All posts by billfer

2008 Season, Pitching

Bonderman stays away

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Jeremy Bonderman turned in another disappointing performance in his latest start against the Yankees. It seemed to follow a pattern than Bonderman has established and has led to the worst set of peripherals in his career. Let’s go batter by batter through the first inning to see what went wrong:

Bonderman against Damon:
Bonderman against Damon
Things started out well for Bonderman. He got a first pitch strike on a fastball in the lower outside quadrant. Damon fouled off two borderline pitches on the outside corner before fanning on a slider that bounced up.
Continue reading Bonderman stays away →

2008 Season, Game Post

Game 39: Yankees at Tigers

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PREGAME: The Tigers will try and close out the season series against the Yankees with a win. It will be two left handers on the mound today which should favor Detroit.

The Tigers offense is built to beat up lefties, and they took care of Andy Pettite last time they hooked up in Detroit.

For Detroit, somehow Nate Robertson will give up 4 runs. He’s allowed 4 runs in 5 of his last 6 starts. It’s just a matter of how long he lasts.

Then again, it’s raining north of Detroit right now, so who knows if they get it in.

Happy Mother’s Day to my mom, my grandma (who we buy the sports package for as a Christmas gift each year so she can watch her Tigers), and my wife. Also Happy Mother’s Day to cib, and Kathy, and Anne, and all the other mom’s.

NYY @ DET, Sunday, May 11, 2008 Game Preview – Baseball-Reference.com

Game Time 1:05

2008 Season, Minors

Tigers Minor League Wrap 5-10-08

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Charlotte 3 Toledo 5
Mike Hessman and Clete Thomas homered. Brent Clevlen had 3 hits pushing his line to 313/376/563. Casey Fossum got the win allowing 1 run in 6 innings on 3 hits. Blaine Neal allowed 2 homers in one inning of relief.

Toledo 1 Charlotte 4
Mike Hessman homered and had one of only 3 hits. Virgil Vasquez went 5 innings and allowed 4 runs on 9 hits with 1 walk and 3 K’s.

Harrisburg 9 Erie 0
Wil Rhymes went 2 for 4. Ben Fritz allowed 8 runs on 9 hits in 6 innings. He walked none and fanned 6.

Vero Beach 2 Lakeland 6
James Skelton went 3 for 4 with his first homer of the year. Scott Sizemore and Ryan Strieby each had 2 hits. Rick Porcello allowed 2 unearned runs in 5 innings on 3 hits. He walked only one, but also struck out only one.

Lansing 2 West Michigan 4
Kyle Peter and Justin Henry each had 2 hits. Manny Miguelez fanned 8 over 7 innings while allowing just 1 run on 4 hits.

Roster Moves

The Tigers made a number of roster moves including Brandon Hamilton joining the Whitecaps from EST. A promotion for a VSL product. And Luis Marte earning his way to Erie. Detroit Tigers Thoughts and Take 75 North break it all down.

2008 Season, Game Post

Game 38: Yankees at Tigers

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PREGAME: Hey, it’s Fox Saturday Baseball again, and it’s the main game with Ken Rosenthal in town and everything. (I saw Rosenthal at the game last night and that is a tiny dude. So small it seemed like John Keating could dribble him).

The Tigers will send out Jeremy Bonderman who still is looking for that first “wow” game of the season. His last time out against the Red Sox he was hurt by a pair of two run homers. The time before he had his typical first inning struggles but then went onto pitch 7.2 innings in his longest start of the year.

Bonderman, like most righties has had a rougher time with left handed batters. While he’s still walking them quite a bit this year (19% of the time actually), it’s the right handers who have hit for more power (449 slugging for righties, 380 for lefties).

The Yankees send out Darrell Rasner. Rasner is making just his second start of the year. He held Seattle to 2 runs in 6 innings in his 2008 debut walking none and fanning 4.

And following Ian’s lead, a shout out to my blogging buddies for the Wings and Pistons on this a Detroit triple header day. Behind the Jersey, Need 4 Sheed, Detroit Bad Boys.

NYY @ DET, Saturday, May 10, 2008 Game Preview – Baseball-Reference.com

Game Time 3:40

2008 Season, Statistics

The Second Inning – 2008

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The following was compiled by DTW reader and commenter Sam Hoff. He breaks down the season into 18 game innings and reports how the team does.

The 2nd Inning is over.

Each 18 games represent 1 inning of a baseball season. The Tigers record for the first 2 innings in 2008:

                                        Starters:         Bullpen:
    W-L   RS –RA     HR-SB-AVG/OBA/SLG    W-L-IP-   ERA     W-L-S-ERA
1:  6-12  74 -112    15-10-262/345/404    3-9- 96.2-5.96    3-3-3-5.28 
2:  9-9   98 -87     21- 6-261/350/426    5-8-105.2-5.11    4-1-2-3.61

The first 2 innings have been ugly. The team has endured a 7 game and a 5 game losing streak. The offense, whose initial starting lineup has an average lifetime BA of .297 is hitting 35 points below that collectively. The starters, 60% of who are left from the 2006 World Series team which lead the major leagues in ERA has collective ERA well over 5 with the best performance coming from an 8-year minor leaguer.

The good news is that the team is only 3.5 games out of first and if they play near their career norms should be able to easily make that up. In 2006, the Tigers last 3 innings were 9-9, 5-13, and 9-9 and that team went to the World Series. In 2007, the Tigers had 2 successive 7-11 innings (innings 6 and 7). In 2003, you couldn’t piece 2 innings together where the Tigers had as many as 15 wins!

The bullpen had a very good 2nd inning lead by Bobby Seay (5 scoreless innings), the departed Jason Grilli (4 scoreless) and Clay Rapada (1.59 era in 5.2 innings). The only member of the bullpen with an era over 5.00 was Denny Bautista (8.44era in 5.2 innings).

The starters were consistent as each of them had exactly 1 win. Galarraga (1-1-3.18) and Bonderman (1-1-3.93) were respectable. Rogers (1-0-6.19), Robertson (1-3-6.38), and Verlander (1-3-5.84) all really struggled. Verlander is a big concern as he has never looked this bad in his career and rumors are circulating that his shoulder is hurting.

The highest OPS in the 2nd inning belonged to Ramon Santiago (1-8-312/421/750) in 16 At Bats! Marcus Thames (1-4-412/444/588), Polanco (2-8-383/422/583), Granderson (5-10-254/362/593) and Ordonez (4-17-324/397/544) have all been hot. The guys who struggled in the 2nd inning were Inge (1-4-154/292/231), Guillen (0-8-246/333/281), and the departed Jacque Jones (1-2-146/265/317).

It is NOT time to hit the panic button. The Yankees started 21-29 last year and made the playoffs. The team definitely needs to start playing better baseball and the biggest disappointment, the starting pitching, needs to get better. Here’s hoping it does, otherwise when the Wings and Pistons are over, all we will have to look forward to are the Lions???

2008 Season, Injuries

Tigers to skip Galarraga and Dontrelle’s rehab

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Though it’s not really a surprise, when Dontrelle Willis comes back he’ll be taking Armando Galarraga’s spot in the rotation. Or perhaps Galarraga will be returning Willis’s spot. You could see this was the plan when Willis started his last rehab assignment on the same night Galarraga was pitching.

Dontrelle will make rehab starts for the Mud Hens on Monday and Saturday. A Monday start would be normal rest for Galarraga, but with the open day he’ll be skipped to keep Justin Verlander on his regular rest. So Galarraga’s next start will be in Arizona on Saturday.

There is a possibility that Galarraga could stay with the club in the bullpen, but that would be a mistake. He needs to keep starting and being ready to fill in should injury or prolonged ineffectiveness plague another member of the rotation.

2008 Season, Minors

Tigers Minor League Wrap 5-9-08

Toledo 8 Charlotte 1
The power duo of Mike Hessman and Jeff Larish were at it again. Hessman had two homers and Larish had one. Larish added two walks and Hessman added a single. Clete Thomas had two assists gunning down a runner at third and home. Eddie Bonine pitched a complete game on 104 pitches fanning 5, walking 1, and allowing 8 hits.

Harrisburg 4 Erie 3
Wilkin Ramirez singled and homered. Lucas French went 8 innings and allowed 1 run on 2 walks and 2 strike outs. Casey Fien blew the save allowing 3 runs on 2 hits, and two walks despite fanning 3.

Vero Beach 5 Lakeland 2
Cale Iorg singled and walked and stole 2 bases. Luis Marte fanned 6 and walked 1 while allowing 3 runs over 6 innings.

West Michigan 3 Lansing 7
Chris Carlson was a triple short of the cycle. Alfredo Figaro went 6 innings allowing 2 runs on 4 hits, a walk, and 5 K’s. Noah Krol didn’t record an out but allowed 4 runs.

2008 Season, Game Post

Game 37: Yankees at Tigers

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PREGAME: The last time the Tigers saw the Yankees they were one game under .500. Since then the Tigers have won one game. They have 10 extra base hits in their last 241 at-bats. They’ve struck out 43 times. They haven’t hit a home run since Curtis Granderson led off with one 5 games ago. Things aren’t good.

Kei Igawa takes the mound for the Yankees, making his first start of the year. Last year he allowed a homer 4.5 innings so that may bode well for an offense in a power outage.

Kenny Rogers has quality starts in his last two outings. His last start against the Twins was derailed following a Carlos Guillen error, but he still managed 6 strike outs and no walks.

NYY @ DET, Friday, May 9, 2008 Game Preview – Baseball-Reference.com

Game Time 7:05

POSTGAME: The Tigers have a thing about playing the Yankees on Friday nights. Comerica has seen some noteworthy games tilting in the Tigers favor under those circumstances. There was the shellacking of Randy Johnson, the Mike Maroth 1-hitter, and the 3:30 in the morning walk-off. Todd Jones did his best to make this one memorable as well.

Jones made a 4-run lead look very surmountable, but the winning run was left on first base as Shelley Duncan hit a ball hard but at Granderson. All I can say about Jones is that if he’s going to pitch crappy, better to do it with a 4 run cushion than a 1 run one. But yes, he will blow some saves, as do all closers.

As for the offense, they pounded Kei Igawa as they’ve pounded many left handed pitchers. Part of me wishes Boof Bonser was traded to the NL instead of Johann Santana (that would be sarcasm). Pudge had two doubles, a single, a WALK, and a flyball deep to right field.

Polanco had two hits, and two line drives that turned into outs. Guillen took an 0’fer but might have had the hardest hit ball of the night but Bobby Abreu tracked it down.

Ryan Raburn got a rare start (more on this later) and made the most of it with two hits.

Two milestones occurred last night. Gary Sheffield tied Al Kaline on the all time RBI list. This was acknowledged on the scoreboard. Kenny Rogers broke the pick off record, totally befuddling Wilson Betemit (who had a really bad game). Yet this wasn’t even mentioned in the stadium.

2008 Season

What’s Going On

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Sean C from Illinois penned this take on Marvin Gaye’s What’s Going On and left it in the comments. I thought it deserved a little more prominence:

WHAT’S GOING ON?

Tigers, Tigers
Not too many of you trying
Batters batters batters
There’s far too many of you dying
You know we’ve got to find a way
To DL Sheffield – yesterday

Pitchers, pitchers
Know they’d better strike them out
Fielding is the answer
For only gloves can conquer doubt
You know that you can rest assured
We need back Brandon Inge at third

Runners on
And runners gone
Don’t punish me
With a 6-4-3
Come on score some runs
And get it done
We’ll win the game
We’ll win the game
Tell me who won the game
I’ll tell you who won the game

Tigers, Tigers
What a rapid fall from grace
But who are we to judge them
Simply ’cause they’re in last place?
Wonder how long it’s gonna be
Until Jim says “That’s it for me”

Hitting’s weak
And pitching’s sick
The starters can’t
Make it through the 6th
Come on bulllpen guys
Oft criticized
Don’t blow the game
Don’t blow the game
Jonesy don’t blow the game
Guillen’s error blew the game

2008 Season, Minors

Tigers Minor League Wrap 5-8-08

Lehigh Valley 3 Toledo 7
Mike Hessman hit his 12th homer. Freddy Guzman, now with Toledo with the promotion of Matt Joyce, had 2 hits and a walk. Chris Lambert went 8 innings allowing only a walk and 2 hits while fanning 5.

Trenton 7 Erie 2
Josh Rainwater only pitched an inning and surrendered 5 runs on 3 hits and 3 walks. In all the Seawolves ended up needing 6 pitchers.

Vero Beach 3 Lakeland 4
Mike Bertram had 3 hits. Scott Sizemore doubled and walked. Matt O’Brien allowed 3 runs on 5 hits and 2 walks in 6 innings while fanning 3.

West Michigan 2 Lansing 0
Casper Wells, Audy Ciriaco and Joe Bowen each had 2 hits. Ciriaco also made his 15th error of the season. Ramon Garcia picked up the 3 hit complete game shut out walking 1 and fanning 5.

2008 Season, Game Post

Game 36: Red Sox at Tigers

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PREGAME: Justin Verlander and Josh Beckett tonight.

Sorry for the brevity, gotta run.

BOS @ DET, Thursday, May 8, 2008 Game Preview – Baseball-Reference.com

Game Time 7:05

POSTGAME:  That winning thing was short lived.  I missed the first 3 innings of this game while coaching my son’s team but it appears to be more of the same. Tigers starting pitching allows runs early, but not so much to make it a blow out.  Red Sox starting pitching looks golden allowing some baserunners, but they were all singles.  And it’s yet another loss.

Curtis Granderson fanned 4 times, besting (or worsting) his 3 K’s performance last night.  Miguel Cabrera is slumping again going 0 for 4 with a couple ugly looking K’s.  If it weren’t for the subs at the bottom of the order – Thames, Inge, and Santiago – stringing together 2 out hits it would have been another shut out.

I just don’t know.

Red Sox 5 Tigers 1

2008 Season, Defense, Front Office, Statistics

Junkballing: riding the river of news

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A startling amount of news from the beat writers and analysis from bloggers today. Inge likes catching, Cabrera at first base, and more.

Inge says catching is fun

Brandon Inge is just too fascinating to resist. The very different views of his defense, the despair over his offense, the sympathy and lack of sympathy over his plight to get traded, his early season success while essentially being a full time player the first 25 games, people clamoring for Inge to return to third base, it’s the gift that keeps on giving for bloggers. Now it appears that Inge thinks catching is cool.

Inge said Tuesday that he still prefers to play third base — “my first love” — and that a chance to play at third regularly could persuade him to play elsewhere.

“Yeah, yeah, I’m not gonna lie,” Inge said, “but I’m good with the catching, too. I don’t like sitting.

“And I love Detroit. I love everything about it.”

It’s quite the shift from his stance this spring when he was catching and complaining about it, and doing it enough to draw ire from me. He later backed off those statements when it became clear Vance Wilson wouldn’t be breaking camp with the team.

I’m in agreement with Ian and Kurt that the possibility of Inge catching next year if Pudge Rodriguez isn’t back would definitely be a nice option for the Tigers to have.
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