All posts by billfer

2006 Season, Game Post

Game 39: Twins at Tigers

7 Comments

PREGAME: It’s the pitching stupid! Justin Verlander and Johan Santana will do battle tonight – barring inclement weather of course. Then again, starting the game and experiencing a lengthy rain delay would probably help the Tigers. While I’d prefer to see Verlander throwing, I think our fresh long relievers would have the advantage against the Twins weary bullpen.

But Pudge Rodriguez, Magglio Ordonez, and Craig Monroe have all had success against Santana in the past. Tonight’s lineup feature Pudge at DH with Vance Wilson catching. Ramon Santiago gets the nod over Placido Polanco at 2nd base.

2006 Season

MId-week linking

6 Comments

Alex Belth and Cliff Corcoran, the fine proprietors of Bronx Banter give some love to the classic style of the Olde English D. Make sure to check out the comments.


Paul disagreed with my assertion in the Indians series wrap that the Tigers were fortunate to have played teams when they were struggling. He makes several good points, supported with data and stuff. But I don’t think we are really that far apart. Most of the examples show that it wasn’t the Tigers catching the team at the right time, it was that the teams just haven’t been good. I’d still assert that offenses like the A’s will be better this year, like the Twins pitchers will also be better than what we’ve seen. If that is the case, it is better to face them now then when they get clicking. And even if they don’t get better, it just plays into the belief that the Tigers have benefitted from a weak schedule. In any case, discussion is good, especially when it is well supported.

Danny Knobler floated the idea that a big trade could be coming the Tigers way by the end of July. I’m not going to delve into the possibilities here yet. I just think it is too soon to know what the holes on the team are. But it is definitely a different perspective for Tiger fans.

This is a couple days old, but I’m really enjoying the Freep’s expanded Tiger coverage on Sundays. This past weekend alone saw interesting articles on Cameron Maybin, bat preferences, and Greg Smith’s draft history.

And this was brought up in the comments, but Baseball Prospectus has some Tiger content in their free section. The article gives the Tigers props, but also highlights how difficult it will be for the pitching staff to continue at their current pace, mostly because the defense can’t continue at its current pace. I think to a certain extent they are correct, but I’ll tackle that more tomorrow night.

2006 Season, Minors

Tigers Minor League Wrap – May 16th

2 Comments

Norfolk 3, Toledo 2
Ryan Raburn, Kevin Hooper, and Josh Phelps all had two hits. Chad Durbin started and allowed on 3 hits and 2 walks to go along with 5 strikeouts in 7 innings. Mark Woodyard pitched a scoreless eighth before Lee Gardner allowed two in the 9th.

Erie – Rained Out

Lakeland 6, Brevard County 0
Kevin Ardoin pitched a complete game shut out. He allowed only 6 hits, and his defense backed him up. He walked none, and of the 27 outs, only one came via strikeout. He helped his own cause by picking off two. Clete Thomas homered for Lakeland and Jeff Larish added a double. Jim Essian had 3 hits including a homer. Wilkin Ramirez made his 11th error of the season.

West Michigan 6, Peoria 1
Michael Hollimon paced the attack with a homer and two singles. Cameron Maybin once again was held out. Burke Badenhop pitched a complete game with the only run coming on a solo shot. He walked none and fanned 5.

2006 Season, Game Post, Uncategorized

Game 38: Twins at Tigers

5 Comments

PREGAME: Wow. The Tigers are playing the Twins again. That almost never happens. After this series, out of the Tigers last 19 games, 9 will have been against the Twins.

The Tigers will be facing Kyle Lohse who must feel like every game is against the Tigers. And for Lohse this year, that hasn’t been a good feeling.

Nate Robertson will take the ball for Detroit, looking to replicate his last outing against the Twins in which he allowed no runs on 5 hits in 7 innings.

Dmitri Young will return to the lineup.

Game time 7:05pm

POSTGAME: With the White Sox loss, your Detroit Tigers are now tied for the best record in all of baseball. I realize that this doesn’t mean nearly as much in May as it does in October, but for Detroit fans this is as good as it gets.

Nate Robertson was quite shaky, but his offense picked him up the very next inning with a 5 spot. Without the game on TV, I don’t have a lot to add. As Eddie and Kyle pointed out, the Tigers got into a Twins bullpen that was already worn down. Now chances are Johan Santana will give them a break tomorrow night, but who knows.

While the Tigers bullpen has had plenty of rest this season, I think Jim Leyland had to go deeper into his pen than he anticipated. At this point it is picking nits, but I was surprised to see Colon only go one inning. Of course, Leyland probably thought that Bobby Seay could pitch an uneventful inning instead of turning it into a closing situation.

2006 Season

Pack the Park

12 Comments

How often is it that Tiger fans wake up in May and find their team with the 2nd best record in baseball? The answer is basically never. And yet the Tigers rank ahead of only Kansas City, Florida, and Tampa in terms of average attendance.

They are averaging 21, 257 fans per game, which is just a hair below where they were after 14 home dates last year when they were averaging 21,334.
Continue reading Pack the Park →

2006 Season, Minors

Tigers Minor League Wrap – May 15th

Toledo 7, Richmond 2
Ryan Ludwick homered and had 5 RBI’s. Don Kelly added a triple and single, and Ryan Raburn reached base 3 times. Zach Miner had another solid start going 5 1/3 innings and allowing 7 hits while fanning 4. Chris Spurling came in and pitched 3 2/3 innings on allowing two hits.

Erie – rained out

Lakeland 8 , Brevard County 3
Andrew Kown allowed 6 hits, 1 walk, and 1 run while fanning 3 in 6 innings. Chris Robinson had a double and a walk. Wilkin Ramirez had two singles and a walk.

West Michigan – rained out. Cameron Maybin wasn’t in the starting lineup.

2006 Season

Series Wrap: Tigers at Indians

1 Comment

The season of unprecendented Tiger accomplishments continues…Okay, maybe not unprecendented, but certainly unfamiliar. The Tigers swept the Indians at Jacobs Field, which quite frankly is unprecedented. I’m not sure why it is working this way, but Detroit keeps seeming to get teams at the most opportune time. They faced the Rangers without their best pitchers, they faced the Twins when they were struggling, they faced the Athletics when they weren’t hitting, and they faced the Indians when nothing was going right for them. Witness the stats:

Tigers Indians
Wins 3 0
Offense
Runs 11 6
BA .269 .245
OBP .296 .318
SLG .433 .357
HR 3 2
SB/CS 1/1 0/1
Pitching
BB/9 3.3 1.3
K/9 6.3 8.0
ERA 1.67 3.00

Continue reading Series Wrap: Tigers at Indians →

Uncategorized

Site Downtime

4 Comments

I apologize for the protracted time this site was down last night and this morning. I think the total outage was about 14 hours. It was a problem with one of the servers at my webhosting company.

I am currently in the market for a new webhost, and will be transitioning the site sometime this week. I don’t anticipate any downtime during this move. The worst that would probably happen is that you might miss out on a new post for a day or so while the nameserver change propagates.

Again, I’m sorry.

2006 Season, Minors

Tigers Minor League Wrap – May 14th

Richmond 4, Toledo 2
Ryan Raburn and Ryan Ludwick each had two singles. David Espinosa had a sacrifice fly and a walk, but saw his average dip to 227. Wil Ledezma made his first appearance since coming off the DL and wasn’t effective. He allowed 9 hits and 3 walks for 4 runs in 5 2/3 innings. Prior to the injury he had been striking out a ton of batters, but only mustered 3 today. Mark Woodyard fanned 3 in 1 1/3 scoreless innings.

Reading 2, Erie 0
Tony Giarratano had a souble and a single. Brent Clevlen and Kody Kirkland both posted 0 for 4’s with a strike out. Nate Bumstead had a solid outing, but did have some control issues. He allowed 2 runs on 6 hits, both on solo homers in 7 innings. His 7 K’s were impressive, his 5 walks were not.

Lakeland – DNP

West Michigan, Lansing (in progress)
Still no Cameron Maybin. Erik Averill started and allowed 2 runs on 3 hits and 3 walks in 6 innings. He struck out 5.

2006 Season, Game Post

Game 37: Tigers at Indians

4 Comments

PREGAME: The Tigers try to complete the sweep, extend their winning streak, and try to stop another trend. The Tigers have yet to win the last game of a homestand or road trip.

Mike Maroth shut out the Indians the last time the two sides squared off, also on a holiday (Easter) and also on a Sunday. He’ll be opposed by Jason Johnson, who I would really like to see the Tigers beat.

Curtis Granderson played in his 88th game without an error last night. That matches the longest string for a Tiger player to start his career errorless since Danny Bautista from 1993-1995.

Happy Mother’s Day to any of my readers who are mothers!

POSTGAME: Don’t look now – actually do look now – but the Tigers are tied for first place, sort of. They aren’t any games back, but the White Sox have the edge in winning percentage.

I didn’t see the game in its entirety due to Mother’s day obligations, but from what I did see Mike Maroth was once again very effective. The Jason Johnson that pitched today was the one that we saw the first half of 2005. He kept the ball down, and induced a ton of groundballs.

If you caught the FSN Detroit broadcast, you probably heard that this was the Tigers first ever sweep at Jacobs Field. This marked the end of another productive road trip and elevated their road record to a remarkable 16-7. The Tigers have now played 23 of their 37 games on the road.

2006 Season, Minors

Tigers Minor League Wrap – May 13th

Richmond 10, Toledo 6
Josh Phelps doubled and walked twice, and Alexis Gomez added a triple and a walk. Jordan Tata made his first start of the season, and was hammered. He allowed 4 hits, 4 walks, and a homer in 2 2/3 innings while fanning 3.

Erie 6, Reading 5
Kody Kirkland homered (9) and fanned 3 times. Brent Clevlen was 1 for 3 with 2 RBI. Brian Jones started and went 3 1/3 innings allowing 2 hits and 3 walks for 2 runs. Jeremy Johnson followed and pitched two scoreless innings. Eulogio De La Cruz who started horrible this season, added another scoreless inning to drop his ERA to 5.79.

Vero Beach 3, Lakeland 1
There wre only 3 hits for Lakeland. Clete Thomas (single), Jeff Larish (double), and Victor Mendez (homer) powered the attack. Dallas Trahern threw a complete game allowing 7 hits and 2 walks against 3 K’s.

West Michigan 8, Lansing 4
Matt Joyce hit a grand slam, and Michael Hollimon added a homer as well. Cameron Maybin continued to be absent from the lineup. Matt Rusch who has been solid in the pen was given a chance to start. In 3 innings he fanned 4, walked one, and only allowed 1 hit. His ERA over 20 innings stands at 1.31 with a 20/3 K:BB ratio.

2006 Season, Game Post

Game 36: Tigers at Indians

4 Comments

PREGAME: Today should be an interesting pitching match-up between two of the talented young arms in the AL Central, Jeremy Bonderman and CC Sabathia.

Tiger hitters have had little success against Sabathia in the past, especially Brandon Inge who is 3 for 31 lifetime. Given my proclivity lately for pointing out interesting notes which then get obliterated by the actual game, expect big numbers from Inge tonight.

On another interesting note, the Tigers lead the majors in home runs and doubles among visiting teams at Jacobs Field.

POSTGAME: Yet another shut out for the Tigers pitching staff. Jeremy Bonderman out dueled CC Sabathia. Bonderman finished officiallywith 8 strikeouts, but he actually struck out Travis Hafner 3 times in the 6th inning while being squeezed by the ump.

It also appears that Chris Shelton minght be getting his groove back. He’s had consecutive multi-hit games, and he crushed two balls yesterday.