Category Archives: 2007 Season

2007 Season, Game Post

Game 97: Tigers at White Sox

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PREGAME: The Tigers head to Chicago for a 5, yes 5 game series. The extra game is the result of a rain out that oddly didn’t produce any rain. Hmmm. Now the White Sox find themselves with a 3 game losing streak and tied for 4th or last place (depending on your point of view) in the division.

In any case, tonight it is a battle of left handers. One who is just beginning his career, and one just got a big payday.

Andrew Miller takes the bump for the Tigers. Pitch efficiency will be an objective tonight with Miller racking up pitch counts in the high 90’s through just 5 innings in 3 of his last 4 starts.

On the other side will be Mark Buerhle. He can be that model of efficiency for Miller. In 6 of his last 7 starts Buerhle went at least 7 innings and completed 8 innings in 3 of them. His last time out he allowed 10 hits to the Indians, but limited the damage to just 1 run. He hasn’t allowed more than 2 earned runs in a game since June 5th.

Mike Hessman jumps right into the lineup and will bat 8th. Curtis Granderson gets a rare start against a tough left hander and will be in his familiar spot on top the order. The rest of the usual suspects are in the lineup.

Game Time 8:11

DET @ CHW, Monday, July 23, 2007 Game Preview – Baseball-Reference.com

POSTGAME: This game had some of everything, in fact too much of somethings. Those 5th and 6th innings were excruciating to say the least. Andrew Miller once again racked up a huge pitch count early on and relied on his bullpen to get 12 outs. With the 7 K’s you can see good he can be, and with the 5 walks and back to back pitches to the backstop you can see he still has some work to do.

Jason Grilli turned in an awful inning with 2 walks and a 2 strike HBP to score the go ahead run. And then he comes out in the 7th and gets the first 1-2-3 inning of the night for the Tigers.

McBride, Seay, and Miner kept the game in check until they handed the ball to Todd Jones. Jones turned in a 1-2-3 inning, as if we’d expect anything else. Right?

  • Reaching bases all 5 times makes for a nice boost to the OBP. A homer and a double make for a nice boost to the slugging percentage. And with the bulk of the damage coming off of a left hander, Curtis Granderson was easily player of the game.
  • It’s not often teams knock around Buehrle like the Tigers did tonight, so it was important to come out on top.
  • The Tigers offense was exactly explosive tonight, but they put the ball in play and it really seemed to work out. The Tigers blooped and snorted their way to 9 runs.
  • Of course the White Sox had some luck as 2 choppers turned into hits in the 4th and another roller was to slow to turn a double play on.
  • Here’s hoping Bonderman can put up 7 or 8 innings in the matinee tomorrow to keep the pen from being too taxed on a doubleheader.
2007 Season, Roster Management

Mike Hessman up, Timo Perez out

The Tigers today called up infielder Mike Hessman and optioned out Timo Perez. This probably means the following:

  1. Craig Monroe’s back feels fine
  2. The Tigers don’t want to rely on Carlos Guillen as the back-up first baseman, especially until Placido Polanco is 100%
  3. I don’t have to finish writing a post about how Timo Perez provides no platoon advantage over Ryan Raburn because Perez isn’t as good against righties as Raburn is and that Jim Leyland will probably rely on him way too much because he’s a veteran National League player that has some sort of track record (regardless of the track record).

The Official Site of The Detroit Tigers: News: Detroit Tigers News

BTW- thanks for the emails and notes left in the comments. I was just away from a connection this afternoon.

2007 Season, Minors

Tigers Minor League Wrap 7/22/07

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Toledo 6 Richmond 0
This game was suspended after 5 innings and I’m not sure why. Virgil Vasquez was slated to start today but didn’t, which makes me think we’ll see him in Chicago on Tuesday. Anastacio Martinez started instead and pitched 2 hit ball (with 4 walks) for 5 innings. Andres Torres had 2 hits.

Erie 0 Bowie 2
Wilkin Ramirez has 3 hits and a walk. Mike Hollimon struck out his first 4 times up. Eddie Bonine allowed 2 runs on 5 hits, 2 walks, and 5 K’s in 6 innings.

Tampa 4 Lakeland 0
Yeah, they were no hit today. Jose Veras and Daniel McCutchen combined for the no-no, but it was of the 7 inning variety. Angel Castro allowed all 4 runs working 6 innings and allowing 7 hits.

Tampa 4 Lakeland 3
Michael Hernandez had 2 hits and a walk. Kyle Sleeth allowed all 4 runs in 4 2/3 innings of work. He allowed 6 hits, 2 walks, and fanned 4.

West Michigan 5 Burlington 3
Joe Tucker went 2 for 4. Ryan Strieby doubled and drove in 3. Brennan Boesch drew 3 walks. Jonah Nickerson allowed 2 runs on 7 hits, 1 walk, and 5 K’s in 6 innings. Brett Jensen picked up his 19th save allowing one hit.

Oneonta 4 Mahoning Valley 0
Justin Henry, Cory Middleton, and Ronnie Bourquin each had 2 hits. Sean Finefrock pitched a 1 hitter over 8 innings while fanning 3 and walking 1.

2007 Season, Game Post

Game 96: Royals at Tigers

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PREGAME: And the homestand is over today. For the Tigers it will be Nate Robertson who is coming off of his best start of the season in Minnesota. He’ll take on Brian Bannister.

Bannister has been the mark of consistency going at least 5 innings in his last 11 starts, and allowing 4 runs or less in 10 of them. His biggest asset is keeping the ball in the park with only 7 homers allowed on the season – and 3 of those came in his last start.

Game time 1:05

POSTSERIES: Seeing as I missed wrapping last night’s game (a little up North time) I figured I just knock out the series here. In all, blah. But not at all unexpected. I just had the feeling that the Tigers were pretty burnt after the Twins series. I don’t mean to imply they played tired or without effort. That’s pretty hard to judge on TV regardless and any effort without a lot of offense can give that impression.

Plus, the Royals are playing really good baseball right now as they cleaned up on the road in Cleveland, Boston, and now Detroit. The Tigers were just out played, plain and simple.

  • As for Todd Jones, I read the ire in the comments. Early in the year Jones was getting hit hard with regularity, and/or he was walking people. That wasn’t the case Saturday night. He was mostly ahead in the count and was inducing weak contact. The weak contact found holes, and so did some decent contact. It had nothing to do with the size of the lead. Jones isn’t a strikeout pitcher, and that’s what happens when you don’t have strikeout pitchers.
  • Craig Monroe looks to be getting back on track. He had 3 big hits the last 2 days, but still left quite a few on base with pop outs or strike outs. Still, production is better than non-production. And I was happy to see him start today over Timo Perez.
  • I thoguht the Tigers would get to Bannister today when the first 3 hitters all reached full counts. At the very least I thought they might get him out of the game. And even after a 7 pitch 2nd inning, the first trip through involved 5 full counts. But that was about it, and when you measure offensive production in terms of full counts you can tell it was a slow day.
  • Brandon Inge had been on quite the roll with highlight plays at the corner, but had a miscue on Saturday night (not coming home on a slow roller) as well as throwing a bunt away today. But he redeemed himself on one account with the walk off homer.
  • I admittedly only saw parts of today’s game, but whenever I’d come back into the room it seemed that the Royals had a man on third base. Nate was pitching in stressful situations all day today.

Now back to Harry Potter…

2007 Season, Game Post

Game 95: Monarchs at Stars

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PREGAME: In the retro uni’s tonight will be Justin Verlander taking on Jorge de la Rosa.

I was looking at de la Rosa’s game logs trying to get a feel for tendencies, and I really have no idea what to expect. He has decent control except when he doesn’t, and he strikes out a decent amount except when he doesn’t. What I do see on his splits page is that right handers have a 893 OPS against versus a .687 mark for lefties. And right handers account for 15 of the 16 homers he’s allowed. So I’m guessing/hoping that either Ryan Raburn or Craig Monroe have left field duties tonight.

Justin Verlander hasn’t been quite the unhittable pitcher we saw in June, but has still pitched through the 7th in his last 2 starts while fanning 13 and walking only 1.

Game time 7:05pm

KCR @ DET, Saturday, July 21, 2007 Game Preview – Baseball-Reference.com

2007 Season, Minors

Tigers Minor League Wrap 7/20/07

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Toledo 5 Richmond 8
Andres Torres went 3 for 4. Jack Hannahan had 2 hits. Chris Shelton doubled and walked twice. Ron Chiavacci allowed 4 runs on 9 hits in 5 innings. Eulogio De La Cruz pitched 2 scoreless innings but allowed 3 baserunners.

Erie 4 Bowie 3
Clete Thomas went 3 for 5 to lead the way. Wilkin Ramirez was 0 for 4 with 3 K’s in his AA debut. Dallas Trahern allowed 3 runs on 6 hits, 2 walks, and 2 K’s while inducing 13 ground outs in 7 innings.

Lakeland 3 Tampa 4
Mark Haske and Joel Roa had 2 hits each. Eleazar Aponte allowed 4 runs on 6 hits in 6 innings.

Kane County 5 West Michigan 2
Jeramy Laster homered and Ryan Strieby went 2 for 4. Matt O’Brien allowed 11 hits and 5 runs in 5 innings.

Oneonta 5 Mahoning Valley 1
Chris Carlson homered. Kody Kaiser doubled and singled. Devin Thomas singled and walked. Guillermo Moscoso followed up his no no with a 3 hit, 1 run, 8 K, six inning effort.

GCL Tigers 1 GCL Braves 3
Christopher White singled and walkd. Luis Arlet added a triple. Jay Sborz allowed 2 hits and 2 runs with 3 K’s in 3 1/3 hours.

Minors News

The Tigers announced the signing of 3 players today including 3rd round pick Luke Putkonen. The others are Jonathan Kibler and one Richard Zumaya.

2007 Season, AL Central

Surging Central

A couple weeks back, on June 26th actually, I wrote that the claim of the AL Central being the toughest division in baseball is probably misguided. Since then the Central has been on a roll.

Through the games on the 19th this is what the Central has done:

	W	L
DET	12	6
CLE	12	8
MIN	11	10
CHI	13	9
KC	10	7

That’s a composite 58 and 40 record, good enough for and .591 winning percentage. And by definition, a good chunk of those wins had to come at the expense of the rest of the AL (if they were just playing each other it would be .500). In fact here’s how the Central fared against the rest of the league by team:

AL West	W	L
Oak	7	1
LAA	3	0
Sea	4	3
Tex	2	2
		
AL East	W	L
TB	10	1
Bos	6	1
Tor	3	4
Bal	3	5
NYY	1	3

And just to clarify, the AL Central teams beat Tampa 10 out of 11 tries. The bulk of the damage was done against the Devil Rays, the Athletics and the Red Sox.

So maybe the Central wasn’t looking strong earlier because they were beating up on each other? In any case, I think they can reclaim that whole toughest division title for the time being. They now sport the team with the best record in baseball, as well as the current wild card leader. And it’s not a top heavy division with the Twins over .500 and the White Sox and Royals merely being not good instead of awful.

Finally, one last table to look at and that is runs scored and runs allowed per game since June 25th in the Central.

	RS	RA
DET	4.9	4.2
CLE	5.4	5.3
MIN	5.0	3.9
CHI	5.3	5.2
KC	5.6	3.8

The Tigers for all the pub their offense has deservedly received has been the worst offense over this stretch. Mind you that they still averaged a hair under 5 runs per game. And look who is tops on both counts, none other than the Kansas City Royals.

2007 Season, Game Post

Game 94: Royals at Tigers

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PREGAME: The Tigers have come home, for a whole weekend no less. And sure the Tigers are taking on the last place team in the division, but this will be no easy task.

Now I realize I run the risk of sounding Lou Holtz-ish here, but Kansas City has been playing some inspired ball. Over their last 17 games they are 10-7. They also have allowed a division best 3.76 runs per game over that stretch. This isn’t the same Kansas City team that we’ve seen the last couple years – or at least they’re not playing like it.

Tonight they send out their ace Gil Meche. Meche has a 3.69 ERA for the year and the last time he faced the Tigers he allowed only 3 unearned runs in 8 innings. But he’s been in a bit of a funk in his last 2 starts where he didn’t make it past the 6th inning either time and surrendered 4 runs in one game and 6 in the other.

Meche actually has fared a little better against righties this year with a 739OPS against righties and 725 versus lefties. Curtis Granderson has cited him as one of the toughest pitchers for him to face. And Jim Leyland will go with Timo Perez again in left field.

Don’t be surprised to see the Tigers swinging early in the count. When the first pitch is put in play against Meche, hitters are posting a 1.272 OPS with 6 homers.

The Tigers send out Kenny Rogers. Rogers struggled with a tight zone in his last start and ended up walking 4 and not striking out any before surrendering a grand slam.

Game Time 7:05pm

KCR @ DET, Friday, July 20, 2007 Game Preview – Baseball-Reference.com

POSTGAME: Bad pitching, bad fielding, bad hitting. That about covers it. There’s really not a whole lot else to say. Brandon Inge made a sweet barehanded play, Magglio Ordonez picked up another RBI ripping a ball between third and short, and Gary Sheffield homered. That’s about it for noteworthy performances.

Retro uni’s tomorrow night and that has to bode well right?

2007 Season, Minors

Tigers Minor League Wrap – 7/19/07

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Thanks to Mike R who did the wrap…

Toledo 3, Norfolk 5
Offensively, Kevin Hooper, Erick Almonte, and Chris Shelton each had an RBI. Shelton’s numbers are taking a hit as he’s hitting .200/.303/.345 in the month of July. Jordan Tata took the loss after going 5 1/3rd innings, giving up 4 runs on 5 hits and 2 walks without striking out a hitter. Preston Larrison and Jeremy Johnson combined for the final 2.2 IP and struck out 3 while walking one and allowing one run.

Erie 1, Bowie 3
Seawolves hitters combined to strike out 13 times as they put up one run despite out hitting Bowie 7 to 6. Clete Thomas and Matt Joyce each had a triple. Andrew Kown pitched well enough to win throwing 6 innings, allowing 3 runs on 5 hits and 2 walks while striking out 6.

Lakeland 1, Tampa 0
In what I’m assuming was a rain-shortened game, Lakeland squeezed out a 1-0 win after just 7 innings of play. Burke Badenhop went the full 7 innings allowing just 3 hits, and walking two while striking out 4. Will Rhymes and Jeff Kunkel each picked up two hits and the lone Flying Tigers run was unearned.

Kane County 1, West Michigan 4
Scott Sizemore, Brennan Boesch, and Ryan Strieby all had an RBI apiece. Lauren Gagnier allowed 4 hits and one run over 6 and a third innings. Brett Jensen picked up his 18th save in front of 4, 857.

Jamestown 3, Oneonta 5
Catcher Devin Thomas had 2 hits including a 3 run homer. 3rd baseman Cory Middleton and Outfielder Casper Wells each drove in a run to complete the Oneonta scoring. Mark Brackman picked up the victory allowing 2 hits and zero runs over 6 2/3rd innings.

GCL Braves 3, GCL Tigers 4
2nd baseman, Hayden Parrot (out of West Bloomfield, MI) hit a 2-run homer and had 3 RBI’s. The 19-year-old is now hitting .342/.369/.456 for the GCL Tigers. Gene Lamont’s son, Wade, was 0-3 with a strikeout and is now hitting .180 (11-61) with 18 strikeouts against just 3 walks. Not the pro-ball start he probably envisioned. Dario Carvajal got a no decision despite having a quality start (3 runs allowed, 6.2 IP). 5’11, 157 lbs. Santo Franco picked up his 6th save for the GCL Tigers by striking out 2 of the 3 hitters he faced in the final inning. In 9 2/3rd innings, he’s allowed only 4 hits and 1 run while striking out 13, walking 7, and holding opponents to a .133 average, although, he is 22 in short-season ball.

2007 Season

Tigers set attendance record

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Well how about these apples:

DETROIT – Through the close of business on Wednesday, sales of Tigers tickets for the 2007 season surpassed the previous club record total, which was set in the 1984 World Championship season at Tiger Stadium.

Tickets sold for the entire season at the close of business Wednesday stood at 2,712,393. The previous record, set in 1984, was 2,704,794. Detroit has sold out 21 of its 44 home dates at Comerica Park and will open the Kansas City series on Friday night with a string of nine consecutive sellouts. The Tigers had a total of 26 sellouts on their way to the American League Championship in 2006.

“The support of Tigers fans has been tremendous and we look forward to an exciting race over the final months of the season,” said Tigers President, Chief Executive Officer and General Manager David Dombrowski. “I certainly hope fans will begin making their plans now to be at the ballpark and keep the energy level as high as it has been all year.”

2007 Season, Game Post

Game 93: Tigers at Twins

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PREGAME: A Metrodome sweep would be sweet for the good guys, but the series has been a success already.

Today will be Jeremy Bonderman matching up with Scott Baker. It’s actually a rematch of the Sunday night 1-0 game. The difference maker in that game was of course the Marcus Thames homer. Unfortunately Thames won’t be available today, or any time over the next 15 days as he hit the DL after blowing his hammy. Timo Perez is your newest Perez on the roster.

Perez’s last productive season was 2002. He has been raking for Toledo, but we’ll see how that translates. Hopefully this is a short term stop gap.

Game Time 1:10

DET @ MIN, Thursday, July 19, 2007 Game Preview – Baseball-Reference.com

POSTGAME: I’m writing this blind. I was at work and didn’t see the game, but I did hear parts on the radio, and saw part of the replay, and of course read all the commentary here. So take all this with a grain of salt.

  • The Timo Perez era begins, and it was a rocky start. Twice he came up with runners on 1st and 2nd, and twice he failed. But his second turn was a decent at-bat with a line drive to second. He later singled and walked so it wasn’t a bad debut. Given his Major League numbers I’m still very skeptical, but if he can carry the stick he was swinging in Toledo for a couple weeks it might work out.
  • Pretty impressive to scratch a run across against Joe Nathan, even if it was in his 2nd inning of work.
  • The bullpen came up big again today. They’ve had narrow margins to work with as of late, and they’ve made it stand up. Including and especially Todd Jones who had to face the middle of the order with a 1 run lead each of the last 2 nights.
  • Bonderman seemed pretty good today, until he started to falter that 3rd time through the lineup. Given that the bottom half of the Twins lineup was hardly intimidating today, I’d say it was a pretty average outing for Bondo.
  • These 3 games were exhausting as a fan so I’m sure the players are feeling it as well. But it should be a happy flight home. Here’s hoping that there’s no let up once they are home and taking on the Royals. Gil Meche is a good pitcher, even if he is overpaid.