PREGAME: This is some stretch of games the Tigers are about to embark on. Three against the Red Sox and 3 against the Angels (who give the Tigers fits) before a 5 game series in Chicago. The Tigers will be getting back Marcus Thames in the near future and likely Jeremy Bonderman and that means that 2 players will likely get sent down or out, whether or not they really deserve it. The team and its outlook could look really different by next Friday. Or maybe not.

With that preamble out of the way the Tigers welcome in the Red Sox who have the 3rd highest OPS in the American League. So it will be no easy task for the Tigers pitchers. The Sox are known for seeing a lot of pitches, will makes tonight’s match-up with Rick Porcello interesting because he typically doesn’t throw a lot of pitches.

Random factoid of the night: Dustin Pedroia has grounded into 11 double plays this year.

The Tigers don’t typically see a lot of pitches with their 3.70 P/PA only a smidge more than Seattle’s 3.69 which is the fewest in the AL. But Daisuke Matsuzaka typically throws quite a few topping the 4 pitch per PA mark in each of his first 2 years and he’s at 3.8 this year. Matsuzaka is looking for his first and he missed a chunk of time due to injury. He hasn’t gotten out of the 6th inning this year and has allowed at least 3 runs in each of his 4 starts.

Bonus Random factoid of the night: Magglio Ordonez has fanned in half of his PA’s against Daisuke.

Boston vs. Detroit – June 2, 2009 | MLB.com: Gameday

POSTGAME: It happens. The Tigers had a decent game plan against Matsuzaka. They were willing to wait him out (4.6 P/PA). They got some walks, they got some hits, but not enough of either and throw in some bad baserunning and that’s how you waste 9 baserunners in 5 innings turn into 1 run. Actually, part of the problem is that of the 6 hits none were for extra bases, and a couple other hard hit balls were right at people, but…it happens.

Cabrera, Granderson, and Polanco all hit multiple balls hard. Gerald Laird had good at-bats but the Tigers didn’t get enough runs early and then they were playing uphill against a good bullpen.

Rick Porcello wasn’t bad, but not as sharp as he has been. He was also singled to death, but the Red Sox did mix in 2 exta base hits and those led to the 3 runs he gave up.

The Tigers bullpenning was passable except for when Ryan Perry lost the strike zone. We saw this a little bit with Perry early on and fortunately it hadn’t happened for quite sometime. You hate to see a run plunked in, which is what Brandon Lyon contributed but  in the end he came into a bases loaded, 1 out situation and allowed 1 run. Lyon pitched 2 more innings allowing only a double.

As for that rally off of Papelbon, let’s look at it for what it was. A broken bat, a check swing, and a seeing eye groundball. But I will give Josh Anderson a ton of credit for his 10 pitch strikeout .

PREGAME: The Tigers are running out kind of a different lineup today. One without Miguel Cabrera or Placido Polanco. They didn’t really do much last night, but still…

Edwin Jackson will try and get the Tigers a series split. Detroit hasn’t played particularly well in this series, and Jackson throwing a bunch of 0’s on the board would certainly help the Tigers chances.

He’ll be opposed by Jason Berken who is making his career start. He allowed 7 hits and 3 walks but only 2 runs in 5 innings in his debut against the Blue Jays.

Detroit vs. Baltimore – May 31, 2009 | MLB.com: Gameday

POSTGAME: Well Jackson certainly did throw a bunch of 0’s on the board. Eight of them to be exact and he was efficient enough that at 101 pitches he probably should have been given the chance to complete the shut out himself. I mean this as no disrespect to Fernando Rodney who has been pitching great. But Jackson has been asked to work deep into other games when he wasn’t as effective, or when the lead was ridiculously comfortable. I thought this would be one of those “it’s his game” type situations.

Regardless, he picked up 7 K’s while only allowing 2 hits and a walk. And somehow he held Luke Scott in check fanning him twice and getting a 3-1 lineout to first.

The Tigers offense was fairly anemic again. I don’t know how much credit should be given to the Orioles young staff, but they held Detroit in check and did so fairly easily the last 4 games. But Curtis Granderson drove a solo homer to right center and that was all the Tigers would need. Though they did add on when Clete Thomas and Jeff Larish drove in runs late.

Ordonez’s hitting streak was snapped, but he did take a walk his last time up.

PREGAME: Enough Luke freakin’ Scott already. This series is not going well and I’ve reached my Luke Scott limit. The offense has been comatose for the last two days. The pitching has been meh. I blame it all on Luke freakin’ Scott.

If anybody can slow him down it has to be Justin Verlander right? Thankfully he’ll have the ball tonight for the Tigers.

Verlander will go up against Jeremy Guthrie. Guthrie has a K/BB ratio under 2 and has given up 11 homers in 60.1 innings of work.

Detroit vs. Baltimore – May 30, 2009 | MLB.com: Gameday

POSTGAME: Hey, there’s one for the win column. It didn’t look good there when the Tigers continued to squander early scoring chances. This was despite solo homers from Clete (who had 2 of them) and Granderson. But 3 8th inning runs proved to be Luke Scott proof.

But Scott got his in. Verlander hadn’t allowed a homer the entire of month of May, but Scott was the immovable force who took him deep. Verlander was cruising early on, but rough 5th and 6th innings quickly ran his pitch count up and he was done after 6. Fortunately the bullpen was money.

• Ryan Perry walked a guy and Bobby Seay allowed a double to Nick Markakis, but that was it. Seay got a pop-up with runners on 2nd and 3rd and 1 out setting things up for Joel Zumaya.
• Zumaya was filthy and pitched out of the 7th inning jam with a 3 pitch punchout of Melvin Mora. In fact Zumaya picked up 4 outs on 12 pitches…all of which were strikes.
• Fernando Rodney was nearly as good allowing only a single in the 9th and only need 12 pitches, 10 of which were strikes.
• Placido Polanco and Miguel Cabrera combined for 1 walk. Polanco even popped up a 3-1 bunt attempt. Their struggles undid the big days from Thomas, Ordonez, and Granderson.
• Ordonez is up to 16 games with the hitting streak and he picked up 3 more hits tonight.

PREGAME: The Tigers will hand the ball to Dontrelle Willis tonight. Willis has been solid in his last 2 starts and will look to keep it going. He’s still walking a few too many (8 in 17.1 innings with only 9 K’s), but it is a vast improvement from where he was.

Dontrelle’s career has many highlights, a Rookie of the Year award, a World Series ring, he’s a 2 time All Star, and a Cy Young runner up. He’s also in the process of bringing his career back from the brink, but there is something he still hasn’t accomplished…facing Matt Wieters [cue the trumpets]. Wieters has come to save the Baltimore Orioles and all of baseball for that matter.

The guy who has the honor of having Wieters catch his first big league pitch is Brad Bergesen. I’m sure Bergesen will have some jitters with Wieters behind the plate and hopefully the Tigers get can on the board before the smoke from the Wieters introduction fireworks clears.

Detroit vs. Baltimore – May 29, 2009 | MLB.com: Gameday

POSTGAME: Missed this entire game as Mrs. Billfer and I celebrated our anniversary. I thinkn I had more fun than those of you who watched the game.

PREGAME: When Detroit travels to Baltimore things seem to get interesting. There was the game where Dmitri Young had 2 homers and 2 triples. Or the time that Craig Monroe hit a grand slam in extra innings. Last year there was the game the Tigers put up a 6 spot in the first only to find themselves losing 8-7 after 3 before falling in extra innings 11-10. So no matter what happens it should be interesting the next 4 days.

It will be especially interesting for David Hernandez who makes his big league debut tonight. He posted some very nice numbers for the Norfolk Tide with a 60/13 K/BB ratio in 45 innings. He hasn’t been ranked on the O’s top prospects lists the last 2 years, but Baseball America has rated his slider the best on the O’s farm in both 2008 and 2009.

Armando Galarraga sports a slider too. It just hasn’t been so effective as of late. It’s been a miserable month for Galarraga. I’ll leave it at that.

Detroit vs. Baltimore – May 28, 2009 | MLB.com: Gameday

POSTGAME: It would be easy to focus on the offense’s inability to score the simplest of runs (runner on 3rd, less than 2 outs) on 3 separate occasions. Sure it is tremendously frustrating, but the Tigers have actually been pretty good at coming up with big hits this year, so I won’t dwell on it and chalk it up to “one of those things” or “that’s baseball.” Instead I’ll focus on a much improved outing from Armando Galarraga.

Galarraga wasn’t great, but there were times when he had his slider back. There were other times he hung it, but this was definitely progress, and the fact he pitched into the 8th meant he was nibbling nearly as much as he had been. He did allow 10 hits and he was helped by 3 double plays (the last one turned by Inge was awesome), but definitely a step in the right direction.

PREGAME: The Tigers go for the series win with Rick Porcello and some day baseball. Porcello has been on a roll and in his 4 May starts he’s allowed just 3 runs in 24 innings. He’ll be opposed by Kyle Davies who has really only had 2 bad starts this season, one of them coming against the Tigers on April 25th. In his last 3 outings he’s allowed just 6 runs, he’s fanned 15, and he hasn’t allowed a homer.

Detroit vs. Kansas City – May 27, 2009 | MLB.com: Gameday

POSTGAME: This was one of those “taking care of business” games where the Tigers came out and excelled on several fronts to take the series. Offense, defense, pitching, it was all working. Fortunately I’ve been able to say that quite a bit lately.

• Rick Porcello was a little off in the first inning, but he settled in VERY nicely and went 6 innings on only 82 pitches. I actually wouldn’t have minded him going another inning as throwing 95-100 pitches on occasion probably wouldn’t hurt. But perhaps his success and the team’s success are creating a great emphasis to keep him available deeper into the season – meaning more conservation now.
• When I saw Anderson leading off I im’d Ian how brilliant it was to maximize the at-bats for a guy with a .660 OPS. Of course he went out and notched a hit in each of his first 4 at-bats after getting 4 hits in his previous 24 at-bats.
• Is the top of the order starting to click? Polanco had good swings all series, Ordonez is riding a 13 game hitting streak.  If these guys start clicking that takes pressure off of everybody else.
• Bobby Seay got charged with a tough run after a bloop hit got over Adam Everett and Joel Zumaya allowed him to score.
• Both Zumaya and Rodney had been taxed last week, and have been gathering moss ever since. So Leyland wanted each to get work, and work they got. Too much work.