First Place Tigers Rout Royals

How is that for a Tiger headline? Just about everything went right in today's 14-3 rout of the Royals. Offensively, the Tigers got 19 hits including 5 for Pudge Rodriguez who had a homerun, three doubles and a single. It was a great day for a veteran who needs to bounce back this year if the Tigers are to improve substantially over last year. My two favorite young Tiger hitters in a long time (Chris Shelton and Curtis Granderson) and one of my all-time favorite veteran acquisitions (Placido Polanco) had three hits apiece. One of Granderson's hits was a long homerun.

The best thing that happened today though was Jeremy Bonderman's 6 2/3 strong innings - 1 run, 3 hits, 8 strikeouts and no walks. This was especially encouraging after reading some ominous articles the last couple of days about last year's elbow problems. In Tom Gage's column this morning, Bonderman talked about his injury last year:

"Last year, when my arm was bothering me, I didn't say anything," he said. "I learned you can't do that.

"You have to tell people when stuff is going on. If I would have said something, I probably would have missed a week or something.

"Instead, I ended up missing five or six starts. I don't want to do that again. But I was stubborn and didn't know any better."

He also mentioned that he felt a little pain this spring:

"A little bit," he said, "but it's gone now. I've switched a lot of my maintenance programs to help the strength of that part of my arm."

Now, Gage's column was not meant to be alarming and he was not saying that anybody is worried. In fact, the theme of the article was Bonderman learning from his mistakes. However, any time I hear about a young pitcher pitching through pain one summer and feeling "a little bit" of pain the next spring, it concerns me. the fact that he dominated today doesn't mean that he'll stay healthy all year but it's a good sign. Leyland pulling him after 92 pitches was another good sign.

Today's game was full of good signs.