PREGAME: I hate going into a game in sweep avoidance mode. It is so demoralizing. And the Tigers are facing Joba Chamberlain, who despite being overhyped due to his Yankee-ness, still shut down the Tigers earlier this year.
Chamberlain has been getting hit hard lately and didn’t make it out of the 6th inning in any of his last 3 starts. But the Tigers haven’t been hitting hard much lately so something’s gotta give.
Edwin Jackson, well rested after his 4 pitch inning during the All Star Break, is riding a streak of 5 straight quality starts. He’ll be looking to not throw a gagillion (sabermetric term) pitches to Robinson Cano who single handedly knocked Jackson out an inning before that fateful 10 run 7th inning disaster.
The Tigers are 4-12 in their past 16 games away from Comerica Park.
I’m not sure who is worse in the field. Anderson or Ordonez.
You lose a ball in the sun and that’s somehow ruled a hit? I am by no means an expert of the rules, but if your eyes fail you, that’s clearly an error.
I know. They always rule that a hit. It’s a joke.
I cannot believe Anderson did not bunt
Anderson is pissing me off. First the fielding error.
Then – after the leadoff batter walks- he swings at the first pitch and nearly grounds into a double play.
1-23 now with runners in scoring position.
Anyone catch the British Open? Cink won the four hole playoff by six shots. Thats like winning a six inning baseball game by 24 runs.
I might just have to stop watching the road games. I’m not sure what happened. They were really a 0.500 ballgame on the road until the last few road trips. Somehow they need to regain confidence in themselves on the road. It’s such an emotional roller coast. When they play at home you think “there’s no way we can lose this division” and then they hit the road and you think “there’s no way we can win this division”.
For starters, when Granderson gets a lead off walk (or single) he needs to run when Polanco is batting instead of waiting until there are two outs. I truly don’t get why he waits to run until we’re one ground ball away from ending the inning.
Hmmm those first two pitches to Polanco did not look like strikes.
The half-full view: The Tigers have had 6 at-bats with runners in double play position the first 3 inn & have failed to convert all of them
LOL
So…..no offense again today?
Wow….with that slide, I didn’t realize Swisher was such a cheap player. That is two games in a row he made some sketchy moves on the base pads.
The Yankees cheat.
Ok I’m gonna switch it up. Gonna go enjoy the sunshine and listen to the radio. Maybe Price and Dickerson can bring some luck.
Stupid A-Rod!!! Why couldn’t he have taken the contract offered to him by the Mudhens!?!?!
This offense is just awful….1 for 25 with men in scoring position…..
1 for 26…..This is just stupid….
This team is not very fun to watch right now. How do you possibly continue, time and time again, to strand a man at 3rd with less than two outs? What is the record anyway? The Tigers have to be approaching it.
This second half fade is starting much earlier than past seasons…Can DD please trade for a bat??? There are too many blackholes in this lineup.
Trade for a bat? At this rate we will be sellers by Trade Deadline…
EJax is sick. At what point does he or JV storm into the dugout and demand that one of these guys do something?
I’ve been wondering the same thing.
And that’s that….1-2…same thing as yesterday….I’m out. So sick of this lack of offense…
Time to fire Lloyd.
Jackson has been great again. He’s fun to watch pitch. Just needs to work a little on first pitch strikes.
So much for the theory that the Tigers don’t need to trade for a bat because whoever they face in the playoffs will have to go through Verlander and Jackson anyway.
I don’t think Walter Johnson and Christy Mathewson could win with this offense.
With the lineup as it stands, this is not a serious team.
EJax looked very angry at the end of the game. Maybe he will get mad enough to become the clubhouse leader. We could use one.
Clubhouse leading isn’t the problem. It’s the lack of any kind of hitting.
Yes, indeed. If looks could kill… He looked pissed, as in, please trade me to a contender….
Maybe this sums it up, during the radio broadcast Dickerson mentioned that Cabrera hasn’t had an extra base hit with runners on base since May 25 (or thereabouts).
It’s amazing the one guy hitting — our supposed power bat — is reduced to a singles hitter.
Let’s just pray Inge’s pentella tendons hold up.
Wow thats nutty! Even worse is you could turn it around to say why is there no one on base when he does hit them. Curtis simply should not be leading off against LHP or playing at all for that matter.
Anyways despite that horrible XBH fact if anybody is going to hot and carry this offense I am waiting on Miguel and just hoping Inge can come close to what he did in April and June.
Except that would require ignoring the fact he has grounded into 8 double plays in the same time frame. With a runner on 1st he is more likely to hit into the GIDP than get a hit.
#4 hitters, and big RBI guys in general, tend to hit into a lot of DPs, and Cabrera’s numbers aren’t that high on that scale. But lately the GIDPs are still there, and the RBIs have been few. Same with Ordonez–in past seasons the GIDPs were a fair tradeoff for all the RBIs. This year the GIDPs remain, the RBIs scarce.
The Tigers have WAY too many GIDPs relative to the number of baserunners they get. There have been a lot of good teams with a lot of GIDPs; they have also all been among the top teams in runs scored, not average like the Tigers.
Three excellent starts and nothing to show for them – very frustrating. And I’ve had it with Josh Anderson. He can’t hit, has made numerous baserunning gaffes and often looks lost in the outfield. Why is he on this team?
Thank God we all voted a 100 times to send Inge to the all-star game! If he goes 0-3 for tomorrow he will be hitting .239 since May 1. His exact career average. I will cherish Inge’s April 2009 like one cherishes Haley’s Comet. That’s the thing about a 162 game schedule, it exposes the great as great and the not-great not great.
I agree. I also wonder if a good way to upgrade this offense through trade is to look for a decent, right handed, fielding center fielder who is average/above average offensively to platoon with Curtis versus lefties. Maybe a guy tooling around AAA in someone’s organization or currently in platoon/on bench for a non-contender who never gets time cuz he can’t hit righties.
I think you meant 141 game schedule, since the 162 game schedule includes April.
Besides we aren’t any worse than the rest of all-star voters, who made Longoria the landslide winner at 3rd, with his paltry .246 BA*
*On the “Since May 1 and Going 0-3 in Upcoming Game” scale
Yeah, the only difference is Longoria is seen as one of baseball great talents while Inge is largely seen as ‘the dude who would be playing in the independent Atlantic League except for the fact he came of age during the time when the Tigers were one of the most talent depleted teams in the history of baseball.’ He is literally the luckiest player in baseball during the past decade. I don’t begrudge him his luck or his money, I do begrudge his selection to the All-star game.
I think my favorite Inge scale is the post all-star selection scale: 0-10 in home run derby, 0-1 in the actual all star game, and 0-9 since then. Now that’s the baseball gods telling you that you don’t belong in an all-star game!
Too much wrong with what you say for me to even give a lengthy response. But, I find it ironic that you point out that he is 0-10 since the ASG, but seem to ignore the much larger sample size – April through mid-July.
Whether you like it or not, the guy was a very deserving all-star and is one of the elite IF/OF defenders of all-time. Get over it and move on.
Thanks
oh hey whats up guys
did we win??
Well the Yankees are no joke, that’s for sure. They are a very good team this year. It was another good game and some very nice pitching in this series by both teams. We got swept, but lost by a total of 4 runs on the road to a team that has a boat load of offense. That just shows that the Tigers are no joke either. I think the biggest lose was Zumaya getting hurt. We’ll survive though.
The Twins didn’t fare any better vs the Yankees last week. The got swept too, but in their own ballpark. They gave up 20 runs and scored 9. The Tigers gave up just 9 runs and scored just 5. The Twins match up very well against us. It’s really a toss up who wins this division between us and them.
Meanwhile the White Sox lost 10-2 vs the Orioles on their home field. They’ve given up 70 runs in their past 10 games. That’s pretty darn terrible. If they want to contend I think they need to trade for Halladay. Now that would make things very interesting for this division.
It’s hard to say what the Tigers really need to make a meaningful improvement. Another big bat only helps if he has a good glove to go with it. Otherwise it’s probably a wash. We don’t need another slow footed outfielder sitting on our bench with the rest of them. I know Anderson isn’t helping though either. It’s a tough call. I hear the Mets are shopping Gary Sheffield. LOL. Thank god I am not a Mets fan. The Mets have been a hard luck franchise these past few years. I almost feel sorry for their fans. Almost.
Maybe we should talk to TB again and try to get Matt Joyce back. Would anyone here want Joyce back? That’s a good question. I bet it wouldn’t take much to get him. Maybe we can trade Anderson for Joyce straight up. It shouldn’t take much more than that.
A month ago I would of wanted some bullpen help, but NI and Dolsi have stepped in and have been excellent so far. Hopefully Ryan Perry follows their lead and is just as effective. We don’t really need another starting pitcher either. Zach Miner probably deserves to go back in the rotation if Luke French or Galarraga doesn’t work out.
i like the fact–which even last season didn’t seem imaginable–that the Tigers are starting to look like they might have a future also. We suddenly have the youngest pitching staff in the majors, young star players at 1st and CF, and some young outfield hopefuls. If we can somehow get through transitions with Ordonez and maybe Polanco, I don’t foresee another dark rebuilding era ahead.
I worry a bit about Inge; his personality and style of play tend to make people forget he is 32–he is a year younger than Guillen and Polanco, closer in age to Ordonez than Granderson. On top of that he has spent a lot of his career catching, and takes very few games off (he has played more than any Tiger this year). That was the one negative I saw in his all-star appearance–with his bad knee he could have used time off.
At any rate I don’t see many reasons to think we won’t be as good next season as we have been this (which is not to say we won’t lose any ground compared to the rest of the division), which is why I don’t think we’ll be making any trades like some of the Halladay suggestions.
I wish we didn’t have a day off tomorrow. I need a win for my own mental health, not to mention what the guys on the team are going through right now. Verlander and Jackson would be the leading Cy Young candidates if they both pitched for Boston, the Yankees, or the White Sox. All those teams have loaded lineups that score runs. Hopefully DD can pull the trigger on a deal and soon. If not, I wouldn’t mind seeing Wilkin Ramirez get a try up here. He can’t be any more pathetic than the rest of our motley lineup. Very disappointing weekend to say the least. I agree with Ol’ Smoky when he says “if you had told me that we would hold the Yankees to nine runs for the entire weekend I’d have thought that we would at least win two of three”. Psssst, Jim. You don’t have to keep McClendon as the hitting coach. These guys might be better off without one right now, because whatever Lloyd is telling them is not working at all. If this team was just average at getting guys in from third with less than two outs this year they’d be leading the division by six or seven games. When the entire team fails to get the job done, I have to look at the hitting coach. What kind of approach is he asking them to take in these situations? When they get home Ol’ Smoky should tell them they are all going to work on hitting warning track flyballs. Set the pitching machine to aim low and away and work on just going with the outside pitch and lifting pitches to the hitter’s opposite field. Routine flyballs to medium depth in the outfield will usually be adequate to get men in from third and lerss than two down with the exception of a handful of AL outfielders.
I still the say the Zumaya injury was a bad break, but not for the reasons most might think. I don’t want him here any longer and if he could’ve just stayed healthy thru the trade deadline I guarantee we could have moved him for a bat. Now, we have precious little of value to trade without creating another hole, as Zumaya is easily replaced with Perry. Perry is also inconsistent throwing strikes with a big, power arm. We don’t need two of the same type of player. Anyone else we trade will create a hole on our roster unless its a prospect. Losing Zumaya would be no big deal as Lyon is proving far to be more trustworthy as a set-up man than Zumaya. Zumaya has more “talent” than Lyon, but at least Lyon can be trusted to throw strikes. He may not be as hard to hit as Zumaya, but at least I don’t worry about him walking the bases loaded.
I absolutely agree with u i nearly have a heart attack when i see coming to the mound
I really like e.jack and he is so undeserving of the lack of run support. the tigers score for mediocre galarraga and pretty good porcello but never score for their phenomenal aces ej and jv. Edwin’s look on his face in the 9th was of total disgust and overall pissed off