2014 Season, Game Post

Pregame 3: Baltimore Orioles at Detroit Tigers

62 Comments

Or is it Pre-Game? I’m never sure which way to go with that. At any rate, the Tigers will make another attempt at Game 3 of their perfect 162-0 season, which will include 81 walkoffs (or is it walk offs? walk-offs?), which is the max for that stat, as T Smith pointed out.

Yesterday’s rainout means that Drew “Can’t Buy A Start” Smyly will be skipped in the rotation, and the Tigers will hand the ball to Anibal this afternoon. At least it looks like him. It’s too foggy to tell for sure. In fact today’s game will likely be delayed; there is almost zero visibility at the moment.

If and when they do tee it up, Andrew Romine will get his first start at short as a Tiger, and oh-so-briefly-ex-Tiger Steve Lombardozzi will be starting at 2B for the Orioles. And this flew under my radar somehow, but on the bench for Baltimore is our old pal Delmon Young. Will be a pity not to watch him track down fly balls in the fog.

Today’s Thick-As-Pea-Soup Starting Lineup:

  1. Kinsler, 2B
  2. Hunter, RF
  3. Cabrera, 1B
  4. Martinez, DH
  5. Jackson, CF
  6. Avila, C
  7. Castellanos, 3B
  8. Romine, SS
  9. Davis, LF

P. Sanchez

62 thoughts on “Pregame 3: Baltimore Orioles at Detroit Tigers”

  1. Apparently the rain and wind is chasing the fog. Start time has been officially delayed until 1:15. We shall see.

  2. There should be a new “Sadistic” catagory for runners Avila almost throws out stealing seeing that he doesn’t throw out any attempting the steal!

      1. I think the Tigers should give Avila a 15-year, $30M contract extension, and put us out of our misery of hope. Catcher For Life Alex Avila.

        As a hitter, great eye for the strike zone, great power in his bat, but not many pitches he can hit well. Three True Outcomes are strikeout, walk, and groundball to the right side. Defensively, he’s very good, even if he’s not throwing out runners like he used to. Pitchers love him, seems like a great guy and great teammate, one of a minority of ballplayers you could call articulate. I think we’d miss him.

  4. So far Kinsler batting 1st is looking good. If the BOOBs hold up their end (pun intended), he should see a lot of RBI possibilities.

  5. Hey Romine..tge guy threw you 6 balls and one strike….and you K….no wonder you don’t play much

  6. Hey Romine..the guy threw you 6 balls and one strike….and you K….no wonder you don’t play much

    1. He definitely needs to work on strike zone recognition. Maybe nerves in first start? But still, that was a poor AB.

      1. It was an ok AB until the last pitch. Yeah, nerves, I’d say. Chance at RBI in a 3-2 count might make you pull the trigger if you weren’t quite sure it was a ball.

  8. As Ausmus said in relation to baserunning aggressiveness at the end of ST, “Some of these guys will have to be reined in”. Looks like Castellanos is going to be one of those guys.

  9. Hey Casstalanos we teach our high school runners to pick up the 3rd base coach before you get to third…another beyond rookie mistake

    1. He’s making me wonder if his head is really in the game, besides at the plate. And where did he tag Davis (going from 2B to 3B), exactly? On the helmet? From the only angle I got to see, it didn’t even look like he made a tag.

    1. He can throw from the hole in the outfield grass, too. That was a beauty.

      Nice 3-6-3 DP today. It’s only taken a few games to realize what an upgrade Cabrera over Fielder at 1B is. I didn’t think that was such a big deal, but I was wrong.

  11. Davis!!! .no bunt here..WOW!..he didn’t need his speed trotting around those bases!

  12. The layoff seems to have affected Mr. Gonzalez’ effectiveness. Hope the same isn’t true for Sanchez.

    1. V-Mart (VMart?) steal was awesome. Someone tell me the odds of these 3 things ever happening in a single baseball game again:

      Victor Martinez steals a base
      Rajai Davis hits a 3-run HR
      Austin Jackson is thrown out by a mile trying for a double

      Throw in “Miggy gets hit #2,000” and the odds get very long indeed.

  14. He “out slowed” them on the steal..he was running so slow they didn’t think that he was running…haha!

  15. Victor “out slowed ” them while running to second. HE was running so slow they didn’t think he was stealing….haha!

  16. Ausmus loses a challenge for the first time. Kind of good to get that one out of the way.

        1. Yeah, that looked like a sure reversal. What I understood of the ruling struck me as… obscure. “Involuntary transfer”? I count this as another correct challenge by Ausmus.

    1. New feature. We told you changes were coming. We couldn’t afford the edit button (you wouldn’t believe how expensive they are), but double-posting was 50% off.

  18. Romine never bobbled the ball til he was trying to pull it out to throw…kind of a strange one to lose. You could even see the secure catch…oh well!

  20. Howd U like to be a SS and have Cabrerra hit a one hopper At about 600 mph at you….no thanks

  21. Funniest part of that replay review is Joe West one of the worst umpires in the history of baseball IS in charge …might as well use Stevie Wonder!

    1. What’s the use of having replay ……. if the Magoo’s in NY still can’t get it right!
      This replay stuff just shows how often the umps are wrong!

  23. They are making it awfully hard on themselves to continue the Walkoff Win streak.

  27. Another pitching change for BAL. It’s always nice when you can burn through some of the opposition’s bullpen in the first game of a series.

    1. Did anyone else have a strong feeling, a by-God premonition – I’m serious – that Cabrera was gonna hit it out there for #2,000? And it just flew off his bat. I wonder what the speed of the ball leaving the bat on that one was. That would have *killed* the SS, jud.

      1. That’s what I’m talkin’ about. It’s like watching Cabrera get the pitch he knows is coming.

        1. I felt bad for Chamberlain. Throwing strikes and getting hammered. I’d like to see him turn it around in Detroit.

  32. Wanted to get this out earlier – props to Castellanos for his first big league RBI.

    1. Props to Castellanos for a nice first few games at the plate. He looks like he belongs already.

  33. Is it a bit strange that the bullpen savior , accoarding to the Tigers hasn’t thrown one pitch yet in 2014….Phil Coke 0.00

  34. T Smith’s “81 walk-offs” went right over my head. I owe him some valuable coupons redeemable toward valuable prizes.

    Pre-game, pregame, etc.: I struggle with it myself. I’ve started to lean away from the hyphen. Pre and post are prefixes (pre-fixes?), no need. I think the hyphen is called for in “walk-off.” A disparate words kind of thing. Walkoff looks like an anglicized Russian name (Smirn-off?). There was a time when I was careful to write “e-mail.” It’s “email” these days.

    Should I have capitalized “anglicized”? Ah, the complications of language.

  35. Looks like there might be a problem with Rajai Davis’s arm in LF, eh? Well, I’m anxious to see him start getting on base and stealing some bases.

  36. So Prince Fielder had a pretty bad baserunning blunder in the Rangers 8-1 loss last night. He missed a go sign from 3B coach Gary Pettis (on a pretty clear run scoring single), and then hesitated, stuttered, went back and forth, well, you know. He didn’t dive and then fall 8 feet from the bag…you can watch last night’s gaffe yourself here. http://mlb.mlb.com/mlb/gameday/index.jsp?gid=2014_04_04_texmlb_tbamlb_1&mode=video.

    After the game he told reporters “I didn’t get a good jump and I didn’t pick up Gary in time. It was one of those days. We played hard, but we made a couple of mistakes. We just have to come back and be sharper [Saturday].”

    He either ignores or fails to understand the importance of certain situations.I mentioned this a few days ago, but I believe that Fielder is playing under much greater expectations down here than Kinsler is up there.

  37. At $20 mil Prince doesn’t really care. After all he is just as he puts it “taking care of my family”..

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