The Tigers have 5 losing streaks of 7 or more games this season. That’s offset by 3 winning streaks of 2 or more games. After being swept by the Diamondbacks, their current losing streak is at nine. The Diamondbacks lineup is almost as obscure (due to injuries) as the Tigers (due to…well you know why) and yet they handled the Tigers easily this weekend. This further contributes to the frustration. Even other young inexperienced teams manage to beat up on the Tigers. Just ask the Indians who are also rebuilding have gone 8-2 against the Tigers. They are almost as offensively inept, averaging 3.8 runs per game when they’re not playing the Tigers (when they average 6.1 rpg). So it’s obvious the Tigers are going to have trouble with good teams, but it becomes even more difficult to watch when they struggle agaisnt teams in the same situation.

In any case, I’m heading down to the game tonight. With Maroth going against Toronto, I’m not holding my breath for this streak to end. I’ll have a look back at the month of June tomorrow.

I always look forward to Lynn Henning’s Sunday Tiger columns. He typically is right on the nose with his analysis. He’s clearly the best Tiger writer in the city, with Danny Knobler of the Ann Arbor news probably second. The Freep is getting better though. Just this week they were talking about OPS for the first time that I can remember.

German sent to Toledo; Mears joins Tigers – 6/29/03 And he’ll probably stay there until he remembers how to throw strikes.
Update To make room for Mears, Kingsale was designated for assignment

This has been a particularly frustrating week, even by Tiger standards. It’s getting harder and harder to write about this team. Wednesday night I was watching the game, and I was preparing to write about how Trammell finally shook up the lineup. He shifted from the speedy-centerfielder has to lead off philosophy, and put Higginson on top, which makes sense.
Higgy definitely hasn’t been hitting like a number 3 hitter (or even a right fielder) with a .340 slugging percentage. However, with an OBA in the .330’s, that is pretty good in the context of the Tiger lineup. And in the first inning he drew a walk, and that was great. I was also going to write about how Maroth was throwing a great game, and how I thought Tram pulled him at the right time, because he definitely labored in the 7th. And I was going to talk about one of Omar Infante’s at-bats that showed promise, but ultimately showed how he’s just not there. He got behind 1-2 early, fouled off some balls, fought back to a full count, and then weakly swung at a shoulder high pitch to strike out.

But then while 1 of the 8 runs in the 8th scored, I realized how silly it is to analyze the minutiae on this team. It’s not like one at-bat, or one good performance, or a good managerial decision will fix this team. Any sort of analysis will show that the team isn’t very good, and probably won’t be anytime soon.

However, in the interest of continuity, I will mention that Omar Infante was sent down to make room for Carlos Pena today.

Sometimes I think I just need to write these venting posts.

Since there isn’t really much to say about a 10-1 drubbing, I thought I’d take some time out to do a little housekeeping and solicit some feedback. I’m working on cleaning up my list of links on the side. I haven’t really touched it in over a year, and some of the blogs that were listed became defunct. Plus, there is a lot of great baseball writing going on, that I’m not yet linking too. As of now, all the blogs listed are active. I’ve also added some additional ones, and more will be coming soon.

Also, I know I have some frequent visitors, some infrequent visitors, and some one-stop shoppers. I want to find out what you like about the site, and what you dislike? And most importantly, what you would like to see more or less of. This can be anything from layout to content to anything else. Is it easy to read? Should I do more original content, or link to more external content? Do you want to know more about me? Anything is fair game-except for actually improving my subject matter because that’s out of my hands. While I ultimately write this blog because I love the Tigers and baseball in general, I’d be lying if I said I didn’t care if anybody came to the site. So go ahead and leave your feedback in the comments, or feel free to email me at bill at detroittigersweblog dot com. I look forward to hearing from you.

A quick update and what’s been going on in the Tiger’s Minor League System. (with help from the prospect report)

Toledo
-Carlos Pena is hitting .389 in his rehab stint
-Matt Anderson continues to get hit. Opponents are hitting .308 against him. At least his 21/3 K/BB ratio is impressive, even if his .74 K/IP ratio isn’t.

Erie
-Preston Larrison was named to the Futures team
-Kenny Baugh continues to struggle. His last outing resulted in 8 earned runs on 9 hits in four and a third innnings

Lakeland
-3B Donald Kelly continues to get on base regularly. He has 31 walks and he’s hitting .359/.447/.473
-David Espinosa looks like a lost cause. He’s .231/.323/.344

West Michigan
-Jon Connolly finally failed to get a win. He gave up 2 earned runs in 6 innings on 9 hits, striking out 7.
-Joel Zumaya scattered 4 hits and 3 walks over 6 innings to get his 4th win. He allowed no earned runs and struck out 7

Oneonta
-Kody Kirkland, the PTBNL in the Randall Simon trade is raking. In 6 games he’s hitting .522/.593/.870

Bonderman might not be out of his league

Four Tigers make the AL team. I’ll give you 4 guesses to figure out who they are. (permalinks aren’t working so go to his June 24th entry)

With so much to say, I don’t know where to begin. So we’ll start with the bright spots, because we can get those out of the way quickly
-In case you hadn’t noticed, Eric Munson has become a respectable 3rd basemen. While his fielding still has room for improvement-he’s last in the AL in zone rating, and next to last in fielding percentage and range factor-he has raised his OPS to .767 which is 7th best among AL third baggers. Additionally, leads all rookies in BB/PA (.097) and is second in isolated power (.192).
-Warren Morris continues to hit well, and with power. His numbers are .348/.348/.587 with three home runs. True, it is only 46 at-bats, and his career numbers of .268/.339/.384 indicate he probably will take some walks eventually, and he won’t continue to hit for this much power. Regardless, even if he reverts to his career numbers, it will be the most production we’ll have had at second since Damion Easley’s good season.
-And while we’re in the middle of the diamond let’s talk about who’s going to play short. Shane Halter brings more power to the position (but about the same batting average). And now it looks like Santiago is auditioning for the job as well. In the end, either Infante or Santiago is heading to the minors when Pena comes back later this week. I know if I’m Nate Cornejo, the combination of Morris and Halter in the middle scares the bejesus out of me. (Side Note: Wasn’t it only last year that the Tigers gave up offense to improve defense- a la Chris Truby?).
-Speaking of poor range, you know you’re in trouble when Dmitri Young is coming over from left to make plays on balls hit to center field. Alex Sanchez simply cannot get to enough balls. Part of the problem is he’s playing two steps in front of the warning track. How long are they going to tolerate this? It’s not like his base stealing is a threat when he has an on base average of .280.
-Gary Knotts didn’t have a very impressive outing in relief on Saturday, as he kept throwing balls into the seats. Today he finds himself bound for Toledo. Fernando Rodney, who had 16 saves for the Mud Hens will take his place.

I do have to give the Tigers credit for one thing though this year. They went into the season knowing they were trying to evaluate talent. And to their credit they gave everyone a fair shot before shaking things up. They waited over a third of the way through the season. The position players have had a number of games to get acclimated, and the pitchers all got 12-14 starts.

Also, I like the fact that Tram kept Roney’s first outing short. While I didn’t understand why you would want him to start at Coors field where the bullpen already stood a good chance of being heavily utilized, I appreciate the fact he was looking out for his arm.

To look at Bonderman’s line from last night, it isn’t terribly exciting. 6.1IP, 3 ER, 7 hits, 8K, 0 BB. However, for the first six innings he was pretty dominating. He had great command and was doing a good job locating all of his pitches. His fastball even hit 97 a couple of times on the radar gun. Also, he was efficient, only using 72 pitches prior to the seventh inning. Then after retiring the first batter in the seventh, Bradley worked an 8 pitch at-bat into a single and stole second. That’s when it fell apart for Jeremy. Broussard doubled in Bradley. Two more singles and Jeremy was done for the night. He had a third run charged to him when Spurling allowed a sac fly. That being said, this was probably Jeremy’s best outing since his battle against Zito in Oakland. While the Tigers didn’t get the win, and Bonderman got the benefit of Tony Randazzo’s wide strike zone, it was still nice to see a strong performance from the kid.

A couple other bright spots from this loss included another home run by Eric Munson, as part of a 3 hit day. Munson has raised his average to .242 and now has 9 home runs on the year. The downside is that 7 of those home runs have been solo. Also, Bobby Higginson hit 4 balls hard, and had two hits to show for it.

Dmitri Young had a couple of opportunities to pick up RBI’s and instead struck out and hit a comebacker.