Rick Porcello and the Tigers against Brett Anderson and the A’s. Here’s hoping for a win. It’s me and Mrs. billfer’s anniversary tonight so you cats are on your own.
Brennan Boesch gets the night off after not getting the ball out of the infield. Probably a good place to spot Ryan Raburn regardless.
- Jackson, CF
- Damon, DH
- Ordonez, RF
- Cabrera, 1B
- Raburn, LF
- Guillen, 2B
- Inge, 3B
- Laird, C
- Everett, SS
Billfer, congrats to you & your honey on the anniversary!
We get the Ryan Raburn experience in LF tonight…I guess maybe that’s to encourage Porcello to induce a lot of ground balls.
And of course, since Raburn is playing in Boesch’s spot, he is hitting 5th in the batting order. What do we think the over/under is on Cabrera walks tonight?
Congrats Billfer and the Mrs. Im sure your blogging in instead of celebrating
can we keep this game out of The Morboro mans pitching change reach please!
hey strike three and Laird even caught it…now theres a good sign
Backing up the league’s best righthanded hitter with a guy batting .196 looks like pure genius to me. So does removing our second-best power hitter for this same .196 hitter.
why is Verlander pitching tonight?
Jimmy had a new bunch of line up cards printed by Kinkos now that guillen is back and becasues the names are alreraedy printed onthem it is easier to just sctatch one name off instead of making a sensible line up
Of all people to get robbed of a HR… Poor guy. What a great catch.
Oh that’s just not fair…I mean poor Laird of all people
Well, that casts a different light on Leyland using Perry yesterday…apparently Valverde was out on a 1-day leave of absence (?), and he was saving Zumaya as replacement closer
Yawn! Do the
tigers get to bat today?
Anyone know the technical reason why Porcello has given up so many fly balls?? I don’t see anything different about his delivery, but I’m not a pitching coach. The balls are staying relatively low in the strike zone… I don’t get it.
On a separate topic, why are the Tigers making Brad Anderson look like Cy Young? He’s thrown some pretty hittable pitches. Bad luck?
Dang. That was two runs if it gets by… Sigh.
Porcello usually has a bit of sink to his low pitches ,It seems lately even though a lot of them are low they are relatively flat as apposed to that sinking acion. More batters seem to get under his flatter pitch more
That makes sense. I just haven’t noticed his pitches looking flat. Oh well, Brad Thomas is here to save the day. It’s a bummer that Porcello can pitch into the 7th, give up only 2 runs, yet have no chance at a Win. That’s pretty sad given our lineup.
Hmm, Jumpin’ Gene Lamont holds Ajax, but sends Ramblin’ Ryan against Ichiro
Great DP there. We needed that.
and Laird and for that matter Avila are in the line up for what reason??????
This. Is. Brutal.
We need a miracle!
the best part of watching the Tigers is after Cabrerra today but ususally Boesch you can leave for 30 minutes get work done around the house and return for Jackson 30-40 minutes lastrer and never miss a beat!!!!!!!!!!!
kind a funny we use Valverde in a 0-6 game but couldnt use him or Zumaya when we were ahead yesterday….atta boy Jim
Valverde wasn’t at the stadium yesterday, he was out on a 1-day leave of absence, i’m not sure why
maybe Zumaya was his driver and thats why we saw Perry back to back
Yeah, the Free Press just said it was a ‘personal matter’.
Man, this team leads the league in excused absences. Seriously, I know everyone has personal lives, but Christ on a Cracker, you’ve got your cleanup guy and your closer missing three games in a row for personal matters. This definitely is not happening on the Yankees or Phillies. Kind of lets you know the players are running the asylum. Want to have more time to spend with your family and working out your stuff? Feel free not to be paid tens of millions of dollars! Otherwise, feel free not to not take personal days or two games off for the birth of your child. Seriously, I’m pretty sure if I was in Cabrea’s shoes, drunk and disorderly before the biggest game last season, I’m not taking two days off for my child’s birth. And before anyone gets on me for being insensitive to family matters, I come from a military family where my dad was away for a lot of milestones. And guess what? It sucked, but if you join the military that’s part of the deal. If you want set days off, go work for the post office. Don’t play major league baseball where 24 other guys count on you. Do you think Kirk Gibson or Jack Morris ever took personal days? I doubt it.
I couldn’t disagree more. I don’t know why Valverde was gone, but I have no problems with Cabrera missing 2 games to be there for his child and wife. They get paid millions of dollars because they are among the best in the world at what they do. They miss lots of family stuff throughout the course of a season. Being there for the birth of your child is significant enough that they should be there.
Kirk Gibson and Jack Morris have no bearing on the discussion. It’s a different era.
Ok, lets go with two from this era. I can’t imagine Derek Jeter or Mariano Rivera missing two games. I know Cabrera is a great player, he could be the MVP this year, and I know great players have always been coddled, see Mickey Mantle, but that’s two series on 60 games where he was either not ready to play–White Sox– or had personal business–Mariners. I remember Miner taking personal days last year or the year before. That’s three guys on the current 40-man roster. I can’t remember three other guys taking personal days on any other team while I’ve been watching baseball. I just think this team has a tradition of excusing players’ foibles, be it the taking of personal days, Zumaya’s alleged moving injury, Dontrelle’s maybe or maybe not anxiety disorder, and allowing Inge to play in the all-star game and participate in the Home Run Derby with two aching knees that really could have used three days of no travel and no playing. Baseball isn’t a sport of independent contractors, it’s a team game and the team doesn’t seem to get put first enough with this franchise.
Foibles was the wrong word to use. And if Cabrera hadn’t spit the bit and got drunk before the biggest series of the season last year, I’d be a lot more inclined to not complain about the two days off.
And don’t forget Magglio Ordonez leaving the team to be with his wife when she had cancer. Or Carlos Guillen the year before when he left to be with his wife when she nearly died during childbirth. Yeah, these Tigers have their priorities way out of whack and are just coddled and running the asylum.
Personal days for these types of matters happen every season to every team. Even the vaunted Yankees.
Cabrera certainly screwed up last season. There’s no excuse and no hiding from it. Being there for the birth of his daughter has nothing to do with that. The Tigers didn’t coddle him then. They stuck his hungover shell out there.
And what were they supposed to do with Zumaya? And they did the best they could with Dontrelle. I don’t get what these things have to do with allowing players to be there for a birth or a funeral. This isn’t your finest argument.
Maybe not my finest argument, but I didn’t use the Ordonez or Guillen cases for a reason so not sure why you’re using them now. Of course, there are reasons to have excused sick days, I’m not saying that. I’ll just end this thread by saying I just don’t see the level of professionalism with the Tigers that I see with other organization whether it be baseball or other sports. There are certain teams that organizationally seem undiscipllined, the Bulls with their GM and head coach getting into a fight stands out, and I think that matters. We’ve had more than our share of players miss games for a slew of explained and unexplained reasons, and I don’t think that happens with championship clubs. Each individual one can be explained away, but there’s just been too many of them. Great teams police themselves and have a player like a Jeter who sets the tone for the team. The Tigers just haven’t had that kind of moral authority in one of their stars, whether it be because the star is too young (Verlander) too troubled (Cabrera) or too shy (Ordonez). All the little things add up to a game lost here and a game lost there and next thing you know the team misses the playoff by an eyelash. Baseball has always been great for harboring knuckleheads in the sport, Damon is a classic, but I feel this team could use one less airhead and one more stereotypical, tobacco-chewing gamer.
That’s just my opinion, of course.
The military is a lot more serious matter to be missing milestones than a baseball game.
Cabrera plays more games than just about anyone else in baseball. I bet he’ll end up with 160 games played at the end of the season.
It’s been nearly 9 months since Cabrera’s drinking incident and the birth of his child. Coincidence?
Mr. X, you bring up an excellent point. It hasn’t quite been eight months and my theory is Cabrera went on the drinking spree after his wife told him she was pregnant. To paraphrase Seth Rogen in ‘Knocked Up,’ guys sometime react unfavorably to the news.
But that’s just a theory.
Oakland BOBS 5 RBI 4 runs Tigers BOBS 0 for whatever……….story of the season
Well at least Halladay threw a perfect game tonight that I got to watch, instead of this garbage.
well look at it this way Raburn- Laird-Inge and Everett extended their do NOTHING streak to almost all of April and only a couple days left in May….wil lthey continue….tune in tomorrow Tiger fans
Exactly why they should have never been asked to join the roster.
No more D-train.
I saw that. Although it makes sense, I’m surprised. I suppose this signals the end of the D-Train experiment??
Yes, the absolute end. DFA.
They can still trade or option him, can’t they? I thought they got a week or something to make a move.
So how about Coke getting stretched out into a lefty starter? He’s pitched well this year.
wish Willis the best…class guy…..hope he can straighten out in the National league……who’s next ….don’t stop here!……..
The final numbers: Dontrelle Willis, (2008-2010) 101 innings pitched, 200 baserunners allowed, 2-8 6.86 ERA. Oh yeah, and $30 million earned. Possibly the greatest free agent pitching disaster in the history of baseball.
Coming on the heels of the demise of Gary Coleman, I think the timing of the DFA is troubling.
OK, perhaps that is a bit obscure, even for me
I know Coke has been discussed as a potential starter before, but if history shows us anything, it’s don’t change Coke.
However, Coke Zero is serviceable. It does taste a lot like regular Coke, but just a little bit flat. Just the way Coke was the other night.
Looks like that loss in Seattle Wednesday afternoon has put this team into a full-on freefall. Minnesota will have this division wrapped up by mid-August. I don’t think we or anyone else in the division can hold a candle to them this year. I didn’t want to believe that, but its becoming painfully clear that we aren’t going to finish with a winning record, much less challenge for the division title. When you get pushed around at home by Oakland there isn’t much to look forward to.
Oakland has a very similar record to us. What makes them SO much worse than us, or any other team 3-5 games over .500??
We’re slumping. It happens. We’ll bounce back and we’ll forget about these 8 crappy games.
I am a white elephant.
I have wisdom exceeding my ears.
I predict there are things to come that are unpredictable.