With the Tigers having an off day, I’ll keep this light.

Pudge’s Slump
Over his last ten games Ivan Rodriguez is 5 for 41. Using the Baseball Musings day-by-day database we can look and see if Pudge has ever had a streak this rough before. After dumping the data in Excel, it became pretty easy to see this is among the roughest streaks of his career. However it isn’t unprecedented. Just last year he had a period in August where he went 4 for 33. In 2003 he had a ten game stretch in which he went 4 for 32. In 1997 he had a 3 for 29 slump. Before that his worst stretch was a 4 for 35 stint in 1992 which was parter of a larger 9 for 64 downer.

What’s most troubling about this current slump is that he is striking out at a ridiculous rate. He has struck out 15 times in the last 10 games, more than any ten year stretch in his career.

I’m not too worried about this slump yet, and the Tigers have managed to get through it thanks to some strong pitching. I also don’t think the weight loss had anything to do with it. He was hitting perfectly fine earlier in the year. If it was related to weightloss he would have been struggling the whole season.

Big Show for the Big Cure
If you’ve got the time tomorrow, head out to Troy Lanes. Team 1270’s Art Regner and Doug Karsch are doing a radiothon to support prostate cancer research at the Henry Ford Vattikuti Urology Institute. They are doing great things with the treatment of prostate cancer at Henry Ford including a robotic prostatectomy that significantly reduces discomfort and recovery time.

It’s a great cause, and should be a lot of fun. If anybody is crazy enough to join me, I’ll be there from 4:30-5:30 in the morning.

Tiger Love
The United States of Baseball recently had an article promoting Tiger Fandom.