PREGAME: Four game losing streaks warrant backwards game threads. The Tigers top 2 in the rotation couldn’t coax out a win, so it is now up to the kid to stop the losing streak.
Rick Porcello was on the mound for the Tigers last start, and hopefully he’ll be on the mound for their next one as well. He does get the benefit of not facing Albert Pujols tonight.
Joel Pineiro has some pressure himself. Opposing pitchers have kept the Tigers under 4 runs for 7 straight games. I’m actually stunned that Pineiro is only 30. He’s having a solid season with only 11 walks and 2 homers allowed in 76.2 innings.
Detroit vs. St. Louis – June 18, 2009 | MLB.com: Gameday
POSTGAME: It’s a win. Sigh.
The Tigers finally had a big inning, and they got it early in the game and took some of the pressure off of everyone. Grandy and Polly each had 2 hits and the top of the lineup produced. Inge and Laird had big hits. Thames with a foul-poul thump. Sigh. Runs. Whee!
Porcello was good again. He gave up a number of hits, but got a ton of ground balls as well. He also slithered out what could have been a bad inning after a Gerald Laird error (Laird’s throw wasn’t good, but Inge seemed like he could have reached it).
Bobby Seay was very good. Brandon Lyon was fine. Fernando Rodney was nearly a train wreck as he was throwing the ball all over the place. Fortunately Rick Ankiel decided to swing to end the game with a double play.
sregit og
4 you kidding me!
WOW, came out hard tonight
Grandy shoots a hard line shot up the middle – BEAUTIFUL (my favorite spot to hit personally and when watching by far)
Poly gets jammed inside and pulls one fair inside the third base bag
Cabrera hits one that gets booted – I’ll take it!
Thames advances the runners and gets them in…fine for out #1
Raburn K’s … ouch, 2 out
Inge goes the other way to RC for a single to drive in Cabby and put us up 3-0!~
Laird hits one into the left field corner for a double to score Charles 4-0
Everett grounds out with Ricky Alfred on deck 3 out.
Fan freeking tastic, last night they were oh so close… TONIGHT IS THE NIGHT!
That has got to be a season high for first inning runs, or damn close to it.
definately at least since first of May
It looks like Opposite Day is a good day…on the down side though, I suppose, is with all these runs we’re kind of wasting the big bat in the 9-spot (Porcello)…
Can we put a rope on Cabrera and keep him somewhere near first base that’s the second time in a week hes gone after a routine ground ball to Polanco and messed it up
This is not developing in the most favorable of fashions…
That was quite an AB by Rasmus…at this rate Porcello isn’t going to last long enough to get a 2nd AB…
lets not sit on this 4 it is ok to score more isn’t it?
Ryan Raburn – your prototypical No. 5 hitter. Although, to be fair, he does have more HRs than “GIDP” (Maggs).
This is definitely shaping up to be a short outing for Porcello. It will be interesting to see which 5 relief pitchers Leyland uses to finish the game – does Miner come in or does our Master Strategist cunningly (angling towards that contract extension) hold him back for a possible start tomorrow.
have they made any roster moves today ???
Figaro up from Erie to replace Willis who goes to the DL. Ordonez to the bench, although maybe that would be better called a non-roster move (roster non-move?).
thanks
Scroll down the page buddy! 🙂
10 in a row put down by Piniero now. He makes it look so easy. How does he do it.
Porcello doesn’t look too bad either..so far so good
Yeah, he’s recovered from that scary 2nd inning. Throwing a lot of pitches though. Hope he can go six. Where would we be without this guy?
13 in a row by Piniero. Actually, if Gameday can be believed, it looks like he is really mixing his pitches/location extremely well, keeping the Tigers off-balance offense even more off balance.
offense is back to earth…not only is he mixing the Tigers are in their throw the bat a a outside ball mode to help him
Goodness PP. Is he the worst fielder on the team, other than Thames? Just may be…
Really? He’s the 5th best fielder in baseball by UZR this year.
http://www.fangraphs.com/leaders.aspx?pos=all&stats=fld&lg=all&qual=y&type=0&season=2009&month=0
That’s a convenient stat billfer…he’s also 2nd to last at getting to ballsin the AL this year: http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/stats/fielding?groupId=7&season=2009&seasonType=2&split=80&sortColumn=zoneRating
Based on what you’ve seen, do you feel that he’s a better fielder than anyone else in the infield? I’m worried that his GG days are long gone.
Kevin – I’ll honestly say I odn’t know what is going on with the ESPN ZR stat. That stat is normally expressed as a percentage (as it says in the glossary of the page) and the values aren’t typically 4-6 anything. With the hardball tiems revised zone rating Polanco is third in the AL for 2nd basemen. http://www.hardballtimes.com/thtstats/main/index.php?view=fielding&linesToDisplay=50&orderBy=zone_rating&direction=DESC&qual_filter=1&season_filter%5B%5D=2009&league_filter%5B%5D=1&pos_filter%5B%5D=4&Submit=Submit
+/- data has Polanco tied for 6th best at 2nd in MLB. Most of the advanced metrics have him as pretty good to very good, and visually I’ve had no problems with him.
I don’t know that he’s best in the infield (they actually have a very good defensive infield), but his defense isn’t a problem.
If you look at the facts that Everett has the AL’s best ZR on that chart, and that the ZRs on this page have a strong inverse correlation to RFs, I think the answer is that Polanco does not operate in his “zone”. Everett’s range lets Polanco work more to the right when desired, giving him a low in-zone number, but a high range factor. This seems to be less a measure of defensive performance, and more a measure of how consistently positioned he is from AB to AB.
Except for these wonky stats, Polanco tends to rate as at least above average, if not very good. He’s losing a step, but is still a high quality 2B.
is this Minnesota or St Louis ….Minn dink and dunk all the way
Dink and dunk as of Yesterday:
HR/R/SLG
MN 70/325/.425
STL 68/294/.416
DET 69/309/.409
Porcello still seems to have good movement, guys are looking foolish and he’s getting ground balls, but those Cardinals are getting some scrappy hits.
Can I please see somebody yoke one deep please. Preferably with a man or two on base for once?
first two singles could have been caught…two DP’s neither one made….one real single …..4-3 game
If they want to keep hiiting them to Inge I think that’s just fine; I wish they had started that a batter or two sooner…
Batters usually hit .301 against this guy?
Piniero wants to know if we can start this game in the top of the second because he has never thrown a perfect game before
Ah, nothing like a nice brisk 9-pitch inning to keep things moving along; gotta save some time for the 3 LaRussa pitching changes…
I need a feel good moment before my girlfriend breaks up with me. “Why have you been in such a bad mood lately?” I couldn’t put my finger on it until now.
atta boy Bobby!
Ah, the old double-switch. And more ABs for Anderson. Maybe he has a clause in his contract that states if he gets all of Maggs ABs, Ordonez vesting option kicks in to Leyland.
Inge is batting a quiet .455 so far this series…in case anybody is tracking his 7-day stats…
good to see something positive in anyones stats for a change
Did you know the Tigers are on a four game losing streak? FOUR. LOSSES. IN. A. ROW.
Thanks for reminding me how to count, it is much appreciated.
🙂
Um Seay, you got PUJOLS out, I think it’s OK to throw a few strikes to these other guys..
I don’t even want to think about who what where when of pitching the 8th and 9th
We need to bite before we get bit. Bitten. Bited. Lose.
LaRussa’s as bad as Leyland. Piniero had thrown 83 pitches, retired 19 of the last 20.
He was also carried off the field by his teammates because of his leg cramps.
I’d have to agree with you billfer and say that spelled the end of his night. Good thing too, he was lights out before he started cramping up.
Yeah that was really, really strange. Don’t they have Gatorade in the Cards dugout?
does that count ??????
Thank you Polly. Thank you Tony.
That may be; but also, hey it’s time to do some Managing…
thats two of those leg shots for Cabby he can’t buy an up the middle single
Country!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Thank you Marcus. Thanky you Tony.
It seems to be pretty hot there (and the leg cramps); has anyone heard what the temp is on the field?
let the real game begin
87 degrees
Who’s available?
I’ve never seen a night where someone can be so close to being 3-4, yet they end up going 0-4.
ok Seay did his job
Lyon did his job
…….next
if you hit the guy in the on deck circle with a pitch does he get to go to first?
Get Rodney out of there. I don’t care if he stays in and gets a DP or something, you can’t take this sort of chance.
EDIT: I’d like to say I jinxed him in a good way. But I stand by my comment above.
get HIM OTTA THERE…put in INGE
This could get ugly. And fast.
Wherever they send Willis, I want Rodney to go along.
Thank god.
Rodney Rocks!
not.
Whew. Nice job with the backwards post, Bilfer.
Rodney this was still BS…….total luck…period
great win none the less great hitting in the 8th put this one away ;;;lets go home
Rodney’s job is up for grabs. I’m certain of it.
Who are you giving it to at this point? Zumaya’s been worse than Rodney. Lyon? Perry?
Committee. Go with whoever is rested. I really think that with putting Willis on the DL, benching Maggs, and now Zumaya and Rodney’s control problems – JL is gonna continue to send a message. Or at least I hope. I saw smoke coming out of his ears.
I would give the job to Lyon for only one reason. I would rather go the Todd Jones route than to walk batter after batter after batter like Zoom and Crooked Hat. I’ll take my chances with Lyon for now. At least he gives your defense a chance to make plays behind him.
True, Lyon has been very good lately, but he is prone to giving up the long ball ( 5 in 33 IP). The fact is the bullpen just isn’t very good and it is a crap shoot whether they will get the job done or not. None of them have a particularly good BB/IP ratio. And what is with that anyway, I thought Knapp had that under control (no pun intended). The only guys that consistently throw strikes are Verlander, Jackson and Porcello.
is winning a game always going to be this hard?
No. It just feels that way. The backward post should have it all taken care of.
Billfer you did…. ! DOOG
Rodney. Cramps. In the head.
Watching Rodney gave me cramps in my head…oiy…
Ah, very interesting, says my friend Dr Fraud, how the subconscious behaves…perhaps Mr Ankiel could not bear to stand there and take pitches for some reason, very interesting (puff puff)….
Well played
Why thank you sir…was perhaps even better played than I knew–posting from my iPhone I hit the submit button, and while I was waiting for the page to re-load the phone shut-down, I’m somewhat surprised my post beat the power-down…(and suddenly I have the bizarre concept of a James Lipton-Jim Leyland interview in my head…)
That was a huge win last night for the Tigers. Whew. I ddon’t even want to think about what could have been: coming home with a 5-game losing streak and a hot Milwaukee team waiting for us after a day off (for them) with BattleStar Galarraga on the bump (and Minny only one game back!).
Fortunately we are still up two games and perhaps some Comerica mojo will help get things moving again (although I must admit that we don’t seem to have any tangible home field advantage at the CoPa). It will be interseting to watch Battlestar tonight to see if he responds to what has to be at least internal pressure from himself (if not from management) to perform or lose his starting spot in the rotation. After that Figuro in his major league debut, followed by Verlander going agaisnt the team he no-hit at CoPa in 2007. If we can take two of those three I will take it and run.