Today is the styrofoam game of the three-game series as Max Scherzer eyes Detroit’s first victory and the Tigers try to keep the brooms in the closet. The Tigers have yet to win a game; then again, neither have the Twins, so there.
Big Don Kelly will be filling in for Magglio Ordonez in right field, although strangely enough, not batting in his spot in the lineup. That honor goes to Brennan Boesch, who yesterday became the first Tiger to strike out with a runner on 3rd and less than 2 outs. Ordonez was taken out of yesterday’s game with soreness in his surgically-repaired ankle, but it was cold yesterday and this sort of thing is to be expected and Leyland was planning to give him a day off soon anyway and there is nothing to worry about, really there isn’t.
Today will also see the 2011 debut of Victor Martinez behind the plate.
The Tigers face Phil Hughes, whom the Yankees drafted with a compensatory pick awarded to them when they lost Andy Pettitte to the Astros, before they got him back again. Hughes supposedly is featuring a new “slider-cutter” pitch which is different from his slider or his cutter. Let us know if you see one. Hughes also was the winning pitcher the last time the Yankees swept a series from Detroit.
Fun fact: Miguel Cabrera and Austin Jackson are tied for the team lead in leading off innings (5). At some point do they consider moving Cabrera up to the 3rd spot in the lineup?
Today’s sweep-busting Tiger lineup:
1 Jackson, CF
2 Santiago, 2B
3 Boesch, DH
4 Cabrera, 1B
5 Martinez, C
6 Raburn, LF
7 Kelly, RF
8 Peralta, SS
9 Inge, 3B
Now that’s the way to start a game! The Big Mig blast. And right after Jim Price was saying the key to beating Phil Hughes is to get to him early.
Nice to see Cabbie getting his first HR of the year. That is the 248th of his career (110th in the D). Gets me to thinking: When do you think Cabrera will pass Magglio in career HRs? Magglio currently sits at 289 (102 in the D). Any thoughts tigers fans? Anyone think it could happen this year? My guess is by the all-star break next year simply because I don’t see Magglio hitting more than 12 this year.
Boesch with an RBI hit !
NOW MIGGY!!
Actually I think the Boesch RBI is even more exciting than the Cabrera home run: we know Cabrera is going to hit, but if Boesch can get back to hitting well it’s going to make a huge difference this season.
Phil Hughes stinks more than Penny.
Where would we be or what would we do without Miggy????? I don’t think we’ve seen his best yet…..now that he has some protection and get some guys on base for him to drive in ……look out!!!!
I guess this is going to be one of those First Team to 10 Wins kind of games…
And there is our 10
First Rayburn sighting of the season.
What to do about the starting pitching…….other than JV……just brutal! Scherzer is given a three run lead and look what happens!!
Bartolo Colon? Yankees must really want to lose this game. What a a gift. Thankyou
Boesch!!!
Boesch bash!
Jeter still trying to make that jump throw? What a joke.
I was thinking the same thing. Rod Allen said “take nothing away from Jeter”, and I’m like ummm except for the fact that he ruined a nice fielding play by making an ill-advised throw. That’s not a good example for the youngsters and is bad baseball form. Trying is one thing, but when it’s impossible to get a guy out, you eat the ball, that’s the cardinal rule of playing proper defense, and he was trying to hot dog moreso than to do the right thing.
Also to Toronto Tiger, well yeah this is Cabrera’s best, in fact it’s a certainty that he will get worse. Right now he is 4 for 9 with a .444 BA, and 2 home runs in 9 atbats. No player in baseball history has ever or will ever (w/o some drastic change to the game or amazing new performance enhancers) perform with those numbers as a general pace. It’s amazing to get one HR every 9 atbats let alone 2, and with that kind of average. The thing to hope for is that he stays as close to that pace as he possibly can, but he can’t do better than that. So just enjoy the ride for now until it settles down a little bit.
I meant a career year might be in the offing for Miggy…..should he continue getting protection in the line-up and guys get on base before his AB’s.
Yeah I could see a career year. Plus, whatever his drinking habits were, I’d bet he is more prone to drink less now than he has in the past. He got away with it for probably so long, but now after these extra embarrassing moments he just has that much more reason to pause before drinking, and a lot more pressure to get help. I mean if you were Cabrera now, would you be more apt to show up at a bar and start drinking as compared to in the past before you got into repeated trouble? That would be just embarrassing now moreso than then. So chances for him to get healthier are probably pretty good.
And maybe next year he’ll have an even better year than this year being his best!
I think we probably should stay away from the ‘enjoy the ride’ references when it comes to Miggsy.
Mr. X, Jeter about to have 3000 hits and he has five rings. The Tigers have no rings in 27 years and no division titles in almost a century. Joke is on us.
Meant a quarter century. It just seems like an entire century.
That’s fine by me. Some of their players were caught using Steroids and HGH to do it, so put an asterisk next to all those championships.
Hi everyone, Killer HR Boesch.
Scoring some serious runs today. Need to work on preventing them. If we get a little pitching I like our chances in the Central.
Steve.
Have you noticed all the HR’s hit in the Major League’s so far this season………9 by the Yanks so far in this series alone. Hoping the Tiger’s can get more than their fair share!
Ridiculous. Rangers hit 11 in their series against the Bo Sox.
breath deeply
Way to go Coke and AJax.
11 ABs this year for Mr Inge, and still no K’s… that’s either an incredible sign or that of the impending apocalypse…
for his amazing feat/streak, that’s gotta make Brandon the obvious choice for ‘game MVP’
This is the Boesch that I like to remember.
That’s 1 win in the books.
Feels good to get that first W under the belt!
Hopefully the Tigers will give us more ROAR’S than meow’s for the rest of the season!!
I hope Boesch keeps sitting at the opposite end of the dugout from Lloyd and Smokey…..maybe he will be ok yet…..nice to see the team battle today for all nine innings…there are NO bad wins……just good ones like today