Monthly Archives: May 2006

2006 Season, Game Post

Game 41: Reds at Tigers

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PREGAME: So prior to the season, this matchup looked like a dog. Two perennial 4th place teams duking it out. Instead the Tigers are leading all of baseball, and the Reds 24-16 record is good enough for second in the division. I’m excited enough to take in two games, including tonight.

Typically when I look at the pitching match-ups, I look to see how the opposing team has done. In this case there isn’t a lot to talk about. The Tigers as a team have 4 at-bats against Brandon Claussen (Polanco has 3, Wilson 1). It isn’t much better going the other way with only Scott Hatteberg having more than 10 at-bats against Jeremy Bonderman.

What I do know about Claussen is he has been brutal on lefties. He’s allowing a .484 OPS to hitters on the left side, but .912 to righties.

I will point you to a couple of excellent Reds blogs, Red Reporter and Redleg Nation, for more info on this weekend’s opponent.

Let the quest for the Sparky Cup begin.

POSTGAME Uh yeah. At least the Pistons won.

2006 Season

Series Wrap: Twins at Tigers

Three more games in Comerica against the Twins, and three more Tiger wins.

Twins Tigers
Wins 0 3
Offense
Runs 7 14
BA .239 .286
OBP .317 .363
SLG .273 .440
HR 0 3
SB/CS 1/0 0/3
Pitching
BB/9 4.1 3.7
K/9 9.4 3.0
ERA 4.50 1.67

Now this performance wasn’t nearly as complete as the last time the Twins came to town. And really, for the second consecutive series I look at the stats and wonder, “How was this a sweep?” Twins pitcher struck out more batters per game than the Tigers struck out in the series – and the Tigers didn’t even bat in the 9th each game. The Tigers had 3 caught stealings, and got themselves out between 3rd and home 3 times. And yet they won, and won, and won. Continue reading Series Wrap: Twins at Tigers →

2006 Season, Injuries, Minors

Tigers Minor League Wrap – May 18th

Toledo 8, Norfolk 2
Jordan Tata made his second start, with better results. He last 5 innings and allowed one run on 3 hits. He did walk 4, but fanned 7 before being pulled after 97 pitches. Ryan Raburn his his 7th and 8th homers and added a single. David Espinosa had 4 hits, and Don Kelly reached base 3 times.

Erie 4, Reading 3
Tony Giarratano had a double, a single, and two walks. Kody Kirkland homered and singled. Virgil Vazquez allowed one run in 8 innings. He allowed 7 hits and 3 walks.

Brevard County 10, Lakeland 3
Chris Robinson had 3 hits, including 2 double to raise his average to .269. Jeff Larish also had 3 hits, including his 5th homer. Lance Davis was the victim of 4 errors and allowed 7 runs (3 earned) on 8 hits in 6 innings.

West Michigan 1, Peoria 1 11th inning in progress
This game just won’t end. Matt Joyce homered and singled to lead the Whitecap attack. Ramon Garcia keeps impressing. He pitched 9 innings and allowed 7 hits while fanning 6. Cameron Maybin didn’t play, but got good news from his MRI. It won’t require surgery, but he’ll be out 3 weeks. Now that we know he’s out, I’ll stop pointing it out every night.

2006 Season, Pitching, Statistics

PECOTA said this might happen

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Now that we are at the 40 game mark, people are starting to really try and determine which surprises are real. The Tigers have received a lot of attention, what with the best record in baseball and all. Most has been positive, but there are dissenters, and they have just cause. The Tigers, particularly the pitching staff, are playing at levels that are by and large, well above what their careers would indicate. But back before the season started, PECOTA thought this might happen. Continue reading PECOTA said this might happen →

2006 Season, Game Post

Game 40: Twins at Tigers

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PREGAME: Ah, that magical game 40 when it is suddenly safe to make judgements about teams. Today’s game will feature Kenny Rogers taking on Brad Radke.

A couple weeks ago the Tigers beat the stuffing out of Radke. Hopefully they can repeat the effort. Working in the Tigers favor is that they have 4 players hitting over .400 against Radke for their careers (min of 25 ABs) – Monore, Rodriguez, Ordonez, and Guillen.

I very rarely make predictions, but I think Pudge goes yard to day. He’s been sitting on two home runs for a long time, and he has 8 career dingers off Radke.

POSTGAME: You know things are going good when your pitcher is sick but doesn’t allow any earned runs, and you make two fielding errors, and a couple baserunning errors, your closer has a rocky outing, and you still pick up the win.

I was wrong about Pudge’s homer, but Placido Polanco managed to pop his first of the season.

And aside from the win, and resulting 2nd consecutive sweep, there were actually 26,000 there to see it. With the Reds coming to town this weekend, I’ll be disappointed if they don’t break 100,000 for the series.

Uncategorized

Site Update

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I’ve moved the site to a new web host. I did this last night, and I realize parts of the site were unreachable for a spell. I think it is all working now (I hope). Also, if you happened to leave a comment last night during the switch, chances are it didn’t make it over. For this I apologize.

Hopefully I can get this whole transition straightened out, and get back to worrying about baseball rather than the technical stuff.

2006 Season, Game Post

Game 39: Twins at Tigers

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PREGAME: It’s the pitching stupid! Justin Verlander and Johan Santana will do battle tonight – barring inclement weather of course. Then again, starting the game and experiencing a lengthy rain delay would probably help the Tigers. While I’d prefer to see Verlander throwing, I think our fresh long relievers would have the advantage against the Twins weary bullpen.

But Pudge Rodriguez, Magglio Ordonez, and Craig Monroe have all had success against Santana in the past. Tonight’s lineup feature Pudge at DH with Vance Wilson catching. Ramon Santiago gets the nod over Placido Polanco at 2nd base.

2006 Season

MId-week linking

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Alex Belth and Cliff Corcoran, the fine proprietors of Bronx Banter give some love to the classic style of the Olde English D. Make sure to check out the comments.


Paul disagreed with my assertion in the Indians series wrap that the Tigers were fortunate to have played teams when they were struggling. He makes several good points, supported with data and stuff. But I don’t think we are really that far apart. Most of the examples show that it wasn’t the Tigers catching the team at the right time, it was that the teams just haven’t been good. I’d still assert that offenses like the A’s will be better this year, like the Twins pitchers will also be better than what we’ve seen. If that is the case, it is better to face them now then when they get clicking. And even if they don’t get better, it just plays into the belief that the Tigers have benefitted from a weak schedule. In any case, discussion is good, especially when it is well supported.

Danny Knobler floated the idea that a big trade could be coming the Tigers way by the end of July. I’m not going to delve into the possibilities here yet. I just think it is too soon to know what the holes on the team are. But it is definitely a different perspective for Tiger fans.

This is a couple days old, but I’m really enjoying the Freep’s expanded Tiger coverage on Sundays. This past weekend alone saw interesting articles on Cameron Maybin, bat preferences, and Greg Smith’s draft history.

And this was brought up in the comments, but Baseball Prospectus has some Tiger content in their free section. The article gives the Tigers props, but also highlights how difficult it will be for the pitching staff to continue at their current pace, mostly because the defense can’t continue at its current pace. I think to a certain extent they are correct, but I’ll tackle that more tomorrow night.

2006 Season, Minors

Tigers Minor League Wrap – May 16th

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Norfolk 3, Toledo 2
Ryan Raburn, Kevin Hooper, and Josh Phelps all had two hits. Chad Durbin started and allowed on 3 hits and 2 walks to go along with 5 strikeouts in 7 innings. Mark Woodyard pitched a scoreless eighth before Lee Gardner allowed two in the 9th.

Erie – Rained Out

Lakeland 6, Brevard County 0
Kevin Ardoin pitched a complete game shut out. He allowed only 6 hits, and his defense backed him up. He walked none, and of the 27 outs, only one came via strikeout. He helped his own cause by picking off two. Clete Thomas homered for Lakeland and Jeff Larish added a double. Jim Essian had 3 hits including a homer. Wilkin Ramirez made his 11th error of the season.

West Michigan 6, Peoria 1
Michael Hollimon paced the attack with a homer and two singles. Cameron Maybin once again was held out. Burke Badenhop pitched a complete game with the only run coming on a solo shot. He walked none and fanned 5.

2006 Season, Game Post, Uncategorized

Game 38: Twins at Tigers

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PREGAME: Wow. The Tigers are playing the Twins again. That almost never happens. After this series, out of the Tigers last 19 games, 9 will have been against the Twins.

The Tigers will be facing Kyle Lohse who must feel like every game is against the Tigers. And for Lohse this year, that hasn’t been a good feeling.

Nate Robertson will take the ball for Detroit, looking to replicate his last outing against the Twins in which he allowed no runs on 5 hits in 7 innings.

Dmitri Young will return to the lineup.

Game time 7:05pm

POSTGAME: With the White Sox loss, your Detroit Tigers are now tied for the best record in all of baseball. I realize that this doesn’t mean nearly as much in May as it does in October, but for Detroit fans this is as good as it gets.

Nate Robertson was quite shaky, but his offense picked him up the very next inning with a 5 spot. Without the game on TV, I don’t have a lot to add. As Eddie and Kyle pointed out, the Tigers got into a Twins bullpen that was already worn down. Now chances are Johan Santana will give them a break tomorrow night, but who knows.

While the Tigers bullpen has had plenty of rest this season, I think Jim Leyland had to go deeper into his pen than he anticipated. At this point it is picking nits, but I was surprised to see Colon only go one inning. Of course, Leyland probably thought that Bobby Seay could pitch an uneventful inning instead of turning it into a closing situation.

2006 Season

Pack the Park

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How often is it that Tiger fans wake up in May and find their team with the 2nd best record in baseball? The answer is basically never. And yet the Tigers rank ahead of only Kansas City, Florida, and Tampa in terms of average attendance.

They are averaging 21, 257 fans per game, which is just a hair below where they were after 14 home dates last year when they were averaging 21,334.
Continue reading Pack the Park →