The Detroit Tiger Weblog

Category: Game Post

  • Game 2010.017: Tigers at Rangers

    Check out the post game wrap-up: Questioning the IBB

    Max Scherzer got something many of us didn’t last night, a full night’s sleep. Scherzer traveled ahead of the team and got into Texas at a reasonable time. The rest of the team? Well, they may be sleepy. And with with Red Wings in the playoffs they didn’t even get to fly Red Bird One.

    Scherzer has two quality starts this season in 3 tries despite not finding the prolific strike out numbers he experienced last year. He’s only fanned 10 in 17 innings so far. Scherzer faced the Rangers once last year and held them to 2 runs in 6 innings.

    Scott Feldman went 7 innings in his first 2 starts, but didn’t make it out of the 3rd in his latest outing against the Yankees. He faced the Tigers once last year and Detroit got to him for 6 runs in 2.1 innings. Granderson did the bulk of the damage hitting homers in each of the first 2 innings.

    Detroit Tigers at Texas Rangers – April 23, 2010 – MLB.com Preview

  • Guillen holds hammy, Tigers hold on

    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.

  • Game 2010.016: Tigers at Angels

    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.

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  • That’s using all your outs

    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.

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  • Game 2010.015: Tigers at Angels

    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

  • A Mighty Wind – Game 2010.014

    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.

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  • Game 2010.014: Tigers at Angels

    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

  • Game 2010.013: Tigers at Angels

    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

  • Here’s to not getting swept

    I don’t know that things came any easier today for the Tigers, but the boys did enough to secure a 4-2 win and stave off panic in Detroit. Max Scherzer did his job, the offense did enough, and the bullpen locked it all down.

    Scherzer was quite good for the bulk of the day, save for Casey Kotchman being a tough out. Scherzer fanned 4 in 6 innings, and was fairly efficient with 87 pitches and likely could have gone another inning or two. Leyland’s reasons for pulling him were fairly sound though. Kotchman would have been due up in the 7th inning and Scherzer wouldn’t have faced him. In between was Ken Griffey Jr so Leyland went to Phil Coke.

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  • Game 2010.012: Tigers at Mariners

    PREGAME: The Tigers turn to Max Scherzer to stop their three game slide. Scherzer, like the rest of the rotation has a good start and a shaky start under his belt this year.

    Ian  Snell takes the bump for the Mariners who would like to sweep the Tigers.

    Your Laird-less lineup is:

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

  • The one where Verlander returns to form

    It appears that Justin Verlander seems to have found some of that rhythm that had proven so elusive this season. Unfortunately the Tigers bats couldn’t muster enough against Ryan Rowland-Smith and the Tigers dropped their 3rd game in a row.

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  • Game 2010.011: Tigers at Mariners

    PREGAME: The Tigers lost consecutive games for the first time this season. Let’s hope they don’t lose consecutive series for the first time this season after tonight’s game goes final.

    Justin Verlander is still going for his first win, and his first “ace-like” outing. The Tigers starters were delivered a nasty blow over the last 5 outings and this is an opportunity for one of those “stopper” type outings that folks are so fond of.

    He goes up against the hyphenator, Ryan Rowland-Smith. Rowland-Smith has made two starts and notched only two strike outs (with 6 walks). Both of those starts came against the A’s. The Tigers faced him once last year and got to him for 5 runs and chased him in the 6th inning. Ryan Raburn and Brandon Inge took him deep.

    Raburn finds himself playing right field tonight as Magglio Ordonez gets a turn at DH.

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

    Detroit Tigers at Seattle Mariners – April 17, 2010 – MLB.com Gameday