PREGAME: The Tigers return home and take on the White Sox. The White Sox haven’t been playing good ball lately, but then again neither have the Tigers. The pitching matchup will be Jeremy Bonderman taking on Jon Garland.

The Tigers have only faced Garland once this season and picked up 3 runs on 5 hits in 8 innings.

Bonderman corrected his first inning problems, or at least he avoided them in his last start. He only allowed 1 run on 6 hits in a strong outing against the Royals. He walked none for the first time since July 13th and it was particularly refreshing after he had walked 4 and 5 in his previous 2 starts.

In the good news department Gary Sheffield is set to return on Thursday and is feeling better. So hopefully we won’t see any more situations where Omar Infante is batting 3rd and DH’ing. It kind of shows you how far out of favor that Sean Casey has fallen, plus Infante is 15-35 lifetime off of Garland.

Game Time 7:05
CHW @ DET, Tuesday, September 4, 2007 Game Preview – Baseball-Reference.com

POSTGAME: Another day, another loss, another one of those “this game was a microcosm of the season” efforts. Bonderman alternated between looking great (1st and 3rd innings) pounding the strike zone and hitting his spots with his fastball and slider, and pitching scared where he couldn’t command the fastball and couldn’t find the strike zone. He repeatedly fell behind 2-0 and 3-0 and it eventually caught up to him in the form of Alex Freakin Cintron.

Still he was good enough to keep the game close, even as the Tigers added a couple defensive goofs with Carlos Guillen at first and Marcus Thames in leftfield. Zach Miner provided 3 2/3 scoreless innings, enough to make fans think the Tigers still had a shot.

And then the offense showed some late life, finally breaking the shutout on a tremendous at-bat by Guillen before fizzling out with weak ABs from Pudge and Thames. If only they could have plated that runner on 3rd, then they would be in solo-homer striking distance. But even then, those days where anyone in the lineup could hit one out are gone. Inge hasn’t had that ability for over 2 months now, and Pudge is pretty far removed, and as nice as Ramon Santiago has played he’s not exactly a threat either. Inffact, of the Tigers last 14 homers, 11 have come from the bats of Ordonez/Guillen/Granderson. Not so much the balanced attack of earlier in the year.

Still, some pinch hit success from unexpected sources (Timo Perez and Sean Casey), plus a very surprising walk from Inge (who was choking up with 2 strikes on him) breathed enough life into the team so that you actually thought they had a shot, only to drop another one – this time with Curtis Granderson making the final out.

Another day, another loss.

PREGAME: It’s kind of a Jekyll and Hyde pitching match-up today. Nate Robertson has been all over the place, shutting down Cleveland and getting knocked around by the Royals. For the A’s it will be Dallas Braden, who’s last big league start ended in the 2nd inning when Magglio Ordonez homered twice off him. Since then he threw 2 complete games in the minors in which he’s allowed only 8 hits and 2 walks while fanning 26 (17 of those in his last start).

Game Time 4:05

DET @ OAK, Sunday, September 2, 2007 Game Preview – Baseball-Reference.com

PREGAME: Afternoon tilt tomorrow with Justin Verlander and Dan Haren doing battle. It seems so long ago that there was debate about who should start the All Star game and both pitchers were in the discussion.

Game Time 3:55

PREGAME: It’s just not an A’s series without facing Joe Blanton. Fortunately the Tigers find him to be kind of hittable, at least so far this year. They rocked him for 9 runs in just 4 innings in his last start (the infamous come back from way down only to get blown out again when Macay McBride was left on the mound to languish).

The Tigers send out Virgil Vasquez who will make his 3rd start. One was really bad, another was pretty good. But he still doesn’t have a win so here’s hoping the Tigers can get him a game ball.

Game Time 10:05

PREGAME: Things that annoy:

Starting off a game post after winning a series with they Yankees by saying “the Tigers look to avoid a sweep at the hands of the Royals…”

I can talk pitching match-ups until I’m blue in the face, but only one pitcher matters in this one and it is Jeremy Bonderman who has to perform. I don’t even care if he gives up a run in the first inning. I just want to see a strong effort that spares a bullpen that was burnt out in the first 2 games of this series. I want him to go shut down a team and get the Tigers a win. It’s that simple.

POSTGAME: Yeah, totally sorry about the game thread today folks. I knew I was going to be away from a computer the bulk of the day, so I used one of the neat features with the blog software that allows me to schedule a post ahead of time. So I wrote the game thread last night, and set it to go live like it were a night game. But it wasn’t. Plus it was actually game 134 not 135. See, the season is wearing on me too. Sloppy play on my part.

As for the game itself, Bonderman was good. Yes it was the Royals, but look how much trouble Robertson and Miller had the last 2 nights, and how much trouble Bonderman has had regardless of the opponent. He made it through 7 innings on only 87 pitches and 63 were for strikes. A pretty incredible ratio no matter who you’re pitching against.

And Grandy and Ordonez powered the offense, with…wait for it…help from Timo Perez. Some may call it Jim Leyland pushing the right buttons by batting a guy who couldn’t crack the big league roster until late August at DH in the 3 hole pushing the right buttons. Or maybe it was dumb luck. Or maybe Leyland knows something that we don’t. (I’ll go with door number 2)

The offense has hardly been dormant in this series as they’ve piled up hits in each of the 3 games. Today they finally cashed in some of those baserunners into runs. And once again a solo homer sparked a crooked number inning. We’ve seen it several times in the last few weeks and it was Granderson who got it started this time.

On to the West Coast. Again.

PREGAME: Andrew Miller will be pitching on short rest, slightly, he of course of the 4 hour rain delay start. Here’s hoping he pounds the strike zone and doesn’t walk any lefties, like he had a propensity for doing against the Yankees. It was his first start back so I’ll cut him some slack, but he ran into the same pitch efficiency issues he did prior to the injury.

For the Royals it will be Zach Grienke who is back starting after a sabbatical in the bullpen where there was talk of him being a back end guy for the Royals. He made his first start since the beginning of May last week against the Indians and allowed just one hit and one walk in 3 innings before being lifted after 48 pitches. We’ll see how long he goes tonight.

Game Time 8:05

POSTGAME: Ummm. Andrew Miller. Really, really, really not good. Four free passes and he didn’t even make it out of the first inning. And one of the outs was a pickoff. Nice night for Zach Miner though who came in and picked up 12 outs giving his team a chance to get back in it…but they didn’t.

Eight left on base tonight is a sign that the offense isn’t a total wasteland (it means they are getting baserunners), just very disappointing. The star tonight would of course have to be Timo Perez who had 2 doubles, a walk, and would have had a couple RBI if not for Sean Casey being the runner on first when he hit both doubles. (talk about your irony, hours after I bash the reasoning of “he can score from first on an extrabase hit”). Of course that presented Brandon Inge with 2 2nd and 3rd situations where he fanned both times. One of them being the patented check swing. So much for new approaches and breaking out of a slump.

Now the Tigers are looking to avoid a sweep by the Royals. And the 2 long men in the pen won’t be available after long outings each of the last 2 days. Bad, bad scene.