Wednesday, August 29, 2007

Sluggish Tigers Shut Out by Royals

Zack Greinke, Ryan Braun, Jimmy Gobble and David Riske combined to shut out the Tigers 5-0 tonight. It was a very uninspiring effort by the Tigers batters who managed 7 hits but, like last night, failed to come up with hits with runners in scoring position. There has been a lot of critcism on the internet (including me) about Jim Leyland's decision to start timo Perez the last two nights. Surprisingly, he was their biggest bat getting two doubles and a walk. Each double followed a Sean Casey single to put runners on second and third. Unfortunately, Brandon Inge then struck out to leave the runners on base in each case.

Andrew Miller struggled mightily with his control again tonight and failed to get out of the first inning. He gave up all 5 runs on 5 hits, two walks and 2 hit batsmen before leaving with the bases loaded and 2 outs. The lone bright spot for the Tigers tonight was the bullpen. Zach Miner, Tim Byrdak, Fernando Rodney and Bobby Seay combined for 7 1/3 shutout innings on just 3 hits and a walk. So, for the second straight night, the bullpen tried to keep them in the game but the bats did not respond.

The loss left the Tigers 4 1/2 games behind the first place Indians and 3 games behind the Yankees and Mariners in the wild card race. They will try to salvage one game of this three game series tomorrow afternoon when slumping Jeremy Bonderman faces Leo Nunez.

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