Category Archives: 2007 Season

2007 Season, Minors

Tigers Minor League Wrap 7/18/07

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Toledo 1 Norfolk 9
Kevin Hooper doubled twice and Timo Perez added 2 singles and a walk. Yorman Bazardo, a candidate to start in the DH next Tuesday, was roughed up for 11 hits in 5 innings resulting in 6 runs. Tim Byrdak made a rehab appearance and allowed 4 runs on 4 hits, including a homer while retiring only 1 hitter.

Reading 6 Erie 3
Mike Hollimon was a homer short of the cycle. Jeff Larish singled and walked twice. Jon Connolly went 5 2/3 innings and allowed 5 runs (3 earned) on 9 hits, 1 walk, and 3 K’s.

Reading 5 Erie 4
Jeff Larish, Andres Torres, and Matt Joyce had 2 hits a piece. Matt Righter allowed 4 runs on 8 hits, 1 walk, and 3 K’s in 4 innings.

Lakeland 5 Palm Beach 4
Mike Hernandez homered and drove in 2 runs. Lucas French allowed 5 baserunners, and 4 scored.

Kane county 8 West Michigan 2
Scott Sizemore and Brennan Boesch each had 4 hits, the only hits of the night for the Caps. Duane Below allowed 2 runs on 5 hits, 2 walks, and 7 strikeouts in 5 innings.

Jamestown 2 Oneonta 11
Casper Wells led the way with 3 hits. Justin Henry and Angel Fiores each added 2 hits. Sendy Vasquez allowed 2 runs on 3 hits, 3 walks, and 5 K’s in 6 innings.

GCL Indians 5 GCL Tigers 1
Marc McBratney had 2 hits and a walk. Emmanuel Miguelez fanned 8 and walked 1 in 5 innings, but surrendered 3 runs on 5 hits.

Minors News

In a chat today, Jim Callis had a Tigers blurb:

There’s talk that the Tigers and Crosby have mostly agreed to terms but that they’re waiting to announce the deal to avoid drawing the ire of MLB. Haven’t heard anything new on Porcello. My gut feel is that he winds up a Tar Heel.

Make of it what you will.

2007 Season, Game Post

Game 92: Tigers at Twins

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PREGAME: Do the Tigers have a third straight 1-0 win in them? Probably not, but getting more than 1 run would be a feat against Johan Santana. It’s the second half of the season, and that’s when Santana is at his best. Over his career Santana allows a .583 OPS in the 2nd half of the season.

Detroit has faced Santana 3 times this year, and they’ve handed him a loss, a win, and a no decision. They have taken him deep 4 times in those 3 games, but that’s about the only chink.

The Tigers will send out a lefty of their own in rookie Andrew Miller. Miller was doing pretty well in his last outing until a single and a couple walks loaded the bases and set up the remarkable weirdness that involved Guillen and Beltre and Froemming oh my. This will be his 2nd start against Minnesota. In the first, he didn’t pitch that bad, but 6 of the 8 baserunners he allowed ended up scoring.

Granderson is 0 for his career against Santana so Ryan Raburn will lead off and play centerfield tonight as part of an all righty lineup.

DET @ MIN, Wednesday, July 18, 2007 Game Preview – Baseball-Reference.com

Game Time 8:10pm

POSTGAME: Another battle with the Twins, and another compelling game. I won’t say a great game because if you’re a Twins fan this had to be a real tough loss. The Twins put pressure on the Tigers with a baserunner (or more) in every inning, yet could only muster 2 runs. And one of those runs was when Miller plunked in a run. Plus they had their ace, pitching very ace like, and couldn’t turn it into a win.

But, for Tigers fans it’s a great win where the bullpen held up and Magglio Ordonez appears to have returned to form. We’ve fretted a little over the last couple weeks about Maggs not driving the ball. Twice tonight he hammered balls to left center and that’s where he’s at his best. Although I think Maggs would be happy to share RBI duties with the rest of the lineup.

  • Twelve tenuous outs and only 1 run. In the end the pen got the job done again.
  • The Tigers lost both left fielders tonight. I’m not sure of Craig Monroe’s ailment, but Thames did something to his left hamstring when he made a spectacular catch in the 8th inning. I’m guessing Ryan Raburn starts and if the DL is involved we’ll see Timo Perez. I’m sure Leyland was going to look to give either Maggs or Guillen or Polanco or some combination the day off tomorrow, but they may be short handed.
  • Speaking of the catch, it was incredible, but thank goodness he made it. If he doesn’t get it we’re looking at a tie game.
  • Carlos Guillen’s 15 pitch at-bat was pretty incredible. Plate appearances that long are rare to begin with, but I wonder how often Santana has ever had to work that hard for an out. That was an innings worth of pitches.
  • A decent outing for Andrew Miller. He looked good at times, but struggled with control other times (4 walks and a HBP).

UPDATE: In Leyland’s post game presser he said that Marcus Thames “is not good.” If Thames hits the DL, it very well may be Chris Shelton who comes up. If Monroe isn’t hurt, then the outfield is covered, but there is no back up first baseman (although Rayburn could probably do that as well).

2007 Season, Minors

Tigers Minor League Wrap 7/17/07

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Toledo 2 Norfolk 0
Virgil Vasquez pitched a complete game 5 hit shut out. He’s due to pitch again this weekend, but the Tigers have a double header on Tuesday next week. Let’s look to see if he makes his scheduled start – if not he’ll probably be called up for a spot start. Offensively Chris Shelton was hitting 7th in the lineup tonight (1 for 4) which is his lowest of the season I believe. No one really stood out, but Timo Perez did have a double.

Erie- PPD

Lakeland 3 Palm Beach 4
Wil Rhymes, Danny Worth, and Justin Justice all had 3 hits. Worth’s season is still young, but for a 2007 draftee he’s had a decent start so far. Kyle Sleeth went 6 innings allowing 3 runs on 2 hits, 5 walks, and 2 K’s.

Kane County 3 West Michigan 6
Brennan Boesch went 3 for 5. Santo De Leon and Jeramy Laster each had 2 hits and Scott Sizemore doubled and had 2 walks. Jonah Nickerson pitched 6 strong innings allowing 2 runs on 8 hits, 2 walks, and 5 k’s.

Jamestown 4 Oneonta 0
Casper Wells and Kyle Peter had the only hits for the O-Tigs tonight. Sean Finefrock allowed 3 runs on 4 hits, 3 walks, and 5 innings.

GCL Tigers – Box unavailable

Minors News

Charlie Furbush was quite impressive for the GCL Tigers, which you’d hope for a college pitcher in the GCL. He was rewarded with a promotion all the way to West Michigan skipping Oneonta. Ed Clelland and Jeff Kunkel were bumped up to Lakeland.

Last night I was going to post about the season that Edward Reynoso was having for the Dominican Summer League Tigers. I generally don’t venture into the DSL or VSL out of sheer ignorance, but took note of a couple performances. Coincidentally, Matt wrote about it so I’ll just link to his work. My contribution will then be to highlight Santos Heredia. A switch hitting, left handed throwing 18 year old middle infielder, Heredia sports a .481 OBP. He’s 5’8″ and 170 pounds so at the very least he qualifies as interesting.

2007 Season, Game Post

Game 91: Tigers at Twins

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PREGAME: The Tigers return to almost normal start times as they escape the West Coast, at least for a little while. They’ll take on a Twins team that has won all 4 games since the break and Matt Garza who hasn’t allowed a run in his first 8 innings of the year. This will be his second start of the season, and second career start against the Tigers.

In his start last year against the Tigers, he allowed 4 runs on 5 hits, 4 walks, and 6 K’s in 4 1/3 innings. The Tigers lost though and Wil Ledezma literally ate his hat.

The Tigers will send out lefty Nate Robertson. Not sure what we’ll get as Nate has been very good at times, very bad at times, and everywhere in between.

Game Time 8:10pm

POSTGAME:Tonight was as good as Nate Robertson has been all season. He had great command, and made a number of very good strike two pitches that were called balls. I’m not saying he was squeezed, but the zone seemed to be pretty tight for both teams.

This game reminded me quite a bit of the games against the Twins in the second half of last season. Games that came down to the very end, games that were a matter of attrition. Games where afterwards I’d receive emails, or send emails to Twins bloggers that were simply a tip of the cap to the other team after a great game. This time the Tigers took advantage of a Twins misplay on a night where the margin of error was zero.

  • Curtis Granderson started to build another case for AL Player of the Week by reaching base all 4 times up on a night when offense was stymied.
  • Magglio Ordonez pulled a pitch for a hit. For awhile it seemed like he was trying so hard to not do too much with the bat, that he ended up doing too little. With the homer on Sunday, and the ground ball through the hole today, here’s hoping the stroke is back.
  • I was only half paying attention to Leyland’s post game presser on FSN, but I could have sworn I heard him say that Granderson “eats right.” I don’t know what this has to do with anything but I found it hilarious.
  • Also on the FSN postgame they interviewed Sparky Anderson. I know he frustrated many as a manager, but the guy is captivating. I had the opportunity to meet him at a press event last year and he was one of the most engaging people I’ve ever met. I can’t really explain it, he’s just a neat dude. By the way, he picked the Tigers to win the World Series and gave Mike Illitch credit for spending to get the guys they needed. Here’s hoping that the Tigers right a wrong and get his name on the wall.
  • Todd Jones made it look easy tonight. He gets hammered when stuff goes bad, he deserves credit when they go well.

Tigers 1 Twins 0

2007 Season, Statistics

The 5th Inning

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Sam has been running reports on how the Tigers do over each 18 game period (or inning). He’s been kind enough to let me post games 73-90, aka the 5th inning:

The 5rh Inning is over.

Each 18 games represent 1 inning of a baseball season. The Tigers record so far in each Inning:

                                       Starters:               Bullpen:
    W-L   RS-RA   HR-SB-AVG/OBA/SLG    W-L-IP-   ERA       W-L-S-ERA
1: 10-8   86 -79  17-9 -235/313/380    5-2-110.2-3.66      5-6-8-4.68 
2: 13-5   112-97  23-10-308/377/518    9-3-102.1-4.84      4-2-8-5.03
3: 7-11   110-96  26-7 -310/364/517    7-7-110.2-3.99      0-4-3-7.80
4: 13-5   136-75  20-5 -324/390/508   13-4-103.0-4.37      0-1-2-3.47
5: 11-7   91 -79  23-20-272/357/443   10-5-112.0-3.46      1-2-7-3.33

The offense has finally tapered off and averaged only 5 runs/game. For the 1st time since the first inning they batted under 300 and slugged under 500. The 357 OBP was pretty good for a 272 BA.

Sheff continues to rake with 5-13-390/500/695 with 9 (yes NINE) SBs. Sean Casey is finally performing like the Tigers thought he would with 1-9-380/458/560 (6 2Bs). Thames is making the most of his opportunity with 5-13-289/312/689. On the flip side Magglio has come back to earth 1-7-254/342/317. Inge’s toe has heeled, but he is back to his old ways but without power 0-5-211/297/263. Infante was 3-28 with his 1st HR. Monroe was 0-4-119/174/143 in 42 ABs.

Both the Bullpen and the Starters had their best performance, 16 unearned runs and 21 errors indicated a team wide fielding slump. The best starter statistically was Bonderman 2-1-2.10era-30k/30innings. Verlander was 3-1 but had a 4.50 era. What was weird is the fact that he gave up only 22 hits, 8 walks, and 3 HRs in 26 innings (with 29Ks). Miller was 2-2-3.13era (18k/23inn). Robertson was 1-0-4.32era. Rogers was 2-1-3.86era. The bullpen’s ERA was 1.90 without the 11.1 innings thrown by Byrdak, De La Cruz and Grilli. Chad Durbin threw 11.1 innings (2.38era). Miner and Seay were perfect for 10.1 combined innings. The new guys, Capellan and McBride combined for a 2.31era in 11.2 innings. Jones had 6 saves with a 3.12era.

11-7 and a better performance by the pitching staff was an encouraging sign. The next 17 games come in 16 days with only 3 coming at home. It will be a tough stretch, but the Tigers have proven to be a very good road team.

-Sam Hoff

2007 Season, Fan Experience

The DTW West Coast Correspondents

15 Comments

The Detroit Tigers Weblog was well represented this weekend in Seattle. Those in attendance have left comments, but I wanted to highlight them:


Bix’s tales from the 3rd base line

Bix’s Flickr Album (awesome seats, great shots Bix!)

Ed from Or noted Kenny looked worn out

Joey the K noted that Nate Robertson was signing right handed.

Chris Y noted that Maggs was parking a ton of balls in the stands during BP

Thanks to everyone for their perspectives and notes. In the future feel free to shoot me an email if you’re taking a game in the road and wish to share your experiences. Also, it’s a nice reminder that there are Tigers fans all over the place. Last year I posted a Frappr Map so that we could see where we all are, or arrange to meet some new Tigers friends for those of us who are displaced. (Note: the map doesn’t seem to be working at the moment, but the comments still do).

2007 Season, Minors

Tigers Minor League Wrap – 7/15/07 – A perfect game in Oneonta

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Charlotte 4 Toledo 5 10 innings
Brent Clevlen continues to swing it with his 4th homer in the last 9 days (and of the season) to go along with a double and a single. Mike Hessman added two hits. Ron Chiavacci allowed 2 runs on 5 hits, a walk, and 4 K’s in 5 1/3 innings. Eulogio De La Cruz allowed a hit and a walk while fanning 1 in 1 2/3 innings but he did allow an inherited runner to score on a sacrifice fly.

Bowie 2 Erie 10
Jackson Melian went deep and 4 Seawolves had 2 hit games. Jair Jurrjens fanned 9 and walked 3 in allowing 1 run in 6 innings of work.

Lakeland 0 Palm Beach 6
Wilkin Ramirez had 2 of the 5 singles. Justin Justice walked twice. Eleazar Aponte allowed 6 runs, only 3 of which were earned in 7 innings on 7 hits, no walks, and 2 K’s.

Beloit 3 West Michigan 5
Scott Sizemore had 2 doubles and a walk and for the season is hitting 271/387/407. Brennan Boesch and Deik Scram each added 2 hits as well. Matt O’Brien allowed 2 runs on 5 hits, 2 walks, and 5 K’s in 6 innings.

Batavia 0 Oneonta 6
Guillermo Moscoso threw a perfect game! He fanned 7 and then all the other numbers were 0’s. Moscoso is a 23 year old from Venezuela and that’s about all I can tell you about him except that he’s a righty and hasn’t allowed a run in his last 3 outings. A 23 year old having success in short season ball isn’t something to get real excited about, but a perfect game is a perfect game. Congrats Guillermo! Ronnie Bourquin went 2 for 4 and Justin Henry walked 3 times.

GCL Tigers DNP

2007 Season, Game Post

Game 90: Tigers at Mariners

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PREGAME: The Tigers will try to salvage a split in their first post ASB series. They’ll face Jeff Weaver, who they lit up earlier in the year. Of course at the time Weaver was getting lit up by everyone. However in his last 4 starts he has a 0.98 ERA in 27 1/3 innings. He’s only allowed 1 homer in that time span and opponents are hitting just 208/266/287.

But the Tigers have a pretty good pitcher of their own taking the mound in Justin Verlander. Verlander has turned into a strikeout machine with 47 K’s in his last 41 innings pitched.

Game Time 4:05pm

POSTGAME:
That was an interesting game. You had the slugfest thing going on for the Tigers with 3 homers. But there was the small ball thing with 5 stolen bases. Justin Verlander struck out the side in the first inning, but only after 2 hits, a walk, and a wild pitch resulted in a run. It took Verlander 31 pitches to get through that first inning, but he only threw 77 over the next 6 innings.

Three runs scored on wild pitches in the game. Sean Casey stole a base, and without a bobble or bad throw or being on the backend of a double steal. Gary Sheffield even stole home.

In any case, a split is fine. Let’s take on the Twins.

  • Curtis Granderson was 8 for 10 when not striking out in this series. But he did fan 6 times. Not that I’m complaining, what with all the lines drives and the triple and the homer and the stolen base and good base running.
  • Sean Casey had hit 2 homers since Magglio’s last long ball.
  • So is Casey going to finish the year with more homers or stolen bases? He doubled his numbers in each this series
  • Thrilled to see Magglio Ordonez go deep, and his at bat the time before was an opposite warning track flyball. After really struggling the bulk of the series, it was nice to see the mini-outburst at the end. The guy is definitely allowed to go into a funk after being so good. I just want him to keep it going because he’s in the middle of a pretty special season. And a game or two without line drives becomes pretty obvious.
  • Marcus Thames is certainly making it hard for Craig Monroe to get back in the lineup. Leyland made Monroe play himself out of the starting spot. Let’s hope he affords Marcus the same opportunity to man the position and doesn’t just hand it back to Monroe.
  • The last inning was pretty ugly, but if it’s going to happen better in a blow out.

DET @ SEA, Sunday, July 15, 2007 Game Preview – Baseball-Reference.com

2007 Season, Minors

Tigers Minor League Wrap 7/14/07

Charlotte 3 Toledo 2
Timo Perez homered and Chris Shelton singled and that was all the offense. Jordan Tata allowed 3 runs, 1 earned, on 5 hits in 6 2/3 innings.

Bowie 11 Erie 2
Jeff Larish homered, one of only 4 hits for the Seawolves. Dallas Trahern was knocked around for 12 hits in 5 innings which resulted in 5 runs. Kevin Ardoin came in and allowed 6 runs – all unearned – in 3 innings on 6 hits.

Daytona 10 Lakeland 12
Finally some offense. Mike Hernandez was a triple short of the cycle. Four other players had 2 hits apiece. Burke Badenhop allowed 6 runs on 8 hits, a walk, and 4 K’s in 5 2/3 innings.

Beloit 1 West Michigan 2 11 innings
Scott Sizemore went 4 for 5 and was half of the offense. However he and Gorkys Hernandez were both cut down stealing twice. Lauren Gagnier allowed 1 runs on 3 hits and 3 walks in 7 innings.

Batavia 5 Oneonta 10
It was a 5 for 5 night for Justin Herny. Kody Kaiser shook off a mini slump and went 1 for 3 with 2 walks, as did Ronnie Bourquin. Mark Brackman allowed 5 runs, only one of which was earned, in 5 2/3 innings.

GCL Yankees 5 GCL Tigers 0
Another game with no offense, just 3 singles. Aaron Furhman was great though throwing a 2 hitter over 7 innings with 2 walks and 5 K’s.

2007 Season, Minors

Tigers Minor League Wrap – 7/13/07

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Richmond 7 Toledo 5
Yorman Bazardo was rocked for 7 runs on 7 hits in just 3 innings. Eulogio De La Cruz pitched 2 scoreless innings. Brent Clevlen went 3 for 4 and is now 9 for 16 since returning to Toledo
.
Bowie 5 Erie 10
Jackson Melian was 3 for 4 with a homer and 5 RBI. Clete Thomas had 3 hits as well and Jeff Larish walked 3 times. Matt Righter allowed 5 runs on 8 hits and 2 walks in 4 2/3 innings. Five relievers pitched shut out ball the rest of the way.

Daytona 4 Lakeland 0
Justin Justice 2 was 2 for 2 with a walk. Lucas French went 6 innings and allowed just 1 run on 3 hits in 6 innings.

Beloit 5 West Michigan 3 12 innings
Scott Sizemore was 3 for 6 with a triple and 2 RBI. Gorkys Hernandez singled, tripled, and walked. Duane Below fanned 7 in 6 innings and allowed 3 runs on 7 hits and a walk.

Oneonta 2 State College 3
Chris Carlson homered, doubled, and walked. Justin Henry had 2 hits and Casper Wells walked twice. Sendy Vasquez allowed 3 runs, 1 earned, on 3 hits and 5 walks in 4 2/3 innings.

GCL Tigers 5 GCL Phillies 3
Christopher White, Carlos Ramirez, and Joseph Bowen all had 2 hits. Jay Sborz allowed 1 unearned run on 5 hits and no walks in 3 innings.

Minors News

Mike Rojas has been managing the Mud Hens while Larry Parish recovered from ankle surgery. Well, the team announced that Rojas will manage the rest of the year. Parish is slated to return next year.

2007 Season, Game Post

Game 88: Tigers at Mariners

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PREGAME: The Tigers will try and shake off last night’s loss and rebound against Jarrod Washburn.

Washburn has been excellent in his last 3 starts going 22 innings and only allowing 3 runs. He walks about one batter every 3 innings, and only fans a batter every other inning. But he’s only allowed 7 homers in 106 1/3 innings this season. Against the Tigers it’s kind of a mixed bag. Gary Sheffield, Pudge Rodriguez and Craig Monroe have all had success while Magglio Ordonez, Brandon Inge, and Placido Polanco have struggled.

That’s not particularly good news for Ordonez who looked to really struggle last night with 3 K’s and 2 weak grounders. I went back and looked at a couple of his at-bats from the end of May, and compared them to his last few games. It appears that his stance is more closed now. At the end of may you couldn’t see his name/number on his back. Now you can. Plus it looks like he might be standing farther away from the plate – at least with his back foot. But I’m not a scout or a hitting instructor so I may be full of it as well.

The Tigers will send out Jeremy Bonderman who went 8 innings in each of his last 2 starts and allowed a combined 2 runs. In both of those efforts he was pitching without really any run support to speak of.

It’s an all right handed lineup tonight with Ryan Raburn leading off and playing centerfield. Polanco is still out so Thames will bat 2nd and Infante will play 2nd.

Game Time 10:05pm

DET @ SEA, Friday, July 13, 2007 Game Preview – Baseball-Reference.com

POSTGAME: Sure it might not have looked good with Jarrod Washburn racking up 4 strike outs his first time through the order, but he also went to full counts on 5 of the first 10 he faced. But then the Tigers loaded the bases ahead of a Gary Sheffield grand slam. The sixth for the team, each by a different player. They were fortunate though that the Sheffield was still in the batters box to hit it though because he took a very good looking pitch with 2 strikes. But after Thursday night I’m not going to look a gift umpire in the mouth.

As for Bonderman, he was quite good again. He fanned 5 and walked none, but did allow 2 homers. It looked like he had set himself up with a shot at a complete game by inducing a lot of early contact. However in the 7th inning he started falling behind batters and there was some solid contact. So Leyland ended his night despite being at only 87 pitches.

The pen did their job with 2 scoreless innings though Todd Jones did put runners on 2nd and 3rd and ran the count full to Ben Broussard before getting him to chase a high fastball.

Ryan Raburn looked pretty good at the plate. He was willing to work the count and drew 2 walks. Sean Casey came in as a defensive replacement and homered, his 2nd of the year. He also made a real nice pick at first to make both ends of a slow roller to third look sweet. Interesting, though not surprising, that when Casey entered the game he took Thames spot leaving Monroe in left field. Monroe is still lost, and Thames continues to be locked in. Ordonez is also slumping and he hasn’t had a ball leave the infield in the first 2 games of the series.

Tigers 6 Mariners 3

2007 Season, Trades

Tigers trade Roman Colon

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The Tigers have traded Roman Colon to the Royals for that famous PTBNL, aka the player-to-be-named-later. Colon’s rehab has been assigned to AA Wichita.

Impact: zero.

I’m actually surprised that the Tigers could get anything for Colon, what with the felonious assault indictment and all. One way or another he punched his ticket out of Detroit when he punched Jason Karnuth and broke his face.

The move does free up a spot on the 40 man roster. There isn’t a pressing need at this point, unless it’s a precursor for something else.