PREGAME: The Tigers welcome in the Colorado Rockies as their first interleague opponent. The Rockies have struggled this year, but their pitching has actually been pretty good with a 4.27 FIP which coincidentally is the same as the Tigers.
Tonight’s starter is Ubaldo Jimenez. Jimenez walks a batter every other inning, but he also fans nearly one an inning and has allowed only 1 homer in 46 innings this year. He’s thrown 4 straight quality starts and has allowed just 6 runs in his last 27 innings. The walks have also been under control of late with a 22:6 ratio.
Rick Porcello gets the ball for the Tigers. Porcello has also been rolling allowing just 2 runs over his last 3 starts.
And on a related note, Rod Allen will miss his 2nd game as he attends his youngest daughter’s graduation. In his place will be Dan Petry. Does anybody else remember a certain game where Petry filled in for Allen? It was also on a Friday night. Give up? It was the Yankees game that ended at 3:30 in the morning.
Oh, and GO WINGS Colorado vs. Detroit – May 22, 2009 | MLB.com: Gameday
POSTGAME: It was a beautiful night at the ballpark, especially for those who appreciate stellar defense. This game had a reel full of web gem type plays. It’s probably best to just watch the highlights but here is a quick run down:
- Inge charges and barehands a ball to make a play look easy.
- Josh Anderson throws a seed to the plate to end an inning and save a run
- Brandon Inge runs to left field to snag a foul ball with his back to the basket
- Miguel Cabrera fields a ground ball along the line, spins and touches the bag and fires home to turn a 3-2 GIDP
Rick Porcello certainly appreciated the help, but he was pretty good on his own as well. He was very efficient up until that 6th inning when struggled a little. But he finished with 6 innings, 1 run, and another quality start.
Inge crushes a ball to right center for the big hit of the game, and it was even a pretty good pitch, so Inge deserves all the credit on that one.
The rest of the offense can be largely attributed nice baserunning. The first run was set up when Gerald Laird hustled to go first to third, and then nicely read (with some help from Placido Polanco) a wild pitch to score the first run. Later in the 8th inning the Tigers twice broke up double plays with hard slides (Polanco at third and Larish at second) that allowed a 4th run to score which proved to be the difference because…
Joel Zumaya wasn’t good. He was on in place of Rodney who had pitched the previous 3 days. He was wild and very fastball happy. He couldn’t find the curve ball and make a 3 run lead with the bases empty into a 1 run lead with runners at the corner. Unfortunately Perry was used 2 innings and Zumaya threw 31 pitches so both are likely unavailable for Saturday’s game.