80 thoughts on “Game 2010.120: Tigers at Yankees”

  1. Kathy any word on howl long ?

    Bondo, you need, must have a good game

    Boesch … Dude you need 3 hits tonight.

    Oh and Lets GO Tigers

    1. 1. DL is minimum of 15 days of course, but with Carlos, who knows. Maybe Illitch gets lucky and it is permanent and he can collect some insurance for the rest of this year and next when his contract will (mercifully) be over. Guillen was wonderful for a while, and we should be thankful for that, but for the last 2+ years his fragility has been more of a liability than anyting else.
      2. Good luck
      3. In your dreams
      4. OK.

      And by the way, speaking of “Go Tigers”, where has Mr. Positive (Mr. X) disappeared too?

      1. Not yet. But I can hear the wheels in Leyland’s head grinding from here. What fate is in store for BB? Stay tuned. If you dare!

  2. Jeremy Bombedagain.

    Cabrera took the rookie downtown anyway. Moseley too green to know he should have walked him.

        1. Boy I hope not, I have been gone for a bit. Well anyway, Our line up is not scaring anyone tonight. If we did not have Miggy. We would be toast.

          Going into next year.

          Is Maggs still here
          Is Bondo here (as a 4th or 5th?)
          Is Inge here
          I like Peralta at SS or 3rd
          Catcher … Availa
          2nd Carlos / Rhymes
          OF: Boesch, A Jax

          We need a serious upgrade and I dont see that many free agents available to fill the holes we have. I dont see the farm coming up with anyone. Pitching we have a couple of starters and a couple of bullpen guys.

          Do we have a legit shot at Crawford outside of paying him wild cash?

          Not cashing in this year yet but looking down the road as seeing where we will be next year at this time

          Steve

          1. The best advise I’ve got for you is to go to the Tigers website and read some of the news articles. It’s all on their website.

          2. This team is a mess. They need to commit to major upgrades at several if not all of: 1 FT OF, a 3B/SS, a 2B. At a minimum. They can get by with a minor upgrade at C if they can get two above average bats from above list who will support Cabrera. Let Avila play more and pick up another vet C to backup – NO MORE LAIRD (sorry Kathy). They also need 2 SP. Our # 3, 4, 5 guys this year are performing at AA/AAA level, no more. Maybe Porcello comes back, but still… Personally, I don’t think they can bring in the talent needed to be bonafide contenders, despite all the money coming off the books – just too many holes to fill in one off-season. I’d like to see them go into re-build mode – forget about this contending-in-a-weak-divsion-and-then-cross-your-fingers bs and think about the future a bit. Actually I wish they had done it this year (but $$$$ contracts etc. probably made that a hard choice too). So I see them stuck in a don’t-do-today -what-you-can-put-off-until-tomorrow mode, with the expectant results. They need a “vision thing” change. But then, I am a glass is half empty sort of guy, so I may be overly pessimistic.

  3. The Jeremy Bonderman Retirement Tour continues! This is called a self-fulfilling prophecy.

  4. Contrast in management style (and results): Tiger’s 1st inning, first two guys get hits, no runs. Twins 1st inning tonight, leadoff hit, Orlando up 2nd (batting .287) sacrifices, Mauer up next, gets hit, Twins score a run in their first inning.

    1. The Twins assemble their teams to be able to perform exactly in that kind of way, minor leagues included – call it small ball I guess.. The Tigers on the other hand assemble their teams to ……….. well, I’m not exactly sure what kind of play they assemble their teams to do.

    1. I’m sure we could be at least 1 or 2 games better in the standings.If they let him pitch every 5th game, maybe even more.

  5. OK, when Alex went up to bat, I thought he’d try to bunt. Didn’t do it. Took a few swings and gets called out. Why is it that guys show bunt and if they don’t succeed they swing away. Has anyone ever took a few swings and then tried to bunt.

        1. No, is there a rule that says a guy can’t swing away for a hit, maybe have 1 or 2 strikes on him and then bunt? Wouldn’t that be something akin to a bat trick. I’m serious.

            1. Well, perhaps Avila is not be a very good bunter – he does seem to swing through a lot of pitches after all. Secondarily, it probably isn’t on Leyland’s playbook to even consider such a thing. Incidentally, I don’t think Leyland is particualrly adept at small-ball strategies.

              1. I wasn’t speaking about Avila specifically, but I’m not sure myself if I’ve ever seen anyone do that. Take a couple swings, the infield is out, and then you go for a bunt. I’ve never seen a player do that and am wondering why. That’s all.

              2. It happens very rarely. Theoretically (in modern ball at least) bunting with two strikes is frowned upon and is therefore discouraged. A good bat handler who is speedy could get away with it, but in an age where the emphasis is more on power (station to station) ball, bunting may be a lost art.

              3. With this team you throw in everything but the kitchen sink to get on base, move a runner…..anything. It’s probably why I like NL style better than AL.

              4. Well, the Tigers really fall between two stools: they are not a good small ball team (slow, poor baserunning, weak on moving runners over, taking an extra base on a hit, K too much, RISP fail, etc) while at the same time they aren’t a power team either, so the station-to-staion strategy waiting for the big hit doesn’t work either. They are like the person with two left feet trying to learn how to ballroom dance – they can fake it for a while, but inevitably they fail as the demands get stiffer. I guess my point is that throwing in everything doesn’t work when “everything” is a mis-match to begin with.

  6. The good news tonight is that Leyland forgot about putting Boesch in impossible to succeed situations and actually gave him the night off. Cabrera hit two SOLO homeruns. After that, uh, well, uh….

    Oh yeah, the Twins are beating the WS (I hate the WS).

  7. So where is Kevin? Outside of the obligatory blurb at the beginning of each game thread (which are suspiciously getting shorter and shorter), he has mysteriously disappeared. I surmise that he is entranced by “meaningful games” down there in Texas and is now (when we need him most!) just going through the motions re: Tigers live games.

    1. Where will we all go when the blog gets torn down? BYB is not my style and the message board on the Tiger website is insane most of the time. There is Motownsports.com which has a pretty good group. It’s like knowing it’s the end just like we know the Tigers are finished. Jim Leland told the whole world we weren’t going anywhere.

  8. Comment on Bonderman retaliating against Gardner.

    Bonderman is a moron. No mediocre (or less) pitcher with an ERA of 5.20 has any business putting a batter on for free, since there is probably about a 65% chance that it is going to come back to haunt you (DumBo has done ths before) – duh! Worse yet, the leadoff hitter. If you are going to retaliate, it is better to wait until you are ahead, oh say by 9-4. Get it?

    1. Bonderman is smart enough to know he wasn’t going to be up 9-4 and probably knew he wouldn’t last long against the Yankees lineup anyway. Since there’s no guarantee he would face Gardner again, he got him when he knew he could.

      1. Mark, if Bonderman was smart enough to know before the game started that he wasn’t going to last long (i.e. lose), he should have let Leyland know so he could have been replaced with somebody that had a better chance. The guy’s job is to try to win, not make it easier for the other team to do so. And who made Bonderman responsible for retaliation anyway? Anything intentionally done to make it harder for the team to win is just assinine.

        1. it was a just a joke, Vince. I didn’t mean to imply that Bondo literally knew he was going to pitch like crap.

          1. Well, that’s different then! 🙂

            I hope you don’t think I was trying to start an argument. On principle I think it is generally a bad idea. I have nothing against kicking the opponent when they are down (which is what NY did with Cabrera), but you need to pick your spots.

  9. Hey friends – my apologies for not posting a thread this morning, you know how it goes. I’ll get a couple of basic ones up tonight to cover this weekends games. To say billfer was devoted to this site would be an egregious understatement.

    Props to the bats for having a little fight in them…

    Kevin

  10. JIM LELAND SHOULD SEND BOESCH DOWN TO AAA (TRIPLE A). EVERYBODY LOVES BRENNAN BOECH BUT HE NEED TO STEP UP HIS GAME A LITTLE BIT. I NOTICED THAT HE HAS NOT BEEN PLAYING LATLEY. IF HE WANTS TO PLAY HE HAS TO DTART GETTING SOME HITS. AND WHEN ONE OF LELAND’S BOTTOM OF THE LINE UP HITTERS GET ON FIRST BASE HOW COME HE WON’T BUNT. THE ONLY PLAYER I SEE DOING GOOD IS WILL RHYMES. I AM GETTING SICK OF LELAND. IITICH SHOULD FIND A NEW GM AND MANAGER. THEY SHOULD MADE MORE TRADES AT THE DEAD LINE.

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