PREGAME: The Tigers go for two in a row against the Minnesota Twins at 1:05pm. Justin Verlander will try for his first Comerica Park win. He faced the Twins last year and lost at home, and of course was beat around by the White Sox earlier this year. He’ll be opposed by groundball pitcher Carlos Silva. Silva made his mark last year by getting through innings very efficiently. However he posts and 8.33 ERA coming into today.
Craig Monroe went 2 for 5 yesterday, but that’s nothing new against the Twins. Monroe sports a .360 average against the Twins which is tops among active players.
Historically against Silva, Carlos Guillen has hit .450 in 20 at-bats. Brandon Inge and Monroe are also .300+ hitters against Silva. Ivan Rodriguez has only managed a .174 average in 23 at-bats, but I’d expect Vance Wilson to get the start anyways. EDIT: it looks like Pudge afterall…
POSTGAME: Ummm, not a lot I can say about an 18-1 thrashing. Everything worked for the Tigers, nothing worked for the Twins. The box score looks pretty ridiculous for the Tig’s, and Verlander did his job.
One thing I will point out is that Minnesota pitchers have 362 pitches in the first two games of this series. Of those, only 113 have come from starters. The Twins bullpen has been battered as much as the starters have, and is largely unavailable tomorrow.
Also, the Tigers drew 24,000+ today despite the Red Wings and Pistons in the playoffs as well as the NFL draft. This team is forcing people to pay attention.
What a game 🙂
I complained about the 121, so I gotta give credit to Leyland for today. He used Verlander perfectly. I literally missed the first part of the Wings game solely because I wanted to see if he was going to run Verlander back out for the 8th.
Well, that was nice.
Verlander is struggling far less than I expected.
Guillen is hitting a ton like 2004. Pudge is too.
Granderson looks like a stud. Best Tiger CF since Chet Lemon.
Well this is a few days old and I don’t know if anyone else noticed, but TSN Canada (hey, they’ve got great hockey coverage) has the Tigers ranked 1st in their power rankings from April 25.
http://www.tsn.ca/mlb/feature/?fid=484&hubname=
I was shocked, but its nice to see they’ve got that much confidence in the team.
Great TV day, Tigers on and pounding the Twins, NFL Draft (could the Lions have used Leinart), Hockey. As a Tigers fan its great to know that they have fire in their bellies and enough talent to beat or hang with anyone. Lets keep the heat on all season long and see where it goes. The line up is solid top to bottom and the pitching is pretty good. They seem to have a good head about them as all have them have been spanked one outing but come back in decent shape mentally (thanks Jim).
Steve