Jackson has pitched better than I ever would have anticipated. He was credited with a breakout year in 2008 when he notched 14 wins, but wins and losses don’t really measure breakouts. His walk rate certainly improved, but he struck out fewer than 6 batters per 9 innings. His K/BB ratio was well under 2. Based on his career he looked to be a number 4 starter coming into 2009. That combined with Joyce’s potential, and other issues like contract status and years of service caused me to pan the deal.
Pawtucket 0 Toledo 6
Mike Hessman is only hititng .200, but he hit another homer and now has 6 on the season. Jeff Frazier tripled and singled. Ruddy Lugo pitched 7 innings of 3 hit ball with no walks and 4 K’s. Casey Fien preserved the shutout with 2 scoreless innings.
Erie 12 Bowie 5
Scott Sizemore homered, singled, and walked. Brennan Boesch, Alex Avila, and Cale Iorg did the same, but without the walk. Jonah Nickerson allowed 5 runs on 8 hits in 5 innings. Josh Rainwater pitched 2 scoreless innings.
Erie 4 Bowie 5
Max Leon and Brennan Boesch each homered. Cale Iorg doubled. Ramon Garcia allowed 3 runs (1 earned) in 5 innings. Brett Jensen blew the save allowing 2 runs while recording just one out.
Lakeland – Suspended and DNP
West Michigan 5 Dayton 2
Ronnie Bourquin homered. Jordan Lennerton doubled twice. Mauricio Robles allowed 2 runs in 6 innings with 1 walk and 5 K’s.
Minors Notes
There was some roster shuffling today. Juan Rincon has chosen to become a free agent if he’s not claimed on waivers. Matt Hoffman has earned a promotion to Lakeland. Brooks Brown has been bumped up to Toledo. Take 75 North has more on Brown and Lucas French.
PREGAME: The Tigers journey through the AL Central with 6 wins, 6 losses, and a rain out. So they didn’t really lose or gain anything. Now they go out of the division for a while starting with the Oakland A’s. Kurt and Blake have already written up previews of this series, so I’ll just put my feet up after I tell you a little about tonight’s pitching match-up.
The Tigers look to Edwin Jackson to perhaps bullpen proof this game – or at least minimize the pen innings. Jackson hasn’t received a lot of run support this year, so if the pattern holds he’ll need to be close to perfect. My guess is that tonight’s pen consists of Fernando Rodney, Lucas French, Ryan Perry…and hope. Miner and Seay are likely out, and I’d guess that Jim Leyland would like to give Zumaya and Lyon an extra day after their marathon night on Wednesday.
Lefty Dallas Braden takes the hill for Oakland. He has a sub 6 K/9 rate, but he walks less than half of that and keeps the ball in the park. Lefties only have 33 at-bats against him this year and they’ve only put together 7 singles and a walk. Most of the damage against Braden has been done in the later innings with a sub .700 OPS in the first 4 innings. But the third time through the lineup hitters post a 953 OPS against.
POSTGAME: It’s nice not to be in the Metrodome anymore. The Tigers hit 2 grandslams and took advantage of 4 Oakland errors, and got another great start from Edwin Jackson.
I never thought that at any point I would look at a list of most recent Tigers grand slams and see Brandon Inge/Ryan Raburn/Adam Everett topping that list.
Inge killed his grandslam to centerfield. You know he’s hit it well if he adjust his cup before he leaves the batters box.
Venezuela got going with 6 hits between Ordonez and Cabrera. Stud 3 hole hitter Clete Thomas also had 3 hits making a potent middle of the lineup, and enabling Inge and Raburn to combine for 10 RBI
Jackson once again pounded the zone and walked nobody with 69 of his 97 pitches going for strikes
About those 97 pitches though. Clearly it isn’t a heavy workload, but there was the rain delay. Plus he threw in the tunnel during the rain delay. Plus he had to warm up after the rain delay. That is way too much work in a game where the only doubt was when the tarp would come off.
The good news is that the entire bullpen should now be available. French and Perry only worked one inning each. Lyon and Zumaya got 2 days off. Miner and Seay should both be good to go as well.
On another note, sorry about misleading you about tonight’s A’s starter. I went off of the info on MLB.com’s site. Braden will be tomorrow night’s starter so at least I have a head start.
Pretty much everyone has beat me to this, but I still feel I should offer up something about Dontrelle Willis’s first start of the year. There are a couple ways to approach the assessment.
You can look at a final line that included 10 hits and 2 walks in just under 5 innings and come away unimpressed or even discouraged. Especially when you look at the fact he only notched one swing and a miss.
Or you can look at the start in the context of last year when the strike zone proved to be a foreign land to Willis. That he only walked 2 in his time on the mound could be a step forward. And even when he missed the zone, he missed by reasonable amounts, like you’d see in a regular start.
Figure 1 Pitch Location
I’m encouraged in that I don’t see him pitching scared. He came inside to both lefties and righties. I don’t know if that is by design or a lack of control in the strike zone, but the absence of unintentional pitch-outs is encouraging.
Pawtucket 0 Toledo 8
Mike Hessman homered and drove in 2. Dusty Ryan was a triple short of the cycle and now has a 253/398/418 line. Ron Chiavacci made the start in place of Lucas French today and fanned 7 in 4 innings of shut out ball. Freddy Dolsi struck out 2 in 1.2 innings with no hits or walks allowed.
Erie 1 Bowie 6
Ryan Strieby had 2 hits and a walk. Scott Sizemore doubled and walked. Luis Marte allowed 13 hits in 7.1 innings. That’s a lot of hits, but only 5 runs scored with 3 K’s and no walks.
Lakeland PPD
West Michigan 7 Dayton 4
Ronnie Bourqin had 4 hits including 2 doubles. Gustavo Nunez went 3 for 4. Luke Putkonen had no strikeouts and allowed 2 runs on 6 hits and a walk in 5 innings.
PREGAME: After a lengthy game with a disappointing result the Tigers turn to Justin Verlander to stave off the Metrodome sweep. He’ll be opposed by Scott Baker. Both pitchers will be expected to log some innings today as both bullpens were burned up in last night’s marathon. Detroit does have a fresh option in Lucas French, who was due to take his regular turn in the Toledo rotation and is Nate Robertson’s replacement. (Nate hit the DL with a back injury).
With a 1:10 start (noon:10 local time) we’ll see which offense wakes up first.
POSTGAME: It’s not too hard to find someone to blame in this one. Bobby Seay and Zach Miner combined to be awful and give away a 5 run lead before recording 2 outs. The result was a wasted outing by Justin Verlander, and 5 runs which haven’t exactly been easy to come by lately.
Verlander
He was freakishly good yet again today with a career high 13 strike outs. The only knock is that his pitch count crept up too high too early on a day when the bullpen was depleted. But he didn’t surrender a run and didn’t ask his position players to do much of anything. He recorded 15 swinging strikes as batter just can’t find his fastball.
In reading the comments, there is a lot of disagreement as to whether he should have been pulled. Verlander topped the 120 pitch mark when he was lifted and it was the 3rd straight start with a heavy workload. In my mind he certainly wasn’t pulled too early, and may have come out too late.
Listening to the game I didn’t think he’d be back for the 7th inning at all, and if he did I thought it would be to get Joe Crede. With the bullpen spent, I thought a 5 run lead and a clean slate would be a good situation to indoctrinate Lucas French. More on this in a minute.
Verlander Fastball Velocity May 14th
As it was, Verlander put 2 men on including a walk to Nick Punto. At this point Leyland had to get him. Whether or not you believe in pitch counts, this had nothing to do with it. Verlander was gassed. Justin is normally a quick worker, and in that 7th inning he was taking longer between pitches. He had fanned Punto on all fastballs in his first 2 at-bats and start to finesse him with offspeed pitches in that last at-bat. And the velocity had tailed off after a flurry at the end of the sixth inning. It was time.
The pen
As I mentioned up above, a clean start with a 5 run lead might have been a nice spot to get French in the game. The downside of Verlander putting 2 guys on was that the situation became much more dicey and did call for Bobby Seay. As one of only 4 options (Miner/Rodney/French) and lefties coming it made sense to go with Seay. Seay didn’t get the job done. Miner didn’t get the job done either. I’m not soured on Seay, but Miner does not seem to pitch well out of the pen. It was a Twins sereis last year where he couldn’t throw strikes out of the pen that led to his demotion and it was more of the same the last 2 nights.
The offense
With 15 runs over the last 2 games it is starting to show signs of life again. Granted, it was helped by Jason Kubel not embracing a direct route to Santiago’s double, but that’s part of the game and the Tigers added on. And everybody that isn’t wearing catchers gear found a way to contribute the last 2 games.
Pawtucket 0 Toledo 1 (10 inn)
Mike Hessman doubled and singled. Wil Rhymes went 2 for 4. Eddie Bonine pitched a 9 inning, 1 hit shutout with no walks and 5 k’s. And didn’t get the win. That went to Casey Fien who fanned 2 and allowed no baserunners in his inning.
Reading 5 Erie 8
Ryan Strieby and Joe Tucker homered. Strieby added a walk and a single. Cale Iorg tripled. Scott Sizemore was 3 for 4. Brooks Brown allowed 5 runs on 9 hits in 5 innings with 4 K’s and a walk. Cody Satterwhite struck out 2 in 2 innings.
PREGAME: It is merely coincidence that Dontrelle’s first takes place alongside the Lost Season Finale right? It isn’t a harbinger of things to come right? Headline writers won’t be able to point to some combination of Lost Season or Finale to describe this game right?
Well, here’s hoping that Dontrelle Willis maybe visited the island and his control problems have been cured. Willis is making his season debut as his DL (anxiety disorder) stint concluded after starts for Lakeland, Erie, and Toledo . Each stop saw an improvement in command over what we witnessed last year. Still his combined 26.7 innings pitched saw 9 walks, 3 homers, 16 K’s, and 23 hits so he wasn’t exactly dominating.
I have no idea what to expect tonight. I’m rooting for Willis, not only as a Tigers fan but because he seems to be one of the good guys.
Lefty Glen Perkins is on the mound for the Twins. There was a time when the Tigers hammered lefty pitching. That time isn’t now. Perkins started the year with 3 straight 8 inning outings where he allowed a total of 4 runs. Since then he hasn’t recorded an out in the 7th and has allowed at least 4 runs each game.
POSTGAME: This game deserves more analysis than what I’m about to offer up, but it’s 1 a.m. and I’m grumpy. Bringing Brandon Lyon out for the last inning was stupid. Leaving him in was beyond stupid. It’s almost hard to believe that a guy that is used to throwing 1 to 2 innings hung a curve ball on pitch number 60. Unless Nate Robertson was on life support this was incredibly freaking stupid.
Information coming in that Robertson is injured and Lucas French is on his way from Toledo. This news makes the above paragraph, well, misguided would be an understatement. You can backtrack on various pitcher usage through the game and look for things that could be done differently, but there is a point where you can’t plan for a 14 inning game.
Pawtucket 2 Toledo 1
Mike Hessman homered and doubled. Chris Lambert allowed 5 hits and 3 walks, but only 2 runs crossed the plate in his 7 innings. He fanned 6.
Reading 2 Erie 5
Andy Dirks doubled and singled. Max Leon walked twice. Deik Scram homered. Alfredo Figaro struck out 6 and only walked 1 in 6.2 innings allowing 2 runs on 3 hits.
Lakeland 8 Dunedin 5
Justin Henry had 2 hits and drove in 3. Kody Kaiser walked 3 times. Lauren Gagnier fanned 5 and walked 2 in 6.2 innings with 5 runs allowed on 8 hits. Robbie Weinhardt allowed a hit and a walk with 1 strikeout.
West Michigan 9 Dayton 4
Ben Guez, Luis Salas, Ronnie Bourquin, and Billy Nowlin all homered. Matt Hoffmann lasted 8 innings and allowed 2 runs on 7 hits, 1 walk, and 6 K’s.
To make room for Dontrelle Willis the Tigers are sending out Juan Rincon. Rincon pitched his way onto the team with a very good spring, but with a rough start to the season the Tigers deemed him most expendable. Brandon Lyon has been just as bad, but he’s owed more, and frankly has been better in recent years than Rincon and therefore has a better chance of contributing.
Given the fact that Ryan Perry threw 42 pitches tonight, I thought that was a signal that he was going to be optioned down. Instead he just won’t be available for a couple nights.
PREGAME: If there is one thing that really irritates me about the Metrodome (and this is of course hypothetical because there are many one things), it’s the fact that they have patterns in the grass like it has been mowed. Only it’s not grass and it’s never been mowed and never will be mowed.
That’s right, the Tigers are playing at the Metrodome. Sigh. New stadium coming soon though.
Tonight it will be Armando Galarraga going for Detroit. He’s the only starter in the last turn through the rotation to allow runs in the multiple sense. He’s struggled in his last 2 starts allowing 11 runs in 11 innings with 5 walks and 5 K’s and 3 homers allowed.
On the other side it will be Kevin Slowey. Slowey has been a strike throwing machine and he has a whopping total of 2 walks…this season. He has allowed 6 homers in 34.1 innings so maybe the air conditioner will be blowing out tonight.
POSTGAME: And the 3 game win streak is over. It was one of those games. Armando Galarraga wasn’t good again. He couldn’t find the strike zone consistently and when he did the pitches got hammered. The outs were well hit, the hits were well hit. The Twins hit 3 balls with home run distance but Clete Thomas brought one back.
Galarraga settled down a little in the middle innings before things kind of spun out of control. There was a tough 4 pitch walk, and 2 double play balls that didn’t get converted including Placido Polanco’s first error of the year. Ryan Perry came in and gave up a run, but it wasn’t until his 3rd inning and I thought it was one of his better outings.
As for the offense, you can’t say it was dead. They had 9 hits, including 2 homers and they doubled Slowey’s walk total for the season. They even got the benefit of a misplay by Tolbert and another by Delmon Young. They had a runner on second in each of the first 5 innings, and in two innings they had 2 on and nobody out. But the big hit just never came. Cabrera came the closest with a flyball to the warning track in right and a sharp grounder up the middle that Tolbert instead turned into a double play.
But with Laird, and Ordonez, and now Inge struggling there are some holes in the lineup. Clete Thomas is still hitting 3rd in this lineup, and his production hasn’t been the problem. Detroit even got a couple of homers from Jeff Larish and Ramon Santiago, but somehow they came with no one on base.
I don’t know that I’ve seen a hitter do less with 5 pitches than Laird did tonight. A 3 pitch K, a pop out, and a check swing back to the pitcher.
Inge had nothing to show for his night, but he had a couple of lengthy at-bats. You’d like to see that pay in results, but it is hard to be upset with the approach.
Thomas also had 2 8-pitch plus at-bats, one resulted in a hit, the other a DP
Lehigh Valley 2 Toledo 9
Brent Clevlen went 3 for 5. Don Kelly homered (321/418/500 line, who knew?). Danny Worth chipped in 3 hits also. Scot Drucker started and went 6 innings allowing 2 runs on 6 hits, 1 walk, 1 homer and 8 K’s. Ron Chiavacci pitched the last 3 innings allowing just one hit.
Reading 2 Erie 3
Brennan Boesch tripled and Deik Scram homered. Jon Kibler only struck out 2 while walking 4, but he scattered 7 hits and the only run came on a solo homer over 7 innings.
Lakeland 5 Dunedin 3
Jordan newton homered and doubled. Audy Ciriaco tripled and singled. Charlie Furbush threw the first 3.2 innings and allowed 7 hits and 2 walks but only 2 runs came around to score. Brett Jacobson pitched 2 scoreless innings with a K and Scott Green finished the game with an uneventful 9th.
West Michigan DNP
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