Are you in? Are they for real, or is this just a 4 game win streak? Regardless, it’s fun to say the Tigers are on a 4 game win streak. The fact that the streak is coming at the beginning at the season, as opposed to sometime in July when they are 20 games under .500 just makes it sweeter. As for me, I’m still on the fence. Four games is just too small of a sample to make any definitive conclusions, so I’m just going to enjoy the 4 wins for what they are- 4 wins.
I’ll have a link to a longer post about opening day later today. It will be appearing on baseballmusings.com and I’ll link to it once it’s up.
UPDATE My opening day post is up at BaseballMusings.com now. Here is the link.
Notes from the game:
-Nate Cornejo’s strike out rate is skyrocketing. Four K’s in seven innings (5.13K/9IP) is a dramatic improvement over last year’s comically low 2.13K/9IP
-Scariest moment: Carlos Guillen taking the foul ball of his leg. Glad he’s okay because I’m expecting big things from Guillen this year
-Redemption moment: Bobby Higginson working to redeem himself with 4 RBI’s and getting a standing ovation from the fans in right field.
-Where is Chris Shelton? Once again Greg Norton got the call in late pinch hitting duties. He’s now 0-6 with 4 strike outs and a GIDP. I know that 6AB’s is prett small to form an opinion on, but aren’t pinch hitting experts supposed to thrive in small samples? What else is there to judge them on?
Great site dude, lovin’ it, GO TIGERS, and I have just one more thing to say – GO WINGS !!!
I’m on the fence as well. At least they shouldn’t have any 1-15 streaks in them this year.
Cornejo’s K’s were up in Lakeland as well. A very good sign. 8 K’s for Bonderman also looked good. If the pitching can be as good as it was the first half of last year they should have a chance to win a bunch of games. I wish they had another arm and another bat. That would make it real interesting.
Trammell all but said that Shelton isn’t going to get to play. I get the impression that DD insisted on Shelton. He’s defensive liability and that is apparently the kiss of death. Sanchez, Munson, Palmer, Higginson and Halter notwithstanding.
PS: I’d like to see Torres get to play a little. He’s a better defender than Sanchez, just as fast and he was hitting the crap out of the ball in Florida.
That’s a shame about Shelton – he should at least be allowed a few pinch-hit opportunities, especially if the best Greg Norton can give happened last season.