Northwest off-day roundup
posted in link roundup |As the Tigers sip their mocha lattes with a touch of chocolate..
NEW — And a last glance at Athletics Nation before the series in Detroit later this month. One poster was glad to take 2-of-3 from the Tigers, saying:
We held the Tigers’ offense down until today, which was why winning yesterday’s game–even only scoring two runs–was so important. Not to mention, we seem to have the personnel for the marathon-inning games; get to extras and it is truly a whole new game.
Detroit Tigers Blog has a nice piece on Inge (d?)evolving as a hitter, one whose batting average and on-base percentage dropped, replaced by isolated power.
And Detroit Tiger Tales wonders if Craig Monroe is going to heat up, or if Kenny Rogers is going to slow down, now that the calendar turned to July. [Separate links]
And the Athletics media is reading the tea-leaves just the same as the Tigers media, looking at the old axiom, a team which leads on July 4 wins its division. From looking around a bit, it appears this is almost always true, but Seattle messed it up and missed the playoffs once. They didn’t have nearly as many win as the Tigers. If, rather than looking at the Central Division, of which the lead is narrow against the other best team in baseball, you pretend there is the Wildcard Division and realize the Tigers have an 8-1/2 game lead, you have to think that’s almost always a safe division lead at July 4. I couldn’t find an example of when it wouldn’t be. Not to mention, I don’t see the Tigers slowing down enough — they have to slow down — to finish under 97 or 98 wins. Still, not gonna get my expectations up…
And Baseball Prospectus (sub req’d) wonders how the Tigers will deal with Justin Verlander.
The Tigers are keeping a close eye on the workload of Justin Verlander. I’ve said in this space that managing that workload is going to be the biggest challenge that Jim Leyland faces, balancing the team’s need for its #2 starter while keeping his innings to a minimum. … The Tigers will give him a bit of extra rest during the All-Star break, essentially using the break to skip a start. Verlander would have pitched on Sunday and will likely stay “on turn†for his next start the following Friday. There will need to be more of this type of proactive moves
Finally, check out Lynn Henning for a Burning Questions Q&A that includes Bobby Abreu trade speculation and talk about Mike Maroth’s return.