PREGAME: Maybe the third time will be a charm. Armando Galarraga and the Tigers take on Carl Pavano for the 3rd time this year. Galarraga pitched kind of okay in both of the previous outings, and the bullpen would allow an add on run or two. But the Tigers couldn’t do much of anything against Pavano and a bullpen come back ended up a run or two short.
Time to flip the script today.
Pavano has thrown his 2 best games against the Tigers but he has allowed 4 homers in each of his last 2 starts. Hopefully the home run ball is still working because a win today means a rare .500 road trip.
Detroit vs. Cleveland – August 2, 2009 | MLB.com: Gameday
POSTGAME: Pathetic. I’m not sure what was worse, Galarraga or the 8 guys behind him. Carl Pavano has a 6.16 ERA against teams that aren’t the Tigers and a 1.93 ERA against Detroit. That is all.
It’s great to see that Washburn will pitch Tuesday vs Baltimore and Sunday vs Minnesota. Leyland has done a great job with his starting rotation this year. Sometimes I don’t understand his decisions, but that’s because he’s looking farther ahead than what I’m looking.
As opposed to burning one of those starts against the lowly Indians? I think it was just a matter of plopping him in French’s slot which, as an added bonus, gave Washburn a couple days to travel and get acclimated.
BTW, does anyone know if he was in the dugout last night? I saw Bondo and Nate, but I don’t remember seeing Wash. I wonder if we set a record for most number of starters present for a single game? 🙂
Ugh…Raburn starting again. The man is anabsolute butcher in LF. Let’s hope they keep the ball away from him
Ugh…Raburn starting again. The man is an absolute butcher in LF. Let’s hope they keep the ball away from him
Looked like Curtis might have been out. Ya never get the call when the throw is that bad, though.
Man that is just bad luck for Clete.
back at second and short will give up the run ///hit the ball to third base…brilliant…
that at bat called for a ball hit up the middle
The AB also called for a line drive base hit, which he narrowly missed. Ya gotta be pretty grumpy to fault a guy for ripping a ball at somebody.
Billfer, FSN just did a replay of Ramon’s bunt with the microphone emphasizing the catcher saying, “I got it! I got it!I got it!I got it!” Is that one of those things where they plan ahead, hoping to get it? Or did they just stumble upon it?
Miggy nice at bat….is it too late to trade him for a real 4 hitter
Wow, some days I hope he does ask for trade … relative to the love shown to Inge and Granderson Miggy is way unappreciated in this town.
when you make 20 frickin million dollars and bat 3rd or 4th ..certain things are expected of you besides hitting with no one on or making out after out after out with RISP….Detroit fans basically know baseball and would appreciate him a lot more if he just did his job.
I’m not sure we do. There seem to be a lot of people who think his career average w/ RISP of .318 carries less weight than his June/July ’09 average w/ RISP of .205.
By the way, his June/July ’09 OBP w/ RISP is .285 which gives credence to the belief that teams were pitching around him like crazy.
I suppose you may be right as BP says he is worth about 12 million this year based on their MORP calculation. Trade him then. Although he is top ten in VORP and top 5 in OPS in the AL. Yah so trade him and when that RISP comes back to (or up to I guess) earth let the team that has him enjoy that production.
Oh and top five in UZR/150 in the MLB this year ( whatever the hell UZR per 150 is).
..using career logic Maggs should be batting 4th and playing everyday based on his career numbers….this is a game of “what have you done lately” not 5 years ago or even last year and in Cabrera’s case April and May as a run producer….no one questions his batting average. His batting average is very good. He is in the lineup to produce runs. He is batting 3rd or 4th to produce when the game is on the line. That’s the problem here
Jud, you’re absolutely right that he hasn’t been driving in runs particularly well over the past 8 weeks and that has hurt us, but do you seriously think it’s a permanent regression a la Magglio?
That run is the result of falling behind hitters. Gallaraga is gonna has a short outing if he doesn’t get ahead of these guys
I am beginning to loathe Carl Pavano. Shouldn’t he be on the DL by now?
lol it is pretty late in the season for him. This is only his 5th August start in the last 5 years.
if pavano could pitch against us 20 times a year he would go straight to the hall of fame.
he feasts on teams like Detroit that have no patience at the plate and swing a ball after ball after ball like the Tigers are doing so far today. How many outs on pitches that were strikes how many outs on pitches that were balls
2 outs on balls outside of the zone. Both by Miggy if you want to beat him up. Before you do, though, not that he’s seen 8 pitches, only three of which were even close to the zone. He hacked at all three.
We’ve swung at a total of 8 pitches that were out of the zone all game. 3 outside pitches by Curtis and 3 inside pitches by Miggy. Ramon and Laird also had a bad swing each.
Pavano’s pounding the strike zone. Ya gotta swing.
re Jud @ 1:47. Fine, fine whatever. But when it comes to making a comment like ‘trade him’I hope to god DD doesn’t use the ‘what have you done lately’ logic. Might get burned a little.
I agree
Sheesh Miguel don’t you know I am trying to defend you in an arguement on an blog. Gotta do better than that.
they pitch around Miggy so much???? his 20th hit into DP which I believe leads the league..another pitch like is first at bat no where near the strike zone
Wow. Are we really going to lose 10-0 to the freakin’ Cleveland Indians?
I think we might have sent the wrong starter to Seattle.
This is pathetic. If we can’t win this series we might as well skip the Boston trip all together.
good bye …nice chatting with all of you today
Was this game rain-delayed? Because I think I just saw batting practice.
lol
Why does this team continue to suck??? 1 run was bad enough to overcome, now 6 runs? Right….
Pavano gets pounded by every other team in the league. To say that he is only have a good game today is ridiculous, I’m thinking the Tigers are the problem.
Wow. 2 on, no one out, and we cannot do anything.
2 men on, with no outs, and no results. This second half fade is so typical and so cliche. I’m so sick of this. I’m going to take a long break from this team.
Yet another 1t and 2d with no outs and not only do we not score, we don’t even move the runners period. when you consistently are struggling to get timely hits, you have to try to move runners over, get the sac fly and get some confidence.
I’m normally a huge supporter of JL, but he has not made the necessary moves to try and shake guys up and get them to stop pressing. We can’t be this allergic to hits with risp.
You would have had Laird bunt?
absolutely
let’s see, no one on, two outs, down 6-0. I’m calling for a cabrera dinger.
or a backwards k.
Hopefully this is the game afterwards where jl just looses it and launches his infamous ‘once a year tirade’.
Baseball and poker are both games of chance with a skill component, but only one is generally recognized as such.
How is it that DD keeps his job? We get a pitcher, when pitching ISN’T the problem. (save today dunno why Armando is so dang bad?) Yet, he wont trade our ‘GREAT Blue chip’ prospects for a MUCH and BADLY NEEDED bat. This is absurd. I cannot take this teams bad management from the front office.
Guillen wasn’t and still isn’t the answer, Miggy having his first down season, Grandy reverting back to his good against only righties swings, and the rest of this so called ‘major league’ lineup is so pathetic it hurts to even watch them.
1-2 to a bad now gutted Cleveland team is not even funny and not even right. The Tigers don’t DESERVE to be in 1st place. And with the exception for the few guys that are good on this team, they dont deserve to get any praise from the fans.
GOD its so pathetic to watch this team. I’m out.
Thanks for the puke-n-run, Steve. Glad you could make it!
Wow.Give Carl Pavano the Cy Young right now!!!!
oh wait… He sucks against everyone else?
Or is it just that the Tigers couldn’t hit ball off a tee right now?
I know it’s the latter.
Well… On the bright side, at least we got one run…
Well, I didn’t mean to say i’m out, forgot to omit that. But this team is just frustrating me but i’m sure frustrating all of us devoted Tiger fans. Its just unbelievable that we cannot score runs against any team, and cannot win a series(let alone sweep) against a team that is gutted with its best pitcher and hitter gone.
I’m not frustrated. The team is what it is. At the beginning of the year, the future was wide open. If we got some good breaks, we could have had been stellar. If we got a bunch of bad breaks, we could have been horrendous.
It should be obvious by now that we’ve had mostly bad breaks (Zero contribution from Guillen, Bondo, Zoom, Dontrelle and minimal contribution from Maggs and the bottom of the order), so if anything, I think this team is over-achieving. If it weren’t for the stellar performances of JV, JAX, and (healthy) Inge, this team would be well below .500.
As for this series: small sample size. Did we already forget about taking 3 out of 4 from the Sox?? That was pretty impressive and frankly, more important.
Man, I hate to be the downer here Jeff, but we’ve gone 6-10 since the break and just lost two out of three to a AAAA team that just endured a soul crushing trade. (And we had to go into 13 to win one!) I’m happy that we won 3 or 4 from the Sox but except for that short burst, this team has looked lethargic.
That doesn’t mean I am carping! I’d love them to reel off eight in a row, but to say they’re playing even B minus baseball would be a stretch.
Stephen, don’t lie to me. You love being a downer. =P
Of those 16, 9 were on the road, 6 of which were against the yankees and the rangers. For whatever reason, this team has been pretty bad on the road. That’s not a good thing, but in context, it’s the same thing we’ve been dealing with all year.
How are we still in 1st place?
Is the AL Central really that weak?
Seriously, how have they not been overtaken?
Strong pitching, yes. But not offensive help and terrible defense (I think, like, 15 errors in the last week or something…).
I’m really happy we’re in first, but how long can this last?
Yes, the ALC is that weak. The top 3 will finish with 86, 84, and 81 wins respectively. The only question is the team order and that will be damn near random.
We are in 1st place because we are a great team at home where we are 31-16 this season. We are 5 games over .500 overall and just ended a 6 game road trip. Now we head back home for 7 games, which we should easily win 4 games, but we will have a good chance to win them all. Just one of the pitchers we’ll be facing has a winning record this season.
Game 1 Verlander (12-5) vs Tillman (0-0 has just 4.2 innings of MLB experience)
Game 2 Washburn vs Matusz (in his mlb debut)
Game 3 Jackson (7-5) vs Guthrie (7-10)
Game 4 Porcello (9-7) vs Hernandez (3-3)
Game 5 Galarraga (5-10) vs Swarzak (3-4)
Game 6 Verlander (12-5) vs Perkins (6-7)
Game 7 Washburn (8-6) vs Baker (8-7)
Tigers at Home-
We average 5.31 runs scored per game
We have a 3.39 team ERA
Tigers on the road-
We average 4.09 runs scored per game
We have a 4.52 team ERA
Id love for that to happen Keith. But the Tigers as of late are in no way going to sweep the competition out. Earlier in the season we had tons of trouble with rookies. We couldn’t figure them out at all. And we ended up i think losing all of our games to rookie pitchers. So there’s that going against us.
I want no I beg the Tigers to prove me wrong and run off 7 in a row. But the way they are playing right now we will be lucky to go 4-3 at home.
The fact that we are facing two guys who we’ve never seen before in the first two games of the BALT series should make everyone wet their pants in fear. We have historically struggled against “major league debut” guys even when we could hit, I shudder to think of the frustration that awaits us on Monday and Tuesday night, not to mention how the THUR starter for BALT shut us down (1 ER in 5.1 IP) in his major league debut (there’s that deadly-to-the-Tigers phrase again). OMG I’m already having coniptions just thinking about it. I’d almost rather be facing guys like Sabathia, Santana, and Beckett those three days, we’d probably fare better. If you have ever payed attention to the Detroit Tigers over the years, you know what I am saying to be true (not to mention that Luke Scott is our daddy and he just loves to break out the paddle when he sees the Olde English D). I am fraught with fear as this series approaches. Its the kind of series where any objective baseball observer would analyze it and say ” Detroit has an excellent chance to sweep Baltimore as they have the pitching edge in all four matchups.” However, I am not objective and I know and fear the power of “Major League Debut” guy. He has humbled us so many times in years gone by, and shall continue to do so going forward. Damn whoever lined that ball off of Bergeson’s leg in the KC series!!!!!!!!! You have doomed us to a week of frustration and consternation!!! 🙂
I’m just the opposite of you. I expect the Tigers to beat those pitchers that are fresh off the farm, especially at home in Comerica Park.
I would wet my pants only if I went against Verlander at Comerica, where he is 7-0 in 9 starts with a 1.15 ERA.
Roger that Jeff.
Besides Verlander & E-Jax, this team is not very good. It’s amazing that DD sacrificed a little offense for defense… because we aren’t getting much of either.
Ehh, every team has games like this one, even the really good ones (see Yankees yesterday). These types of games I can take once in a while. It’s the constant 2-1 losses while leaving a dozen in scoring position that get to me.
It was great to see that Buehrle crapped the bed vs the Yankees and the Twins get dominated by the Angels. Tigers losses are much easier to swallow when our division contenders do poorly.
Props to Pavano. He once again pitched great against us. In his 3 starts vs us he’s walked just one batter, so there is little doubt that he is locating his pitches fantastically. He must be one of the most hit or miss pitchers in baseball. He probably has more quality starts than any other pitcher with an ERA over 5.50. He had a 5.66 ERA going into Todays game. Here’s something kind of funny, his ERA is roughly twice as high as Edwin Jackson’s, but has more wins.
I’m not going to kill the guys tonight even though they got punked by a team that has packed it in for the rest of 2009. We were 7-2 against CLE this year before this series, so there was bound to be a little “market correction” taking place sooner or later between these teams.
The real concerning thing is the continued inability to score runs. I am really scared about the BAL series because we are facing three rookie pitchers , two of whom we have never faced (and we all know how the Tigers do against starters they haven’t seen before), and one who shut us down in BAL in his major league debut on May 28 of this season. I hate to put any more pressure than what is already on our starters, but they will need to be sharp this week. BAL can score runs, and we probably won’t be able to outslug them this week. I am begging Lloyd McClendon to please…….please……….please…….please…………stress the importance of working the count this week against these cherry BAL starters. We will really do ourselves a disservice if we continue to go after first pitches all night long against these young starters. Please Tigers, take a page from the Yankee playbook and make these guys work. I guarantee we will have offensive success if we are disciplined enough to work the count this week. We need a strong homestand. It is obvious that we just can’t get it done with any consistency on the road (we have now lost 8 consecutive road series), we have to continue to make hay while we are at home. This is a big week. We cannot let a dog team like the Orioles (we do have some nice young pieces to build around) do damge against us if we are serious about winning this division. Leyland needs to manage these games as if they are postseason games because they essentially are just that, due to the fact that there won’t be a postseason if we don’t take advantage of a weak team like BAL at home.
Looking forward, it seems like the year the Tigers can be jaugernauts will be 2011. Obviously, many burdensome contracts come off the books after next season freeing up salary and roster spots. But, I think maybe just as importantly, the Tigers should be stocked (back) up with early round draft picks to either slot in – less likely – or to deal for extablished players – more likely. Our drafting in the Chadd era has been fruitful – most of our early round picks are at least considered by MLB as valuable good players.
I’m looking at the Red Sox as my comp. Much has been made of Sox ‘mangaing’ its playroll well and not signing huge free agent contracts (although Texiera would have been a huge contract) but what makes the Sox a dangerous organization are the 10+ 2nd round or better draft picks currently in the organization. It’s not that they draft ‘better’ than other its that they draft more. They’ve accumulated these picks by letting aging players leave as free agents and amassing compensation picks.
Now onto my point. Rodney projects as a type A as does Lyon. Washburn and Polanco are – right now – Bs, but that could change for both quite easily. I would think all four of these guys would turn down one-year arb deals for 2 – 3 year deals in market. That would give Tigers 4 extra sandwich picks next draft. In one year, Tigers could completely replenish its system and in two years Tigers would have both top prospects and salary room.
Agree with Rodney, Lyon and Polanco turning down arbitration, but Washburn may not. i doubt he gets the $14-15 million in the free agent market he might see in an arb. offer.
Overall, I think you are dead on. Amass a few extra picks, and while drafted kids are never a sure thing, the Tigers have a decent enough scouting system to come up with some major league players.
Somebody will surely try to give Washburn a multi year deal, and it might even be us. He’s having a career year and lefty pitchers like him are hard to come by.
If he continues on with the great season he’s having and helps us get to the playoffs, then he’ll probably be one of the most sought after free agents in the market.
That may be true, but a lot of teams are going to look at this year’s stats versus his career numbers. It’s certainly possible that some change in mechanics or a new pitch are the reasons for the sudden jump in success, but teams are bound to be skeptical. The best hope is for someone like the Brewers, Mets or Rangers to step up and overpay him. It’s definitely a gamble, though, if you’re considering offering arb.
I think Washburn is just a younger and better version of Kenny Rogers when we got him. Washburn is capable of throwing 175+ innings and getting 10+ wins in each of the next 4 or 5 seasons. We got a much needed lefty starting pitcher, so why not keep around for a few more years? Salary shouldn’t be the only issue. It’s who do we currently have that’s any better? Bonderman? Nate? Willis?
What’s nice about Washburn is that he’s at the top of his game right now. I understand complaining about Willis’ contract because it looked like he was on the decline, but now we have a guy who is pitching at his highest level.
So when are you supposed to give any player a contract? Some people make it sound like never.
Now I’m reading that early this year Washburn was thinking about retiring after this season.
http://mlb.mlb.com/news/article.jsp?ymd=20090803&content_id=6221556&vkey=news_det&fext=.jsp&c_id=det&partnerId=rss_det
That would put a damper into getting any draft picks.
At what point does Lloyd McClendon start getting heat for the Tiger hitters inabillity to make adjustments at the plate. 7 weeks ago Tiger batters were hitting poor and average pitchers without a problem and were only baffled by the elite pichers. Now they are only hitting the 4 and 5 men in the oppositions rotation. Early in the season it became clear… don’t throw the Tigers fast balls or they will kill you. Professionals make adjustments. These guys are on their heals, truly on their heals falling away from the ball as they swing. Swinging like they aren’t sure they should swing (Granderson) Or not swinging at all(Cabreara has watched strike three in key at bats with RISP that he would have crushed a in May or June.
My first question is how much does the hitting coach work with guys between games?
My second question is, are these guys just folding under the pressure of leading the division?
Personally, I would have already fired Lloyd McClendon.
I don’t know that you can directly tie the god-awful hitting performances to Lloyd, but I think at this point you simply have to change something. Anything.
It worked for the Rockies.
Once they fired the manager the team started playing radically better. And I considering that the manager doesn’t swing the bat or throw the ball, it’s strange to play some poorly under one manager and so much better under another.
I think the Rockies team had just gotten complacent. So changing managers shook things up.
Maybe the same thing is happening with the Tigers. They’ve gotten complacent and comfortable. So perhaps a change could do some good.
I’ve never put much stock into coaching. IMO, success or failure is up to each players god given talent, ambition, and work ethic. IMO, instructional coaching usually messes things up more than improve things. The cheerleader type coaches that help give the player confidence or a pat on the back are the best kind.