Tiger Geist

I head to Seattle for a weekend, and Detroit rewards my short vacation with another series win;  this time a sweep over the Colorado Rockies.

Thought’s I had over the weekend:

• I know its Todd Jones’ first blown save of the year, but didn’t it seem like that was an important game?  A win brought Detroit right back to .500;  a loss just reminds the team of their losing ways.  Would have enjoyed a 1-2-3 inning a little better, but he was solid in today’s win.
• I’ve always liked Ryan Raburn, though I thought he’d hit for a higher average this year.  Nice to see him put together some solid games at the plate.
• Thames continues to impress me;  Sheffield has fallen back to earth.  Both need to continue to up their game to get get over the loss of Ordonez.
• Rough goings for Magglio, but he’s not getting any younger.  It also gives Leyland some interesting options with three outstanding defensive and left-handed outfielders (Joyce, Thomas, Granderson).
• Don’t expect we’ll see Guillen playing left field much anymore.

Questions I have:

• Who is Detroit’s best center fielder?  Brent Clevlen, Clete Thomas, Curtis Granderson, Raburn and apparently Brandon Inge can all play.  Raburn and Inge I imagine are in the lower tier;  Clevlen probably has the best arm.  At one point, does Detroit move Granderson?  I’m not suggesting they do, but who’s the best, and if they are ready to play every day, do they move Curtis around more next (or an upcoming) year?
• Does Detroit really have two starting pitchers who have losing records in the minors?  Why am I concerned that now, after they get over .500, we might get the rug pulled out from under us?  Its a great story, but seriously… Galarraga and Bonine?  Can this be reality?  (please say yes.. please say yes…)
• What trades are going to be made, if any?  Leyland hinted again today about Raburn’s versatility and a possible attraction for the NL.  I can’t imagine he has much value, however.
• With the pitching turn-around, has Brandon Inge solidified himself as the starting catcher in 2009?  Even with the obvious lack of catching depth in the farm system, would Detroit look to move him if they had the right offer?  The team’s play has really turned around, but Inge is still batting .215 and striking out nearly once for every three at-bats.

I’m tired… delayed flights, 90 degree weather in Seattle… and Tiger victories.  Great weekend.

Yeah, a little over board there.  Big win for Detroit, who got a gutsy performance from Nate Robertson, great pitching by Rodney and Seay, Todd Jones almost suffers the loss.  Sheffield homers to tie the game, after popping up with the bases loaded earlier.

Big numbers:  4 / 5 / 4… number of men left on by Ordonez / Cabrera / Sheffield.  Detroit left 18 runners on, while STL left a whopping 23.

Interesting move to leave Clete Thomas in the game in both bases loaded situations, with Thames on the bench (assuming he was available to hit).  I imagine Jim Leyland liked the defense he could get over Thames by leaving Thomas in the game, especially with Polanco getting ejected earlier in the inning (and having to bring in either Renteria or Raburn).  Leyland got it right this time.  Big big Kudos to the rookie, with two RBI’s, both on walks.

Question:  Doesn’t detroit seem to be thrown out at the plate a lot this year?  I’ve counted at least three times in the last 7 days (two in this series) that we’ve had guys thrown out at the plate.

Hollimon gets his first big league hit;  Sardinha doesn’t give much at the plate, but seems to have caught a great game.

Go Tigers:  Two games under .500; 4.5 games out of the division race.

Sounds like a decent number of people went to the game last night, and some even stayed until the end.  Everyone was talking about Todd Jones’ Magglio impersonation, so i found it this morning on youtube:

After being told that Rodney, Zumaya, Sheffield, and Clete Thomas would all return a week apart, who would have guessed that Thomas and Sheffield would help lead Detroit to victory last night, and Zumaya and Rodney would struggle?

Not too worried.  I think its a great sign that they were able to gut out the win.  Zumaya should come around.  I wonder if Leyland is a little concerned that neither Rodney, Zumaya, nor Dolsi have looked good this week.  Early game today;  big series victory on the line.  Continue the crawl back to respectability.  Please.

Update:

I’d love a series win, and then the Cardinals just activated Pujols.  As I’m watching mlb live gameday (with their snazzy new 3d display), here are the Tiger’s batting averages for the batting order:  .269, .316, .305, .304, .277, .296, .234, .000, .000.  I know Sheffield’s swinging a hot bat, but the bottom of the order is slightly scary.

Wow, headline alone kills me:

Tiger’s Inge Loses battle with Pillow, place on DL

i thought it was a joke… onion article type thing that a friend sent me.  Nope.  Godspeed Mr Inge on your recovery.  The bizarre rash of injuries this year is purely comical.. hemorrhoids… pillows… maybe this is a sign that Detroit was not meant to contend this year.

Best Free Press article since they chronicled how Atlanta homosexuals were in love with Joey Harrington (no link since the freep seems to have taken all links down to the story).

Hell of a week. Today’s game was very important, with some very timely hitting, decent relief pitching, and overcoming some rust in the bullpen.

Thoughts on the west coast road trip:

• Eddie Bonine was solid, and gives the team more time to consider what to do with the fifth spot in the rotation.  No one knows how he’ll do, but I bet it’ll pretty much be what we’ve seen:  Some games he’ll pitch alright but get shelled (vs LA Dodgers), some games he’ll pitch pretty well and keep the team in the game (vs SD Padres).  As long as you can keep it between there, you have your #5 pitcher.  It would be a boost to the team if he can get them to the trade deadline to either develop someone from the minors or make a trade.
• Miguel Cabrera is inching his batting average up, slowly but surely.  He was noticeably favoring his leg in Monday night’s game;  i wonder if that is still affecting his play.
• The catching platoon has shown promise;  when Brandon Inge got hurt, Pudge seemed to drop off a little bit.  After another day of rest, he was 2-2 with two walks today.
• Zach Miner is unspectacular, but had two holds this week.  If they’re able to get Zumaya and Rodney going again, he’ll have to help out.  
• I’m not too concerned about Fernando Rodney.  Historically, when he’s been healthy, he’s been very good.  He struggles when he’s hurt and doesn’t tell anyone.
• Joel Zumaya had an average series, but I think it points to much greater things.  His fastball has had some life on it (hitting triple digits today);  hopefully his off-speed pitches are nearing their old form.
• Looking forward to the schedule, they’re in great shape to stay around .500 at the all-star break.  They also have some big games against Minnesota coming up, another team on a hot streak.  
• Marcus Thames could be a very good player if he could hit .275.  A couple more two hit games could help him out.

Zumaya in, Denny Bautista out.

This kind of surprises me, but I guess it really doesn’t matter.  Having Casey Fossum or Denny Bautista on the team wasn’t going to make or break Detroit’s playoff chances.  I imagine if Bonine is absolutely horrid tonight then Fossum will get a couple of starts, at least until Lopez ’stretches out’ a little more in Toledo.

In other words… compared to what I felt was poor player management that might have cost Detroit some games earlier this year (with the handling of Sheffield’s injury, his left field stint, etc), this move provokes little emotion.  It probably does point to Detroit hanging onto Todd Jones for the rest of the year.

I’ve been waiting to use that one all week.

Sooooooo…. another day at the park yesterday.  It was 70 degrees out, but felt like 100 in the sun.  The only person it seemed to affect was Barry Zito, who just wasn’t very good.  It actually caused Giants fans to scream out “We Want Willis!” (they can have him).  Detroit gutted out seven runs, but should have scored 15.  Galarraga kept them in the game; Dolsi was effective but not dominating;  Miner pitched well.

Detroit got a series victory against a team that isn’t playing very well. They improved the health of the squad, with Zumaya officially joining them on the roster tomorrow.  My guess is Dolsi will head down for some more seasoning (his last few outings were a little shaky; he’ll be good but needs some work).

Thoughts:

• Brent Clevlen gets the boot, with Clete Thomas re-joining the team from the DL.  Don’t like the move, but it probably doesn’t matter.  Thames has earned the starting job for a while.
• Pudge proved why the platoon at catcher is a good thing:  two strikeouts, both on very very bad pitches, one with the bases loaded.
• Freddy Dolsi got an at-bat;  Leyland’s reason was because he wanted to save the bench players.  If that is the case, why don’t they give an at-bat to a starting pitcher in the upcoming San Diego series?
• The defense is improving;  this article talks about Thames’ better play.  However, Guillen made some AMAZING plays at third (we were right above him in the third deck with great angles).  It didn’t hurt that Capt Slow (Molina) was hitting, but his double play was probably the longest double play of all time (from ball leaving the bat to the final out).  I wish they kept track of those stats.
• Aaron Rowland comes up to bat with the bases loaded, 2 outs.  He strikes out, only to have a giant advertisement come on the big screen / Public address with a “vote Aaron Rowland, all star game!!”.  It was very very humerous… to me.
• Tons of tiger fans at the games this week.  To the point where the Giant’s fans seemed surprised.

Best quote of the day:  My dad & I were walking around the ballpark before the game.  Two scalpers were asking people if they wanted tickets.  Upon seeing us, one guy says to the other (in a hushed tone so we didn’t hear), “don’t offer it to them.  They’re from detroit… there’s no money in detroit”.  Thought it was rather comical since they weren’t trying to be mean, just… nationally aware i guess.

I’ll update more later.. I saw a lot of baseball this week, which meant a lot of $8.25 and $8.75 beers.  I’m a little slow today.

Nothing against Monday night’s game, but winning trumps losing, so I probably had more fun last night at AT&T park.  Today we go for a day game and a series victory.  My father, Scott, & Laura were all on hand for the festivities.

We’ll do a seven nation army roll call this morning on the top players last night (no real order):

1. Kenny Rogers.  Can’t deny what he did and how impressive he was.  Jonathan Sanchez, for the Giants, was fantastic as well, but he’s not 43.
2. Ryan Raburn.  He turned things around with his blast in the seventh.  As impressive as Thames’ home run was in the ninth… Raburn hit the ball where few have hit it in the bleachers.
3. Marcus Thames.  Easy call here — moonshot to center field.  AT&T / SBC / PacBell park is not a home run park (for those not named ‘Bonds’), and Thames dropped on in 450 feet from home plate.  Interestingly, Thames got into a little tiff with the home plate umpire before the hit;  he thought he had drawn a walk.
4. Edgar Renteria.  Impressive with his leading off (two walks and a single).  Very good defense.
5. Carlos Guillen.  Great fielding night.  He also provided us with some solid comic relief in the ninth inning — see below.
6. Zach Miner.  Solid with the hold.  I wish he was better with inherited runners, but he’s sound when he starts the inning.
7. Brent Clevlen.  Plays half of an inning and helped save the game — Thames wouldn’t have gotten to that short fly to left.  He was helped by having Captain Slow (Not James May — Bengie Molina) at third at the time.

No points to Todd Jones, who did his best Fernando Rodney impression in the ninth.  To his credit, only Molina had a decent hit off of him, but when you bring the tying run at the plate with NO OUTS, including the previous night’s hero… not good.
Our seats were about 30 rows behind the on-deck circle.  In the ninth, Laura noticed something wasn’t right about Carlos Guillen… she said “hey… um.. do all ball players do that?”.  Luckily she had a camera:

Other Notes:

This morning I’ve had a steady diet of Raw Power, looking for the series victory.  Hopefully I remember the sun block.

The wife has some Raconteurs on this morning so we’ll go that direction, with some more random thoughts from last night’s game:

• Verlander and Lincecum both work very very fast.  If their pitch count was lower, we might have been out of there in an hour and a half
• Lincecum’s scoreboard picture looks like a 12 year old school girl.  You’d think they’d photoshop a mustache on or something.  Or pull in R Lee Ermey for the picture to help out… “You got a war face! AHHHHHHHHHHH! That’s a war face, let me see your war face!”
• Verlander seemed to be throwing 70% strikes.  He was close to the plate all day
• In between innings where Pudge was still putting his gear on, Raburn and Inge split duty warming up the pitcher.
• ‘Specialty’ beers ran $8.75.  I don’t know why they don’t just make it $10 so the lines go faster.
• Cold day last night (welcome to san francisco)… Scott scored our $40 tickets for $20 each on craigslist.  Thirty rows right behind Detroit’s dugout.
• Cabrera seems to joke around a lot;  it looks like he has fun out there.  He also crushed a long single off of the park’s high right field wall.
• Great at-bats in the ninth.  The team didn’t quit and were patient as Brian Wilson had some control issues.
• Hollimon doesn’t look comfortable at short, with two bad throws (one for an error) to second.

All headings this week will be based on songs from detroit bands (bonus points to whomever states the band from the last post).

Attending the game with Scotty, we were encouraged at Thames’ continued onslaught on the rest of the league with two monster shots.  The ninth provided more potential to get close… but no ah ah.

Overall, its a tough loss in a game I didn’t expect to win.  Verlander (again) pitched well enough for the victory.  However, I wonder if Leyland out-thought himself tonight.  He replaced Freddy Dolsi (any reason its not Fred Dolsi?  its always Freddy… no idea why that is…) with Fernando Rodney, who self destructed.  Most of his pitches were for strikes, which i guess is a good sign.  I don’t question replacing Dolsi, but I wonder why he replaced a right hander against a left hander with another right hander… Leyland seems to love matchups so much that I don’t know why Fossum or Seay weren’t warming up at the same time — Bowker is a rookie who has shown decent power so far this season.  It was a frustrating loss, but if the team is to win, Rodney needs to be solid, so to me its an acceptable loss.  Also, Giants fans are much easier going then Oakland fans, so Scotty & I could walk out of there without being threatened with our lives (see playoffs, 2006 for a reference).

Interesting subplot:  The first 6 or so players in detroit’s lineup seemed to make huge gestures to Bengie Molina; most likely in reference to his brother Yadier getting blown up last weekend.  The best part was the awkward hug that wasn’t to be between Polanco and Molina.  Either way, hopefully Yadier is doing alright.

Interesting subplot #2:  tomorrow my father visits Pacbell (or whatever the hell they call it these days) park for the first time.  I’ve been telling him that CoPa, while a fantastic stadium, doesn’t compare at all to pacbell for years… tomorrow and Wednesday he’ll be able to visit it first hand.

Interesting subplot #3:  Though i didn’t expect to win tonight’s game, we should have won.  I’m pissed.  Not happy at all.  Its hard to keep a straight head when you can take a train to and from the game (I live 3 miles from the stadium) and sneak a flask into the game… but still… this was a tough one.  The last inning was interesting at least, with SF’s closer (a capable Brian Wilson) throwing 30+ pitches to get out of a four run lead, escaping with a two run victory.  Kudos for Detroit not giving up.  Kudos for Sf’s fans not killing me — on the train home, they merely pointed out that pudge was probably out at home, with casual conversation about ernie harwell.  To be continued tomorrow.