PREGAME: It’s a crisp fall evening tonight as the Tigers look to manufacture a 4 game winning streak. The Tigers send out Nate Robertson who takes the spot of the gimpy-hip’d Kenny Rogers. It is Robertson’s first start since he filled the Ballpark in Arlington with firework smog during a 5 homer, 3.2 inning stinker.
The A’s send out Dana Eveland. The Tigers faced him once this year and he walked 7 batters and didn’t make it out of the 5th inning. He was later demoted, but since returning has walked only 4 spanning 3 starts to go along with 14 K’s and no homers.
OAK @ DET, Tuesday, September 9, 2008 Game Preview – Baseball-Reference.com
Game Time 7:05
POSTGAME: Well, Nate Robertson wasn’t the problem. Nate went 7 innings on only 79 pitches, 60 of them for strikes. The A’s are a poor offensive club, but that is a very nice line regardless. But then there was the bullpen. Leery of the fact that Robertson hadn’t started in a few weeks, he didn’t want to extend him to far so he went to a Farnsworth-less (groin injury) bullpen in the 8th.
Leyland ripped into the Bobby Seay walk and the Fernando Rodney 0-2 pitch leading to a triple. Rodney ended up blowing the save. His first blown save since the Tampa melt down, a span that included 14 games, a 2.12 ERA, and 9 saves in 14 games.
The offense did little, except return to their double play ways. Ordonez is an amazing 2 for 12 in bases loaded situations this year, and was one of the culprits. Inge lined into a tough luck double play. Granderson is a remarkable 0 for 11 in this series. Remarkable in the sense that he hasn’t reached base in the last 2 games after having pushed his OBP to .391. Ergh.
The whipping boys are on tonight.
Robertson has been good against the Sacramento A’s so far tonight.
Okay… Emil Brown is batting third. Just… I… COME ON!
Update: And he’s DH!
btw I’m starting to put some stock in that Forbes article about Tigers fans being among the least loyal of fanbases. Over at SB Nation, nearly every other team’s game threads manage well over a hundred posts a night. Bless You Boys currently has two.
I have noticed that a lot with people that I would always talk tigers with…many claim they don’t follow anymore cause they are out of it. I think that the majority of sports fans just like football better. Even this blog proves it to be true.
It’s weird, because Oakland’s page at SB is still thriving, as are those of other out of it teams like Seattle. The only team that has as few posts as the Tigers’ page is the Marlins’ — a team that has never caught on with the local population. What’s up, Detroit?
If the team wasn’t so completely and utterly underachieving, there would be more interest. This was the team that was supposed to score 9 million runs and clinch a post season spot in July, remember? Fans take a cue from the players, who (up until the last few games) seem to have mentally checked out long ago.
Plus, what’s not to love about football in the D? Will the Lions win 3 or 4 games this year? Woo-hoo, I can hardly wait ’til Sunday!
On the plus side, it looks like Nate can at least shut down a minor league roster of Oakland A’s players through the first five innings.
If he can pitch against these
jokersscrubs again tomorrow night, he could get his ERA down below 6.00!Edit – sorry, forgot my Bay area vernacular for poor players.
It’s true. The Tigers have mostly band wagon fans. Most are not even baseball fans.
fyi Dusty Ryan is on fyyyyyyyahhhh!!!
All right, Chief, I’ll admit it. Most fans are of the bandwagon variety, and maybe 50% of the people in the stadium even remotely pay attention to the game. Sad but true.
It should provide some good deals at StubHub.com to watch some of the last few games of the year in person, though.
Is today the first day for yhe Sheff HR tracker? For some reason I feal that sign will cause Sheff to produce even less.
This is the first time I’ve seen it, Jim
8:30, and it’s the seventh inning. It’s like the exact opposite of yesterday.
Robertson at 79 pitches through 7 innings and now he is gone. I don’t understand. Oh wait, now I rememeber, the manager is Jim Leyland.
Bandwagon fans are the fans down here in Tampa. The rays fans, red sox fans, and yankees fans down here make me want to hurl.
God our bullpen sucks
Leyland is retarded
I do not ever want to see Rodney again. WTF.
Granderson is in a slump… Clutch hitting is aweful tonight. Tigers should have put up 4 more runs.
Polly doubles. At least that takes the GIDP away.
CHris you are right about the offense. But Nate is just the unluckiest pitcher I’ve ever seen.
Because “awful” , in Middle English, was spelled as “aweful” (or, technically, “aueful”, since they didn’t actually have a w), I choose to believe that Chris is simply a time traveler from the 12th century rather than that he is just trying to irk me with his oddly consistent misspelling.
This loss definitely belongs to Leyland. Robertson was on a roll and could have easily completed this game.
I agree, the clutch hitting, as well as the relief pitching, has been offal.
Vince: Ha!
Chris: This loss… hasn’t occurred yet. But as you’re a time traveler who knows what wondrous things you’ve seen!
Ziegler’s delivery is all kinds of nutty
Like Leyland overthinking the 8th inning pitching situation, I like to overthink the spelling of the word “aweful”.
NOW the loss has happened. Recommence with the attribution of blame.
GET RID OF RODNEY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
“Chris: This loss… hasn’t occurred yet. But as you’re a time traveler who knows what wondrous things you’ve seen!”
No. I just look at Ziegler’s ridiculously low 0.53 ERA in 50 innings and I see no possible way this un-clutch lineup wins this game. None. And time proves me right.
BTW, who else here is rooting for the Lions to lose their next few games in hope that it will prompt the end of Millen & co?
“None”.
That is silly, and hopefully hyperbolic. Of course a win was unlikely, but by no means was a loss a certainty — there were two men on base to end the game, it’s not like Ziegler was dominating.
Do people really think the Tigers have fair-weather fans?
That’s absurd. Check the ESPN scoreboard. For almost every game they list attendance and what % of the seats were filled.
The tigers are having a crappy year. It’s a boring series. And it’s a weeknight. Yet over 90% of the seats were filled at Comerica Park.
The Orioles are also having a crappy year. Guess how many of their seats were filled. 30%.
How about the White Sox? They’re having a great year. Guess how many of their seats were filled tonight? 60%.
I bet other MLB owners WISH they had these kind of fair-weather fans…
I think Tiger fans are the greatest and most loyal fans in the world. I have yet to meet a fan who has ever jumped ship. Don’t confuse not attending games( some people just can’t afford it), criticism bordering on insanity( that is what baseball fans do),not watching every or even most games( a lot of people do have another life)with being a fair weather fan. They can be dear to your heart and the closest you ever get to a stat is checking the newspaper every morning for the standings. Some fans think they’re more of a fan than others. That is an elitist attitude. Go Tigers.
Nate pitches well and the Tigers lose? What’s up with that? To the A’s? Come on, man.
Vince – Nate’s been in the pen for a while. Not surprising that they’re not going to let him go to 100 pitches just yet.
Still makes me glad when the Tigers win. Still bugs me when they lose. But they’ve played all kinds of lousy baseball this season. Not hard luck, boy they sure tried hard losing. Just lousy baseball. If I lived in Detroit and could go to the games, I certainly wouldn’t feel guilty about skipping them, retroactive to early August.
Go Ron. Go Tigers.
I’m talking internet fans, here, ron. Like I said, I was making an observation based on one popular website (SB Nation). Judgment calls — let alone elitism — don’t come close to entering into it (to be honest, I couldn’t possibly care less about the definition of a “fan”).
I just think it’s strange that the Tigers have such an inactive page in that community compared to almost every other team (who generally have hundreds of comments per game per night, regardless of how crappy their season has been), and I’m curious as to why that may be. Is there a reason why Detroit fans would be less likely to use the internet than anywhere else in the country save Florida that I am missing? Considering that the Tigers page was thriving in the early portion of the year, I concluded that most internet fans were only interested in the team in the instance in which they were winning.
Dave: I think a lot of people subscribe to the theory of “if you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything”. There hasn’t been much positive to talk about with these Tigers in 2008, what with all of the high expectations.
“Dave: I think a lot of people subscribe to the theory of “if you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything”.”
Well, I’m glad we’re different. This would be a pretty lonely place…
Yeah, Chris, the disparity between expectations and results is really the key difference between Tigers fans and other fanbases this year. The only apt comparison is with the Yankees, and that probably isn’t fair — you know, due to the whole being in New York thing.
I’d say Cleveland would be another good comparison. The Tribe and Tigers were supposed to have a Mexican death match for the division title, at least according to the pundits. Obviously both fanbases are a touch on the disappointed side.
Oh. I also forgot to mention the Mariners, since their payroll is roughly comparable to the Tigers (i.e. well over $100 million). I’m surprised the USS Mariner guys haven’t committed ritual suicide yet.
And both the Indians and Mariners have huge amounts of posts each night on their pages. Craziness.
Dave bw aren’t internet fans a very small percentage of fans in general? Did Forbes distinguish between the two? And what is SB Nation?
What is wrong with blogging only when thing are going right. This has nothing to to with team loyalty. Maybe loyalty to a site.
It seems, ron, that you’re attributing my argument with more nuances than I intended. Yes, internet fans can be assumed to be a small percentage of fans in general, and granted, my first post on this topic was in retrospect needlessly inflammatory.
Anyway, SB Nation is a network of sports fan sites, and isn’t necessarily indicative of internet fan behavior in general — though in my experience ALL Tiger fan sites (this one, motownsports, etc) have been slow for over a month. My point has been that posting trends for the Tigers seem to be completely linked to playoff odds, and this does not mesh with the posting patterns of fans of other teams (who seem to be consistently active regardless of performance). This doesn’t mean that Detroit fans are absolutely less loyal, but that is one obvious conclusion.
I did not mean for you to construe that I was attributing value judgments to “team loyalty”, posting trends, etc. I’m not. For fans that are concerned primarily with winning (which, again, there’s nothing intrinsically wrong with) — or even with sound baseball — following a team like this year’s Tigers would be ridiculous.
Seattle internet fans are just a bunch of over caffeinated, 2nd generation hippies sitting in rain soaked internet accessible cafes with nothing better to do than baseball blog. Cleveland fans, well they’re just idiots. Detroit fans spend most of their time working, looking for jobs, taking care of their families, praying for the welfare of the nation and supporting the Tigers by ordering in Illitch’s pizza every other night. It’s hard for them to find time to blog when thing are going good. When things go South, they go outside and play catch with the kids, hoping to raise a future Tiger. They have their priorities.
Dave bw Sorry I overreacted. I just love my city so much. Well, at least the suburbs.
Not saying anything about right or wrong or loyalty. But it seems to me that if you’re really interested in a team, there’s always something to examine, revisit, propose, speculate about, and otherwise discuss. A losing or disappointing season only provides more fuel for this.
In fact, SL, there’s MORE to discuss with a losing team. There’s only so many ways you can say “Awesome game, tonight!”