PREGAME: If you notice this is only game 49 and a loss would drop the Tigers to all of 2.5 games back of the league leading Indians. Clearly it’s not a must win situation, but it certainly is a nice to win situation. If only to keep from the impending overreactions if the Tigers are swept.

They’ll have their work cut out facing Fausto Carmona. After watching him in the closer role last year, who would have ever thought the previous sentence would be written. Still, Carmona comes in with a 2.73 ERA. Now that ERA is probably a little better than it should be with a K/9 of 3.25. But like his rotation mates Sabathia and Byrd he doesn’t walk many with only 15 in 55 1/3 innings pitched. Limiting the free passes and extra base hits (opponents are only slugging 380) keeps the runs down.

The Tigers will send out Mike Maroth and would love to see him get through 7 innings. The key will be to keep the ball in the park. Maroth has already been tagged for 10 round trippers, and Cleveland certainly has the offense to add to that total.

With Placido Polanco out, Craig Monroe will assume the #2 spot in the order and Omar Infante will man second base.

Game Time 8:09 on ESPN. Let’s see if Joe Morgan has learned the names of any other Tigers besides Gary Sheffield. I’m a little disappointed that Jason Verlander won’t be pitching tonight.

PREGAME: The Tigers are on pseudo national TV today. It’s one of Fox’s games of the week, but once again it is the 3rd game on the schedule. It’s really ashame when there are 2 very good teams and a very good pitching match-up with C.C. Sabathia and Justin Verlander going at it.

The weather has been sketchy today, so hopefully they can get it in.

Game Time 3:55pm

POSTGAME: Ugh. Not so much the final outcome, but the fact that the injury count for the day matched the runs on the board. I guess in some warped way it’s a good thing the Tigers didn’t score more. The rest of the day is just so much more frustrating than the final score in this one.

• There was really only one hard hit ball off of Verlander. However, he was working behind in the count and 4 walks and a hit batsman helped chase him an inning earlier than his counterpart Sabathia. The Tigers had a few more hard hit balls, but Sabathia didn’t issue the free passes and kept his pitch count low.
• Even still, Verlander comes back to start the 7th inning if Jhonny Peralta doesn’t poke that single over Guillen’s head. It extended the inning 2 more batters and pushed his pitch count from 96 to over 100.
• Not sure what the official scorer was thinking on the Omar Infante error/triple. Yes the ball was hit a long ways, but Infante got back in time and the ball hit him in the glove. That catch has to be made, and no way do you score that a hit when it was the first of the game.
• Nice game today by Marcus Thames. I can’t believe how far the broken bat homer went, and he added a sharp double as well.
• Not a nice game today by Infante. He looked horrible at the plate, and of course had the aforementioned drop in centerfield. Not really what you want to see when you hear that your starting second baseman has a strained oblique.
• And of course the bullpen. As nice as it would be to have Leyland leave his starters out there another inning, he can’t do it with the pitch counts they’ve been running up. A combination of Seay/Byrdak/Grilli in the 7-8 innings of close games could make for a long couple of weeks. I don’t fault any of those guys especially. It’s just not what anybody pictured for the pen.
• Of course Grilli might not be a part of that picture. After the homer he took a liner off the leg adding injury to insult. I know Grilli is a popular whipping boy, and I’ve even taken part to an extent. But things are getting very thin.

PREGAME: The Indians roll into town for the first time this season, but we’ll be pretty well acquainted 2 weeks from now. Seven of the Tigers next 10 are against the Indians.

The Indians and Tigers have of course been hanging tight on top of the Central for the last couple weeks.

Tonight the Tigers will take on Paul Byrd. Last year it was Byrd who pitched the game that inspired the Leyland tirade. The Tigers faced him twice more, once scoring 7 runs off of him (and still losing 12-7 when the Indians scored 7 in the first) and beating him 4-3 in the other game.

This year the story on Byrd is control. He’s walked 3 batters…the whole season. His last walk was April 26th against Texas. Because of the low walk rate, and low strike out rate he’s been pitching deep into games. His last 3 starts have all been 7 innings and he hasn’t even needed 100 pitches to do it.

In terms of individual match-ups, Byrd has owned Magglio Ordonez only allowing 4 hits in 29 at-bats. Let’s hope that changes. It’s just fun to see Magglio do well right now.

The Tigers send out Nate Robertson. Robertson has been battling his last couple starts, and racking up big pitch counts. In each of his last 2 starts he’s topped 100 pitches after 5 innings.

Game Time 7:05pm

UPDATE: Beck says Fernando Rodney is still out. Good thing Bondo went deep yesterday.

POSTGAME: Kathy in the comments summed this one up pretty succinctly:

Between Nate’s so-so pitching, Indians great hitters, C-Mo’s robbed HR we got beat. Good game but we came out on the short end. Tomorrow’s game should be a doozie.

I’d just add that the middle relief actually was pretty good. Ledezma was very strong, and even Mesa did his job.

After a nice lengthy stretch of hitting pretty well, Brandon Inge has ended the bulk of his ABs the last 3 games either shaking his head or flipping his bat in disgust. But it looks like he’s currently the only cold player in the lineup with Craig Monroe hitting a couple balls that were homer worthy and Sean Casey at least picking up a bunch of singles.

PREGAME: The rubber game of the series is a matinee edition. Jeremy Bonderman returns to the rotation after battling blister and cut issues. Bondo’s last turn against the Angels saw him get lit up by the Angels and shoddy defense by Carlos Guillen.

The Tigers will be doing battle against Ervin Santana. Santana has been victimized by 11 homers this year, 9 of which have come on the road.

Catch this one on FSN if you can because Ernie Harwell will be in the booth. If you forgot to DVR it, you can catch the replay at 7pm

Game Time 1:05pm

POSTGAME: What’s not to like about today’s game? A 12-0 thumping leaves a lot of people smiling.

The offense was decidedly top heavy with 11 of the 13 hits being picked up by the top 5 hitters in the lineup (Omar Infante pinch hitting for Maggs picked up one as well).

Magglio Ordonez is simply hitting crazy good right now, and really doesn’t have a peer in the MVP race right now. These things of course aren’t decided before Memorial Day but doesn’t he have to be leader in the clubhouse at this point?

I was just thinking the other day that while Carlos Guillen was hitting pretty good his power number weren’t quite what we were accustomed to. Three homers in 2 days will help to fix that and push his slugging percentage all the way to .551.

Jeremy Bonderman was quite good. He nearly matched his season total in free passes, but it didn’t hurt because there wasn’t a lot of hard contact against him. He could have finished this game with his pitch count under 100 going into the 9th.

Instead Wil Ledezma, the much maligned Wil Ledezma, came in and picked up a 1-2-3 inning. Hopefully it is a sign he’s righting the ship. With Mesa being awful and Fernando Rodney with shoulder tendinitis the Tigers need some of the other guys to step up.

And with only one inning of relief needed today, the Tigers bullpen will be completely intact and available going into this weekend’s series with Cleveland.

Tigers 12 Angels 0