The source of Gary Knotts’ recent struggles seems to be a sore arm.  I don’t know how long he’s had the problem, but I’d guess it happened during the Yankees game on the 17th.  Knotts was pretty effective early in that game, but then was touched for 3 runs in the 5th, and couldn’t make it through the 6th.  Since that 5th inning his OPS against is 1.344 with half of the batters reaching base.

If this is the case, and Knotts was injured for several starts, this is the second time this year a starter has gone out mulitple times with a sore shoulder.  Cornejo and Knotts both tried to be warriors and it cost the team multiple games.  I know that Bob Cluck is worried about protecting his pitcher’s arms, and he’s done a pretty good job the last two years.  I appreciate the warrior mentality, but there seems to be a reluctance on the starter’s part to let Cluck protect them.

This warrior mentality is taking a toll on Pudge as well.  He’s clearly in pain, and it is affecting his game both defensively and offensively.  His pitch selection since the All Star break has been horrendous.  Defensively, he’s reaching on pitches in the dirt instead of blocking them.  Opponents are also having a field day running on him  lately.  He’s only thrown out 24% of basestealers, which ranks third worst in the league.  To his credit, his reputation has resulted in only 33 attempts in 700 innings behind the plate, but eventually teams are going to figure this out.  Pudge needs several days off, regardless of whether he wants to accept them.  I know Tram has deflected to his star’s wishes, but it’s time that Pudge sits.  He’s too good to burn him out in July.

Roster Shuffle:
So with Knotts on the 15 day disabled list, he will be replaced on the 25 man roster with AA reliever Roberto Novoa.  Novoa was acquired as part of the Randall Simon trade with Pittsburgh.  Taking his spot in the rotation will be Wil Ledezma.  The Tigers want to limit his innings to 150 this season.  If Ledezma pitches about 6 innings a game, he should be able to get about 5 starts.  This will get the team close to September 1st when the Tigers can expand their active roster.

Now I have some issues with the 150 inning limit.  I fully endorse protecting Ledezma’s arm.  Last year he accumulated his first significant innings since 2000.  In fact, in his entire professional career he has only thrown 135 innings.  However, a 150 inning limit might not be the best way to protect him.  First of all, I don’t know that a major league inning is equivalent to a minor league inning, and 111 of Ledezma’s inning’s this year were with Erie.  Furthermore, he dominated Erie, so I have a feeling he wasn’t throwing a ton of pitches.  In fact, he only threw 24 walks in those innings at Erie.  So while adding 40 major league innings to 110 minor league innings might keep Ledezma at his limit of 150 innings, I’m not sure it’s the 150 inning limit they envisioned at the beginning of the season.

In any case, we’ll get to see Ledezma make 4-5 starts and see if he’s progressed from last year.

Links of Note:
Baseball Prospectus has a free article about the Tigers and whether they should be buyer’s or sellers.

Baseball Think Factory (or Primer) has made a list for each team of the best players to play their entire careers with the same team. He kind of cheated with the Tigers by making Charlie Gehringer the 3B because he played a couple games there. This did clear the way for Whitaker to make the team as a second basemen. Here is the link to the article.