43-35, 1st place, 2 games ahead of Cle (did you see their sweep over Chi yesterday? 46 total runs between the teams. Check out these box scores).

Now, that was a fun game. Miggy went 4-4 with 2 no-doubters, and Prince hit a rafter. He would have hit it out of the stadium had it been hit in a stadium. According to the ESPN, Fielder’s homerun was estimated at 414 feet, which is a bit embarassing matched up against Miggy’s second at 432 feet. It sure looked like Fielder’s ball would have gone much, much further hat it not been impeded by the rafter. We’ll never know.

And then there’s Mad Max Scherzer. Max is now the first pitcher since Roger Clemens in 1986 to start a season 12-0. He very may well be starting the All Star game in two weeks. Though I’m going to get very queasy when they put up a graphic titled “Last Tiger to Start the All-Star Game…”

Justin Verlander throws today. Well, hopefully, he’ll be pitching today. He’s definitely lost his paintbrush as of late, and it’s cause for concern. Earlier this month, I posted that JV’s peripherals suggested that he’s been unlucky, but otherwise pitching near career norms. Since then he’s had 1 brilliant game (which was lost by Toledo’s current closer) and 2 awful ones. Over his last 9 games Just-another-guy Verlander is 3-3, with a 6.04 ERA, 1.64 WHIP, and 3.90 BB/9. All of those are simply awful (though curiously, he’s still posting an extremely impressive K rate – 10.65 K/9). We’ve discussed the foul ball issue on here and I started looking for foul ball stats. I couldn’t find any (if you can find them, please let me know and I’ll take a look), so then I started looking for reasons why (a) his BABIP against is so high and (b) he’s getting a lot of foul balls. My feeble baseball mind suggested less movement on his pitches and poor counts. Let’s take a closer look.

Look at this chart which reflects what happens on balls in play on certain counts.

I omitted 1-0 and 2-0 because there were so few balls in play.

Obviously, 1-1 and 2-1 count events are astonishing. I know that I’m presenting this without league or team averages, so it makes it difficult to really draw any conclusions, but the numbers speak for themselves. (I ran out of time and plan to do that part tonight or early tomorrow – so stay tuned).

Now, JV throws his fastball more than anything else. His fastball contact rate this season is 86%, versus 81.2% for 2012, and 83.6% for his career. His fastball swinging strike rate is 7.1% in 2013, down from 9.9% in 2012 and 8.3% for his career. Those are significant changes.

So his fastball is either slower, or not moving. Or, gasp, both. Well, his average fastball this year is 93.6 MPH, compared to 94.7 last year and 94.8 for his career. And, using PitchFX data, we can conclude that it’s not moving as much in 2013. I believe that this partially explains why the BABIP against and foul ball numbers are so high.

Thus, we’re left with “what does this mean?” Far from my area of expertise, but I would guess that it’s something mechanical, or mental, considering his age. But a full season of this and the high innings over the past three years are going to get heavier and heavier.

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Tonight’s Potential Series Clinching Lineup:

1. Jackson, CF
2. Dirks, LF
3. The Man, 3B
4. Fielder, 1B
5. Martinez, DH
6. Peralta, SS
7. Kelly, RF
8. Infante, 2B
9. Pena, C