2009 Season, Game Post

Game 2009.029: Tigers at Indians

43 Comments

PREGAME: The Tigers hadn’t won a Friday night game this season until last night. They haven’t lost a Saturday or Sunday game this season. Hopefully that trend continues one this weekend.

Another trend is that the offense goes into hibernation when Edwin Jackson pitches. The Tigers have provided a whopping total of 8 runs of support to Jackson this season. Some early runs would be nice tonight.

The Tigers will go with a lefty heavy lineup against Fausto Carmona. Carmona has allowed 59 baserunners in 35 innings this season. This should spell runs but the Tigers have had struggles of their own offensively of late. Carmona has always allowed a plethora of baserunners, but with his sinker he also gets his share of GIDPs. The Tigers will try to mitigate that risk with a speedy lineup featuring Granderson/Anderson/Thomas.

Detroit vs. Cleveland – May 9, 2009 | MLB.com: Gameday

POSTGAME: Was anyone else nervous that Edwin Jackson was going to get screwed again? Here he is pitching another gem (and each one seems to be a little better) and his guys can’t get the bats going. Fortunately, the Tigers finally got to Carmona by staying patient.

Back to back walks, a nicely executed sac bunt by Brandon Inge, and a grounder by Gerald Laird scored Granderson for the go ahead run. The Tigers added on 3 more, but it turns out they only needed the one run as the Tigers tossed back to back shutouts for the first time since the summer of 2006.

  • Fun fact of the night anyone? Detroit picked up their 16th win tonight. Last year they also got their 16th win on May 9th. The difference was they had 21 losses at the time.
  • Granderson got on base 3 times tonight.
  • Fernando Rodney seemed to struggle with his fastball command for the first time this year. He walked only his 2nd batter of the year, but went to other 3 ball counts.
  • Jackson only has 11 walks in his 7 starts this year. A quick check of his 2008 game log in his “breakout” season and the best 7 start stretch I could find was 14 walks (June 21st to July 30th). And he didn’t have the 35 K’s to go along with it (he had 16 K’s over that stretch).

43 thoughts on “Game 2009.029: Tigers at Indians”

  1. I’m the least bit worried about the offense. The Tigers scored 9 runs a couple of nights ago. Tigers lack of scoring was due to facing staff aces on back to back nights. Buerhle and Lee are 2 of the best pitchers in the game. Before the 9 run onslaught, we faced 2 more staff aces in Liriano and once again Cliff Lee. The Tigers just have an unlucky schedule. In the meantime, the Royals have been lucky because they have missed all these staff aces these last few weeks.

    1. I’m a bit worried–you’re right about the luck of the draw concerning the starting pitchers; on the other hand, we have some guys who have historically done unusually well against both Buehrle and Lee, and this time through..not so much (Ordonez–career OPS vs Buehrle 1.283, vs Lee .951).

      (I think you meant to write I’m NOT the least bit worried…although maybe that’s one of those that kind of means the same either way, like ‘I could care less’ or ‘I couldn’t care less’…)

  2. I’m predicting a big offensive night for Grandy. His numbers vs Carmona are pretty good.

  3. Now that looks like the line-up of the future. I love it!! Not one gimpy player in the line-up. This line-up gets the the bad taste I had left in my mouth from Renteria, Sheffield, and Thames from last season. (Ordonez and Guillen are only reminders).

  4. It would be great if Larish can contribute to this team. He’s one guy that I don’t think much of, but I wish for him to prove me wrong.

  5. I like the speed too–our 3 hitter (Clete instead of Maggs) and then our 4 hitter (Miggs) both hit the GIDP ball–except neither were GIDPs since Clete was too quick to 1st and he stole 2nd before Miggs could hit the ground ball (it’s especially important to avoid the GIDP when you are a team that doesn’t have much patience at the plate, or you’ll blink and it’s the 6th inning and you have an opposing pitcher who’s thrown 65 pitches)

  6. We need some runs. Nuttin in Chicago, 1 last night and no so good tonight.

    We are one catch and an infield hit from being in a fridge.

  7. Carmona’s throwing strikes at about a 50% clip. So what does Clete do? Swing on a borderline first pitch. Yuck.

  8. The Aflac trivia answer is Pudge I think.

    BTW – did anybody notice on that Sizemore play where he caught the Larish liner he actually stopped for a moment, and then dove. Someone mush have an inferiority complex after last night.

    1. The stop-start-dive motion is necessary if you’re gonna stand any chance at all of having the hat fly off while you make the dramatic catch…

      1. DY was good at that dramatization while running the bases and having his helmet fly off. \

  10. Billfer, are you ready to ‘revise and extend your remarks’-––as they say on the floor of the US Senate when members want to correct a past mistake––regarding Mr. Edwin Jackson?

    (Or you can wait for him to revert to the mean like I’m doing with Inge)

    1. He has been very impressive, better than I expected. If he’s still doing this at the end of the month, it will be a full on “I was wrong” post coming.

  16. We’re looking rather, um, fundamentally sound, I’d say (although Laird catching the popped up bunt would have been nice…Inge woulda had that one!). The difference in this game is likely to be that we got our sac bunt down, they failed.

  19. @ Bilfer. My wife and I said the same thing. He dives for everything. Inappropriate dive early on!

  21. HA! Hilarious, Sizemore tries to pull a Granderson and misses by about 4 feet and turns it into a triple for Larish! And he couldn’t even get his hat to fall off!

  23. Ahh, breathing room. I think Inge may have dented the wall with that one.

    (Although I did like it when it looked like we would win cause we got our sac bunt down and they couldn’t manage it…)

  25. I ain’t missing Ordonez in the line-up or Guillen that matter. I love this new athletic line-up. Even Larish at 1st makes the defense a little better.

  29. As far as your last point/comment goes Bill, I’m thinking we can attribute that to

    A) Hard work and game prep.
    B) Knapp
    C) Maturation
    D) Laird
    E) + possibly New Staff giving tips

  30. What could be better than 2 straight shutouts (WITH bacon)? Oh, I know! 2 straight shutouts and Greinke throws a 4-hit 1-run complete game, and loses 1-0 to the Angels.

  32. I like the Times’ attempt to un-villify A-Rod’s latest cheating allegations.

  33. Arod and Greinke are two fantastic players.

    As long as we aren’t playing them I wish them the best.

  34. Wonderful bunt by Inge and approach by Tiger hitters to get guys on base. (It was also nice of Brandon to break up his 2-21/9K mini-slump later in the game).
    Cleveland showed the difference in execution in the bottom half – and pretty funny for the Tribe fans to start raining “boos” on Dellucci for failing at the same task. It was a sight that much the Tigers land-locked lineup of last year would’ve provided. Its so nice to have Sheffield gone.

    One final plea: play Ramon Santiago every day. I still fail to see what makes him a backup to Everett, beside’s AE’s supposed “reputation” for defense. Santiago continues to outplay him in every facet.

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