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  • Zach Miner called up

    While all the reports yesterday were that Andrew Miller would be called up with Jeremy Bonderman going on the disabled list, today’s game notes indicate that Zach Miner was called up. My guess is that this is the result of the rainout and today’s doubleheader. Miner will give the team another arm in the bullpen if need be today. He, or perhaps one of the other relievers (maybe Byrdak?) will probably be sent down following today’s game to make room for Miller.

    Miner had a rough start to the year, but has made 3 quality starts in a row and hasn’t allowed a run in his last 13 innings.

    UPDATE: Thanks to those who sent this, but Miner is starting in place of a sick Maroth.

  • Tigers Minor League Wrap – 5/16/07

    Louisville 5 Toledo 4 (11 innings, resumption of suspended game)
    Time Perez had two doubles and Mike Hessman homered and doubled. Chris Shelton added 2 singles and a walk. The bullpen pieced together the rest of this game after Yorman Bazardo pitched 2 innings before the rains came on Wednesday night. Cory Hamman pitched 3 2/3 scoreless innings allowing 4 hits.

    Trenton 1 Erie 2
    The Wolves only mustered 3 hits, two of which belonged to Erick Almonte including a homer. It was Almonte’s first game with the Seawolves. Eddie Bonine pitched 8 innings allowing 1 run on 4 hits, 2 walks, and 3 K’s.

    Lakeland 7 Sarasota 4
    Mike Hernandez homered for one of his 3 hits. Wilkin Ramirez had 3 singles and a walk and added 3 stolen bases. Cameron Maybin and Wil Rhymes each doubled, singled, and walked. Eleazar Aponte was dinged for 3 runs on 6 hits, 3 walks and 4 K’s over 4 1/3 innings.

    West Michigan – DNP

    Minors News

  • Bonderman to the DL

    Andrew Miller
    Andrew Miller – cr. Roger DeWitt

    Jeremy Bonderman has been placed on the DL retro to the 9th. Andrew Miller will start on Friday night.

    MORE: The first post was brief, because it was from a blackberry. With an actual keyboard at my disposal, I’ll expand a little more.

    This DL stint doesn’t worry me greatly. This is a blister issue, which should only need a couple weeks to resolve itself. With it being retroactive to May 9th, Bonderman will be eligible to come off the DL on the 24th. The 24th would be his next turn to start so the damage may be limited to 2 starts.

    As for Miller, his numbers are a little more complex than what you see at a first glance. He of course shined in his AA debut last weekend going 8 innings and allowing only an unearned run on 6 hits, 7 K’s, and no walks.

    At Lakeland he was a little up and down with walks being his only struggle. He had a 28/15 K/BB ratio in 41 innings. The complexity comes in his 3.48 ERA. By all accounts Lakeland’s infield defense was poor, and Miller is an extreme ground ball pitcher (4.5 ground outs for every air out). With the Tiger defense behind him, he could be fine if he keeps the ball down.

    And for those of you worrying about rushing him, I don’t see it as an issue. He already tasted the big leagues last year, and they’re not asking him to join the rotation. This is a spot start (or two) and with make-ups in July this was likely to occur at some point this season.

  • Stuff that doesn’t fit elsewhere

    You may have noticed I’ve been doing a little something different with link posts. I’ve been posting things to del.icio.us throughout the day, and then del.icio.us will dump them all into a blog post. It’s nice and convenient for me, but I don’t have as much room to comment. So tonight I’ll go old school.

    Schedule Changes

    The Tigers have had a couple start times change, and had a couple of their rainout make ups added. The May 26th game against Cleveland and the June 23rd game against the Braves have been moved from 7:00pm to 3:55pm and are now part of the Fox National package. The June 16th game originally scheduled for 3:55 on Fox was moved to 7:00pm and will be on FSN Plus.

    The Toronto rain out/cold out will be made up on September 10th at 7:00pm and will be televised on FSN Detroit.

    The White Sox rain out will be made up as part of a day-night doubleheader with a 2:00pm first pitch on July 24th. It’s in the middle of a string of 16 consecutive games without and off day, so an additional starter will need to be called up.

    Bondo ready to return

    Danny Knobler reports that Jeremy Bonderman looks likely to return to the rotation on Friday night. The Tigers are already doing enough mixing and matching with their arms, so getting things back to normal will be nice.

    Infante to change at-bat music

    From the same Knobler piece, we find out Placido Polanco’s and Omar Infante’s at-bat music. I’ve long said that my favorite at-bat music for any Tiger is Infante’s so finding out artist (Tono Rosario) was great. But finding out that Infante planned to change it was disappointing to say the least.

    Granderson doesn’t need no stinkin’ batting average

    Beyond the Boxscore has been handing out weekly awards and last week Curtis Granderson won the Batting Average is For Wussies award on the strength of a 975 OPS despite a meager 250 batting average. That’s been par for the season for Granderson. Curtis is 7th in slugging and tied for 2nd in extra base hits. What’s new is that he’s started to walk. After only 6 walks in April, he’s already at 7 in May.

  • Tigers Minor League Wrap – 5/15/07

    Louisville 2 Toledo 0
    This game was suspended due to rain in the 2nd inning.

    Trenton 4 Erie 2
    Eulogio De La Cruz allowed 4 runs in the first inning, but settled down and followed with 6 scoreless innings. In total he allowed 5 hits and 3 walks while fanning 7. Jeff Larish doubled and Kody Kirkland was 1 for 4.

    Sarasota 1 Lakeland 2
    Ovandy Suero had 2 hits, 2 walks, 4 stolen bases, and 2 caught stealing – so he was busy. Cameron Maybin was 0 for 2 with a sac fly. Justin Justice sat out again today.

    West Michigan – PPD Rain

  • Game 38: Tigers at Red Sox

    PREGAME: The Tigers will try to nip this losing streak at 2 games. Tonight it will be heat (Justin Verlander) against the opposite of heat (Tim Wakefield)

    Wakefield has been ridiculously good this year posting a 1.79 ERA. He’s done it by keeping the ball in the park with only 2 homers in 45 innings. Combined with a WHIP a smidge over 1 and that isn’t a lot of scoring. He’s been particularly tough on left handers with only 2 extra base hits allowed this season.

    Justin Verlander has been pretty good himself with a 2.83 ERA. His weakness is that he’s been prone to bouts of wildness with 2 5 walk outings already.

    Game Time 7:05

    POSTGAME: Describing Verlander’s start as excellent may be an understatement. In fact, I’d probably rank it as the 2nd most impressive start this year by a Tiger (behind Bonderman’s duel with Halladay). Statistically it was on par with several other starts by Robertson, Durbin, and of course Justin himself. However, given the context of the situation: against the Red Sox offense, after a couple bad losses, with a depleted bullpen – that was really stepping up.

    And props to the Sox fans who recognized the effort with a standing ovation.

    Fernando Rodney came in for the last 4 outs, and was quite effective despite allowing 2 baserunners on a fly that found a spot between Granderson and Monroe and a tough chopper to Rodney.

    The Tigers bats bounced back after struggling against Matsuzaka. They racked up 12 hits and had a couple other hard hit balls that were fielded clean. Every player except Marcus Thames was able to contribute one way or another.

    It was a nice 7-2 win, returning the favor from the night before. It also kept the Indians at bay who thumped the Twins tonight.

  • links for 2007-05-15

  • Reviewing Ty and The Babe

    Tom Stanton, who is probably best known for The Final Season, has written another book: Ty and the Babe.

    In the book, Stanton chronicles one of baseball greatest and bitterest rivalries. Cobb was widely regarded as the best player of his day, at a time when small ball, bunting and stealing were part of the science of baseball. Cobb was on top of the baseball world until a young slugger who was more brawn than brains captured the Nations baseball attention.

    Stanton vividly describes their on field clashes and the venom that eventually turned to a mutual respect and even friendship years after their retirement.

    The book also details the Has Beens Golf Tournament that took place after both retired from the game. It was a series of 3 matches that took place in Boston, New York and Detroit that got the competitive juices flowing for both old timers.

    I thoroughly recommend the book. Stanton did a wonderful job spinning details of the battles on the diamond and the links. The book also presents Cobb in a much more favorable light than you are used to reading. He clearly wasn’t a saint, but he’s not depicted as evil either and at times Stanton even paints him as a sympathetic character.

    For your enjoyment, here is an excerpt: (more…)

  • Tigers Minor League Wrap – 5/14/07

    Toledo 1 Pawtucket 3
    Chris Shelton, Timo Perez and Mike Hessman had the only 3 hits. Dennis Tankersley allowed 10 hits and 4 walks over 6 innings but limited the damage to 2 runs. Ian Ostlund allowed his first run after 4 Toledo appearances since his promotion.

    Erie-DNP

    Sarasota 1 Lakeland 8
    Burke Badenhop allowed 1 run on 4 hits and 5 walks over 6 innings. Cameron Maybin singled and walked. Justin Justice missed the last couple games, but nothing has been reported int he Lakeland Ledger yet.

    West Michigan 5 Great Lakes 4
    Gorkys Hernandez and Lou Ott knocked their first homer of the year. Brennan Boesch added 2 hits. Lauren Gagnier allowed 3 runs on 7 hits.

  • Game 37: Tigers at Red Sox

    PREGAME: The Tigers look to bounce back from a shellacking in the Metrodome by taking on the best team in the American League.

    The Red Sox sport the best record, and the best run differential. Like the Tigers they are winners of 8 of their last 10 and 14 of their last 20.

    The Red Sox will send out some rookie from Japan named Daisuke Matsuzaka. I hear he throws 14 different pitches for strikes at various speeds and arm angles. Basically, his pitches are like snow flakes, no two are alike. In all seriousness, he’s better than his 4.80 ERA and is striking out a batter an inning. He has struggled at home with two-thirds of his runs and only a quarter of his strikeouts coming at Fenway.

    He’ll be opposed by Nate Robertson who has been quite good, except for his last outing where he was rocked by Seattle.

    This series is always a treat. I really enjoy watching games at Fenway (on TV of course) and wish the Tigers traveled their more often.

    Game time 7:05pm

    POSTGAME: The Tigers have dropped two in a row since losing the first 2 games to Minnesota. Nate Robertson battled, but had a hard time putting hitters away. There wasn’t a lot of hard hit balls, but enough balls in play fell for hits to run up his pitch count and plate 3 runs.

    Of course the Tigers couldn’t muster much offense either, save for Curtis Granderson. For the first time in a while they weren’t driving the ball. I don’t know if it was Dice-K, or the looming monster, but there seemed to be quite a few grounders to the left side. The right handers seemed to be looking to pull the outside pitch and there appeared to be a lot of “roll-overs.”

    Bobby Seay was the latest member of the pen to blow-up. Turns out it didn’t matter much, except that with a high pitch count tonight, he probably isn’t available tomorrow. Tim Byrdak however did excellent in 2 innings of work.

    Boston 7 Detroit 1

  • Vasquez out, Byrdak in

    The Tigers will have at least one fresh arm in the bullpen for the start of the Red Sox series. They purchased the contract of Tim Byrdak from Toledo. The 33 year old lefty has been effective this year, allowing 4 runs over 22 innings. He has fanned 25 against 7 walks. He has also spent parts of the last 2 years with the Baltimore Orioles so Fenway Park should be a little familiar with 5 appearances there.

    Virgil Vasquez was of course optioned back to Toledo to make room on the 25 man roster. Kenny Rogers was moved to the 60 day DL to free up a spot on the 40 man.

  • Tigers Minor League Wrap -5/13/07

    Toledo 3 Pawtucket 4
    Mike Hessman went 3 for 3 and Chris Shelton, Timo Perez, Jack Hannahan, and Chris Maples all had multi-hit games. Roch Chiavacci pitched 6 2/3 innings allowing 1 run on 5 hits, no walks, and 5 K’s.

    Erie 3 Akron 4
    Erie only mustered 2 hits and 2 walks, yet scored 3 runs. Jair Jurrjens went 7 innings allowing just 1 run on 4 hits. He walked 5 and struck out 5.

    Lakeland – DNP

    Great Lakes 5 West Michigan 12
    Gorkys Hernandez and Audy Ciriaco each had 2 hits and a walk. James Skelton went 4 for 5 with 2 doubles. Jonah Nickerson was touched for 5 runs on 5 hits, 3 walks, and 1 strikeout in 6 innings.