2015 Season, Game Post

Game 2015.80: Blue Jays at Tigers

17 Comments

The diagnosis is in: Miguel Cabrera has a grade 3 calf strain, and is expected to miss 6 weeks. The good news is that Cabrera has no achilles damage and won’t require surgery; the bad newses are most of the summer without Cabrera and no real Plan B to replace him.

The Tigers have called up Jefry Marte from Toledo, who is at .271 for the season, with 13 homers and 55 RBI, and has had a hot June (.317). He has played 10 games at first over the span of his minor league career. For today, the Tigers are going with Alex Avila at first. Brad Ausmus said that playing Victor Martinez at first is “not an option.”

The Cabrera injury was the beginning of what was a very strange baseball game. He probably actually injured it on a strange play where he tried to go from 1st to 3rd on a goundout, and was tagged out on a hard and slightly awkward slide. But the Blue Jays put on a clown show (including errors on back-to-back plays by former Tiger Carrera), and it looked like a blowout win. All the excitement in the game came from the mound, with Anibal Sanchez cruising into the 8th with a no-hitter. At 110 pitches Anibal was probably just out of gas, but Ausmus tried to let him finish the inning, and the Blue Jays pounced. By the time the inning was over, the game had turned into a nail-biter.

If the Tigers had come out on the wrong end of last night’s game, that and the Cabrera injury could have been too big of a blow to rebound from. As it is, the team will have to show some character and come together to fill in for the big man. Miguel has had some mini-slumps over the season, and when he does the team has tended to not do well. Let’s see what they can come up with without him in the lineup at all.

Today’s Who’s On First? Lineup:

  1. Ian Kinsler, 2B
  2. Yoenis Cespedes, LF
  3. Victor Martinez, DH
  4. JD Martinez, RF
  5. Alex Avila, 1B
  6. Nick Castellanos, 3B
  7. James McCann, C
  8. Josh Wilson, SS
  9. Anthony Gose, CF

“And now batting fifth, 1st baseman Alex Avila!” [Crowd roars]. I had figured we’d see Romine at first, but Avila makes sense also: he had played first in Spring Training in case Cabrera wasn’t going to be ready to start the season. (But batting 5th?). To me the curious move is resting Iglesias. A win today, on Cabrera’s first day on the DL, would make a statement. I say rest Iglesias tomorrow. Unfortunately, Brad isn’t taking my calls at the moment.

The Tigers will be wearing special 4th of July uniforms; the game post picture is from a JD Martinez tweet.  Happy Independence Day everyone!

17 thoughts on “Game 2015.80: Blue Jays at Tigers”

  1. Well, I know a lot of you have been complaining about Cabrera. IMO when you complain about the best Hitter in baseball, you lose all credibility. But anyway, now we can go back to playing small ball – bunting, speed etc. like we did back in 1988 to 2007 BC – (Before Cabrera) Let me know how this works out ha ha

    1. JD has still got some big ball in him. I’m still waiting for Cespedes to go on a home run tear though.

    2. Bill, i’m not sure i understand your point…or perhaps maybe you weren’t trying to make one

      1. Hmmmm……I would wish for better #s from him than that. It’s one thing getting thrown out at the base you’re trying to swipe, but getting nabbed at the base you’re leaving is a lot dumber, usually.

  5. JD Martinez running on contact, thrown out at home by about 5 feet. Why do they keep doing this?

    1. Because apparently their manager has Topps bubblegum between his ears. In all his big league years, he doesn’t consider having Casty BUNT BUNT BUNT. Any kind of decent bunt scores that man from 3rd, & maybe he beats it out too.

  6. Frankly, I love having Dave Clark at 3rd. Who here would like to bet that Gene Lamont would NOT have respected Bautista’s arm, and would have sent him around for an easy tag-out?

  8. I’m encouraged by Kinsler’s at bats lately. Ausmus’ tutoring seems to have been a big boost for him.

  9. I guess my point is this: I understand that web blogs on the Internet are a forum for people to voice their opinions and basically complain. I do the same thing. I totally get that. But Miguel Cabrera when he is through will probably be considered one of the top three right-handed hitters of all time. I think we should appreciate him instead of complaining. Although if Al kaline was playing in this era, we would probably be complaining about him as well

    1. i”m with you Bill – couldn’t agree more. I also believe that when putting together a list of the reasons why DET has underachieved this year (to this point), Cabrera wouldn’t be on anyone’s list. DET fans have been spoiled over the past 9 years with some great teams/players’ efforts (MVP’s, Cy Young, Division Titles, etc), and the expectations have escalated… so when those expectations are dashed, fans (myself included) are quick to assign blame. Baseball is a strange game, and most die hard baseball fans are a strange bunch (myself included)…and no matter how pessimistic i get, that flame of hope will always burn.

      Whether its fair or not, sooner or later everyone in professional sports is subject to scrutiny, complaints and even boo’s from their own fans… especially highly paid players – its the nature of the beast.

Comments are closed.