Tonight in Oakland the Tigers have the chance to get to .500 for the first time this season, and in doing so get Jim Leyland his 1,500th career win.

Taking the mound for Detroit will be Rick Porcello, who hopefully will get a night as chilly as last night (no, really, it makes sinkers sink more).

The A’s will look for some relief from their strike-zone-aphobia from last night with Brandon McCarthy, who rarely walks batters (only 1 BB so far this season in 2 starts).

By the way, for all of the fretting about the Tigers not being patient enough at the plate last night, it was interesting to see this from the other perspective:  Gonzalez felt quite the opposite…

“These guys were being very patient,” Gonzalez said. “They’d give you one of these first-pitch swings and miss them, and all of a sudden they wait the next four or five pitches. It’s impressive. It was like a chess game. Every pitch was there but like a little hair off. Again, you live and you learn.” SF Chronicle

Today’s Player of the Pre-game:  Rick Porcello, who has his sinkerball working, gets a couple of double-play balls, and leads Detroit to the 4th straight  in another low-scoring affair.

Today’s What-Rhymes-with-Leadoff? Lineup:

1. Will Rhymes 2B
2. Ryan Raburn LF
3. Brennan Boesch RF
4. Miguel Cabrera 1B
5. Victor Martinez DH
6. Don Kelly CF
7. Brandon Inge 3B
8. Alex Avila C
9. Ramon Santiago SS

(Also known as today’s Because-They-Bat-Left-Handed-That’s-Why Lineup).

The Tigers packed up Wednesday with a to-go order of walk-off under their belts to travel to Oakland for a 4-game series with their good friends the Oakland Athletics.  Good friends because the A’s are returning home from a road trip which saw them take consecutive series from the Twins and the White Sox.

The Tigers will go from facing the team with the best ERA in the league, to facing the team with the 2nd best (2.73), who recently held the Twins to 5 runs in 3 games.  Add to that the A’s lack of offense and the Coliseum’s large dimensions, and this is likely to be a low-scoring series.

The first game features a left-coast lefty matchup of Phil Coke and Gio Gonzalez, who has only allowed 1 run in 13 innings so far this season, picking up where he left off last season (2nd half ERA of 2.59).  His weakness is a relatively high number of walks, so if the Tiger hitters are patient they may be able to get into the bullpen early.

One of the nice things about Gio Gonzalez becoming so successful is that he is not on the White Sox.  They had him, and traded him–twice.

• Player of the Pre-game: Ryan Raburn. Raburn vs Gio Gonzalez is a career 4 for 5 (.800) with a 2B and 2 HR.

If the Tigers win, Raburn will likely be involved.  If not, the loss can probably be blamed on me for not following the short-but-sweet lucky game post format.

Today’s no-Rhymes-nor-reason lineup:

1. Austin Jackson CF
2. Casper Wells RF
3. Ryan Raburn LF
4. Miguel Cabrera 1B
5. Victor Martinez C
6. Jhonny Peralta SS
7. Brennan Boesch DH
8. Brandon Inge 3B
9. Ramon Santiago 2B

This afternoon the Tigers try to bounce back from their first home loss of the season in the rubber game of the series with the Royals.  The Royals send Luke Hochevar to the mound to oppose Rick Porcello

Speaking of Porcello, I happened to overhear one of those baseball science kind of conversations about the effect of temperature on pitching, in which someone was arguing more or less that cold weather is good for curve-ball pitchers, and hot weather is good for fastball pitchers (cold air is more dense than hot and therefore offers more resistance, which ball movement relies on).

So naturally I thought, well Porcello should have a good game tomorrow.  Then I saw the weather forecast for Detroit:  high of 76.  So much for that.

But since game time temperatures are recorded in the box scores, just for fun why not go ahead and see how Porcello did at varying temperatures last season.

Rick Porcello ERA 2010 by game time temperature:

4.14 – sub 70

5.43 – 70 – 79

5.96 – 80 plus

This is somewhat affected no doubt by his progression throughout the season: he struggled for a while, and came on strong at the end of the season, when it was naturally colder. But that begs the question whether or not that improvement was aided by the temperature.  In August he had 6 starts; the first 4 at 82, 80, 83, and 87 degrees, the last 2 at 74 and 75.  The first 4 he had a 6.95 ERA, the last 2 a 3.21 ERA, and he continued to improve into September.

Is it possible his improvement was aided in some way by the weather? Did he get better, or did it just get colder, or was it both? I wouldn’t try to form an opinion either way based on this little bit of data, but it does add an element that I hadn’t thought of before.

Then again, it’s possible that ALL pitchers do better the colder it is, and that’s all that’s showing up here, not anything specific to Porcello,  or to pitchers who rely on a sinker.

And that one is a little deep for the moment, so instead let’s look at today’s no-Magglio lineup (ankle soreness):

1. Austin Jackson CF
2. Will Rhymes 2B
3. Brennan Boesch RF
4. Miguel Cabrera 1B
5. Victor Martinez DH
6. Ryan Raburn LF
7. Jhonny Peralta SS
8. Alex Avila C
9. Brandon Inge 3B

Today the Tigers look to continue unbeaten at home, as Phil Coke gets his 1st start of the season (and only 2nd of his career) against Bruce Chen and the Royals.  Whether or not Coke adjusts to the starting role will likely have a big effect on how this season plays out, and whether or not any of the young prospects get called up during the season.

Bruce Chen has a mixed history against the Tigers.  Last season he was 2-1 with a 6.30 ERA (with 12 walks in 20 innings).  Luckily Miguel Cabrera is fine after his run-in yesterday with the tarp:  in 14 career ABs vs Chen he is hitting .571 with 3 HRs.  Chen will find some relief further down in the order–Inge has 1 hit in 21 career ABs vs Chen.

Expect the Tigers to take a patient approach at the plate with Chen.  In fact, the Tigers have been uncharacteristically patient this season as a whole, and surprisingly lead the league in Pitches per Plate Appearance with 4.13 led by Wee Willie Rhymes (4.69).

Today marks the first appearance of The Ghost in the starting lineup:

1. Austin Jackson CF
2. Will Rymes, 2B
3. Maggio Ordonez DH
4. Miguel Cabrera 1B
5. Victor Martinez C
6. Ryan Raburn LF
7. Jhonny Peralta SS
8. Brandon Inge 3B
9. Casper Wells RF

It’s Homecoming time in the D, as the Tigers bring baseball back to Detroit for the 2011 Home Opener.

The weather is chllin’ (42 and rainy with 2 hours until the 3:05 start, but the rain is expected to go away) but the fans are grillin’ and I don’t expect any of that Yankee stadium empty seat malaise, because that’s just not how Detroit opening day goes.

The Home opener is simply bigger in Detroit,  according to Lynn Henning

Brandon Inge agrees, and says his bit on the subject in the Metro Times

On-field festivities include

• Raising of a Sparky Anderson flag and retirement of his number 11 (the players have also been wearing patch honoring him).
• A moment of silence for Bill Lajoie, Steve Boros, Cecil Kaiser, Woodie Fryman and the victims of the Japan tsunami.
• A military A-10 flyover, courtesy of the 107th Fighter Squadron, 127th Wing of the Michigan Air National Guard
• Game ball presentation by Master Sergeant Michael Lionberger of the US Air Force
• 7th inning stretch performance of God Bless America by Scott Stapp of Creed
• and rally towels for the first 10,000 fans!

The National Anthem will be performed by Committed, the winners of NBC’s The Sing-Off (yes, but can they measure up to Amber Grand?)

The ceremonial first pitch will be delivered by a young person from the C.A.T.C.H. organization, along with “very special guests.” (Ooh, I’ll guess we’ll just have to watch to find out!).

For those lucky enough to be enjoying all of the festivities in person, you might want to check out the new Food Network signature steak sandwiches (not to be confused with Sgt. Lionberger), which will be available in only 8 ballparks, and Comerica is one!

For those who can’t make opening day in person, you can follow the party online at the Detroit News, where they have a live fan blog with lots of photos and tweets and whatnot (I just saw the tarp coming off the field, yea!)

There are many ways to celebrate opening day–1,000 retirees at Fox Run retirement community in Novi will do a pre-game reading to honor Ernie Harwell.

How are you celebrating?  Please post and tell us, especially if you are lucky enough to be there at Comerica.  Go Tigers!

* * *

The Tigers will face the 4-2 Kansas City Royals, the youngest, cheapest, and apparently fastest team in the league (they lead the majors with 14 stolen bases).  And it’s not all small ball; they still have the dreaded Billy Butler.  A well-rested Max Scherzer (he left Baltimore a day early) will try to keep the runnin’ Royals off the basepaths–if not, expect them to test Alex Avila, who has had some early season struggles behind the plate. Not to worry too much though:  Mario and Rod pronounced yesterday that Scherzer will have 9 strikeouts today.

The home opening lineup:

1. Austin Jackson, CF
2. Will Rhymes, 2B
3. Magglio Ordonez, RB
4. Miguel Cabrera, 1B
5. Victor Martinez, DH
6. Brennan Boesch, LF
7. Jhonny Peralta, SS
8. Alex Avila, C
9. Brandon Inge, 3B

Today is the styrofoam game of the three-game series as Max Scherzer eyes Detroit’s first victory and the Tigers try to keep the brooms in the closet.  The Tigers have yet to win a game; then again, neither have the Twins, so there.

Big Don Kelly will be filling in for Magglio Ordonez in right field, although strangely enough, not batting in his spot in the lineup.  That honor goes to Brennan Boesch, who yesterday became the first Tiger to strike out with a runner on 3rd and less than 2 outs. Ordonez was taken out of yesterday’s game with soreness in his surgically-repaired ankle, but it was cold yesterday and this sort of thing is to be expected and Leyland was planning to give him a day off soon anyway and there is nothing to worry about, really there isn’t.

Today will also see the 2011 debut of Victor Martinez behind the plate.

The Tigers face Phil Hughes, whom the Yankees drafted with a compensatory pick awarded to them when they lost Andy Pettitte to the Astros, before they got him back again.  Hughes supposedly is featuring a new “slider-cutter” pitch which is different from his slider or his cutter.  Let us know if you see one.  Hughes also was the winning pitcher the last time the Yankees swept a series from Detroit.

Fun fact:  Miguel Cabrera and Austin Jackson are tied for the team lead in leading off innings (5).  At some point do they consider moving Cabrera up to the 3rd spot in the lineup?

Today’s sweep-busting Tiger lineup:

1 Jackson, CF

2 Santiago, 2B

3 Boesch, DH

4 Cabrera, 1B

5 Martinez, C

6 Raburn, LF

7 Kelly, RF

8 Peralta, SS

9 Inge, 3B