PREGAME: The Tigers have lost 4 in a row. Their offense has been held to 8 runs over that span. Their defense has been bad. It’s time for it to change.
Freddy Garcia against Zach Miner.
The Tigers have only been swept once this year. Let’s hope it doesn’t happen again.
Game Time 2:05.
POSTGAME: Yes, losing streaks are no fun. Losing to your intra-divisional mates is all the more painful. Losing badly is…Okay you get the point. Before I talk about today’s game specifically, I will say for the first time I’m troubled with the Tigers performance against the White Sox. I don’t necessarily buy the “they’re in their head” speak, but the Tigers have made a habit of coming up short against the Sox. For awhile I thought it was close games not going the Tigers way. This weekend they were manhandled.
I know there is much concern in that a 10 game lead was halved so quickly. But to be fair you have to remember that the Tigers lead ballooned to 10 games rather quickly as well. Where for much of the season the White Sox and Tigers were in lockstep, for the last 2 weeks the teams have been moving in opposite directions.
Am I concerned? A little. But the Tigers just dropped 5 in a row, and they still have a 5.5 game lead. That is more a testament to the fact that the Tigers haven’t really hit the rough patches that their other counterparts have – until now.
As for today’s game, I’m not doing the sour grapes thing because the Tigers were flat out beat. They swung early and often in the count and chased balls out of the strike zone while Zach Miner couldn’t get a corner (more on this in a minute). Craig Monroe and Brandon Inge both made outs on ball 4 (I at least give them a little credit for getting to ball 3. Even Curtis Granderson swung at the first pitch in 3 of his plate appearances.
All that said, Tim Timmons was awful behind the plate. Miner was wild, but he was also getting squeezed. And that I believe is what led to Rodriguez’s frustration for being called out on a pitch that was close (for the record I actually thought that pitch was a strike). And as I’ve mentioned before, I hate it when umpires keep going after players. Timmons did it with Polanco (horrible call) and Rodriguez. Both were upset with called 3rd strikes and showed their displeasure while walking to the bench. In both instances with the player walking away Timmons takes off the mask and continues the argument. Timmons – you made the call, the player disagreed with it yet went back the bench, why continue the argument?
On a final note, it was a great day by Guillen who saved a run in the early going with a spectacular defensive play and came up with 2 2-out RBI.