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  • Game 32: Mariners at Tigers

    PREGAME: An interesting blurb on ESPN.com this morning cited that the Tigers, the current owners of an 8 game winning streak, haven’t won 9 games in a row since 1984. To keep the streak alive they are going to rely on Nate Robertson to do battle with Cha Seung Baek.

    Game time barring rain delays is 7:05pm

    POSTGAME: Eh, what are ya gonna do? This game started out great with the Tigers connecting for runs in each of the first 2 innings on a leadoff homer and triple. Meanwhile Nate Robertson retired the first 7 Mariners with ease. Next thing you know the Tigers get stuck on the 3 hit mark while Seattle connects for 10 hits off of Nate Robertson. A poor showing by Jason Grilli pretty much ensured the Tigers weren’t coming back in this one.

    • When Jose Guillen took Nate Robertson deep to take the lead, it was only the 3rd tater that Nate had allowed this year.
    • It seemed pretty clear that the Tigers as a team had a game plan to jump on first pitch fastballs. It appeared to be a decent strategy generating a number of hard hit balls. Trouble was that only a few of them fell for hits. I don’t think this was the team reverting back to their old ways of being overagressive, I think it was by design.
    • Placido Polanco swung and missed twice last night. You just know something wasn’t right.
    • Inge had 2 hits last night pushing his average to .200. Exciting? No. But at least all the starters are off the interstate.

    Mariners 9 Tigers 2

  • links for 2007-05-09

  • Tigers Minor League Wrap – 5/8/07

    Toledo 5 Rochester 6
    Timo Perez homered and doubled and Ryan Raburn added 2 doubles. Ron Chiavacci allowed 2 earned runs (5 total runs) over 6 innings with 6 K’s and no walks.

    Erie 3 Altoona 4
    Jackson Melian had 2 hits to lead the offense. Jeff Larish doubled and drove in all 3 runs. Jair Jurrjens allowed 3 runs over 6 innings with 5 strikeouts and 1 walk.

    Jupiter 7 Lakeland 7 (11th inning in progress)
    Wilkin Ramirez doubled, homered, and walked. Burke Badenhop allowed 1 run on 6 hits over 7 innings.

    Cedar Rapids 2 West Michigan 1
    Brennan Boesch had 2 hits and Scott Sizemore tripled. Jonah Nickerson pitched a complete game allowing 2 runs on 5 h its, no walks, and 9 K’s.

  • Guess the pitcher

    Do you want to play a game?

    In classic Rob Neyer style, let’s do a little Player A vs Player B

    Both performances are from relief pitchers prior to their 29th birthday. Both players had pretty uninspiring starts to their careers, bouncing between the majors and minors. But player B had a pretty clear advantage with the exception that he walked a couple more batters.

    Player A is former Tiger lefty Jamie Walker. Walker was signed as a minor league free agent by Detroit after toiling in the minors for 3 years following his age 26 season. Walker of course went on to be a mainstay in the Tigers bullpen before heading to Baltimore and he’s one of the arms the Tigers are probably missing this year.

    Player B is current Tiger lefty Bobby Seay. Seay was signed by the Tigers as a minor league free agent prior to the 2006 season after several short stints in the majors. The most recent having come in Colorado where he surrendered 11 runs in 11 2/3 innings on 3 homers.

    Seay is going to be called on to help fill the void left by the departure of Walker and the injury to Joel Zumaya. So far this year he has been up to the task allowing only 6 baserunners in 9 2/3 innings. He has a decent career strikeout rate and has done a decent job keeping the ball in the park. Plus he halved his walk rate last year for Toledo.

    Now I don’t mean to imply that Walker’s success will predict success for Seay. Afterall, there wasn’t a whole lot to like about Walker’s numbers and there are probably far more pitchers who had similar numbers and failed than who went on to get $12 million contracts. Plus I cherry-picked the stats I wanted. But I just wanted to point out that Seay has some favorable indicators and could be come a valuable member of the pen.

  • Game 31: Mariners at Tigers

    PREGAME: The Tigers return home riding a 7 game winning streak. In fact, no Detroit team has lost since April 30th when the Red Wings dropped a game to the Sharks.

    Jeremy Bonderman takes the mound with a little extra rest taken to heal a blister. It sounds like the blister effects him primarily on his 2 seam fastball. If we’re seeing lots of groundballs tonight that means he’s probably feeling okay.

    The Tigers will be opposed by lefty Horacio Ramirez. With the southpaw on the mound Omar Infante will get the start in centerfield and Pudge Rodriguez will lead off. Sean Casey, who is 5 for 13 with a homer off Ramirez will get the start at first. Ramirez’s strikeout and walk rates aren’t particularly impressive, but he has kept the ball in the park with only 2 homers in 20.3 innings this year.

    Game Time 7:05pm

    POSTGAME     Seven in a row is good, but 8 is great.

    • The bottom of the order came up big going 7 for 10 with 7 RBI. Monroe and Inge took a while to get going, but along with Omar Infante they carried the offense today.
    • I watched this game and I still can’t figure out how Bonderman surrendered 5 runs. He had the slider working and was locating his fastball well as evidenced by the 7 K’s and 2 BB’s. Of the 7 hits he allowed 3 were of the infield variety and 2 of them could have been double plays if they hadn’t been hit so weakly.
    • Now there is no doubting the Sexson homer. Bonderman tried to sneak in a fastball on the inner part of the plate while ahead in the count. In retrospect it was a bad move, but I understand the thinking. It was reasonable to expect Sexson to be looking for the slider away, and an inside fastball could have frozen him. It didn’t hit and ended up in the seats.
    • Bobby Seay was pretty awesome. Fernando Rodney not as much. Thank goodness for the offense.
    • Todd Jones actually pitched pretty well, but got some huge help from his corner outfielders who both made web-gem type catches. I’ve ragged on Ordonez for not going after balls before, but I have to commend him on this one. Good thing he made the catch though or the tying run is in scoring position.

    Tigers 9, Mariners 7

  • An I-70 Weekend

    You may have noticed that posting was light this past weekend. An open thread, late minor league updates, and no post game reports. Well, I had a good reason. I was soaking up baseball in Missouri. My friends and I took in a couple of games on opposite ends of the state. (more…)

  • links for 2007-05-08

  • Tigers Minor League Wrap – 5/7/07

    Toledo 9 Rochester 4
    Chris Shelton’s slide continues with an 0 for 3. Ryan Raburn went 2 for 3 with a homer and Jack Hannahan drove in 4 on 2 hits. Virgil Vasquez allowed 3 runs on 5 hits and 2 walks over 5 2/3 innings. He did fan 9.

    Erie 0 Altoona 4
    With only 4 hits for the Seawolves there isn’t much offense to report. Dallas Trahern pitched a strong game allowing 8 hits and no walks over 8 innings with 5 K’s.

    Jupiter 4 Lakeland 0
    Justin Justice drew 2 walks to pace the Lakeland attack. Cameron Maybin was 1 for 4. Andrew Miller allowed 3 runs, 1 earned, over 7 innings behind 6 hits, and 4 walks. He fanned 5 and induced 14 groundball outs.

    Burlington 1 West Michigan 6
    Gorkys Hernandez went 3 for 4 with a double and a stolen base. Ryan Strieby and Santo De Leon each had 2 hits. James Skelton doubled twice and added a single pushing his average to 358. Chris Cody went 8 innings and allowed only 1 run on 4 hits and 5 K’s.

    Minors News

    Andres Torres was named Eastern League player of the week

  • Joel Zumaya out 3 months

    The news wasn’t good out of New York this afternoon. Joel Zumaya, who injured his hand warming up Saturday night, has a ruptured tendon in the middle finger on his throwing hand. It will require surgery which Zumaya will have performed by Dr. Charles Monroe on Thursday. Zumaya is expected to miss 12 weeks.

    Getting by for a couple weeks is a lot different than having to cope for half of a season. Rodney is certainly capable of picking up a good deal of the slack, but who picks up Rodney’s slack? With the combination of set-up men Jim Leyland could either double up their innings on a given night, or have them each pitch one inning shortening the game to six innings. That luxury is gone now.

    Jose Mesa will be called on, as will the lefty duo of Wil Ledezma and Bobby Seay who will likely see more LOOGY situations.

    I’d expect that the Tigers will not rely on Aquilino Lopez and will either a)reach down to the minors and select one of their starting pitchers (like Virgil Vasquez or Zach Miner) or look to acquire another arm.

    The other possible side effect of this is that Jim Leyland stays with his starters deeper into games. The additional workload on each starter would probably amount to no more than 5-6 innings total. As long as it doesn’t invoke pitch counts of 120+ regularly that wouldn’t be so bad.

    The longer term ramifications aren’t as pleasant to think about. The middle finger is the last part of the pitcher’s body to have contact with the baseball. Any lack of feel or confidence could be devastating. This isn’t a shoulder which exists to generate a ton of torque, this is the delicate part. I’m neither a doctor nor a pitcher, but I fear that coming back from this particular injury will be much more difficult than just having the doctor go in and fix it up.

  • Game 30: Tigers at Royals

    PREGAME: The Tigers are looking for their second series sweep in a row and to build on a 6 game win streak. They’ll be sending out Chad Durbin, who is looking to rebound after spending the better part of his last start looking for the plate. Durbin walked 6 in 3 2/3 innings in his last start.

    He’ll be taking on Zach Grienke who was pretty impressive in 3 of his starts in which he combined to allow 2 earned runs in 20 innings. But in his other 3 starts he allowed 14 runs in 10 2/3 innings. One of those was against the Tigers in which he didn’t make it out of the first inning and he racked up 49 pitches.

    Game Time 2:10

  • Tigers Minor League Wrap – 5/5/07

    Toledo 4 Columbus 7
    Ryan Raburn led the way with a single, a homer, and a walk. Timo Perez added a double and home run as well. Yorman Bazardo surrendered 5 runs in 6 innings on 7 hits, 1 walk, and 1 strike out.

    Harrisburg 4 Erie 5
    Andres Torres continues his tear with 3 hits including his first homer of the year. Mike Hollimon and Jeff Larish added 2 hits each as well. Eddie Bonine allowed 2 runs on 7 hits and no walks over 6 innings to go along with 4 K’s.

    Jupiter 8 Lakeland 7
    Mike Hernandez was a homer away from the cycle while Wil Rhymes and Justin Justice added 3 hits each. Cameron Maybin was 2 for 5 and Ovandy Suero added his 20th stolen base. Eleazar Aponte took the loss giving up 5 runs on 8 hits and 2 walks in 5 1/3 innings.

    Burlington 1 West Michigan 5
    Deik Scram had 2 triples and a double to push his line to 328/423/443. Ryan Strieby added 2 hits and a walk. Angel Castro allowed a single run over 7 innings on just 5 hits.

  • Zumaya to the DL

    Joel Zumaya has been placed on the 15 day disabled list. It appears that he dislocated a finger on his throwing hand while warming up. Aquilino Lopez had a very short sojurn with Toledo and has been recalled.

    Unlike the Jose Mesa injury, this one is going to sting. Fortunately, Fernando Rodney seems to have corrected his earlier problems. This will mean more high leverage situations for both lefties, Wil Ledezma and Bobby Seay, as well as Jose Mesa. I’d anticipate seeing Jim Leyland playing the platoon advantages more often now without Zumaya available to shut down the 8th inning.