PREGAME: The Tigers blow into the Windy City to take on the Wild Card leading White Sox. The Sox are coming off of 3 straight 1 run games against the Yankees where they came out on top twice. Over the last 10 days or so their has been quite a bit of shifting in the Central with the Tigers seeing their lead expand to double digits and the Twins briefly overtaking the White Sox. However all 3 teams are 6-4 in their last 10 so everyone’s right back where they started from.
Jose Contreras will be taking the ball for the Sox tonight. His best start of the last 4 was against the Tigers when he went 7 innings and allowed only 2 runs. Since then he’s still been effective lasting into the 7th inning in each of his last 3 starts, but a little more hittable allowing 4, 4, and 6 runs.
Justin Verlander who was given a free pass his last turn in the rotation, should be well rested for the Tigers. As Mack Avenue pointed out, the Tigers altered their rotation and bumped Verlander ahead of Rogers. While I don’t get into labeling starters #1, #2, etc., I did like the way Rogers was sandwiched between the 2 hard throwing righties. I’m not sure for the reasoning behind the move, except maybe to set a record for pick-offs in a game when Kenny Rogers takes on Mark Buehrle tomorrow.
Game Time 8:35pm
POSTGAME: Talk about a butt kicking. Jose Contreras owned the Tigers easily slicing through the lineup on his way to a 101 pitch complete game. Curtis Granderson and Carlos Guillen saw 30 of those 101 pitches. They also accounted for 3 of the 4 Tiger baserunners. Coincidence? Probably.
Meanwhile Justin Verlander was pitching from the stretch all night. The White Sox batting average on balls in play was .550. It seemed anything put in play was turning into a hit. Oh yeah, and there were those 2 bombs.
Craig Monroe made a nice play gunning down Alex Cintron.
Comments
6 responses to “Game 115: Tigers at White Sox”
Man, ugly game so far…I expected our hitters to fight more than this.
The US Cellular is the biggest pile of crap this side of the Metrodome. Thank god we have to play at both stadiums in an unbalanced schedule.
Okay…
I’m getting kind of officially a little bit scared about the future now…Let’s turn it around guys!
Discouraging.
[…] I got a bad feeling immediately. It took Contreres just seven pitches to get out of the first inning, and Curtis Granderson used four of them. In the second inning, Magglio Ordonez and Craig Monroe both found their pitch on the first offering. Both grounded out. In between, Carlos Guillen walked and Dmitri Young struck out. The Tigers were shut out until late in the sixth inning. It was getting perilously close to an AP alert crossing the wire. They stunk. There’s not much more you can say about it. The Tigers couldn’t get the hit. Couldn’t even find the patience to try, most of them. Even when someone connected with the ball, it was an out. Meanwhile, the White Sox had a .550 average for balls in play to go with two home runs (as pointed out by Detroit Tigers Weblog). Oh, and Detroit compounded it with two errors, one by Verlander himself. That makes three straight losses. Detroit lost 3 of 4 in early July, but you have to go back to June 4-7 to find a three-game losing streak. The White Sox were involved in that one too. How much so? The June 7 game was Verlander’s last loss before the latest one. The longest Tigers losing streak of the season is four, which occured in the last week of May. […]
Some of these so called tiger fans should stop freaking out. Its a long season and this team is not going to collapse. The pitching is too good and pudge and the manager will guide them into the playoffs on a high note. I think this team is better than either the 68′ or 84′ tigers.