2012 Season, Game Post

Game 2012.17: Mariners at Tigers

14 Comments

The Rangers head back to Texas to celebrate Pudge Rodriguez’ retirement, and the Seattle Mariners drop into the D for a 3-game set against the 10-6 Tigers.

The Rangers series may not have been as bad as it sometimes seemed: The Rangers bombed the Tigers in the first game of the series, but after a bad 1st inning in the second game, the Tigers played them even, only giving up 6 earned runs over the last 28 innings against the best hitting team in the majors, and were a couple of bad throws and maybe a blown call from splitting the series.

Still there is a nagging feeling left by the team’s inability to score runs, or even advance runners.  This vaunted Detroit offense has now dropped to 12th in the AL for team OPS (.695, above only Seattle and Oakland).  And it isn’t just the Raburn-Inge effect:  the Tiger 3-6 hitters are only 10th best in the AL.  Detroit may not need many runs to beat Seattle (see above), but if the offensive struggles continue, let the nail-biting commence.

Tonight we will see Max Scherzer (or is it Max Scherzer?) try to tame the tepid Mariner bats, while Jason Vargas does the same for the M’s.

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Tonight’s random note:  The Braves have demoted Jair Jurrjens (0-2, 9.37) to the minors.

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Today’s Player of the Pre-game:  Brennan Boesch

Boesch has been one of the real struggling bats so far this season, putting up Inge-like numbers (.212 BA, .538 OPS), including an OPS of .000 in 4 PA with a runner on 3rd and less than 2 out (2 Ks).  But Boesch hit his 1st HR of the year Sunday night, and has hit Vargas well over his career (6-9 with 2 2B).  Look for Boesch to continue to break out tonight.

Today’s Rabinging Lineup:

  1. Austin Jackson CF
  2. Brennan Boesch RF
  3. Miguel Cabrera 3B
  4. Prince Fielder 1B
  5. Delmon Young DH
  6. Jhonny Peralta SS
  7. Alex Avila C
  8. Ryan Raburn LF
  9. Brandon Inge 2B

14 thoughts on “Game 2012.17: Mariners at Tigers”

    1. The Ghost is platooning against lefties, so we should see him tomorrow against Wilk.

  5. Looks like Seattle found their bats in Detroit. Message to Mr. Balester: the key to staying in the bigs is not letting guys batting .200 go yard on you.

  6. So, yeah, Detroit is pretty much the worst team in the league with a runner on 3rd and less than 2 out. It’s still early, but if this carries over the season we will need a lot of guys to have a lot of home runs.

  8. R3L2O and the Tigers fail again. Well, this team has two great hitters…The rest are very overrated. This team is probably not as good as last year’s team, unless V-Mart comes back or Porcello has a big year. The reason, I believe this is because, the defense is worse and the bullpen had a career year last year. 77-0 when leading after 7, the Tigers have already lost 2 games when leading after 7. Peralta also had a career year last year. Even JV had a career year (although he looks better then ever) So, to steal a quote from Larry Brown either “The Tigers start playing the right way” meaning doing some of the little things or they will not win as many games as last year. The Tigers are just hoping their bats will catch fire, and that may happen, but, they are terrible at situational hitting, defense, and running the bases. It sure would be nice to get some runs w/out the HR. We have Wilk against King Felix tommorow, so, I hope we come back today. Raburn, Ramon, and AJaxx do not give you much confidence.

    1. Thankfully we’re in the AL Central. So even if the pen, Peralta and Avila regress, we should still have enough to win the division.

  9. It’s early and the Tigers will probably get on a very good run at some point this year and win the central…BUT, it sure would be nice if the Tigers offense would at least make the starters work, so, they can go against that middle relief…We let all these starters go 6-7 innings. Too many wasted at bats…They need to work these pitchers and make them throw more pitches early. That will go a long way, to winning ballgames, IMO. AJaxx saw like 3 pitches in 3 at-bats for example. In fairness, it’s tough to win any games when you give up 7 runs (especially to Seattle)

  12. If someone would have told me a month ago that Smyly would have the best ERA on the team three weeks into the season after 3 starts… i’m not sure if that would provoke more confidence or worry

    His next start is @ Yankee stadium on Saturday

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