Monthly Archives: May 2006

2006 Season, Minors

Tigers Minor League Wrap – May 15th

Toledo 7, Richmond 2
Ryan Ludwick homered and had 5 RBI’s. Don Kelly added a triple and single, and Ryan Raburn reached base 3 times. Zach Miner had another solid start going 5 1/3 innings and allowing 7 hits while fanning 4. Chris Spurling came in and pitched 3 2/3 innings on allowing two hits.

Erie – rained out

Lakeland 8 , Brevard County 3
Andrew Kown allowed 6 hits, 1 walk, and 1 run while fanning 3 in 6 innings. Chris Robinson had a double and a walk. Wilkin Ramirez had two singles and a walk.

West Michigan – rained out. Cameron Maybin wasn’t in the starting lineup.

2006 Season

Series Wrap: Tigers at Indians

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The season of unprecendented Tiger accomplishments continues…Okay, maybe not unprecendented, but certainly unfamiliar. The Tigers swept the Indians at Jacobs Field, which quite frankly is unprecedented. I’m not sure why it is working this way, but Detroit keeps seeming to get teams at the most opportune time. They faced the Rangers without their best pitchers, they faced the Twins when they were struggling, they faced the Athletics when they weren’t hitting, and they faced the Indians when nothing was going right for them. Witness the stats:

Tigers Indians
Wins 3 0
Offense
Runs 11 6
BA .269 .245
OBP .296 .318
SLG .433 .357
HR 3 2
SB/CS 1/1 0/1
Pitching
BB/9 3.3 1.3
K/9 6.3 8.0
ERA 1.67 3.00

Continue reading Series Wrap: Tigers at Indians →

Uncategorized

Site Downtime

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I apologize for the protracted time this site was down last night and this morning. I think the total outage was about 14 hours. It was a problem with one of the servers at my webhosting company.

I am currently in the market for a new webhost, and will be transitioning the site sometime this week. I don’t anticipate any downtime during this move. The worst that would probably happen is that you might miss out on a new post for a day or so while the nameserver change propagates.

Again, I’m sorry.

2006 Season, Minors

Tigers Minor League Wrap – May 14th

Richmond 4, Toledo 2
Ryan Raburn and Ryan Ludwick each had two singles. David Espinosa had a sacrifice fly and a walk, but saw his average dip to 227. Wil Ledezma made his first appearance since coming off the DL and wasn’t effective. He allowed 9 hits and 3 walks for 4 runs in 5 2/3 innings. Prior to the injury he had been striking out a ton of batters, but only mustered 3 today. Mark Woodyard fanned 3 in 1 1/3 scoreless innings.

Reading 2, Erie 0
Tony Giarratano had a souble and a single. Brent Clevlen and Kody Kirkland both posted 0 for 4’s with a strike out. Nate Bumstead had a solid outing, but did have some control issues. He allowed 2 runs on 6 hits, both on solo homers in 7 innings. His 7 K’s were impressive, his 5 walks were not.

Lakeland – DNP

West Michigan, Lansing (in progress)
Still no Cameron Maybin. Erik Averill started and allowed 2 runs on 3 hits and 3 walks in 6 innings. He struck out 5.

2006 Season, Game Post

Game 37: Tigers at Indians

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PREGAME: The Tigers try to complete the sweep, extend their winning streak, and try to stop another trend. The Tigers have yet to win the last game of a homestand or road trip.

Mike Maroth shut out the Indians the last time the two sides squared off, also on a holiday (Easter) and also on a Sunday. He’ll be opposed by Jason Johnson, who I would really like to see the Tigers beat.

Curtis Granderson played in his 88th game without an error last night. That matches the longest string for a Tiger player to start his career errorless since Danny Bautista from 1993-1995.

Happy Mother’s Day to any of my readers who are mothers!

POSTGAME: Don’t look now – actually do look now – but the Tigers are tied for first place, sort of. They aren’t any games back, but the White Sox have the edge in winning percentage.

I didn’t see the game in its entirety due to Mother’s day obligations, but from what I did see Mike Maroth was once again very effective. The Jason Johnson that pitched today was the one that we saw the first half of 2005. He kept the ball down, and induced a ton of groundballs.

If you caught the FSN Detroit broadcast, you probably heard that this was the Tigers first ever sweep at Jacobs Field. This marked the end of another productive road trip and elevated their road record to a remarkable 16-7. The Tigers have now played 23 of their 37 games on the road.

2006 Season, Minors

Tigers Minor League Wrap – May 13th

Richmond 10, Toledo 6
Josh Phelps doubled and walked twice, and Alexis Gomez added a triple and a walk. Jordan Tata made his first start of the season, and was hammered. He allowed 4 hits, 4 walks, and a homer in 2 2/3 innings while fanning 3.

Erie 6, Reading 5
Kody Kirkland homered (9) and fanned 3 times. Brent Clevlen was 1 for 3 with 2 RBI. Brian Jones started and went 3 1/3 innings allowing 2 hits and 3 walks for 2 runs. Jeremy Johnson followed and pitched two scoreless innings. Eulogio De La Cruz who started horrible this season, added another scoreless inning to drop his ERA to 5.79.

Vero Beach 3, Lakeland 1
There wre only 3 hits for Lakeland. Clete Thomas (single), Jeff Larish (double), and Victor Mendez (homer) powered the attack. Dallas Trahern threw a complete game allowing 7 hits and 2 walks against 3 K’s.

West Michigan 8, Lansing 4
Matt Joyce hit a grand slam, and Michael Hollimon added a homer as well. Cameron Maybin continued to be absent from the lineup. Matt Rusch who has been solid in the pen was given a chance to start. In 3 innings he fanned 4, walked one, and only allowed 1 hit. His ERA over 20 innings stands at 1.31 with a 20/3 K:BB ratio.

2006 Season, Game Post

Game 36: Tigers at Indians

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PREGAME: Today should be an interesting pitching match-up between two of the talented young arms in the AL Central, Jeremy Bonderman and CC Sabathia.

Tiger hitters have had little success against Sabathia in the past, especially Brandon Inge who is 3 for 31 lifetime. Given my proclivity lately for pointing out interesting notes which then get obliterated by the actual game, expect big numbers from Inge tonight.

On another interesting note, the Tigers lead the majors in home runs and doubles among visiting teams at Jacobs Field.

POSTGAME: Yet another shut out for the Tigers pitching staff. Jeremy Bonderman out dueled CC Sabathia. Bonderman finished officiallywith 8 strikeouts, but he actually struck out Travis Hafner 3 times in the 6th inning while being squeezed by the ump.

It also appears that Chris Shelton minght be getting his groove back. He’s had consecutive multi-hit games, and he crushed two balls yesterday.

2006 Season, Managing & Strategy, Pitching

Leyland’s Tender Loving Care

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As I documented here several times, the part of the Jim Leyland hire that made me most apprehensive was his handling of starters. A couple times earlier this season those fears were reinforced. There was the time he said didn’t believe in pitch counts, and he left it up to the opposing hitters to let him know when his starter had tired. And then there was the game in Oakland when he left Justin Verlander in for 121 pitches. However I’ve been happily wrong for the most part.
Continue reading Leyland’s Tender Loving Care →

2006 Season, Minors

Tigers Minor League Wrap – May 12th

Richmond 3, Toledo 0
The Mud Hens were held to 4 hits, so there isn’t much in terms of offensive stars. Alexis Gomez did pick up two of the hits. Colby Lewis pitched well allowing 3 runs, 2 earned, on 8 hits, 2 walks, and 5 strikeouts in 6 innings.

Erie 1, Reading 0
While the Mud Hens only managed 4 hits, the Wolves only picked up 3. The difference is that one of them was a homer by Mike Rabelo. Brent Clevlen added a walk and a single. Preston Larrison allowed 5 hits and fanned 5 in 8 innings. Chris Homer picked up his 7th save.

Lakeland 5, Vero Beach 2
Nick McIntyre had 3 hits. Brent Dlugach added two while the Jeff’s (Frazier and Larish) went a combined 0 for 8. Lance Davis fanned 11 in 6 2/3 innings to limit Vero Beach to 1 run.

West Michigan was postponed again.

2006 Season, Game Post

Game 35: Tigers at Indians

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PREGAME: The Tigers make their first trip to Jacobs Field this season. Cleveland begins a homestand after being swept by the Royals. While the Tigers look to avoid their first losing roadtrip of the season.

Kenny Rogers, who was the fastest Tiger pitcher to 5 wins since Frank Tanana in 1988, will take the mound for the Tigers. He last faced the Indians 4 weeks ago, also on a Friday night, and put an end to the Tigers 4 game losing streak.

Cliff Lee will go for the Indians. Among current Tigers, the red hot Magglio Ordonez has the best numbers against Lee. Ordonez is 7 for 14 against Lee in his career.

This will be the first game that Roman Colon has been active after getting called up on Wednesday.

POSTGAME: So smart guy, the red-hot Ordonez who has hit .500 in his career against Lee did what tonight? Two K’s, a double play, and a foul out to first? Baseball is weird.

I think it’s safe to say that Craig Monroe was the player of the game. He had the dinger, a double, and an outfield assist.

The Tigers keep their Friday night fun fest intact as they are perfect on Fridays.

On an interesting side note, it appeared that Pudge Rodriguez had several animated exchanges with Ronnie Belliard. One time after striking out, Pudge was yelling at someone in the field. Later, when he doubled he continued to be expressive. Finally, after Belliard flew out to end the game, I’m pretty sure that when Pudge went out to shake hands, he was flipping off someone in the general direction of where Belliard would have been. I’m curious to hear what’s going on between those two.

2006 Season, Minors

Tigers Minor League Wrap – May 11th

Toledo 14, Norfolk 5
Ryan Raburn had a triple and 3 singles while Ryan Ludwick had a homer, a double, and two singles to power the top of the lineup. Josh Phelps had 3 hits, as did Alexis Gomez who cleared waivers on Tuesday. Chad Durbin started and gave up 4 runs in 6 1/3 innings. Mark Woodyard retired all 5 batters he faced.

Erie – DNP

Lakeland 11, Vero Beach 10
Jair Jurrjens allowed 2 runs in 3 innings with 3 K’s. I’m not sure why he’d only throw 3 and fear this might have been injury related. Chris Robinson doubled, singled and walked. Jeff Frazier , Clete Thomas and Wilkin Ramirez all had 2 hits as well. Jeff Larish doubled and walked.

West Michigan was rained out. Cameron Maybin has missed the last 3 games with a finger that locked up. I have no idea what that means, or whether he was going to be in the lineup tonight.