PREGAME: It’s the third series of the season, and the Tigers are facing a team for the second time. Where would we be without the unbalanced schedule? Dare to dream.
If the Luke Hochevar and Max Scherzer pitching match-up seems like deja vu, it’s because we’ve seen it before. I’m going out on a limb here, but I bet there are more runs scored this time than in last week’s 2-1 11 inning affair.
Fun fact of the day: the Tigers lead the league in batting average and on base percentage. I’m sure yesterday’s 29 baserunners had something to do with that.
Your Sizemore-got-3-hits-yesterday-so-we’ll-rest-him-today lineup:
- Jackson, CF
- Damon, DH
- Ordonez, RF
- Cabrera, 1B
- Guillen, LF
- Inge, 3B
- Avila, C
- Raburn, 2B
- Santiago, SS
Oh yeah, and Amber Grand is singing the National Anthem today. I’ve got a good feeling.
Kansas City Royals at Detroit Tigers
POSTGAME: No part of this game made sense. Amber Grand sings and they lose. Magglio goes hitless. Scherzer gets rocked. Yuniesky Betancourt continues to get on base. The Tigers made 4 errors. There’s nothing good to report here. Well, except for the third leg of the Veneuzuelan tripod getting his first homer and Brandon Inge playing well with the glove and the bat. But the rest was bad. Let’s move on. Nothing to see here. Amber will get ’em back next game.
“Your Sizemore-got-3-hits-yesterday-so-we’ll-rest-him-today lineup”
Yup, makes about as much sense as DH’ing Damon the day after him coming off the bench for one AB.
Hopefully they can make two wins of the didn’t-need-to-come-from-behind variety.
I’m sure Raburn was scheduled to play today well ahead of yesterday’s affairs. I’d like to get Raburn as many ABs as we can.
You’re probably right on the Raburn thing and I’m actually all for more Raburn in general. I was more confused on DH’ing Damon after what was essentially an off-day for him.
Back to Billfer’s comment though, I realize these lineups are scheduled to a degree, but it seems to me that you’d let the rookie ride the confidence of a good game after a somewhat disappointing start to the season.
Granted these seem like mere quibbles at this point.
andre, I’d be content to spend all day debating the merits of the game 7 lineup, and I’m sure you’d have a counter for every point.
Just one reason why I love baseball and am thankful for DTW.
George Will had a fantastic commentary on baseball in yesterday’s Journal. Unfortunately, I only get it in print and it is premiere access only online, so I could not repost. Definitely worth checking out if you have a copy around.
“I’m sure you’d have a counter for every point”
Thou doth give me too much credit, sir. And, just to be clear, your point makes sense imo.
Little known trick to the Wall Street Journal online edition: if you type in the title of the article into Google, the first link or so will have the entire article available to read, e-mail or print. I just typed in ‘George Will, Wall Street Journal’ and the second link in Google gave me the whole article. Dow Jones is apparently aware of this, but they want to continue to get picked up by Google news searches, so they essentially make their online premium content free. You just have to look for it. 😉
Meanwhile, sloppy game for Scherzer, and David DeJesus always kills us.
Leyland will avoid using the same lineup twice if it is at all possible. And I don’t just mean on consecutive days.
Wow Inge wow
don’t even watch any more web gems for today there is #1 no doubt
Unbelievably, this was only #5, because “the SS would have made a play” if Inge hadn’t made the catch (according to John Kruk).
Apparently the final rankings this year are based on fan voting though, and the fans have so far given Inge as slight edge as #1.
I find it fascinating when they show the results by state–Inge wins the center of the US, Carl Crawford wins California, Florida, and NY. There must be some meaning in this, but what?
Air Inge!
Debate: Who was the best defensive 3B for the Tigers you have seen: Inge, Aurelio Rodriguez or somebody else?
Don Wert
Inge
Apparently some people are confused as to what it means to debate.
Clearly, Doug Schu was the best Tigers 3rd baseman ever.
He was the first “next Tom Brookens.”
Moriarty
It’s nice to see the breaks going the Tigers way for a change.
It’d be nice if our starters could throw a few more strikes and be a little more efficient. None of the starters have gone longer than 6 innings. That’s a problem.
A lot of long ABs against Scherzer today. Although his BB/9 ratio was pretty good last year, the rap on him is that he had a high pitches per inning count and gave up a lot of hits, which translated to a very low number of quality starts. That happens when you haven’t developed an “out” pitch. Also note the Fastball Happy Syndrome alaVerlander.
That was a brutal inning. Costly drop by Miggy…
Did anyone get to see it? How bad was it? I’m listening to Dan & Jim.
I’m following on Gamecast…
If you’re talking about the foul pop fly, it seemed like he was basically under it, and it just popped out.
A LOOGY that can’t get out lefties – great.
who the heck is this bum brad thomas? has pitched one season in the minors since 2004?!? but hes on our major league roster? get out
“get out”
Oh the irony!
Leland likes him!
Just was a terrible inning by Thomas. Back-to-back walks to Betencourt (who walked 21 times in 590 plate appearances last year and owns a .297 career OBP and has been on base 3 times today) and Getz (who is only marginally better with a .324 OBP last year in 375 plate appearances) followed by two straight singles to lefties. You are supposed to be tougher on lefties, Brad.
Hopefully we can pound the KC bullpen again because we’re down 5 now.
Inge again!
Fantastic AB by Inge. Similar to Miggy’s AB when he tied the game on a HR in first series.
Inge is on pace for 115 doubles.
Seriously though, I like Doubles Inge much better than Home Run Inge. He has 5 already; he had all of 16 in 2009.
As long as he lays off the low and outside pitches, which he did that AB, he may be OK. We’ll see if that is a permanent adjustment or merely an abberation. Anyway, with two hits today, I’m sure Leyland will want to give him the day off tomorrow, so we’ll probably have to wait until at least Wednesday to see if this continues.
Wow…the bullpen has laid an egg this afternoon….Thomas and NI are both on my short list…
Man old Smokey is really hanging his guys out there to dry. They look terrible, this is two rough outings in a row for Ni.
Those 2 errors didn’t help much.
Yes, defense matters.
Tough game today, the boys just aren’t playing well. That’s going to happen though. Hopefully they can bounce back and take the last 2 in this series.
Sign your team is losing “Royally”: When you click on the ESPN scores and the top three performers are all players of the opposing team (that and as you glance thru the scoreboard you notice a big fat 10 next to the Royals).
Plain and simple, we need more effecient innings from all of our pitchers. If our starters only get 5-6 every outing, and the bullpen gets the rest, we are going to have one tired bullpen and more games like this.
193 pitches today.
Of course when you give the other team an extra four outs, it does help run up the count some, but still….
Gotta love the OBP on this team.
Do we have to use a thousand different line ups every year? How do we expect these guys to get into a groove when they constantly move around and get “rested” so often? I don’t know, I think we should try to win every game…. that’s what Billy Martin used to do.
Not a thousand, but I think Vince in MN may be on the right track–the goal may be 162 (163?) different lineups, and a permanent smokey mark in the annals of managing…