Sunday, May 25, 2008

Home stand ends on sour note

The Tigers lost 6-1 to the Twins today and lost the series two games to one. That made it a 4-2 home stand which isn't bad but it could have been better. On the heels a 19-3 thrashing of the Twins last night, the Tigers could manage only one run in 7 2/3 innings against Twins rookie Glen Perkins today. It was tied at one until Francisco Cruceta allowed a grand slam to left-handed hitting Jason Kubel. Some have questioned why Jim Leyland did not have a lefty (Bobby Seay or Dontrelle Willis) ready to pitch to Joe Mauer, Justin Morneau and or Kubel and it's a good question.

There were some good signs in this series. They got two more quality starts from Justin Verlander and Nate Robertson. They are still last in the league with 17 quality stats but 9 have come in the last 13 games. Unfortunately, their bullpen is starting to pitch the way many of us feared when the season started. The pen gave up 4 runs on Friday night and 5 more today and , in general , has been pretty shaky as of late.

On the offensive side, they hit the ball very hard this week and averaged 9 runs per game. Unfortunately, they continue not to do a great job distributing the runs evenly across games. They scored only one run today after 19 yesterday and, despite being third in the league in runs scored, have had more than their share of low run games and they are losing virtually all of those games. This point was nicely illustrated by Billfer.

At least this week, they played closer to what we expected at the beginning of the season - great hitting, decent starting pitching and a leaky bullpen. The other piece of good news (and I know many are probably tired of hearing this) is that nobody in the division is pulling ahead. The Tigers are still just six games behind pending the outcome of the White Sox - Angels game tonight. Next up for the Tigers is a nine game western swing with three games each in Los Angeles, Seattle and Oakland.

1 comment:

  1. Great site Lee. We have a new story up about Selig, Leyland, and Necromancy here:

    http://grittyandclutch.blogspot.com/2008/05/bud-selig-accusations-of-necromancy.html

    Let us know what you think.
    Gritty

    ReplyDelete

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