For, lo, the winter is past,
The rain is over and gone;
The flowers appear on the earth;
The time of the singing of birds is come,
And the voice of the turtle is heard in our land.
1:05pm ET. Who is headed out to the park? Where will you be watching?
1. Jackson, CF
2. Boesch, RF
3. Cabrera, 3B
4. Fielder, 1B
5. Young, LF
6. Raburn, DH
7. Peralta, SS
8. Avila, C
9. Santiago, 2B
Let the turtle sing as normality has once again returned to America!
I will celebrate my 46th season as a devoted Tiger fan as like past starts by playing afternoon hookey from work. My coffee bud from work, a devoted Red Sox fan will be coming to the house where we will cook up brats before the game. (We mutually hate the Yankees so have been able to forge a shaky truce.) We will drink Swedish and German brews that our former exchange students recently brought my wife and I over the winter. I will drink them out of a Tiger mug we gave our Dad back in Christmas of 1968.
Hey, Number 6 celebrates his 60th season with the Tigers! God bless him!
On the way into work this morning, I nodded my Tiger cap to Delmon Young’s Uncle who is a guard at the gate. I predict Ryan Raburn to be the Open Day star.
Ok boys, here we go! Enjoy this season. Play fair and have fun. Remember this is being done for all of us.
Free Sean Peyton!
OTFiM
Game day has Santiago at second. What happened to Inge?
Inge is on the 15 day DL.
That AL Central Flag looks pretty slick out there.
This is the 2nd career Opening Day start for Ramon Santiago. The other was 2003.
2003? Wasn’t that season canceled? I don’t remember anything about 2003.
Tigers are now leading the majors in GIDP.
The will also lead the league at the end of the season, maybe both leagues. They have the capacity to even break records. Young will top the list by the way.
Hmm, getting some good whacks on the ball, lotta “at em'” balls so far. Verlander spot on.
Cabrerror at 3B.
It’s good to get it out of the way right off.
Man what is with the double plays today? ugh.
After 22 complete innings of baseball today, 2 runs have been scored.
Bring him out for the 9th? I say yes.
Valverde blown save. I guess it was good to get that out of the way, too!
Go Tigers
Only Leyland would pull Cy Young out of a game with a two hit shutout going into the 9th.
Eh, he was at 105 pitches. Even a fast inning would have put him close to 120. Two weeks from now, he’d have finished the game for sure, but I’m not sure you want to push JV that hard on opening day when you have an awesome closer ready to go.
He allowed 3 baserunners in 8 innings not counting the Cabrera boot – he obviously wasn’t working that hard. At 105 pitches I doubt he was tired and I think he threw more than, or close to that amount, in one of his last ST starts. Frankly, I feel a lot more confident having Verlander pitch the 9th than any other pitcher in baseball in that particular situation. Today was another example of Leyland’s play-by-the-book mentality. Right there on page 25, Section 2.3 of his well-worn copy of ‘How To Mange A Baseball Game’ it says: “In save situations (your team is ahead by 3 runs or less late in the game) you ALWAYS put in the closer.”
On the other hand, at least Jackson and the boys bailed him out and Leyland wasn’t tempted to think creatively, which is when he can be really dangerous. Fortunately, the team is so good it won’t matter in the long run to the finnish.
For his last spring training start they were shooting for about 100 pitches. The boxscore doesn’t show the pitch count for that game, but I’m sure it was close to the target. We all know what JV’s arm is capable of, so he certainly could have finished the game, but Valverde is a bona fide stud, so I don’t have any problem with handing him the ball. I’m sure there are at least 25 other managers in the league that would have handled it the exact same way. Hell, Halladay handed the ball over to their closer after having thrown only 92 pitches and he only had a 1 run lead.
Nothing wrong with disagreeing with the decision, of course, but it’s not one of his crazier calls.
I enjoy second-guessing a manager as much as anyone, Vince, but really there’s so much we don’t know about what went into this Leyland decision that I recommend you save your outrage for when you’ve got a more clear-cut issue. (And you will.) How tired was Verlander? How would he feel if he worked the clean eight innings, then took a loss? (This was the heart of the Red Sox order and they’d all seen JV three times already.) What were the chances of JV overextending himself? How did Valverde look in the bullpen? Does he have a history of matching up well against the upcoming hitters? Would it be a good idea to get Valverde in the groove before the next game? How would it affect Valverde’s psyche if he didn’t come in for a situation that seems tailor-made for him? Was the wind blowing out or in? How was the cold affecting things? Etc., etc.
All very valid points beejeez, but I suspect Leyland thought of none of them and basically went with his gut, er, I mean book.
Ah, getting another thing out of the way: Leyland second guessing!
Nice job AJax! Nice start to the season
And this is where I hate how baseball scores wins for its pitchers. One of the dominant opening day starts of all time, at least in my lifetime anyway. Still happy to get the W though! Encouraging to see Austin Jackson swinging some good lumber.
Yeah, bummed for JV, but he’ll win an 8-5 game later this year where he only goes 6, so it will even out.
Hey Valverde got a win with a 18.00 ERA!
The pitching box says it all – something really wrong there.
Great start……PappaGrande comes within one pitch from making this a routine save
What is Leland thinking? Don’t care if Valverde was perfect last year – he was lucky and could have blown about ten saves. How you don’t send Verlander out for the ninth is beyond me – awesome and well within his pitch count.
Valverde stinks as you will continue to see. Throwing pitches up in the zone will not work.