Tigers’ strength becomes their weakness
posted in Toronto Blue Jays |
Wow.
Man.
And a few words I can’t publish on a family blog.
I’m going to make a template pretty soon here. “The Tigers outplayed (Opponent) for seven innings, only to blow the game in the late innings.” If it happens once or twice, okay, random things happen. If it happens a lot in 10 days, you just hope that’s a bad stretch, not a bad sign of things to come.
The Blue Jays have a dangerous offense. You don’t have to help them with walks. I just hope Zach Miner fell asleep in the clubhouse and missed this 10-5 loss. His first game up, he gets to see Manny Ramirez and David Ortiz. His second game in the Majors, he runs into a team that had nine batters reach first base safely — in a row! — in the eighth inning. I don’t have to recap this one much. Jeremy Bonderman got himself in trouble. He survived barely. Joel Zumaya loaded the bases. He survived the seventh. Barely. Jamie Walker got the first out of the eighth inning, and Blammo! Fernando Rodney can’t find the plate after a Shea Hillenbrand pinch-hit home run. Whammo! Todd Jones can’t find the catcher’s mitt, and the outfielders can’t find the ball after it’s pasted yet again.
3 run lead? 5 run deficit.
5-2 victory? 10-5 loss.
That… well, fast isn’t the word. That inning took longer than a drive to the Upper Peninsula for someone in Metro Detroit.
“I’ve been through way worse than this. I don’t want to go down that road,” Jones said, adding he has to focus better on making better pitches.
“You have to tip your hat. They are a very good ballclub,” Detroit manager Jim Leyland said.
Yeah, we keep hearing that from Jones, and yet, he, the guy with the baseball in his hand, has done nothing to change things, has he? Give him the rope to hang himself with, I figured. Or else pitch through it. Well, the former seems a lot more likely than tha latter right about now. The Tigers came into the game with one of the top relief ERAs in baseball and a highly respected set of guys in the late innings. And yet they looked more like the Kansas City Royals. (Texas Rangers maybe?) They’re not that bad. Maybe they weren’t that good.
Jones must go. Have you seen a closer come into a ballgame with a 7.29 ERA? I haven’t. I sure don’t want to either. If the Tigers looked at an opposing reliever with those numbers, they’d be salivating.
I think Fernando Rodney pitched like he was lacking confidence, which was the knock against his closing. Jones stunk. He keeps stinking. Can left-handed specialist Walker be called on to pitch to more than one batter? He’s mostly impressed. But then again, Rodney has mostly impressed, too. Maybe Zumaya? Not a great day but at least he got out of it. He was my pick to close. He still is.
The Tigers are an enigma. A myriad myriads of possibilities… in any inning.
But I’m not mad. Repeatedly losing games in the late inning will do that to you. The first or second are shockers. After that? Not so much.
That’s how I feel tonight, anyway.
Saturday Morning
The sky isn’t falling — I wouldn’t go that far — but certainly what we’ve seen in the past 10 days isn’t a good thing and the more blown close games against good teams occur, the more you have a hard time calling one or two a fluke.
Jon Paul Morosi mostly featured Jones.
Todd Jones leaned forward, his eyes dissecting a computer screen in one corner of a quiet clubhouse. He saw good velocity, decent location, and a pitcher who “felt pretty good” on the mound Friday night.
And yet, all examination of the images before him yielded one simple, devastating conclusion: He watched a pitcher face four batters, without retiring any.
Jon Paul is still the best Tigers beat writer in my opinion. That’s just so much better than a regular game story.
Toronto Star: Don’t worry Tigers fans, you’re not alone. It didn’t really follow up the thought much. But here’s another Leyland quote.
“It is a good bullpen,” Leyland reiterated. “There’s no question about that. There’s no concern. It didn’t work out. We got ourselves in a situation where we needed a ground ball. I thought Fernando’s control was a little sluggish so we went to (Jones) because we knew he was going to throw strikes. We just didn’t get a ball on the ground, that’s all. It’s part of the game.”
Sphere It
I just knew you were going to have something on here. You’re Todd Jones hate has reached critical mass. Comparing the Tigers to the Royals?!?!? C’mon. And thanks for the myriad myriads. Good thing I read it, or it would have gone unappreciated.
My apologies to Coleridge, naturaly.