Miguel Cabrera: Defying Gravity

Photo: Otto Greule, Jr (Getty Images)

Wicked was awesome. This game was also awesome, except for the rash of uneven pantlegs that drive symmetry lovers crazy (On a related note from a different game yesterday, I learned definitively that alternate-color jerseys and white shoes offset quite a significant amount of boxiness. However, the underlying reason remains a mystery. But I digress). I finally got to see a little bit of Max Scherzer pitching as a Tiger. And he pitched decently, for the most part, as did the bullpen. Ryan Perry in particular got himself out of a big-time jam.

The offense had some issues with stranding runners, but every time that happens, I keep thinking of something Lou Pinella said when he was serving as a color analyst for the 2006 ALCS. And this is something I actually remember from watching the game in 2006. I did not get it from watching the archives later. He said that if you keep getting baserunners, eventually you will score them. I don’t know why, but that stuck with me ever since (of course, he was talking about the fact that Nate Robertson kept getting into a lot of jams against the Oakland A’s, but Pinella was wrong in that instance; Still, if that series had gone to Game 5, who knows? Besides, the Cardinals didn’t have any problem scoring runs in the World Series that year). At any rate, Miguel Cabrera hit a 3-run homer on his birthday. And it went a long way. Austin Jackson came up with a big RBI single late in the game to tack on an important insurance run. Of course, not all the stranding was really the fault of the Tigers. Both Guillen and Avila absolutely smoked balls right at Chone Figgins who, on both occasions, turned them into Web Gem-quality double plays. Speaking of Alex Avila, he finally looked like he had good swings for probably the first time all year. We’ll have to see if he keeps that up or not. On the flipside, Magglio went 0-for-5. It had to even out sometime.

Okay, this long and winding road trip has made its way to Anaheim for four games (yuck). Places don’t get much weirder than the Big A either. And the Angels are hot right now. They just swept the Blue Jays and they got some really good pitching in that series (Rodney is now the closer, by the way). They’ll lead things off with Joel Piñiero. He’s pitched well so far this year, and apparently he used to dominate the Tigers, but has lost his last four decisions to them. The only one I remember is the last one, when he was with the Cardinals last year (I don’t even remember him ever being in the American League). The Tigers scored four runs against him in the first inning but nothing after that (It was a game the Tigers won, though). No current Tiger has homered off him, but Maggs and Guillen both hit over .400 against him. We might see Alex Avila behind the plate again, only because Gerald Laird has not hit Piñiero well in the past (only 2-for-13), and I’m not sure what they’re gonna do about shortstop because neither Everett nor Santiago has a hit against him. Meanwhile, Dontrelle Willis will start for the Tigers, and I’m still not sure what’s gonna happen. He hasn’t really imploded yet, but he hasn’t exactly instilled confidence in the fanbase, either. Earlier today, Tom Gage pointed out on Twitter that Dontrelle is 0-3 in nine career road starts for the Tigers (He does not mention ERA, which I would imagine would be quite high). I’m not surprised by the fact that he’s winless. I’m more amazed that he’s somehow ended up with six no-decisions out of the nine starts. At any rate, he hasn’t faced the Angels since 2005, which was the year he almost won the Cy Young. Obviously, a lot’s changed since then. As a matter of fact, only three current Angels have ever faced Dontrelle: Bobby Abreu (who wasn’t even with the Angels in 2005), Juan Rivera, and Maicer Izturis. Get ready for a long night. Really. That’s not a knock on Dontrelle at all. The game starts at freakin’ 10:00 at night. I’m not getting to sleep before 1 AM likely. And I have to get up at 7:00. So yeah.

Deep But Not Enough

Short post, because I have to leave very quickly. Well, at least we finally had a starter go seven innings. I didn’t see as much of the beginning of this game as I wanted to because I was bouncing between it and another show. At any rate, Justin Verlander said that his fastball command was off but his offspeed stuff was working. Whatever it was, he recovered from a 28-pitch first inning to last seven. However, it still wasn’t enough. Justin only had one walk, but it was a leadoff walk to Milton Bradley that he couldn’t get away with. I’m not sure what all the hating on Gerald Laird was after this game. He gunned down Jack Wilson and made two more close (Seriously, Pudge couldn’t have done any better). I actually thought Milton Bradley was out (and the fact that it was close was impressive enough cuz Laird had to dig that ball out of the dirt), but Santiago was behind Bradley when he caught the ball and therefore the umpire was not gonna be able to see the tag. I was not surprised that the offense didn’t do much against Ryan Rowland-Smith, but I am wondering how Scott Sizemore did NOT beat out that double play ball. He’s not necessarily a burner, but he’s no Sean Casey either, and that play took a really long time to develop.

Today, the Tigers will look to avoid getting swept at the hands of the Mariners. Max Scherzer will be up against Ian Snell. Snell struck out 17 Mud Hens in a game once last year. Scherzer only has numbers against Casey Kotchman, Jack Wilson, and Chone Figgins, and Wilson’s the only one with a hit off him, but that’s way too small a sample size to determine anything. I’d love to give more information, but I’m leaving to go see Wicked right now (literally). As such, I will miss the beginning of this game.

Welcome to the West Coast

Well, everyone on the blogosphere seems to be taking to this game by writing maybe one paragraph while holding their collective noses, and meanwhile providing no further insight beyond “everyone sucked.” Therefore, it falls to me to try to make sense out of it, although one thing to consider is that the west coast rarely makes sense. Bonderman was cruising pretty well for the first part of the game. He did give up a walk and stolen base to Chone Figgins in the first (and no matter what anyone else tells you, Laird had no shot at throwing out either Figgins or Ichiro later on), but got around that just fine. Then in the third, he gave up a two-out single to Ichiro, and I think everyone in the ballpark knew that Ichiro would be off and running, but Bonderman made a bad pickoff throw. For some reason, that got him flustered and he never seemed to recover from it. The error from Laird on the bunt in the following inning didn’t help matters, but with the way Bondo kept giving up hits, it probably only served to speed up the inevitable. And so we have the fourth game in a row where the opposition got a whole lot of hits, and that’s still a mystery that’s unsolved. I listened to a little bit on Gameday Audio, and Jim Price was spinning some conspiracy theory about the last series with Kansas City wherein someone was stealing signs and giving them to the Royals, because they got hits that were out-of-character (his specific example was the pull-hitter Yuniesky Betancourt flipping an outside pitch into right field). That sounds a little far-fetched, but so does the concept of every single starter giving up a ton of hits through an entire turn of the rotation.

There obviously wasn’t a lot on offense, but it’s hard to extrapolate anything from that since Felix Hernandez is one of the best pitchers in baseball. Rod Allen kept saying that Felix had been wild previously since he’d had seven walks on the season, but he neglected to mention that six of those were in his first start. Still, the Tigers only had one good inning that featured a Cabrera 2-run double that put the Tigers within one before the pitching fell apart. Laird had a double later in the game, and I’d like to mention that his average is now higher than Alex Avila’s. Just sayin’. But as I said, you can’t take a whole lot away from the offense in this game.

So needless to say, that last turn through the rotation was rather blah, and it began with a shaky Justin Verlander start against Cleveland. It’ll be up to Verlander to turn that ship around and get the rotation back on track. He didn’t have a lot of luck with the Mariners last year (the last time he was at Safeco Field, he had a perfect game through four innings with a ton of strikeouts before the Mariners scored five runs against him in the fifth) but his career numbers are good. Ichiro hits him well, as does Milton Bradley, but Chone Figgins is 2-for-16 with eight strikeouts. JV has given up a home run apiece to Ichiro, Franklin Gutierrez, and Casey Kotchman (try as I might, I don’t remember that one). He’ll be up against the Aussie Ryan Rowland-Smith. His ERA against the Tigers is 5.61 but I’m guessing most of that came as a reliever. His two starts (that I remember) against the Tigers didn’t result in a lot of offense. Also, most of the Tigers do not have good numbers against him at all. Ryan Raburn’s had the most success. He’s 3-for-5 with two home runs, and Gerald Laird is 2-for-4, but that’s about it as far as Tigers who have hit him well (and I believe one of Laird’s hits may have been a bunt single when he was still with the Texas Rangers). Brandon Inge is 1-for-5 (that one hit being a home run) and Miguel Cabrera is 1-for-6. All of the other Tigers who have faced him don’t have any hits. Kind of a scary proposition, if you ask me.

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.

The Kansas City Bullpen Comes Through Yet Again

Photo: Leon Halip (Getty Images)

Score one for rally lab practicals. Just before I started my exam, the Tigers were down 5-0 and Carlos Guillen had just struck out to begin the bottom of the seventh. When I finished, it was the top of the ninth and the Tigers were up 6-5. It’s hard to guage Dontrelle Willis. He obviously didn’t do as well as he had in his first start, but there’s even disagreement on the Tigers blogosphere about what to make of that. Depending on who you ask, he’ll almost assuredly have a meltdown next time or the fact that he hasn’t melted down yet is encouraging. Were it any other pitcher, the numbers he’s putting up are acceptable for a fifth starter, and you probably shouldn’t ask for more than that, especially since a lot of our better pitchers have also failed to contain the Royals’ offense (and if you’re wondering, Nate Robertson gave up six runs in five innings to the Reds last night, with all the damage coming on two 3-run homers, though only three of the runs were earned). Of course, he could go seven or eight innings with just one walk and there’d be people who would fixate on the walk. I suppose we’ll find out in his next start, since it’ll be against the Angels and they’re generally regarded as a better team than the Royals. I can’t comment further than that, because I was only able to listen to the first six innings on Gameday Audio, so I have no insight on the bullpen.

Likewise, I can’t give a lot of commentary on the offense because the offense didn’t show up until after I was in lab. I don’t know what more they could have done against Brian Bannister. I did have Gameday up and it looked like he just kept painting the corners. It was good to see that Laird finally got in on the action, as the Tigers basically doubled the Royals to death. There may be kind of a power outage in terms of home runs (with five, I’m sure that’s gotta rank near the bottom of the AL; after all, there are some players who already have five home runs all by themselves), they’re really racking up the doubles.

Today marks the last home game before a really long road trip. Rick Porcello gets the start for the Tigers. He wasn’t at his sharpest on Opening Day, but he pitched well enough to win, and did so. Again, Leyland wants at least six innings out of him (since Zumaya will probably be unavailable today). Rick actually kinda struggled against the Royals last year, going 1-1 but with an ERA of 5.00. Looking at the individual matchups, I don’t see anything that really stands out, though. He’ll be opposed by Kyle Davies, who’s had kind of a mixed bag against the Tigers. His record and ERA aren’t good (1-6 and 5.61), but for some reason, the games that stand out to me are the ones he’s pitched well against them. Several of the Tigers have really good numbers against him, especially in the extra-base hit category. However, have I mentioned that I am sick of day games? While you all enjoy the game, I’ll be learning about drug-induced nephropathies.

Well, That Sucked

Yeah, every team’s gonna have “those” games where the pitching, offense, and defense all fail. You just kinda wish they wouldn’t happen against teams in your own division, particularly the ones projected to be bottom feeders (though I’m still not convinced the Indians are that just yet; they easily could’ve won their last four games). At any rate, I still haven’t seen Max Scherzer pitch for the Tigers. He was gone before I got home. Somehow, the Royals developed the Red Sox-esque ability to foul off pitch after pitch, particularly Jose Guillen (although the Royals actually put up quite a few hits against the Red Sox over the weekend). Errors and late walks did not help matters. There was something else I noticed while following on Gameday. On Sunday, I know some of the Tigers fans online got concerned when Verlander’s velocity seemed to drop to the low 90s after his rocky first inning. I don’t know if it went back up at any point because I didn’t see much of the game, so I’ll have to take their word for it. However, Gameday had Scherzer’s velocity below normal yesterday. I think I saw 93 go by once, but for the rest of his time on the mound, his fastball was at 89-91. Maybe one of them is suffering from a loss in velocity, but not both of them. Something screwy’s going on.

Though the offense had some issues again with stranding runners, when you score five runs, you should probably win. They finally got to Luke Hochevar, but the problem was that suddenly they lost their ability to score against opposing bullpens. Other than that, there’s no new developments save for the Guillen home run.

I had a very bizarre dream the other night. I dreamt that Alex Avila was hosting Saturday Night Live. They were doing a sketch that was a spoof of Star Trek (original series) and Avila was playing Spock. Then I dreamt that I was some Zorro-like vigilante and one of the other Tigers (don’t remember who) was my sidekick. What the hell did I eat before going to bed?

Jim Leyland is right about one thing, though: The starters have to go deeper into games, especially since Bonine, Thomas, and Ni are probably all unavailable today. If you needed to turn to a guy to give you some innings, I’m not sure Dontrelle Willis would be your first choice, but that’s the hand we’ve been dealt. He put up a good outing against the Royals a week ago, but as Max Scherzer proved, seeing a team again in such a short time span is not easy. Plus, there’s that small issue that he could have a meltdown at any time. And on the flipside, you all know Brian Bannister and his numbers. He generally pitches well against the Tigers, he generally pitches well in day games, and his ERA at Comerica Park is 0.45. So why couldn’t this be a night game?

Now That's a Comeback

Photo: Leon Halip (Getty Images)

As it turns out, I did manage to get out of work a couple hours early (though I had a vague sense of what was going on when I left). Unfortunately, since the Red Wings were on FSD, the Tigers got shifted to FSD+, which is BCSN (a local sports channel) on my cable provider, and they decided to air the Toledo Walleye hockey game instead (You might be familiar with the Walleye as the ECHL affiliate of the Red Wings, which I read somewhere is the equivalent of Double A). As a result, I listened to the whole remainder of the game on the radio (though it occurred to me hours later that since my cable provider also carries Sports Time Ohio, I could have always watched the Indians broadcast). I have watched the archived game on MLB.tv, but I wasn’t paying attention 100% to it. At any rate, I’d like to get more of what Verlander did innings 2-5 than what happened in the first inning. He probably should have stayed in for one more batter, since Peralta’s done virtually nothing against him in his career, but maybe it was a question of pitch count. For what it’s worth, he doesn’t seem all that concerned.

For all the talk about stranding baserunners, the Tigers did score at least one run in each inning I was able to listen to. The RBIs are all kind of spread around so there’s not really one particular hitting hero, though Maggs continues to sting the ball. As for the ninth inning…do you realize that the last swing the Tigers took was Inge’s groundout to short? Santiago never took the bat off his shoulders. Same for Damon and Sizemore. They didn’t have to. And here’s your first broom of the season:

So now that we’ve sent Cleveland packing with their tails between their legs, it’s time to see the Royals again, only this time without Zack Greinke. This afternoon it’ll be Max Scherzer against Luke Hochevar. The last time they met, they got locked into an epic pitching duel. I’m not going to go over their numbers again because I just did that last week. I don’t know about you, but I’m starting to tire of all these day games, mostly because I keep having to miss most of them.