PREGAME: It’s AL Central season for the Tigers. After playing only 5 intra-divisional games in the month of April, the next 13 are against divisional foes. First up are the Indians, who are for the time being Hafner-less.
Carl Pavano will make the start for the Tribe. Pavano has given up more than a run an inning this year, thanks in part to a 9 run 1 inning effort his first time out. Things have been a little better since then, but he still only has one quality start. One thing Pavano has done well is limit the free passes with only 5 walks in 18 innings.
Armando Galarraga gets the ball for Detroit with his 1.85 ERA. He’s done that by fanning a batter an inning and keeping the ball in the park with only one homer allowed on the season. He has been a little susceptible to the walk though with 8 issued over his last 2 games.
Your Guillen-returns-to-the-field starting lineup:
- Granderson, CF
- Polanco, 2B
- Ordonez, DH
- Cabrera, 1B
- Guillen, LF
- Laird, C
- Inge, 3B
- Anderson, RF
- Everett, SS
Cleveland vs. Detroit – May 1, 2009 | MLB.com: Gameday
POSTGAME: The Tigers dropped their 3rd in a row. It’s the first time they’ve dropped more than back to back games this year and now find themselves back at .500.
Armando Galarraga wasn’t good and he followed a disturbing Tigers pattern of being undone by a big inning when 5 runs crossed in the 2nd.As such he was done after 5 leaving 4 innings for the bullpen. The pen, by comparison didn’t fare too poorly with Nate Robertson allowing a run in 3 innings and Ryan Perry pitching a scoreless 9th. It wasn’t a real clean performance with 6 baserunners allowed, but the damage was minimal.
Of course it also proved difference making with the team coming up one run short.
The most troublesome aspect of the game was the offense being 4 hit by Carl Pavano. Pavano just breezed through the Tigers lineup way too easily. I appreciate the fact that they rallied in the 8th inning, but they have to generate more offense consistently.
- Nice to see Miguel Cabrera ripping the ball again. He had a couple hard outs as well as the homer.
- Carlos Guillen is playing too deep in left field, especially with runners in scoring position
- Brandon Inge continued his streak of being on base every game. He also add a web gem-ish quality play on a foul ball
Galarraga not looking too good so far.
I bet he wiggles out of this.
Terrible terrible defense.
Can someone explain why the 4 runs are all earned?
There were two outs when the second two runs scored…so shouldn’t those be unearned?
Because the error was just called for the runners advancing. It was ruled a hit plus an error. So the error wouldn’t have resulted in an out anyways.
I was wondering the same thing, Adam. Can’t help.
Maybe we should do what everyone else is apparently doing and watch the Red Wings. Tigers’ bats look weak right now.
What are they arguing about? This shouldn’t have anything to do with whether he got to first base or not. It’s freaking INTERFERENCE. You can’t flip a player over the bag to get him out.
Let’s get no-hit. Sounds good to me.
Willis today: 5 IP, 7H, 2BB, 4K, 3R, 102 pitches, 60 strikes.
K/BB ratio encouraging.
Don’t worry guys, I just put on my rally jersey. Gotta hop in the car, I’ll be back for high fives in a few innings.
@Billfer: This mean they’re going to move Willis up to Toledo ya think?
Go Wings! They won in case any one cares.
That was for Toledo.
geez, by looking at gameday it looks like a lot of the pitches are well within the strike zone and being called balls!
good job carlos.
Russ: Hey, I don’t want to jinx him or anything, but Carlos is on a pace to finish the season with more GIDP than RBI, which I’m sure no #5 hitter has ever done before (currently 6 GIDP, 5 RBI).
I just watched Willis pitch at Lehigh Valley. What wasn’t encouraging was his velocity, rarely above 85, or his manic movements on the mound. There was a lot of batting practice fastballs that a major leaguer would have hammered. He never could get into a rhythm and he seems to be over-compensating and trying to convince himself and everyone around him that he’s having a good time out on the mound. It was a decent performance for a #4 starter for a AAA team, like a Casey Fossum type, but in terms of being an effective major league starter he has a long, long way to go.
Thanks for the report Stephen. I know both walks came in the first. Did it look like he settled in at all, or was it the same all game. Did you talk to him?
OK, I’m just gonna pretend this one was rained out…I wonder when they’ll reschedule it?
Oops…my bad, for some reason gwas thinking he was in at erie.
Carlos is definitely on a roll.
And there goes Inge…showing off yet again! 🙂
Everett! Who knew?
I officially like Brandon Inge.
@Coleman: What did Yogi Bear say? …er…my bad. Wrong yogi.
Let’s get it started in here! Let’s get it started in here!
WOO HOO!!!!!
That was the 6th homer Lewis has allowed this year. That’s Farnsworthian.
I know you normally don’t pitch around anyone with a 4-run lead, but walking Miggy was probably the move there, Mr. Wedge.
I’m curious. I don’t get why Inge is batting so low with the hot bat while Guillen is putzing around up high and going for a record GIDP. If you’re looking for your top of the lineup to get things started then Guillen is acting as a flame retardant and Inge as the spark that escaped. What gives?
and he makes my point stronger with that at bat.
Russ: No explanation other than Leyland’s strongly-held belief that moving a guy out of his established spot in the batting order will somehow screw up his swing.
My bigger gripe is why Guillen’s in the lineup at all. The achilles thing is clearly affecting him at the plate. Sit him until he’s healthy.
The thing about Carlos is he is hitting GIDP balls even when there are 2 out or nobody on base so it’s not bad luck, he’s just hitting a bunch of ground balls to SS and 2nd, whether he gets a GIDP or not just depends on what happens before he bats.
@Kyle J: There’s that too. Odd logic.
Last season when we got on a run of GIDPs I half-jokingly suggested changing the batting order…you know how Leyland like to have R-L-R-L as much as possible, instead maybe have the batting order alternate between Fast guy-Slow guy-Fast guy-Slow guy, that way in potential GIDP situations either the guy on base or the guy at bat puts pressure on the infielders to turn the DP well or one of them beats it out.
Now I’m thinking they need to do this, and I’m only tenth-joking…
Look at it this way: You take player A: team high OBP, weakness is speed on the bases. You take player B: has been dependable RBI guy but has a high GIDP rate; in addition his running ability is hampered by injuries. Bat player B after player A. Sit back and watch GIDP records fall…
That run Nate gave up proved costly.
As did the 5 that Galarraga gave up.
Ok, point taken!
@!##*%! the 5th!
OK, here’s a nugget for y’all…
So far today Inge has had 3 AB; one bad one (K), one decent one (hard line drive), and one great one (double). The K was in the 5th inning. Why do I mention that? Because his BA for 2009, in the 5th inning, is .000, OBP .111 (with 3 K in 9 PA).
(OK now he’s had 4, including a K in the 9th).
His BA/OBP if there weren’t any 5th innings would be .349/481 (before the double).
(Overall career he is .238/.307…career in 5th innings he is .217/.284).
Not only that, but DET as a team in 2009 is .178/.262 in 5th innings (even with Inge’s numbers taken out they are only .194 BA), easily the worst in the league (OAK is next at .211/.291).
Leyland’s a crafty old-timer; now’s the time for him to pull out the tricks and figure out a way the team can go straight from the 4th to the 6th inning…
Sooo close and yet so far. I’m going down tomorrow, anybody else?
That’s two games in a row where we have a five-run inning against a bad bullpen and still lose.
Pitching, anyone?
I think many of the Tiger hitters are giving away ABs…led by Miggy, who looked more locked in during his 8th inning AB (even before he hit the dinger, he took a few borderline pitches to get an offering he could drive). They look to me like they need a little something to wake them up and get them locked in. They can’t afford to be playing bad baseball the next two weeks.
A final note on Willis. I didn’t talk to him, but watched him warm up and that’s where I noticed him trying to psych himself up and convince himself playing baseball was still fun. He threw a lot more strikes as the game went along, but he was throwing mostly in the mid 80s. Now I didn’t see him in spring training, but he looks like he’s as heavy as I’ve ever seen him. I’m all for him getting help for his anxiety, but he’s got to take some responsibility and get in better shape. Sure, Sabathia and David Wells were huge and still got the job done, but there’s also the Bartolo Colons who wasted prime years at least partially because they were overweight.
I would say the most disturbing thing about the game was the IronPigs’ ‘Swing For Swine’ charity drive. (Talk about bad timing!). Oh yeah and they don’t shoot t-shirts into the crowd, they should actual hamburgers. I am not making this up! There’s all you can eat BBQ and the crowd chants ‘Oink, Oink, Oink’ during rallies. If the cleanup hitter gets an rbi, everyone gets free Arbys so the crowd chants ‘Roast Beef, Roast Beef,’
Seriously, they should give an angioplasty with every ticket.
Obviously he’s a professional athlete and you think there should be some expectations of staying in shape that go with that.
… But I just wonder if the anti-anxiety drug is causing him to put on weight. I know that’s a side effect to some of them.
Kurt, that’s a very good point.