The Tigers say it's nothing serious, but Mike Maroth has a tender left elbow and isn't going to start tomorrow against the Tribe.While this doesn't seem serious, any ailment to a pitcher's arm is a cause for concern. This is not nearly as bad as hearing that Jeremy Bonderman, Justin Verlander or Joel Zumaya has a sore elbow but the Tigers can't afford to have any injuries to their starters if they want to improve significantly this year. They are already thin in starting pitching and there is no guarantee that any of their pitching prospects will be ready at the start of the season. I'd hate to see them in a position where they had to rush a pitcher to the majors and having two open slots would make that a pretty high probability. This would probably not be a good situation for this season or more importantly for the development of their young arms.
``We're just being precautionary,'' Jim Leyland said.
Leyland said Maroth will start sometime in the next 3-4 days, and if that's the case, it really isn't serious.
Tigers Beat Pirates
In a game which featured a lot of rookies and other little known players, the Tigers defeated the Pirates 8-2 behind three shutout innings by Nate Robertson and Brent Clevlen's first home run. The win improved their record to 4-1. Spring training records are, of course, meaningless but it always feels better when they win. Despite the good results, Robertson threw strikes on only 22 of his 44 pitches and was not happy with his performance (MLB.COM):
"I wasn't extremely happy with the way I threw my changeup today, and a couple flat sliders," he said. "But my two-seamer was working really well. I got a lot of ground balls. I was behind in the count several times, so I had to go back to that two-seam fastball, and wasn't really in a position to put guys away. But again, it's Spring Training."BB/K Update
The Tigers had five walks and six strikeouts to give them a 25/26 ratio in 5 games.
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