Monthly Archives: April 2010

2010 Season, Injuries

Guillen to DL, Boesch is up

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With Carlos Guillen’s hamstring blowing up, he’ll be hitting the 15 day disabled list. This opens up a spot for Brennan Boesch who has been promoted from Toledo. Boesch will make his debut tonight in Arlington.

For those that read the Minor League Wraps Boesch’s name is very familiar. He’s been getting a daily mention due to his 379/455/621 line at Toledo. The left handed hitting outfielder just turned 25 earlier this month and was added to the 40 man roster during the offseason.

Boesch has huge power that finally materialized last year at Erie where he had 28 homers. Boesch has some holes in his offensive game in that he will strike out a lot (24% last year and 17 K’s already this year) and he doesn’t walk very much. But when he hits, he mashes. Don’t expect him to bunt or move runners over.

The loss of Guillen though is significant. While Jim Leyland has rotated numerous people in and out of the lineup this season, the Venezuelan heart of the order has remained intact. Presumably Ryan Raburn and Brandon Inge would move into the 5th spot which takes away the lefty bat behind Cabrera.

Fortunately if the Tigers have any position of depth in the minors it is with outfielders. With Clete Thomas on the disabled list with a hamstring problem of his own, Boesch makes the most sense. If he struggles and Guillen is delayed the team can always turn to Casper Wells or Wilkin Ramirez as a stop gap as well.

2010 Season, Game Post, Injuries

Guillen holds hammy, Tigers hold on

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The Tigers finally got to a starting pitcher early. Unfortunately Detroit’s starting pitcher wasn’t on his game. Fortunately the Tigers bullpen earned a cumulative save getting the last 12 outs.

The Detroit lineup had no trouble getting to Joe Saunders. They hit, they moved people over, the bunted, the sacrifice flied, and they scored in the first 3 innings. When Adam Everett hit the flyball to left to plate a run it was the first 2nd inning run Detroit has scored this season.

On the other side Justin Verlander had significant issues controlling his offspeed pitches leading to all sorts of trouble. Mostly in the form of rapid pitch count escalation. The irony is that Verlander often becomes fastball happy when in trouble. Yet when the other pitches weren’t working for him against the Angels, he stayed away from the heater. Only 17 of his first 35 pitches were fastballs.

Credit needs to go to the Angels also who fouled off 35 pitches for the night.

Joel Zumaya, Phil Coke, Ryan Perry, and Jose Valverde did a terrific job locking down the game once Verlander was lifted. Seeing Zumaya come out for two innings the night after throwing 33 pitches makes me nervous given his history, but he did fine. As a group they allowed 5 baserunners and fanned 5 in 4 innings.

The bigger news in all this though is probably the injury to Carlos Guillen. Guillen’s hamstring popped as he was coming around to score (pictured above) and couldn’t make it to home plate. Guillen is hitting the disabled list, which is an unfortunate annual tradition.

  • The Tigers didn’t strikeout until Gerald Laird fanned with 2 outs in the 7th inning.
  • It looked like Austin Jackson’s strike out streak may end, but he went down swinging in his 4th at-bat.
  • Miguel Cabrera doubled in his 5th straight game. The last Tiger to do it was Frank Catalanotto in 1999.
2010 Season, Minors

Tigers Minor League Wrap 04.22.2010

Columbus 4 Toledo 6
Brennan Boesch continues to pound the ball, going 3 for 4 with a double and he picked up a stolen base. Max Leon had 2 hits and a walk. Alfredo Figaro fought his control and walked 4 and struck out 2 in 5.1 innings. Jay Sborz walked a batter but picked up his 6th save.

Erie 2 Altoona 3
Thad Weber lasted 6 innings and allowed 2 runs on 6 hits, 2 walks, and 5 K’s. Zach Simons fanned 3 in 2 innings but allowed a run. Audy Ciriaco went 2 for 4.

Lakeland 2 Clearwater 3
Adam Wilk allowed 2 runs on 2 walks, 6 hits, and 1 strike out. Matt Hoffman allowed the go ahead homer in relief. Kody Kaiser went 2 for 4. Billy Nowlin hasn’t found the stroke he had at West Michigan last year and his 4 K night dropped his average to .163.

West Michigan 8 Dayton 3
Jamie Johnson was moved from leadoff to clean-up and he went 3 for 4 with 2 doubles and a walk. Hernan Perez, Wade Gaynor, and Luis Salas all reach base 3 times as well. Jordan Lennerton homered and singled. Ramon Lebron lasted 5 innings and allowed 3 runs on 6 hits, 4 walks, and 3 K’s. Luis Angel Sanz fanned 4 in 3 innings of relief.

2010 Season, Game Post

Game 2010.016: Tigers at Angels

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Read the post game wrap up: Guillen holds hammy, Tigers hold on

Tonight Detroit plays their last game in Anaheim this season. If they win it would bring the road trip to 3-4. If they lose it means they will have dropped 3 straight series. Justin Verlander takes the mound for the Tigers and Joe Saunders goes for the Angels.

Verlander is coming off his best start of the season, a season that has seemed to go pretty badly so far. But then you look at his total numbers: 8.8 K/9, 3 K/BB, .87 HR/9, 1.35 WHIP. The numbers aren’t great but they don’t beget an ERA approaching 7 either. The problem is that half of the runners (50.5%) who get on base end up scoring. As that rate works it’s way towards a more normal ~70% that ERA will drop.

Continue reading Game 2010.016: Tigers at Angels →

2010 Season, Game Post

That’s using all your outs

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The Tigers performance with runners in scoring position of late has caused much consternation and understandably so. Sometime the failures have just been failures, but during this recent stretch a significant portion was just bad luck. It’s only fitting then that Ramon Santiago plated the go-ahead run with an “excuse-me” flop shot to left.

Brian Fuentes and the Angels were 1 strike away from escaping the 9th inning with the game tied when Santiago reached down and somehow lifted the ball into shallow left field. A good jump and secondary lead by Gerald Laird let him reach home just before the tag.

Continue reading That’s using all your outs →

2010 Season, Minors

Tigers Minor League Wrap 04.21.2010

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Toledo 1 Louisville 3
Enrique Gonzalez had a nice start allowing 3 runs (1 earned) on 6 hits, a walk, and 6 strike outs in 6 innings. Daniel Schlereth allowed 2 hits and 2 walks but fanned 3 and nobody crossed home plate on his watch. Offensively Ben Guez led the way with a double.

Bowie 5 Erie 3
Audy Ciriaco homered. Josh Burrus had 2 hits and a walk. Duane Below gave up 2 homers amongst 6 hits in 3 innings. It was another short outing for Below who is coming off of TJ surgery.

Clearwater 2 Lakeland 6
Brayan Villarreal continues to shine. He surrendered a solo homer, but he also fanned 9 and walked only 1. He has 26 strike outs and 2 walks in 15.1 innings this year. Billy Nowlin doubled and singled. Daniel Fields added 2 hits, a walk, and 2 stolen bases.

West Michigan 2 Dayton 5
Jamie Johnson went 3 for 3 with a walk and his OBP sits at .475. Mike Gosse added 2 hits and Wade Gaynor drove in 2 runs. Giovany Soto allowed 3 runs on 7 hits, no walks, and 3 K’s.

In other Whitecaps news, Jacob Turner’s start last night was pushed back due to forearm stiffness which doesn’t sound serious. Then again the organization has been down playing the Cody Satterwhite situation as well.

2010 Season, Game Post

Game 2010.015: Tigers at Angels

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Head over and read the post game analysis: That’s using all your outs

Were we not just in this same situation on Sunday? Tigers open up a series against a team that just ran off 3 wins by dropping the first two games. Fortunately Max Scherzer stepped up and the offense plated enough runs for a win that time. Can Jeremy Bonderman right the ship after his last rocky appearance?

Jered Weaver goes for the Angels. The Tigers fanned 13 times last night. Weaver has 21 K’s in 19 innings this season and only 3 walks. His only (and very minor) weakness so far is the 4 homers allowed. But with the Tigers only knocking out 8 homers this year it doesn’t really play into their strengths.

It’s a very lefty lineup:

  1. Jackson, CF
  2. Damon, LF
  3. Ordonez, RF
  4. Cabrera, 1B
  5. Guillen, DH
  6. Kelly, 3B
  7. Avila, C
  8. Santiago, SS
  9. Sizemore, 2B

Detroit Tigers at Los Angeles Angels – April 21, 2010 – MLB.com Gameday
Jeremy Bonderman photo courtesy of April A Taylor

2010 Season, Game Post

A Mighty Wind – Game 2010.014

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Scott Kazmir must have been some kind deceptive against the Tigers. He threw his fastball, which peaked at 92mph, 74 times and managed to record 15 swinging strikes with it. Sure, the Tigers chased a number of pitches outside of the strike zone, but they also were whiffing on pitches right down the middle.

Let’s think about this for a moment. His fastball wasn’t that fast. He threw it 78% of the time. And the Tigers couldn’t find it. If you include Kazmir’s entire night, the Tigers mustered only a 63% contact rate. For his career Kazmir has a 76% contact rate against and he was at 82% last year. I don’t get it.

Kazmir ultimately fanned 7 Tigers batters and by the end of the night 13 Tigers went down via the strike out.

Continue reading A Mighty Wind – Game 2010.014 →

2010 Season, Minors

Tigers Minor League Wrap 04.20.2010

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Toledo 4 Louisville 1
Don’t look now, but Armando Galarraga is dealing. He pitched 7 shut out innings and allowed 3 hits while walking none and fanning 6. That brings his K/BB ratio to 18:1. Casper Wells brought the thump with 2 homers, a single, and a walk. Jeff Frazier added a homer and Brennan Boesch and Danny Worth both had 2 singles.

Bowie 2 Erie 7
Wilkin Ramirez singled, tripled, and walked. Audy Ciriaco assumed third base duties and picked up 2 hits, a walk, and 2 stolen bases. Lauren Gagnier struck out 7 and walked 1 in 7.2 innings of 2 hit ball.

Brevard County 3 Lakeland 5
Mark Sorensen allowed 2 runs (1 earned) in 6 innings with no walks and 3 K’s. I missed Daniel Fields getting added to the Flying Tigers roster (presumably when Guez took Clete’s spot in Toledo), but he picked up a triple today (pictured above) while manning centerfield. Kody Kaiser went 3 for 5 with 2 doubles.

West Michigan 0 Dayton 3
Jamie Johnson, Wade Gaynor, and Jordan Lennerton each singled accounting for the totality of the Whitecaps offense. Victor Larez managed to allow just 1 run on 6 hits and 1 walk in 5.2 innings despite not recording a strikeout.

2010 Season, Game Post

Game 2010.014: Tigers at Angels

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Rick Porcello will try to rack up the Tigers 4th consecutive quality start. Of course it would help with the Tigers could solve the mystery of that elusive RISP success. It’s been bad the last few games, but it is unsustainable.

The Tigers .369 team OBP may also be unsustainable, but in the short term they are facing Scott Kazmir. Kazmir allowed 11 baserunners in 4 innings against the Yankees. Maybe that short term RISP issue will continue though because Dan Dickerson tweets-out that tonight’s lineup has hit .153 against Zazmir, but with 26 walks in 40 innings.

That 15-98 against Kazmir is:

  1. Jackson, CF
  2. Damon, LF
  3. Ordonez, RF
  4. Cabrera, 1B
  5. Guillen, DH
  6. Inge, 3B
  7. Raburn, 2B
  8. Laird, C
  9. Everett, SS

Detroit Tigers at Los Angeles Angels – April 20, 2010 – MLB.com Gameday

2010 Season, Minors

Tigers Minor League Wrap 04.19.2010

Toledo 10 Indianapolis 1
Toledo pretty much had their way with the Indians. Brennan Boesch hit his 3rd homer of the year and added a single. Wil Rhymes, Jeff Larish, and Casper Wells all doubled as part of two hit days. Phil Dumatrait allowed 1 run on 4 hits, 2 walks, and 3 K’s. Scot Drucker struck out 2 and allowed just 2 hits in 4 innings dropping his ERA to 0.84.

Bowie 3 Erie 5
Wilkin Ramirez was a triple short of the cycle and he picked up an outfield assist. Andy Dirks and Deik Scram added homers. Jon Kibler lasted 7 innnings, striking out 4 and allowing 3 runs on 5 hits and a walk. Luis Marte was perfect for 2 innings with 3 K’s.

Audy Ciriaco is back from his hand injury and Santo De Leon was cut to make room.

Lakeland – PPD

Great Lakes 5 West Michigan 3
Jade Todd allowed 3 runs (2 earned) on 6 hits and a walk in 6 innings while fanning 6. Shawn Roof had 2 hits and a walk. Jamie Johnson and Wade Gaynor each drew two walks.

2010 Season, Game Post

Game 2010.013: Tigers at Angels

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Things just don’t seem to go well for the Tigers in LA (or Anaheim). For all the talk of the Tigers struggles in the Metrodome, opportunity for frustration against the Angels always seems to run high. There was this game where people questioned Justin Verlander’s acehood. And this one where Jeremy Bonderman’s arm pretty much disintegrated. Or this one which started bad, got better, and ended miserable. People just don’t remember because the games are on so late.

Tonight it is Dontrelle Willis who will try and, well, do good. The Angels have the second worst run differential in the American League (behind the Red Sox) at –17. They hadn’t won a series until sweeping the Blue Jays this weekend and are now riding a 3 game win streak. Fernando Rodney is their closer.

Joel Pineiro goes for the Angels.Pineiro was actually quite awesome his last time out. He went 7 innings in Yankee stadium and allowed just 1 run on 5 hits with no walks and seven strike outs.

Detroit Tigers at Los Angeles Angels – April 19, 2010 – MLB.com Preview