Suffice it to say, this road trip was been odd, which, admittedly, was expected. But think about it: The Tigers won 5-4 on Thursday, lost 5-4 on Friday, won 8-4 on Saturday, and lost 8-4 yesterday. While I wouldn’t mind this pattern continuing for one more game (since that would mean they’d win tonight), I don’t think it will. Rick Porcello sure is stumping the stat geeks, though (Ordinarily, I might find this slightly funny in a mischievous sort of way, but as this is a detriment to the Tigers, I won’t). Compared to this point last year, he’s getting more ground balls and more strikeouts and he’s giving up fewer walks, fewer home runs, and fewer line drives, and yet the results don’t seem to suggest that. They think things will correct themselves on their own, or maybe with a few adjustments. I think there have been some command issues, which stats like that don’t really tell you. He hasn’t walked many, but he is falling behind hitters a lot, and guys are going to get quite a few hits when you’re constantly pitching to them in 2-0, 2-1, and 3-1 counts. Granted, they probably shouldn’t be getting as many hits as they are getting, though. Also, his sinker hasn’t really been sinking (and so I don’t go for Rod Allen’s theory of other teams “laying off” the sinker, because I haven’t seen any evidence of that), which probably suggests a mechanical issue. He did look better in the third and fourth innings, for what it’s worth.
I don’t know what happened to the offense there. It looked like they were gonna tee off on Colby Lewis all day, and then suddenly he set down fifteen straight and went seven innings. It was a nice day for Austin Jackson as he hit his first big league home run, and Johnny Damon continued his hitting streak. That’s about it as far as offensive highlights. I did notice that the umpire was calling the outside strike against lefties far more often than he did against righties (Apparently this is a real phenomenon that happens all the time). I’m not really one of those screaming for robot umpires. I can deal with a weird strike zone as long as it’s consistent, but this strike zone seemed dramatically different depending on which side of the plate the guy was swinging from.
With the bullpen being so taxed as it is, it’s no surprise that there’s a ton of speculation that someone could get called up soon and that the Tigers will go with 13 pitchers for a while (though with Adam Everett on the shelf for a few days with this hamstring problem, I’m not sure that’s a good idea). I’m not sure who they would call up. Robbie Weinhardt’s ERA is really high right now, but he’s been pretty good recently. Armando Galarraga has pitched exceptionally well in Toledo so far, but I don’t want them to call him up unless they intend for him to start. Alfredo Figaro has been Toledo’s other good starter, but with Freddy Dolsi gone, Figaro’s now the pitcher that unnerves me too much. Jay Sborz is also a possibility. He’s been closing for Toledo, and he’s been doing a good job. I don’t know how anyone in Erie is doing, so you’ll have to go elsewhere for Double A speculation.
Of course, there’s another way to get the bullpen back in order, and that’s for Jeremy Bonderman to go a long ways into tonight’s game. He survived a rocky first inning to go six strong innings against the Angels last time out, and most of the Rangers that have seen him haven’t (for the most part) done particularly well against him. The only one that has is Michael Young (Ian Kinsler hits .600 against him, but as Kinsler is on the DL, that doesn’t matter). Vladimir Guerrero is 4-for-21 with 10 strikeouts. However, you have to remember that was a long time ago and he hasn’t gotten the velocity back quite yet. And he hasn’t pitched against the Rangers since April of 2008. The Rangers counter with lefty Matt Harrison, who missed most of last year with thoracic outlet syndrome, same as Bonderman. His last start was not very good, but given that his ERA is in the 4s after that start, he must’ve been pitching okay before then. His ERA against the Tigers is over 7 and I don’t know why because I don’t remember them hitting him particularly hard. No Tiger has more than six plate appearances against him, but Damon and Inge have had success (Inge is the only Tiger to have homered off him).
Anyone else feel like they just watched a spring training game? I did not get home until the bottom of the third. I was able to listen to a few seconds here and there on the radio prior to that point. Whenever I turned the radio on, it seemed like one of the Rangers was hitting a scorching line drive somewhere and a run was scoring. The whole time, Dan & Jim never mentioned the name “Brad Thomas” and I thought they were teeing off on Dontrelle Willis. So it’s hard to have a negative emotional connection to something you didn’t see and thought was someone else. All I saw of Thomas was the bottom of the third, where he pitched reasonably well. The rest of the bullpen (Bonine, Zumaya, Valverde) was terrific.
The Tigers, for the second time on this road trip, poured all their runs on a starting pitcher and didn’t do anything against the opposing bullpen. Johnny Damon in particular seemed to be the catalyst for Scott Feldman’s downfall. He saw a lot of pitches, walked a couple times, and doubled in two runs. The tying and go-ahead runs scoring on a wild pitch/error combination was almost as weird as Alex Avila’s error the night before. The big boys (Maggs and Cabrera) also pitched in, and Brennan Boesch had his first big league RBI.
Today is not the rubber game of this series, because they play another game tomorrow, but a win would assure the Tigers of at least a split and a satisfactory road trip. Leyland is not pushing everyone back a day, so Rick Porcello will get the start. He needs to bounce back from two rough outings in a row and get some innings in, because I imagine the bullpen is near its limit. Leyland has also said that if Dontrelle Willis is feeling better, he will be available out of the ‘pen. Porcello never faced the Rangers last year. As such, the only Ranger who has a history against him is the red-hot Vladimir Guerrero (0-for-3). The Rangers counter with Colby Lewis, who apparently pitched very briefly for the Tigers in 2006 (I don’t remember him). He’s spent the last couple years in Japan, and he’s been a good pickup for the Rangers so far, pitching very well. The Tigers (at least the ones starting today) don’t have a lot of at-bats against him, so it’s hard telling how they’ll do. Maggs will get the day off, and Leyland has loaded his lineup with lefties (Damon, Avila, Santiago, Boesch, and Kelly are all in). And, as an aside, it’s my grandpa’s 94th birthday today.
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 ComericaPark, 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.
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.
Why am I using this photo? Because it’s the only one Yahoo had of this game and I’m too lazy to took elsewhere. I’d prefer to use one of Cabrera, but Bonderman didn’t do too bad himself. He had some first inning difficulties (something that characterized him in 2007), but settled down nicely after that. He had a jam of his own creation in the sixth, but this time he didn’t let it fluster him. A lot of people have said he paid better attention to the runners this time. I don’t know about that, since he did give up two stolen bases and the Angels didn’t have that many other opportunities (which makes it hard to tell). The game also featured some more good work from the bullpen.
After a couple of nights that had some bad breaks, the Tigers figured out a way to keep the Angels defenders from catching the ball: Hit it out or bloop it into the outfield (Considering all the lineouts they’ve had in this series). Miguel Cabrera came through in a big way to make a game on this road trip finally worth the sleep deprivation. That thing was a bomb. We also were treated to our first non-Venezuelan home run of the season, although I’m pretty sure most Tigers fans weren’t predicting Don Kelly to be the one to hit it (Kelly later fell victim to the lineout plague). Inge would have been the most logical choice, but I had actually picked Santiago, just to be weird. Ramon didn’t homer, but he did deliver the go-ahead run with a bloop single (after Guillen got picked off but stayed in a rundown long enough for Laird to get to second, and Laird’s a good baserunner, much moreso than most Tiger fans give him credit for). At any rate, it’s finally good to see the Tigers rewarded for good approaches, which they’ve had this entire series with the exception of Scott Kazmir.
So even though this series started badly, there’s still a chance they could end up with a split, which is pretty much what I wanted in the first place. Justin Verlander is still after his first win (which should be old hat by now, since this has happened the last three years). He was decent in Seattle, but he can be better, and he knows that. JV’s 1-2 against the Angels in his career. The MLB.com pitching matchup earlier stated that that’s his lowest win total against any AL team, but that’s inaccurate, as he’s yet to beat the Blue Jays. Still, the last time he pitched at Angel Stadium, it was one weird outing. It was the sixth inning, JV was cruising, and the Tigers had just scored a bunch of runs off Jered Weaver in the top half of the inning. All of a sudden, the Angels kept getting hit after hit, Verlander gave up four runs, got pulled from the game, and he and Laird got into a shouting match in the dugout. He got the win, but it was a wild finish, as the bullpen had its issues as well. Several Angels have hit him well. It would actually be more efficient to list those who haven’t: Mike Napoli (2-for-11, 1HR) and Juan Rivera (0-for-10 with a walk, but only one strikeout). The Angels counter with Joe Saunders, who was very good his last time out (seems like every Angels’ starting pitcher was good his last time out). His career ERA against the Tigers is over five, but they didn’t do much against him the last time they saw him (which was last August). Most of the Tigers have decent numbers against him with the exception of Inge and Raburn. Saunders has given up homers to Maggs, Laird, and Everett, and exactly one double to everyone except Inge and Guillen. But as I said, the Angels’ starting pitching has been on a roll. That might trump everything else.
This series has been strange so far, but not your typical west coast strangeness. This has been more subtle, so subtle that it’s hard to pick up when you’re sleep-deprived and moody. Monday night featured a good approach from the offense but nothing to show for it. Last night didn’t have quite as good an approach against Kazmir, but decent against the bullpen and they were able to score five runs, which on most nights would give them a win. However, this time Rick Porcello just dug too deep a hole. Plain and simple. I can’t really analyze anything he did in comparison with anything else (though he says he didn’t think his command was that bad) because most of the articles were all about the offense. On the flipside, there was some nice work done out of the ‘pen.
I’m not sure what Scott Kazmir was doing with that 90 MPH fastball of his, but apparently something about it was enticing because he was getting a lot of swings and misses on it, especially ones that were way out of the strike zone. And he wasn’t just getting swings and misses from the high strikeout and bottom of the order guys. Maggs and Cabrera fanned on that pitch as well. Regardless, the whole low RISP thing may have been a little deceptive. They cashed in on their opportunities in the sixth and the seventh, and there was at least one instance of bad luck (Laird hit a bullet right at the third baseman with Ryan Raburn on third) and two instances of blown calls (both involving Johnny Damon). They still need to score earlier, but when you score five runs, you should win.
And so the sleep deprivation continues. I wanted to take a nap today, but I’m running out of time so I don’t think that will happen (I even drank the UT equivalent of a frappucino this morning and I hate coffee; it had chocolate cookies in it, so it wasn’t too bad, but I kept jealously staring at a guy’s strawberry banana smoothie the whole time). It’ll be up to Jeremy Bonderman to stop the skid. To say he had issues his last time is an understatement. He can’t get himself flustered over errors or walks or anything like that. And he’s been hit hard by the Angels before, Abreu, Matsui, Hunter, and Izturis all hit well over .400 against him. Jered Weaver gets the ball for the Angels, and he seems to be trying to claim that ace position, because he’s pitched really well for them all year. His numbers against the Tigers aren’t so pretty for him. He’s 2-2, but his ERA is over seven. However, the one who led the charge in pummeling him is gone now (that would be Granderson, who seemed to homer off him every single game), so I would expect those numbers to go down. That said, the three Venezuelans all still have good numbers against Weaver (Cabrera’s at .375 and is the only current Tiger to have homered off Weaver, Guillen’s at .571, and Maggs is at .600). None of the rest of the Tigers have good numbers against him. The lineup is already posted. Alex Avila is catching again (Probably because Laird is only 1-for-15 off Weaver, but as I said before, Bonderman’s not going to hold runners on anyways so why should Laird’s defensive numbers have to suffer because of that), and one interesting development is that Scott Sizemore is batting ninth. Your Mood Music for tonight: Boom-de-yada. Because it’s stuck in my head right now. And you’re getting the Discovery Channel commercial of it because it was the only one on Youtube that wasn’t a fourth grade choir recital or someone sitting in front of a webcam playing a guitar and singing.
Well, I’m tired and maybe a little frustrated but not as angry as the rest of the blogosphere. As much as I hate to admit it (and getting shut out is one of my least favorite ways to lose), you might have to give the opposing pitchers some credit. More on that later. I wonder when the last time was that Dontrelle Willis had a tough-luck loss. It certainly wasn’t as a Tiger. At any rate, he had himself a pretty damn good start. The strikeout total was a little low, but other than that, it’s a line I would take from any of our starting pitchers. He had some issues in the third (when the two runs scored) and in the fourth (when he got bailed out by a nice catch from Magglio), but looked really strong in the other innings. Hell, the Jeff Mathis double that started things for the Angels wasn’t that well-hit.
And then there’s the complaints about stranding baserunners. To be honest with you, though, I’m not sure how you would go about doing things differently. It looked to me like most of the guys had a good approach when there were runners in scoring position. They weren’t swinging wildly at pitches out of the strike zone or popping stuff up. They weren’t trying to do too much, just take the ball up the middle. The problem was that they couldn’t get it past the pitcher. And therein lay some bad luck. With runners on first and second and one out, Alex Avila hit a scorching line drive that Piñiero caught and turned into a double play. Then in the eighth, with runners at second and third and two outs, Carlos Guillen there were a few instances of guys hitting balls well but right at defenders. I just wish they hadn’t made it so easy for Rodney, after being so used to the adventures he used to put us through.
If I may indulge my own eccentricities for a moment, I watched last night’s Rockies-Nationals game while waiting for the Tigers to come on (I wasn’t sure who to root for in that game, since I like the Rockies as a team better than the Nationals, but my favorite player ever is with the Nats). And yes, I was pretty much only watching that game because I was able to see both Carlos Gonzalez and Pudge Rodriguez (and besides, my only other choice was a Blue Jays-Royals matchup). During the game, Pudge had pretty much the exact same dropped ball issue that Gerald Laird had in that game against Kansas City (So indeed it happens to the best of them, so you can stop harping on Laird). Later on he really flaked out when Carlos Gonzalez struck out on a pitch in the dirt and Pudge started frantically scrambling around looking for the ball (and he was looking all over the place), only to finally discover it had been in his glove the whole time. Considering how long it took him to realize that, I’m amazed he was able to throw to first in time, because CarGo can really run. And what would that have been ruled if he HAD made it to first? You can’t really call that a wild pitch or passed ball because it never got past the catcher. On the flipside of things, I knew Pudge had gotten off to a good start with the bat, but I didn’t realize he was leading the National League in hitting. And here I only drafted him for my fantasy team out of sentimentality. I’m not sure he’ll keep it up (after all, he IS a 38-year old catcher), but it’ll be fun while it lasts.
Next up on the late-night docket: Rick Porcello against Scott Kazmir. The Tigers have not seen Kazmir since before he got traded to the Angels (as a matter of fact, they might not have seen him at all last year). His career numbers against the Tigers aren’t all that great, but most of those numbers must’ve been put up by those who aren’t with the Tigers anymore cuz most of the current crop are probably dreading facing him right now. Magglio’s 1-for-11, while Guillen is 0-for-7. Miguel Cabrera is 3-for-11, with all three hits being for extra bases (a double, a triple, and a home run). The only Tiger who has hit him well is Ramon Santiago, who is 2-for-3 with two home runs (both of which came in the same game, I believe). Gerald Laird will likely be back in the lineup, as I don’t think Leyland would want to start Avila against a lefty (should’ve stuck with the switch-hitting there, Alex), but I’m not sure Leyland will be doing Laird a favor (1-for-12 with five strikeouts). Johnny Damon is also under .200 against Kazmir and Inge is just at .214 (though his three hits off Kazmir were two doubles and a triple). My personal observation of Kazmir in the past is that he’s allowed quite a few baserunners but not many runs. It always seemed like the first two would get on (via hit or walk), and then he’d strike out the side. He has struggled out of the gate for the Angels, though. Much has been made about his slider not working right now. For the Tigers, Rick Porcello faced the Angels once last year, at ComericaPark. It wasn’t a very auspicious start. He gave up two home runs in the first inning (one to Chone Figgins, the other to Juan Rivera), but it was a game the Tigers won. The most ABs any of the Angels have had against Porcello is three, which is not much to go on. Porcello’s gonna have to keep the speed demons off the bases, though. Dontrelle Willis was able to do that. Your Mood Music for tonight: After seeing Ichiro in the last series and Hideki Matsui in this series, I guess I’ve gotten into sort of a Japanese mood. I don’t really consider myself a fan of anime, but when I was in college I had a lot of friends who were into it so it was fairly inevitable that I would get into a couple shows. This is the first season opening theme to one of them. I actually found out there’s an English version of the song (by the same group, by the sounds of things), but I’m used to the Japanese version (oddly enough, since I prefer watching the show dubbed).
