Some thunder from the bat of Air Laird, some cleverly induced wild pitches, and the 6-3 Tigers head to Kansas City to once again defend their perch atop the AL Central, in their 2012 night game debut.
Without the big bat of Laird in tonight’s lineup, the Tigers will have to depend on help from unlikely sources, perhaps even Miguel Cabrera. Cabrera is in the midst of an 0-18 slump, the longest since he went 0-23 as a wee tyke on the Marlins.
Justin Verlander will try for a third straight brilliant start, and hope this one ends better than the other two did. And if the Royals choke, he may even get the save. If anyone on the Royals is going to give him trouble, it is, unsurprisingly, the dreaded Bill Butler, who has hit Verlander at a career .359 pace.
2nd-year lefty Danny Duffy will take the mound for the Royals. Duffy was 0-2, 5.63 against Detroit last season, but is fresh off 6 shutout innings with 1 hit, 4 walks against Oakland.
Today’s Player of the Pregame: Delmon Young
Young’s bat started to heat up against the White Sox, and he should welcome the Kauffman stadium lights. Delmon is a career .304 hitter in night games, vs. .255 in day games. And as DH, he doesn’t have to dizzy himself in left.
Today’s Under-the-Lights Lineup:
- Austin Jackson CF
- Brennan Boesch RF
- Miguel Cabrera 3B
- Prince Fielder 1B
- Delmon Young DH
- Ryan Raburn LF
- Jhonny Peralta SS
- Alex Avila C
- Brandon Inge 2B
Comments
66 responses to “Game 2012.10: Tigers at Royals”
After yesterdays poor performance at the plate and being pinch hit for ….. why is Inge in the line-up tonight?
Leyland: “Inge is gonna play 2B agianst LH g..dammit, and I don’t want to talk about it any more.”
I would rather see Ramone at second.
It’ll come, but be prepared to put up with this for awhile. The loyalty thing is just going to have to run its course – sooner rather than later I hope, but we’ll see.
I’m gonna make an effort to support Leyland for a while since everyone outside of Tigers fans seems to think he’s a top 10 manager. Maybe it will help me to make sense of it all.
Ahem.
“Inge is a major leaguer, I’m not going to make any rash decisions after 2 plate appearances. He was our guy against Lefties going into the season and that hasn’t changed.”
Actually, Inge’s track record vs. lefties isn’t bad, over .800 OPS in recent years.
“[Delmon]…. doesn’t have to dizzy himself in left.” Um, I think Rayburn has that covered.
Speaking of Rayburn, Leyland inexplicably has him hitting 6th again. Either he is trying to show him confidence or he is truthfully afraid of having 2 black holes back to back in the 8-9 slots.
JV may need his shutout stuff again tonight.
A-Jax showing he has muscle too ….. oh yea.
He is still K-ing to much and I expect him to regress, but he is certainly putting some muscle on the ball and he is walking more too.
AJax must feel lonely having the only glove in the outfield.
Boesch isn’t that bad is he? And Rayburn doesn’t need one.
Agreed. Even when his hitting tails off, he has to stay in the lineup for that reason alone. Scared to think of what it’d be like out there with a mediocre center fielder.
It seems that Prince is hitting into quite a few DP so far this year?
Needless to say, he won’t be beating many relays to 1B on those infield grounders. And with Young batting 5th (23 GIDP last year), there is going to be a lot of around-the-horn action whe the Tigers play.
This is why I’m in favor of running AJax a lot until we start getting some production from the two-spot. We hit into two double plays the other day with him stuck on first.
We definitely are lacking in defense. Terry Foster just tweeted “Magglio woulda caught that”. Lol
Somehow Inge got almost as close to the ball as Boesch…Boesch isn’t that slow, he must have just got an awful break on it.
How is it that Leland keeps giving players days off but not Raburn?!?
How about giving Cabrera a day off? I think he might be hurt. Remember that at-bat versus Tampa last week where he tweaked his wrist on a swing and kept shaking his hand? He doubled later in that at-bat, but has been hitless ever since. If he was hitting the ball hard I wouldn’t be concerned, but the majority of his outs have been weak ground balls or strikeouts. Cabby is too good for something to not be wrong with him physically.
What the heck is Leyland trying to pull with Inge and Raburn starting yet again today? There are effectively two blackholes in the line-up offensively…It is painful watching them play and kill so many scoring opportunities with just bad at-bats…
The Raburn thing is getting ridiculous.
Yes…yes it is… As is the Inge thing….One or both have got to go….There has got to be better options out there than having both of them in the lineup on a regular basis…
Inge is today’s Laird.
Man, Pretty good shot there
Yeah, he drilled it. Opposite field, too, that’s what he’s done when he has had hot streaks.
That’ll keep him in the lineup for another 30 games.
crickets
No way….Inge would go and hit a homer right after I get done bashing him…
Leyland is a genius. OK, except for the Raburn thing.
@ Kevin – its crickets because we are all in shock
Boy, Cabrera is in a funk…
I see Gene Lamont is in mid-season form.
I just tuned in. don’t tell me that Geno just produced an out at third or worse yet at the plate with another of his classic base running calls?
He tried to get Peralta from 1st to 3rd on a single, was out by a mile (Francoeur has a great arm).
He was out cleanly, but it was only two steps. If that ball was off by a couple feet, he’s safe. It was an aggressive call, but I like it.
Babe Ruth didn’t hit a HR every time up either.
has Raburn’s average dropped to .001 yet?
It drops about .002 each AB, so another 33 or so PA should bring him close.
And that isn’t outside the realm of possibility; he had a 0 for 30 slump 2 or 3 years ago.
I just did some checking and after the 0 for 4 tonight, Rayburn is 2 for 31 on the season. So, to get down to .001 he would have to go 0 for his next 169 official ABs. The question is, can he do it.
It’s getting close to Potato Time, we need to score some more runs here.
Yes. The Valverde show has gotten quite dicey as of late.
Here we go! Justin grabs the glove and heads out for the 9th…
Ahh crap, this is looking all too familiar…
i see where Raburn’s avg is matching today’s game-time temperature…
I didn’t realize it was below zero in Kansas City today…
Leyland the gambler!
What the heck is going on?!?!?!? This is insane!
VERLANDER! Never in doubt.
With all the drama, can he get credit for both a win and a save? :-p
JV earned his salary and ‘that win’ today.
131 pitches for Verlander tongiht. Leyland is a genius.
J. Leyland saw his life flash before his eye with that last pitch
131 pitches from JV today
Man alive….that was too much…
well the bullpen is rested should Smyly run into trouble tomorrow.
Smily is on a low pitch count, so they’ll need the bullpen anyway.
Can I say, it’s not easy being Leyland. Everyone second guesses him, but that’s 20/20 vision.
Just look at Verlander’s 3 starts this year. First game, he gets pulled for the ninth, Valverde blows it and Leyland gets crapped on. Second game, he keeps Verlander in and he blows it himself. Valverde comes in and makes it worse. Leyland gets crapped on. Third game is tonight’s and it’s all Verlander and came very close to being another blown game.
I think we should all recognize it isn’t as easy as we imagine it to be when we make the perfect decisions in our head. Look how tricky it is… And that’s when you’re relying on talented guys: 2 of the top 5 Cy Young vote-getters last year.
So, I’m going to cut Leyland some slack. Except when he puts Inge in the line-up. That’s definitely wrong. Oh, wait…
Fister is injured, Valverde has blown a save, Raburn is hitting under .100, Scherzer has not been very good, Cabrera is hovering around .200. Yet, the Tigers are 7-3. Pretty Amazing. AJaxx has been awesome and we have had a different bat every game it seems. That is depth, I suppose. Not to mention, the work of Porcello, Verlander, Below and Dotel. Miggy has to get a hit tommorow or I am going to start to believe that the 3rd base position is cursed in Detroit. Hopefully, the rookie can give us 6 innings.
An interesting Verlander profile..
http://www.mensjournal.com/justin-verlander
Nice find stephen.
Easy find since I write for MJ.
Whoa, big time.
I would have been much more interested had the article been playing putt-putt with Brandon Inge. “That was a warm-up, wasn’t trying to hit the ball. Practice strokes don’t count.”
Smokey said batting Rayburn in the 6Th spot tonight was a no brainer….. I dont think he means No Brainer like I think a no brainer is for putting him there
More Inge Saga:
http://www.blessyouboys.com/2012/4/17/2950344/why-is-brandon-inge-still-on-the-tigers
Saw that, but I don’t agree. Inge is just fine vs. lefties. If Leyland confines him to that he can help the team.