2010 Season, Game Post

Game 2010.010: Tigers at Mariners

45 Comments

PREGAME: It’s west coast sleepy time baseball. At least the Tigers will have had a chance to get all Phiten’d up and that titanium should be improving their blood flow. Of course going up against Felix Hernandez they can use whatever advantage they can get.

If it weren’t for the ridiculous season by Zach Greinke, King Felix would have likey taken home the Cy Young award. Hernandez has made 2 starts this year, both of the quality variety. Although his 6 walks against the A’s probably wasn’t ideal. The Tigers faced him 3 times last year and they struck out 23 times in 20 innings.

Jeremy Bonderman goes for the Tigers. The rotation has struggled this second time through and it would be wonderful if Bonderman could be the first Tigers starter this season to record an out in the 7th inning.

The “normal” lineup is back:

  1. Jackson, CF
  2. Damon, LF
  3. Ordonez, RF
  4. Cabrera, 1B
  5. Guillen, DH
  6. Inge, 3B
  7. Laird, C
  8. Sizemore, 2B
  9. Everett, SS

Detroit Tigers at Seattle Mariners – April 16, 2010 – MLB.com At Bat

POSTGAME: One way to look at this game is to think that the chances of the Tigers beating Hernandez weren’t that great, that this was a game they had a pretty good shot of coming out on the losing end anyways. Having said that…there’s losing and there’s getting smoked. The Tigers got smoked and there is very little to take away from this game that was encouraging.Bonderman looked pretty good early on. I could do without the walks to Chone Figgins, but the slider had bite and Bonderman was working at the edges of the strike zone and keeping the ball out of the middle of the plate. I’ll give him a pass on the 2 runs he game up in the 4th because if the team could field a sacrifice bunt he gets out of the inning.

The 5th inning though? I don’t know. Ugly and something we’ve seen way too much from starters against bad offensive teams. The thing is there was nothing glaring. He was mixing pitches, working both sides of the plate, but it was line drive after line drive.

Offensively the Tigers did their best the first time through the order to make Hernandez work. The first 9 batters saw 39 pitches and King Felix had a perfect game after 3. They started jumping on pitches before getting 2 strikes on them the second time through and managed a couple of runs and squared a few more balls. But they weren’t going to get 12 runs.

  • Gerald Laird has entered Renteria-ville. He’s not hitting and he’s made two huge defensive gaffes in the last 2 games. This time chucking a free out into right field. He’s not getting it done in any facet of the game right now and he’s feeling the hate.
  • Inge’s hit streak ended last night.
  • Brad Thomas wasn’t good last night, but he ate innings. No need to fret about his performance, or be excited about it either. Still, the guy has to throw strikes, even as a mop up man.

45 thoughts on “Game 2010.010: Tigers at Mariners”

  1. Well looking at runs scored Seattle is dead last in the AL and only ahead of the ‘stros in MLB for RS with a pitiful 28 in 10 games …yikes!

    Hopefully their anemic offensive start continues while we are stationed in Seattle. Go Bondo, if you’ve got tonight anything even remotely similar to last time it should be a fun 3 hours.

  2. I’m sorry but Laird should be batting 13th or 14th on some beer league slo-pitch team out of Livonia!

    1. I played in a softball tournament out of Livonia two summers ago and those guys can hit… I’m not sure Laird could hang.

  4. I think Bondo thought this was slo pitch and the runners couldn’t steal that was tooo easy

    1. it is kind of fun watching Bondo mix the speeds of his pitches up. Something he could never do before…nice inning

  5. Are the comment fields (name/email) staying populated for you guys now? I haven’t got the comment editing working yet, but at least we’re part way there.

  6. Though I do have to click twice on “submit.” That’s been going over the last few weeks as well.

    I really like Bondo’s early stuff today.

    1. he will make up for his defensive short comings by hitting a three run homer as the lead off hitter next inning

  15. That’s 4 outs so far this inning. When a team gives you two outs for free, you kind of need to take at least one of them.

  16. What a pathetic display of baseball again tonight……giving runs to a team that has had trouble scoring runs themselves so far this year.

  17. Whatever happened to that stellar defensive team we had last season? It’s a bit of a clown show out there right now…

  18. Bonderman actually looks pretty decent, if a little wild. No help from his defense and too many walks, but a lot of swings and misses and good movement. There is at least something to be positive about.

  25. Seems like just yesterday that some unnamed scout was in awe of how many power arms we had in camp.

    1. It was the Mariners hitting coach and he was salivating at the prospect of facing our staff…

  26. Man, I’ve been off the channel for like 15 minutes and this inning is STILL going? And there’s STILL only 1 out?

    Brad Thomas can not get major league hitters out, by the way.

    Mariners are 6-11 with RISP (and 2 sac flies)

  28. story of brad thomas’ life right here. one time, i pitched 3 innings in mop up duty.

    enjoy it before being cut next month, bum

  29. That one was a wash.

    Rod Allen said it best: “The Mariners LOOKIN’ like Jackie Robinson today, boy.”

    Bonderman seems like he needs a lot more work out of the stretch, preferably not in-game when he can get tittied (like last night).

  30. Cliche time: Losing by 8 counts the same as losing by one… one game does not make a season, and for the Tiger’s sake they better hope this game is not a barometer for the rest of the season.

    The next ten games (in 10 ten days) will show what this team is made of, and what character they have (or do NOT have). Aside from some quality hitting from a few guys and 2-3 quality starts, there has not been a whole lot of positives to take out of the first ten games… they’re fortunate to be 6-4

    1. Well, the Tigers going into yesterday had the highest OBP in the league, I’d certainly say that is a positive. They’ve also had solid bullpen work when playing with the lead for the most part.

      I don’t buy that the next 10 games will tell us much about character. They’ve already come from behind multiple times and have shown an ability to grind at-bats late in a game when things looked lost.

      I’m not saying there aren’t things worth complaining about, but it isn’t all bad.

  31. I was at the game last night. Brutal. The worst part is you can’t change the channel!

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