All the Tiger news this weekend comes from the mound. Saturday saw Matt Roney battle Pedro (and hang with him). Roney’s line for the night was 6.2 IP, 4 H, 1 ER, 2 BB, 7 K. Roney clearly likes pitching at home. In his two Comerica starts (against the Blue Jays and Red Sox) he has given up 1 run in 13.2 innings on 5 hits and 4 walks (plus 11 K’s). On the road he has made 3 starts, and his stats are 12.1 IP, 11 R, 17 Hits. Now while his road starts were at Coors, Fenway, and Kaufman, the problem appears more to be his control than the stadium. On the road his K/BB ratio is 4/10 and at Comerica it is 13/10.

Next there is Wil Ledezma who has yet to give up a run in his two starts. He scattered 6 hits over 7 scoreless innings. While he only had two strike outs he didn’t walk anyone. However, subjectively he wasn’t quite as effective as his last start. A number of balls were hit hard, but fortunately they found their way into outfielders gloves (only 3 ground ball outs). Grady Little while giving Ledezma credit said that if the game were in Fenway, they might have had 7 or 8 runs early. And in all honesty, he probably isn’t far off.

The next bit of news is that the Tigers traded Adam Bernero to Colorado for AAA catcher/outfielder Ben Petrick. This killed the “Why the Tigers should try Bernero at closer” article I was pondering. Ben Petrick’s numbers aren’t overly impressive at Colorado Springs. He’s hitting .259/.333/.500 with 11 home runs (second on the team). He has struck out 53 times in 258 plate appearances, but he does take some walks (26). Baseball America projects him to a .231 average at the major league level (which is what AJ Hinch projected to as well). Sadly, this is still an improvement for the Tigers at catcher. Colorado plans to use Bernero exclusively out of the pen.

The best news regarding the Tiger pitching staff is that the organization is very aware of how much their young pitchers are throwing. Lynn Henning reports that Ledezma and Bonderman will both get 12 days of rest. Furthermore they are looking at how to restrict the innings of their rookie pitchers. There is further evidence that Bonderman and Ledezma will get shut down early, or the Tigers will got to a 6 man rotation. With Bernero’s departure, this would probably indicate that Knotts and Loux will get some starts (and possibly Sparks too) towards the end of the season. During the telecast today, Jack Morris was sharing a conversation that he had with Bob Cluck. The Clucker is particularly concerned with the number of innings guys throw while they are under 25. According to Morris, Cluck feels that pitchers shouldn’t increase innings from one year to the next by more than 50. (One could argue that this is kind of a strange and arbitrary rule because going from 25 to 75 innings is quite different than going from 125 to 175. The important thing is that he is aware) Also Cluck is watching the innings that the minor league pitchers are accumulating. With the exception of one 118 pitch outing by Bonderman, the Tigers have done a great job of babying their young pitchers.

I should have a pretty full minor league report at some point during the All Star break.