). Enjoy the off-day today, and tomorrow, it’s time for another homestand (I originally typed “homerstand,” which may or may not come true). The Tigers get to see the Tampa Bay Rays for the first time this year (Really? The last weekend of August?). As good as the Tigers have played against the AL West, they’ve been just the opposite against the East. And the Rays are a good team and have been hot recently. They’re on the fringes of the Wild Card race, and yet they have a better record than the Tigers. Their pitching has been much better than it was earlier this year, and while their offense is not as hot as it was at the beginning of the season, it’s still producing with regularity (Carlos Peña in particular has been on a home run tear). And by the way, they run just as much as the Angels, if not more. Yesterday notwithstanding, I’d like to see Gerald Laird behind the plate for most of this series (He’ll definitely get the call Saturday with the Rays starting a lefty, and on Sunday, when Verlander pitches). With Armando Galarraga having been sent to Toledo with elbow inflammation (This revelation does not surprise me, and I wonder if it’s not the first time he’s dealt with it this season), they’re gonna take advantage of the off-day and send out Rick Porcello on regular rest. He didn’t do so well against the A’s, falling behind hitters regularly and paying the price by giving up a couple of long balls to Jack Cust. He’ll be opposed by hard-thrower (and reigning ALCS MVP) Matt Garza, who has pitched well of late. He has never beaten the Tigers (and actually credits Rick Knapp for the success he had last year). I work tomorrow night, so it’ll be the late innings for me.

Two Blogs In the Space of One

Photo: AP

This’ll be a different sort of post (fitting for a west coast swing), since I was unable to do a recap of game 1 yesterday (between school, work, and computer problems). So I’ll discuss both games, beginning with Monday night’s. Angel Stadium lived up to its billing as a bastion of strangeness. I watched the game on TV until there were two outs in the bottom of the sixth, at which point I decided to go to bed (normally I would not do this no matter the score, but school has started and I have a 6 AM wakeup time). I don’t have cable in my bedroom, so I brought up Gameday Audio and figured I’d drift off to sleep with Dan Dickerson and Jim Price in the background. And that’s when everything started going to hell. Obviously, I was too stressed out to get to sleep, so once Leyland removed Brandon Lyon from the game, I turned the radio off, but that didn’t really work either, because then I lay awake wondering what was happening (However, I DID fall asleep without looking at the score again, so I did not find out that the Tigers won until 6 AM yesterday morning). The offense suddenly woke up but the pitching had a mini-meltdown. Bobby Seay was not in there long enough to make an assessment, but both Verlander and Lyon started out strong. Remember, most of the trouble occurred once there were two outs in the respective innings in which they were chased. It’s like the Angels offense is the Borg: Once one adapts, they all adapt. But it’s the west coast. What else would you expect?

Photo: Harry How (Getty Images)

I stayed up for last night’s game in its entirety (figuring that I wouldn’t have to do it again, and that even if I went to bed, I would still just lie awake wondering what was happening, like I did on Monday). It was nice to see the offense alive for two consecutive nights. Miguel Cabrera is red hot right now. Maybe he will get to 100 RBIs after all. He only needs fourteen now, and there’s still about 38 games left to play. Meanwhile, defense was the big story. Jarrod Washburn was very, very shaky to start out with. He got bailed out in the first inning by incredible plays from Curtis Granderson and Brandon Inge. He really struggled through the second, and the bewilderment over the rash of home runs he’s given up as a Tiger started to resurface. However, from the third inning on, he wasn’t so bad. He never really had an easy time of it except for the bottom of the fourth, but he did a good job maneuvering his way around the traffic the Angels had on the bases (And even though he has an unsightly ERA since the trade, the Tigers are 4-1 in games he has started. I don’t understand it either, but that’s really the only stat that ultimately matters). It really took until the bottom of the seventh inning for the west coast weirdness to show up. Zach Miner came out and became extremely gun-shy regarding the strike zone. That’s not so unusual (and actually pitching problems like that are par for the course when the Tigers play in Anaheim). But he got out of it by nailing Bobby Abreu trying to score on a wild pitch with the bases loaded. Fernando Rodney did that once last year to end a game. And one more defensive gem came in the eighth courtesy of Clete Thomas, who bailed out Bobby Seay.

By the way, it has been a while since I’ve discussed personal grooming, so I’d like to take the time to do that now. By now you must’ve noticed the new tattoos that Brandon Inge has on his arms. They are of his sons’ names, and that’s nice, but dear God, they’re enormous. I don’t think I’d ever want a tattoo that covers my entire arm (I have kind of wanted a tattoo for a while, but I’m too indecisive as to what to get and where to put it, not to mention the fact that the profession in which I am going into would necessitate having it somewhere inconspicuous). Plus, what happens if he has more kids? Then there’s Ryan Perry. For most of the year, I’ve been fairly indifferent about his looks. I thought he was nice-looking (especially at the beginning of the season), but his appearance never stirred any sort of girlish emotion or anything like that (unlike Justin Verlander, who I find very attractive except for the hairy arms). However, at some point in the past couple days, for some unknown reason, he shaved his head and he looks AWFUL (Several of us voiced our displeasure on Bless You Boys last night). Did he lose a bet or was he that desperate to get Sunday’s meltdown out of his system? Yuck. Hopefully this is not something that will catch on with the rest of the team.

And now, the Tigers are in the somewhat unlikely position to sweep the Angels in Anaheim. Edwin Jackson was very good against the A’s last Friday. He’s had one good start and one bad start against the Angels this year. The good start was a complete-game victory at Comerica Park. The bad start was in Anaheim. He issued two bases-loaded walks in a game that also featured an earthquake. Both of those happened at the same time, if I remember correctly (At the time, we jokingly blamed the earthquake for his poor performance). The Tigers will face lefty Joe Saunders, who is coming off the disabled list. His season has been sub-par (perhaps related to the injury), but he has made some good starts here and there.

Talk About Bad Timing

I meant to get this up WAY earlier, but between school and the fact that my computer restarted itself, I’m down to the wire again. At any rate, it was a rather uninspiring game yesterday. The offense DID score four runs, and while that’s nothing to write home about, with our pitching staff, it’s usually enough. Unfortunately, Porcello and Perry both faltered, big time. Porcello kept falling behind and leaving pitches up. Normally, he gives up home runs to guys who normally don’t hit home runs. That wasn’t the case this time. Jack Cust definitely hits lots of home runs. It was Perry who gave up the home runs to the guys without power. Now, there has been a little bit of criticism regarding Armando Galarraga and the number of home runs he’s given up, but with the two bombs that Cust hit, Porcello has now given up twenty. Galarraga has given up twenty-one (which is nothing new; he gave up a lot of home runs last year as well). At any rate, it was not a good day for the pitching staff.

Now after a rather unproductive series in Oakland, it’s bound to get harder and stranger from here on out on this road trip, cuz we’re in Anaheim tonight. The Big A is the bastion of west coast strangeness. No other ballpark can match the oddities and horrors that likely await. The Tigers tend to not pitch well or play good defense in Anaheim. It’s up to our big three to reverse that trend. Justin Verlander gets the first crack at a very strong Angels offense (seriously; they recently had all nine in their starting lineup hitting over .300). He did not fare very well earlier this year. They scored seven runs off him in a game the Tigers eventually won. Now, the Angels’ pitching has not been especially good, but both Weaver and Lackey have, for the most part, been effective, and Brian Fuentes does lead the league in saves. The Tigers will face Weaver tonight. He’s 2-1 career against the Tigers despite an ERA of over seven. Granderson in particular hits Weaver well. It seems like every time he’s faced him, he’s homered off him. Maggs also has good numbers against Weaver, and against the Angels in general. And with the way the Angels run wild on the bases, I would much prefer Laird get the bulk of the playing time behind the plate in this series. Your Mood Music for tonight: It’s another late-night affair, and I tried to post this once before, only to have YouTube screw up my upload. Well, since then, someone else has uploaded it, so I’ll use that one. Fittingly enough, it is Styx’s “Just Get Through This Night.”

Better Late Than Never

Photo: AP

I only saw the late innings of this game, but it certainly went from being a frustrating pitching duel to being a dramatic see-saw affair at the end. Edwin Jackson apparently had some control problems, but he battled his way through seven innings and only gave up two runs (both of which came on outs). I was at work during most of the game, including the go-ahead 2-run homer by Brandon Inge (though that happened right before we closed). I got to listen to most of the top of the eighth in the car on my way home. Derrek Lee’s single happened sometime while I was en route from my car to the house/TV, and the Hoffpauir home run occurred when I left the room for minute to change clothes. I do want to discuss that a little bit, though. If you believe the Comerica Park radar gun, Zumaya blew away Milton Bradley with a 104 MPH fastball (if that’s true, then that’ll break Zoom’s own record for the fastest pitch thrown). Hoffpauir really had no business sitting on a changeup, but at the same time, Zumaya really had no business throwing it. I usually don’t get into things like pitch selection, but it seems to me that it’s not a good idea for a reliever to take a chance on his third-best pitch in a one-run game with a runner already on base. With a three-run lead? Sure. But not when you have no wiggle room, especially when you throw harder than anyone on the planet and you have a somewhat decent curveball. At any rate, what I was referring to in the title is that the Tigers hadn’t had a walk-off win this year, and it’s kind of late in the season to not have one. Ryan Raburn took care of that, and made Jim Leyland look like a genius in the process. This game also featured the return of Magglio to the lineup. However, he was out of the game by the time I got home, so I can’t really comment on how he looked at the plate. He went 0-for-2 with a walk, though Leyland said after the game that he liked his swing better. More (bad) news on Magglio later.

Tonight is Game 2 in this series. Rick Porcello’s last start brought an end to a four-game losing streak, and the Tigers haven’t lost since. He maybe battled some control problems, though. At the same time, he’s tied for the team lead in wins with Justin Verlander. The Cubs will send Rich Harden to the mound. I haven’t seen him pitch this year, but I’m just going to ignore the 5.27 ERA, because I know he’s a much better pitcher than that. And now for the (bad) news (at least, it’s bad news for me and every female Tigers fan I know): We have advanced warning from both Jason Beck and MLive that Maggs is in the lineup…sans long hair. ¡Qué lástima! indeed (Of course, I would imagine the male fans are thrilled, as this topic had kind of stirred up a mini-battle of the sexes on a BYB game thread one night). Kurt has posted a link to a picture, and basically he looks like how he did in the old video I’ve seen of his pre-2006 days, which is, to say, not real distinguishing (And I’m praying that neither John Keating nor Mickey York have anything to do with the pre- or post-game show). Well, I had a feeling it’d come to this eventually. Damn superstitious bastards. Just for that, I’m going to punish you by having no Mood Music tonight.