Game 116: Tigers at White Sox

PREGAME: It’s a battle of struggling left handed all star starters today with Mark Buerhle taking on Kenny Rogers.

Since the All Star Break Buerhle has an 8.68 ERA with only 13 strikeouts to go along with 8 walks and 8 homers. Buster Olney talked to a scout (Insider) who had this to say about Buerhle’s struggles

“His pure stuff is the same to me — velocity is the same, 84-90 mph. But he’s getting the ball up in the strike zone, and he’s paying for it. It’s got to be a mechanical thing. And to me, he needs to throw more changeups to right-handed hitters, too.” The scout disagrees with the view that Buehrle’s fastball is down from last year.

Rogers numbers are eerily similar with an 8.34 ERA, 14 K’s, 13 walks, and 6 homers allowed.

On another note, did you notice that the Tigers were using signs like when a runner is on second, but they did it the whole game? I noticed it in the first inning. Rod Allen picked up on it a couple innings later, but didn’t have any idea why. I’m guessing it’s because Jim Leyland trusts what his buddy Tony Larussa experienced back in June to be true.

Game Time 1:25pm

POSTGAME: So the Tigers have their first 4 game losing streak of the second half. Let the hand wringing begin. Actually, if you want to get upset about today’s loss, I can’t blame you. The Tigers seemed to crumble defensively despite an excellent outing by Kenny Rogers. The offense again looked stagnant with 7 of the first 10 batters striking out (to their credit they didn’t strike out after that until MacDougal came in so some adjustments were made).

The pressure is on tomorrow to avoid the sweep and keep the lead from shrinking to 5.5 games. That’s right, all the way down to 5.5 games. The Tigers are still in good shape despite their recent slide. That said, 7.5 would look a lot nicer.

16 thoughts on “Game 116: Tigers at White Sox”

  1. I didn’t notice it until Rod mentioned it. It sure didn’t seem to help, thought.

    Way to be with the game time. 🙂 I definitely would have missed it.

  2. So much for Guillen’s errors being of little consequence… I just hope it doesn’t trip Rogers up any more than it already has. He was absolutely dominant.

  3. I’m starting to get worried about our boys. If we drop tomorrow’s game we’re only 5.5 games up and then enter a series with Boston, while the White Sox get to beat up on the Royals. If we’re not careful, we could be looking at a race for the division after dominating the central by 10 games less than a week ago. Ahhhhhh!! I feel bad for Kenny, too. He needed that win bad.

  4. Calm down guys. It’s a slump. It happens. The Sox just pulled out of one themselves. How do you think we got 10 games up? Did you think we were immune? It’s going to be a race to the end. Buckle up and enjoy the ride. 🙂

  5. Only distance gained today was Guillen’s error lead at SS. At 21 for the season, he’s got 7 (thats 2/3) more than anyone else in the AL.

    Spoiled a great game by Rogers. Straight spoiled.

    If this is how the rest of the season goes, we’ve got no chance, zip, none. Playoffs or not.

  6. Excellent game by Kenny, btw. Someone reported last week that he found a mechanical flaw that was causing his slump. Certainly looks like he corrected it.

    On the downside, I think Walker has quadrupled his walk total in the past week.

  7. re Walker, exactly — the last two times he’s been brought in he’s offered up 4-pitch walks. Troubling, though not as much so as the atrocious defense.

  8. don’t look back…something is gaining. wow. the last 2 against the Sox could have psch. reverberations. Maybe we don’t got what it takes… Major gut-check tomorrow.

  9. It is a slump which we really haven’t had for quite a while. The worrisome thing for me has been the offense of late. When we’re winning games it seems we’re squeaking them out. It’d be nice to see the offense put up 6-8 runs every few games to give the pitchers a bit of a break.

  10. From an psychological standpoint, they could probably use a laugher every now and then, but from a statistical standpoint, you want to just “squeak them out”. If your offense is only capable of scoring X runs per year and pitching is bound to give up Y runs per year, I would absolutely love to lose the first game Y to (X – 161) and win the remaining games 1-0.

  11. In perspective, we are playing the world champs. So I guess we have to expect some bugs to be worked out of our system in these final months. Also, Twins are having it rough in Toronto.

    Still, hope they get one from Chicago before the trip to Boston and a hotter hitting Texas.

  12. I don’t know if I laughed to day. But, luckily we’ve got enough room to ignore the fact we lost a game in which we scored three runs and Rogers gave up nothing earned. My high school coach would have eaten us alive. Like a pack of dingos on a binge. Hopefully Leyland doesn’t need to do the same. These kids are smart enough.

    Get ’em tomorrow guys!

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