Detroit Tigers: 27-20, 1st Place (.5 ahead of Cleveland).
The Tiger winning streak ended at four last night as the Twins got to Doug Fister for three runs early, and then quieted the Tiger bats for the 3-2 victory. The big blow was a home run by none other than Joe Mauer, who came to the plate greeted with boos from the Tiger fans for his dastardly spoiling of a perfectly good no-hitter the night before.
Then of course his next at bat brought more booing, and according to Jason Beck Mauer said that Pena told him “they shouldn’t boo you. You got a homer after they booed you.” Well he responded with another hit, which led to more booing, and a Pena response of “No. Stop, stop, stop!”
Speaking of Pena, he did his part with the bat last night, with a 3-for-4 game that raised his average to .328. Whether his success at the plate lasts or not remains to be seen, but he will be getting a lot more at bats, as Leyland tries an alternating catching mix. “I’m trying to have a little bit of one [day] on, one [day] off just to see if we can get him [Avila] going a little bit.” Avila will be in today with the Sunday Lineup.
*****
Max The Undefeated (6-0) will take the mound looking for the Tiger series win. Max beat the Twins in April, holding them to 3 runs in 7 plus innings, with 10 Ks. And, more importantly, Mauer was 0-for-3 against him. Scherzer has the 2nd-best run support in the majors at 8.23 per 9 innings, so I am expecting Avila, Kelly, and Santiago to pound the ball today.
Wilkin Ramirez seems to be OK after a frightening collision in the outfield yesterday, but he is out of today’s lineup with a sore jaw.
*****
Today’s Player of the Pre-game: Hmm, well it was going to be Jhonny Peralta, after his nice day at the plate yesterday (not to mention turning a nice double play). So let’s try Victor Martinez, who takes a try at first. Maybe playing in the field will “get him going.”
Today’s Sunday Special Lineup:
- Dirks, LF
- Hunter, RF
- Cabrera, 3B
- Fielder, DH
- Martinez, 1B
- Avila, C
- Infante, 2B
- Kelly, CF
- Santiago, SS
A 4 game winning streak will be quickly forgotten if we split here.
Let’s go Max.
That was a Maxterful job of getting out of a jam (and getting Ramon off the hook).
Max just bailed Smokey out for putting Santiago into the stating lineup!
Smokey is on some pretty bad drugs ….. putting Santiago, Avila and Kelly in the same starting lineup. Especially when we are trying to win the series and stay in first place.
Well, technically Avila is the starting catcher, so that’s only 2 bench guys.
And Kelly is our regular CF, so really only 1 bench guy.
He’s always going to keep his bench players ready. I’m okay with it.
I’ve got no problem with the bench and getting those guys regular work, either. Though I applaud Vince’s little funny.
The significance of a Peralta, an Infante, a Hunter out of the lineup on any given day is highly overrated. The Tigers have been without Jackson for a while now, and the lineup seems to be doing OK.
Miggy really read that well. Great base running.
Once again Fielder comes through after a Cabrera walk.
Good base running by Prince too, though a slide would be preferred.
Yeah, I noticed that, too. Hicks in CF made it pretty close. Do you suppose it was Brookens not signaling slide?
Good baserunning by the big guys!
That is the highlight of the day for me so far. Prince needs to work on his awareness issues to spot opportunities that he misses in a lot of elements of his game. He needs to be more sharply focused and proactive in trying to find the clues that suggest to him where these tiny advantages can be picked up. And this time he did a fantastic job to anticipate the opportunity and process the entire play and he gave full effort and hustle. That’s a complete and full execution moment and really encouraging to see. A lot of players will be too lazy or less anticipatory and just mope around the bag with a tiny lead in case he drops it and they won’t even think twice about tagging and then find themselves still standing on 2B. But Prince was no fool today, he took what was easily available by making the smart effort play.
And now Joe Mauer creates an out because he couldn’t anticipate and react on the basepaths. A simple slide is a safe and sure way to be safe and Prince had no shot if Mauer played that opportunity the right way. But he was being a lazy thinker and that’s an out due to assumption.
I can’t remember the last time I saw a Tiger starter look as lost at the plate as Alex does right now.
I can, and his name is Inge. And for the life of me I cannot understand Ingvila is batting in between Martinez and Infante???
Ryan Raburn looked quite lost last season, but not in the same way. I agree that Avila now is about as bad as I’ve ever seen. He looks almost sad up there, like he’s going to bat thinking “what’s the use?” It’s not even funny any more. You have to wonder what’s going on with him.
And, of course, Raburn wasn’t a full-fledged, you’ve-got-the-job starter. I don’t think.
Ok the Avisail Garcia Triple is my new highlight of the day, that was just beautiful.
Putty time
putting Avila in the 6 spot is just part of Mumbles warped management style. By puttting him 6 I will reallly get him going!!!! instead of the reality of 2 outs in arow behind Cabrerra
At least he kinda ran into one in one AB today. The other three not so much. But he is batting .250 in his last 1 game, so he will be back in the lineup at No. 6 tomorrow. To be fair, despite all the Ks, he is hitting 12 points higher than Adam Dunn.
Better lucky than good for Alex today. I was ecstatic when that bloop dropped. I wondered if it was going to have some effect on his next AB, but clearly it didn’t. I guess he wasn’t fooled by his own luck.
From Jason Beck’s blog:
“Joe West was joking with me asking me if I wanted to get the ball, keep it as a souvenir.” — Alex Avila on his sixth-inning RBI single, a blooper into short left field.
We know it will be bad when they stop the game to give him the ball as a souvenir for a groundout to second.
Great to take 3 of 4 from the hapless Twins while the Indians lost 3 of 4 to the Red Sox. The next 4 games with PIT should be a good test. It would be nice to take the first two at home, since they are kind of slack as a road team (12-12) and Inge’s Pirates are playing good ball.
CLE has won quite a few games in their last AB lately, so I guess this is just a bit of tournabout.
I’ll admit that I was thinking “Why not Tuiasosopo?” when Garcia came on to pinch-hit, and I was even factoring in the subsequent OF situation.
Didn’t end up mattering, but Smyly didn’t look too sharp for the second (?) time in a row. Nor did Putkonen. Even if it’s 6-1, I like to see those guys pitch like it’s 6-5. (That’s a setup line for you, Vince.)