Tiger Geist

I caught innings 3 through 8 on mlb.tv, and I noticed something interesting about Verlander’s demeanor:  he was on fire.  Note: i watch what I can, but most people reading this watch more minutes of Fox Sports Net Detroit then I get.

In the bottom of the fifth, Brandon Inge got hit by a pitch in the dirt and got thrown out attempting to steal second.  It looked as if New York knew he was going (and Molina has an outstanding arm behind the plate), but either way he was back in the dug out.  Fox sports detroit shows a quick look into the dugout, and Verlander walks past Inge.  No emotion.  No “hey, go team”.  No “hey man, keep it up”.  No “hey, you’re totally right, the 93 Cab totally has more body then the 96 Cab, thanks for setting me straight”.  Nothing.  Verlander keeps his head down, seems to look slightly at Inge but basically walks from one end of the dugout to the other in disgust.  

This is ballsy;  Inge has been on fire and is as much a reason for Detroit’s solid start as anyone else (and the antithesis of Verlander thus far).  But Justin had a look: “Its my game, no one is going to screw this up for me, and I’m finishing this one off”.  He got close enough.  For a pitcher who seems to get a little too high for big games (and the Yankees will always be a big game), a big big big step for Verlander tonight.

Anyone else notice how safe Gerald Laird appeared in the bottom of the seventh?  Rod Allen didn’t seem to notice since Andy Van Slyke didn’t argue (also quite weird).  I love how Laird continued to complain in the dugout; I like the moxy of this team.

Last, a big TigerGeist congrats to new tiger fan Ashton Jay Keith.  Tell your daddy the cubs suck.

It appears the Gary Sheffield for Josh Anderson deal (Ok, Anderson for Rudy Darrow, followed by cutting Sheffield to make room on the final roster) is working out in Detroit’s favor.  He’s hitting .364 and has 6 steals through the first 18 games.  Today he scores the winning run with a single, stealing second, advancing to third on a ground out, and scoring on Dane Sardinha’s sac fly.  Its been said before, but its the type of run that Detroit hasn’t generated in a while.  You could look at Anderson’s stats vs Granderson’s stats and start thinking about who currently deserves to get more at-bats, but I’m not going to go there — I’ve thought for 2-3 years that Granderson shouldn’t be leading off due to his potential power numbers.  But on a team with a severe lack of speed, where is Anderson’s real worth?

I think Anderson is still better suited as a fourth outfielder that is available for pinch-running duties most nights.  When he’s on base, he’s a threat to steal, go from first to third, and generally make the pitcher think less about the hitter then he should.  Unless Anderson continues to hit at this clip (and he won’t), his value is when he is on base… and the best way to guarantee this is to pinch run.  I imagine Anderson will get plenty of outfield innings and at-bats due to injuries (Guillen is starting to worry me), but with the overall lack of team speed, he seems to be a better weapon to use off the bench in the late innings of close games.

Other thoughts as Detroit leads the Central Division:

• Guillen’s random injuries is worrisome.  Its only April.
• Speaking of only being April, nothing is won in April. Or May.  Jimmy Leyland needs to think about resting his players a little – Inge, Granderson and Cabrera could use a spell here and there.
• And speaking of playing time, Larish will have a better chance on those late inning pinch-hitting assignments if he gets a regular at-bat once in a while.
• I’ve read rumors of both Guillen and Ordonez being ‘available’ on the trade market.  With Ordonez’s lack of power right now, and his possible 2010 and 2011 contract kickers closing in, I imagine Detroit would move Magglio in a heart beat.  Not saying they should, but I can’t imagine them refusing a deal to move that possible contract.
• I don’t think it would take much to get Guillen either.
• Its nice that the Tigers can replace one defensive / no hit catcher (Matt Treanor) with another (Dane Sardinha).  Nice that Sardinha was able to get the game winning sac fly this afternoon.
• FYI:  Misty May Treanor has her own blog.  Its a lot like TigerGeist.  But different.
• Hate to get too up or down in April, but… Armando Galarraga doesn’t suck.  Better keep those walks down, however.
• I don’t think the closing situation is solved yet.  But I’ll give Rodney the benefit of the doubt for now.  A career minor league catcher plus a two run lead might have some effect, but let’s get this under control.
• Any guesses on when Matt Stafford throws out the first pitch at CoPa?  

I’m having a hard time understanding this team.  Make no mistake — they’re fun to watch and they’re winning.  They’re scoring runs, and at times they’re not allowing the other team to score runs.  So what’s going on?

• They play small ball and win with small ball
• They hit some home runs and some clutch doubles
• They hit only two solo home runs and still score 12 runs last night
• Arguably there are three starting pitchers (Galarraga, Jackson, Porcello) throwing better then four of the projected starting rotation going into spring training (Verlander, Robertson, Willis, Bonderman)
• They’re either awesome in the field, or just not very good.
• Josh Anderson seems to be hitting his way for more playing time;  everyone assumed it would be his glove and legs that got him more time.
• Miguel Cabrera is the best player in the history of baseball.

Ok, that last one might be a stretch.  I had thoughts of exactly how Leyland would play more small ball (or should we just call it ’speed ball’?) now that Raburn should get an extended tour of duty.  Then Raburn had a ‘rough’ outing in right field, so maybe he’ll be limited to more pinch running in the immediate future.

Other thoughts — ironically, i can’t watch as many west coast games since I’m generally busy in the evenings, but let’s give this a go:

• If Dontrelle Willis makes it back to Detroit soon, will Matt Treanor be his exclusive catcher?  Treanor can’t hit, and it seems that even if Willis is a viable starting pitcher, he’s going to carry a high ERA.
• I’m not surprised by Laird’s hot start, but he does seem to slow down during the year.  I felt it was important for Treanor to be able to play a few times / week.  If runs become a premium, that theory might get shot down quickly.
• The Tigers’ schedule has been favorable, but their injuries have not been.  So I still feel its ok to be excited.
• Magglio might have to swap with Granderson in the batting order if he keeps this ’singles’ thing up.

Other baseball notes:

• Caught the Giants – D-bags – D-backs game on Saturday.  One of the warmest baseball days in SF this year, day game… and maybe only 80% full.  Giants have an AWESOME pitching staff, and this was a “Lincecum” game.  This is why Detroit won’t trade Cabrera — its awfully hard to sell a decent team without a star position player.  If you can’t sell out a saturday day game with Tim Lincecum on the mound, marketing is pulling their hair out.
• Arizona’s starting pitcher, Doug Davis, had the longest delivery I’ve ever seen for a left hander.  In the first inning, the Giants got a speedy player to third, and Davis went into his full wind-up.  I said “wow, i can’t believe they don’t try to steal home” after the runner got a huge lead.  Next pitch, runner doesn’t get a huge lead but decides to steal home… and is thrown out by five feet (on a pitch in the dirt, with a right handed batter at the plate no less).  I still think it was the runner’s fault for indecisiveness, but I’ve never seen that attempted live.

Other random note:

• If you like The Mighty Wind and/or Spinal Tap, go see unwigged.  Caught the Oakland show last night and it was even better then expected.  Detroit show on May 29 at the Fox Theater.

Right before the season I mentioned that I was very interested to see how the team would look after 10 games.  For the first time that I could remember, they were playing 10 straight games without an off day, and that encompassed three teams and two runs through the starting rotation.  Well, that didn’t exactly work out the way I thought it would work (damn you mother nature), but after last night’s loss to the Mariners we hit the 10 game mark.

What have we seen?  The offense is pretty good, the defense is pretty good, the pitching has been either excellent, pretty good, or surprisingly bad depending on the pitcher and the night.  And that’s your .500 team.

Surprising numbers (good):

• Miguel Cabrera, Gerald Laird, and Ramon Santiago are hitting well.  Cabrera was expected to hit well, but… really?  Hitting .513 and slugging .872?  Well played.
• Armando Galarraga:  2-0, 0.68 ERA.
• Fernando Rodney:  2 saves, 4 IP… 0.00 ERA.  I don’t think anyone would have expected this.  He’s looked awesome.

Surprising numbers (bad):

• .238 — starting shortstop Adam Everett’s batting average.  That is not surprising, but he’s a full 33 points higher then leadoff hitter Curtis Granderson.  And 62 points higher then Carlos “I’d better have a good year so I can protect Cabrera in the order” Guillen.
• 7.88 and 9.00 — ERAs of Justin Verlander and Zach Miner, respectively.  Both are a reflection of one bad outing in an early season.

I didn’t include Brandon Inge’s numbers in either area above, as I’m conflicted as to whether he’s having the hot (or surprising) start people are talking about.  Inge has had some big games, including the come from behind victory against Texas.  He’s hitting .265 with 4 home runs and 9 RBIs through 10 games (42 plate appearances).  However, if you compare that with last year’s start (at 44 plate appearances):  .303, 2 home runs, 9RBIs… is he having a better 2009?  Detroit definitely is, as this year’s 5-5 start compares with the 2-8 start (2-9 over the Inge comparison).

General thoughts:

• I thought this looked like a .500 team, and we’re sitting at 5-5.
• I’m much more nervous when I see Juan Rincon or Eddie Bonine enter a game as I was before the season started.
• I’m not as nervous about Robertson.  Good news is it appears Detroit won’t have to eat his contract.  Bad news is he’s one expensive long reliever.
• I think Porcello needs some more seasoning in the minors.  But a solid start.
• Ryan Perry could probably remain on the roster all year.
• Guillen needs some days off.  I don’t know why, but he seems to be a step away from an injury every play.
• Congrats to Gary Sheffield for hitting his 500th home run, but I like how the Josh Anderson trade is working out so far.

Last:  The white sox.  Are the White Sox afraid of the Tigers?  I’m not a fan of bean-ball, but its kind of surprising that the Sox would talk so much about Ryan Perry’s wildness without charging the mound.  Maybe, with Verlander, Perry, Rodney and soon to be Zumaya nearing triple digits on the radar gun, maybe they decided the first series of the year wasn’t a good time to start something.  Tom Gage reported:

Perry was wild. Four of his 18 pitches were up and in, nearly hitting the White Sox batters who eventually took exception. At one point, depending on how angry Josh Fields was going to get, the scene could have gotten ugly. Pierzynski was looking out at the mound from the dugout. Two other White Sox were headed up the steps. The moment was tense.

Bullshit.  The Sox have owned Detroit and had a chance to rattle one of their young pitchers in a game that didn’t matter anyway.  Also, I’m not sure how much of it had to do with Perry being 100 pounds.  You really think AJ Pierzynski is coming out of the dugout to rush a 250 pound Joel Zumaya?  You don’t think the entire league would line up to swing at Pierzynski if they had a chance?  I’m glad it worked out the way it did, without a brawl.  But while Detroit split the white sox series (Miner’s non-sinking sinker ball didn’t stay in the park), I think they took that series by Perry standing his ground.

I got a very nice text message from a friend yesterday offering his extra SF Giants tickets, so I’m off to see Timmy Lincecum hopefully pitch into the fifth inning.

Sad news about Mark Fidrych for baseball fans everywhere.  Its ironic that the mlb channel televised one of his games against the Yankees last weekend, and more ironic that I happened to turn it on at 6am PST (i’m not an avid mlb channel watcher nor am I ever up before 9am on a saturday).  I was hung over and wanted something I could listen to on TV that didn’t require watching since I was trying to fall back asleep.  I was annoyed because Fidrych was so captivating (I had never seen him pitch before for more then a batter) that I couldn’t fall asleep and instead had to watch the game.  That’s how enjoyable he was to watch:  hung over and on five hours of sleep, I couldn’t turn off a game he pitched in 30+ years old.

My tiger enjoyment began post-Bird… but it was obvious he was in the hearts of many fans.  He passed what I call “the mom test”.  My mom, while an avid sports fan, never really gets caught up in player history.  She’ll know the players on the team and will have her favorites, but they usually drop from her vocabulary when they retire / are traded.  But Mark Fidrych passed “the mom test” for me — she talked about how fun he was to watch, and that was in the mid-80’s.  (The other player that passes the mom test — Wayne Gretzky, in a slightly different test — tells you the group Fidrych is in).

You don’t want too get to crazy about Detroit’s 4-3 start to the season, but a sweep against Texas in a very exciting fashion gets the blood pumping.  Today’s game was a treat to watch (assuming you started watching after the fifth inning).  The bullpen has been outstanding for two games;  it really seems that Fernando Rodney wants the closer job and is willing to fight for it.  And as much as I’ve hated Brandon Inge over the years, 2009 seems to be his year.  Solid hitting in the eighth followed by another great play on an attempted bunt single in the ninth makes Inge the Easter day player of the game.

So what else was interesting about tonight?  I went to a late easter dinner at a small San Francisco restaurant with friends and five Boston Red Sox showed up.  It appears they flew up after their game in the LA area… and Kevin Youkilis’ brother is the head chef at the restaurant.  And I will say that the restaurant is one of the FINEST in san francisco, so that family has some very outstanding yet diverse talent.

My friend goes to this restaurant maybe four times per week, and the owner let us know about the possibility of the Sox showing up after we got our appetizers.  Sure enough, as we’re sitting near the door I recognize Kevin Youkilis walk in.  Initial impressions?  The camera definitely adds 15 pounds;  he is not nearly as large as he appears on TV.  Actually, none of the Sox even appear to be baseball players — they look like well dressed men in a city of… well dressed men.  You would never pick these guys out of a crowd.  I didn’t recognize anyone else in the group, but the owner was introduced to “Chris” and “Rocco”, which I assume was Chris Carter and Rocco Baldelli.  I didn’t catch the other names, and I was shocked at the lack of size of the group.  Not taking anything away from the Sox players, its just you forget how normal sized baseball players are versus Basketball or Football players.

The players seemed very nice and respectfully reserved (we had 6 in our party, they had 5, and the restaurant is small enough that you could have fit maybe another 15 in there).  My biggest surprise?  They ordered bottled water.  I don’t know if it was just expected due to the number of drug testing that happens in the league (and therefore don’t trust tap water) or if its just habit, but it surprised me.

Due to the nature of their size, no one in the restaurant knew who they were.  My table did, but (besides myself) they were all hockey fans, and would have been much happier if the Boston Bruins showed up.  And I will have to say, while Kevin seems to be an excellent baseball player… his brother Scott knows his way around a kitchen.

As of 6pm, EST on April 8, 2009, the number of days of time since each of the major Detroit sports team’s last victory was:

• Red Wings:  2 days (last victory on April 6, 2009)
• Pistons:  3 days (last victory on April 5, 2009)
• Tigers:   193  days (last victory on Sept 27, 2008)
• Lions: Um… 472 days (last victory on Dec 23, 2007)… and counting.

The Tigers ended their streak with a solid 5-1 victory over the blue jays tonight.  So we can all step back from the ledge.  The Tigers will not go 0-16, 0-7, nor even 0-3.  We can wait another day to talk about firing Jim Leyland, Dave Dombrowski, or Gene Lamont.  We can hold off the dissection of the bullpen situation.  We can listen to (insert classic rock radio station name here) instead of (insert sports talk radio station here) tomorrow.  We can take a break from registering FIRE(insert name of Tiger official).com, or (insert bullpen pitcher or Brandon Inge)SUCKS.com.  Now, as fans, we can live for today.  As today, the Tigers are winners in 2009.

I mean, they’ll have to do better then win 1 out of every 3 games or this season will be a giant disaster… but now we can watch the team without worrying about the sky(dome) falling down on us.

Two losses in two nights.  One with Molson Canadian, one without.  It has been a rather unfortunate two nights to start Tiger baseball.

• Justin Verlander is a big time pitcher.  One who has trouble controlling his emotions.  Its obvious Leyland wanted someone else to pitch the home opener;  I wonder what the results would have been if Jackson started game one and Verlander game two.  I mean, in terms of the starting pitching.
• I’m not too worried about the bullpen.  Yet.  Leyland’s grand bullpen scheme included Joel Zumaya and Zach Miner, neither of which are available at the moment.  Zumaya is getting better, and Zach will start game three.
• I think Jeremy Bonderman’s progress will help Verlander.  If Edwin Jackson continues his hot start (which continued his hot spring) and Bonderman returns to form, maybe Verlander will relax.  Otherwise, maybe some Xanax.  Justin does not seem to handle pressure starts well.
• The defense hasn’t been awesome, but I’m encouraged with Miguel at first.  Everything else will even out.
• The #5 hitter will be the most important hitter this year.  Teams CANNOT pitch around Cabrera for Detroit to be successful.
• MLB.tv sucks to this point.  I still have faith.  I’m also excited I am paying month to month in case they offer some sort of rebate for the dogshit they’ve served up thus far.
• Leyland is digging the hit and run;  this is a good thing.  I think.  Surprising how often he called for it tonight without Anderson in the lineup — maybe he’s sick of all of the 2008 double plays.
• Inge is digging the long ball.  Not a bad thing.
• How does Leyland respond to the bullpen fallout will be interesting to watch.  Rodney hasn’t pitched yet;  I doubt Lyon is closing tomorrow night.  Does Lyon become the 7th inning man, with Perry stepping up to setup?

Everyone knows the story where Lyon gave up 4 straight home runs in spring training this year.  Well I was there… for half of it.  My dad was there in our seats, I went for some beer.  After the second shot (we were sitting in foul ground, near the left field wall) I returned to our seats, which were surrounded by Sox fans in the Red Sox park (City of Palms Park).  The Sox fans make jokes at our expense, always a good time.  Then, dinger #3 was hit.  That was fun.  Then… #4.  The jeers became sypathetic jokes.  My dad & I started laughing.  How could this happen?  It was nearly impossible.  The Sox fans accepted us as their own (if, over the course of time, a group of people know misery, its the fans of the Boston Red Sox).  So I thank Brandon Lyon for that hot sweaty Monday in Florida.  But now he’s the gift that keeps on giving.  Like herpes.  Give it up Mr Lyon.

Wow… Jason Beck is reporting that there will be no alcohol sales tonight. I bet someone is pretty pissed about the lost sales revenue, and possible lost walk-up ticket sales. Maybe not blowing it in the giving-up-nine-runs-on-opening-day like Detroit, but… Nice work Toronto!

Update
Apparently the ban is NOT related to last nights crowd. Maybe the fans were drinking for both nights on Monday?

Being a tech geek and an iphone user, the MLB.com at-bat 2009 application looked extremely promising.  Priced at $10, it advertises itself as an application that gives you in-game video, audio feeds from both the home and away team, real time scoring, video highlights, and pitch by pitch graphical updates.  $10?  Count me in.  I also purchased the mlb.tv package for my computer and… I’ll give that a review after a week.  I don’t think its fair to judge that app after one day so I’ll give it some time (though they do get some egg on their face by strutting the wonders of their switch to adobe the same day as the mlb.tv web app crashed for millions of users).  Give me the weekend to play with mlb.tv, as I’m still intrigued by their features — probably a server / load problem.

I spent most of opening day playing around with the iphone application, and in the ultimate test, I walked home from work (about 3 miles) listening to the Tiger / Blue Jays game.  Here are my first impressions.

PROS:

• This thing is really slick.  While many iphone applications are slick, the interface is very well thought out.  Live in PST?  Tell the app and all games are listed in PST.  Favorite team is Detroit?  It will automatically put every Detroit game at the top of the application.
• You can listen to one game and browse box scores, game updates, etc from another game without interruption of your audio stream.
• Audio works very well.  The quality is about the same as your standard internet radio feed.  Not quite AM quality (slightly tin-y) but easy to listen to for a few hours.
• Audio was tested on Wifi, 3G and Edge network connections and worked well.  Video / rich content speeds may vary based on connection speeds, but audio quality was the same for each.
• My walking tests?  I walked from the financial district, down market street, to the lower haight in San Francisco, about 40 minutes.  Very limited audio interruption, and this was only caused when the network dropped 3G and moved to Edge and then back to 3G.  The game picked back up automatically.  I imagine if you were hanging out in one area you wouldn’t see an interruption, as I probably went 15 minutes at a time before buildings probably blocked the signal.
• Battery life was very respectable.  During a 40 minutes in mostly 3G, starting with a full battery, I easily had 65-70% battery life remaining.  This was mostly walking in a 3G network;  If you disabled 3G and stuck with Edge it might have been better, but I don’t see any issues with the battery.  Easily could get through a game without any concerns.
• Real-time box scores and play by play is easy to use and easy to read
• Video results populated themselves;  while waiting for a stop light I checked the stats and was able to watch a video of Curtis Granderson’s solo shot in the fourth (can’t verify the time it showed, but it was about 20 minutes after he hit the homer that I checked and noticed the video was available).
• Video quality was very good.  Could have been better, but the game wasn’t in HD (from what I read) so that could have been a factor in the coding/codec available.
• When the app crashed (see below) the phone was unaffected.

CONS:

• They advertise “home and away” radio broadcasts.  The fine print says “All home and select away feeds”.  I was going to buy the app anyway, but it was very misleading.
• Not all audio feeds came through; some didn’t work at all, and some crashed the application.  Luckily, the phone never crashed.  This was a problem during the earlier games, but I didn’t have any issues with the Tiger game.  Early glitches may have been solved by then.
• Early games didn’t seem to post video feeds; nothing was available for the Texas 9-1 victory over Cleveland.  Not sure if this was a glitch that is to be worked out or if they didn’t have any videos of interest.
• Volume levels (while walking in an urban environment) are low.  Noise isolating headphones would be preferred, but then I wouldn’t be able to hear the drug dealers offering their wares.  In an office environment there aren’t any issues.
• Standard iphone headphone adjustments don’t work and have unexpected results.  For example, iphone headphones allow users to pause music, fast forward, or rewind by the click of their headphone extension.  However, when this is done while listening to a game on at-bat 2009, it actually starts your iphone’s itunes application.  By habit, when i’m listening to music and someone stops to ask me something, I just ‘pause’ what i’m listening to.  When this happened at work while listening to the Rockies / D-backs game, it clicked on itunes.. which had a different volume level and was playing music.  Not the expected result and scared the crap out of me.
• Standard iphone issue, but its annoying here too — you can’t use another iphone application while the mlb app is running, and if you do the game audio feed stops.  So if you get a text message, to reply you must stop the game.  Frustratingly there is no saving of the last known state, so when you re-open the application it doesn’t remember your game or what feed you chose.
• Application launch can be slow if you’re in 3G, and slower still in Edge.  Not as much of an issue, but compounds your annoyance level with the above issue.
• Small glitches — I had to select the Toronto feed of WXYT to listen to the actual Detroit announcers.  Sounds like a data feed problem that can be easily fixed without a software update.

Overall… this thing rules.  For $10 its one of the best applications you can purchase for the iphone in terms of service and what you can get out of it.  Yes, a portable satellite radio would have better service, but I don’t have satellite radio — I have an iphone.  Very Highly recommended.  Go buy it.  Now.

Also available:

MLB.com At-Bat 2009 Lite:  Blah.  Its free, but its not worth the time or money.  No audio, no glitz… no value.  The optimized espn.com mobile site I feel is faster, and allows you to click into the game immediately.  If you deem $10 not worth it, the mobile espn.com is pretty slick (scores only — no audio).