PREGAME The Tigers look to repeat last night’s drama, and hopefully there will be a repeat of a full house as well. I’m off to the game…

POSTGAME: I typically appreciate a fast moving pitchers duel. That goes double when I take a 3 year old and a 5 year old. I love spending an afternoon or evening as much as anyone, and I usually don’t care to rush the event. However, a fast moving game with the little ones (especially the littler one) is a beautiful thing.

Nate Robertson continues to walk people, but he did everything else right today. Amazingly, despite the 5 walks he protected the shut out without the benefit of the double play.

Once again the Tigers put on a good show for a pretty full house. The crowd of 31,000+ was very engaged and enthusiastic. It’s fun being a Tiger fan again.

PREGAME: Milton versus Maroth. That’s all I have time for tonight.

POSTGAME: Well that was a pretty good show in front of the 4th largest crowd in Comerica history. I’m having a hard time organizing my thoughts on this game so I’m going bullet form:

• As important as anything is Mike Maroth continues to impress without overwhelming. I’ve always pulled for Maroth, but part of me is still expecting a collapse, or at least a derailment. This time he did it against a pretty good offense. Maybe Dave Dombrowski knew what he was doing when he inked Maroth for a second year.
• To Joel Zumaya – stuff happens. You got beat by a Hall of Famer. Your team still won. Shake it off. And did anybody else see the radar gun show 104 on the first pitch to Griffey?
• As far as extra-inning rallies go, I really think the Reds deserve pretty much all the credit. Carlos Guillen gets hit by a pitch. He should have been out stealing second if Brandon Phillips catches the ball. A walk to Shelton (Big Red gets credit for this part). The Reds fail to double up Dmitri Young of all people when Phillips doesn’t field the ball clean. And then Felipe Lopez chokes on Monroe’s inning ending ground ball. Not that I’m complaining.
• I’ve really wanted Dmitri Young to succeed. But he’s lost at the plate. He’s being arraigned on Monday. He probably won’t stay healthy this year. I’d just assume Thames get the majority of his at-bats. He’s become Bobby Higginson. Without some serious production pretty soon, his career will end ugly.
• I’d be remiss without mentioning Curtis. But I’d also be remiss throwing it into a game thread. So I gave it its own post.

PREGAME: So prior to the season, this matchup looked like a dog. Two perennial 4th place teams duking it out. Instead the Tigers are leading all of baseball, and the Reds 24-16 record is good enough for second in the division. I’m excited enough to take in two games, including tonight.

Typically when I look at the pitching match-ups, I look to see how the opposing team has done. In this case there isn’t a lot to talk about. The Tigers as a team have 4 at-bats against Brandon Claussen (Polanco has 3, Wilson 1). It isn’t much better going the other way with only Scott Hatteberg having more than 10 at-bats against Jeremy Bonderman.

What I do know about Claussen is he has been brutal on lefties. He’s allowing a .484 OPS to hitters on the left side, but .912 to righties.

I will point you to a couple of excellent Reds blogs, Red Reporter and Redleg Nation, for more info on this weekend’s opponent.

Let the quest for the Sparky Cup begin.

POSTGAME Uh yeah. At least the Pistons won.

PREGAME: Ah, that magical game 40 when it is suddenly safe to make judgements about teams. Today’s game will feature Kenny Rogers taking on Brad Radke.

A couple weeks ago the Tigers beat the stuffing out of Radke. Hopefully they can repeat the effort. Working in the Tigers favor is that they have 4 players hitting over .400 against Radke for their careers (min of 25 ABs) – Monore, Rodriguez, Ordonez, and Guillen.

I very rarely make predictions, but I think Pudge goes yard to day. He’s been sitting on two home runs for a long time, and he has 8 career dingers off Radke.

POSTGAME: You know things are going good when your pitcher is sick but doesn’t allow any earned runs, and you make two fielding errors, and a couple baserunning errors, your closer has a rocky outing, and you still pick up the win.

I was wrong about Pudge’s homer, but Placido Polanco managed to pop his first of the season.

And aside from the win, and resulting 2nd consecutive sweep, there were actually 26,000 there to see it. With the Reds coming to town this weekend, I’ll be disappointed if they don’t break 100,000 for the series.