8th
April
2007
It isn’t always pretty… thoughts and links
posted in 2007 season, link roundup |First some site news:
- I really need a name for my quick hits. I’ve been blogging a year and I still don’t have one. Whenever I think of one, I’m pretty sure it’s already used by another Tigers blog. Or its name!
- One goal I’ve always had and always fallen short of is linking baseball blogs of opposing teams rather than always a regular media source. Like a stable of baseball blogging “friends” I can go to, and not necessarily always the best known blog. As the Tigers blogosphere proves, there can be good ones bubbling up. I’d like to find those. Any tips, drop me a comment or email.
- I’ve also committed myself to a daily recap of some other interesting things in baseball, though that will always be secondary, maybe as little as “around the central” at the bottom of a game post, but as I come up with items, I hope to have more posts like today’s.
- Finally, I’ve tried to incorporate Ballhype a bit. It’s a great help in finding interesting MLB stories around the Internet, but nice to have on my blog, too. Any comments, please let me know.
Now some Tigers news:
- Speaking of, I’ve found this link via Ballhype (see, it is useful) about Joel Zumaya. It’s pretty entertaining: Voodoo Sabermetrics – Joel Zumaya.
- Jeff Passan at Yahoo! Sports likes a good Jim Leyland rant.
- A thought I forgot to include in the recap of today’s game: Wow, did the Tigers ever let Brandon Duckworth off the hook. He threw 90 pitches, 49 for strikes. That meant41 were balls. But he kept the Tigers off the basepaths, allowing few hits or walks. While listening to the game, it seemed like he forced a lot of ground balls. But it was actually a 10-7 ground-to-fly ratio, not that much different than Bonderman’s 6-4.
- Cold weather makes batting harder. But you hate to glance at the stats and see .176 average from Gary Sheffield, Magglio Ordonez and Sean Casey, a .143 with eight strikeouts from Craig Monroe and .000 with six Ks from Brandon Inge after the first week of play. On the other hand, they’re not going to do that all year and Detroit finished the week 3-2, so it’s nothing to worry about.
- Casey’s problem so far is that he’s a ground ball/line drive batter but half of his contact has resulted in fly balls.
- But if he continues to struggle, how much fuel does that toss on the fire for Chris Shelton fans? He has a homer and double to go with a 1.250 on-base-plus-slugging in the first three Mudhens games.
- But Curtis Granderson has a .938 slugging and was pretty fun to watch. As was Pudgey and his two homers. Those two alone sank the Royals in the past two games.
- Vance Wilson may not need surgery, Jason Beck reports.
- He reported in the same piece in addition to Gary Sheffield wearing Jackie Robinson’s #42 on April 15, Curtis Granderson, Craig Monroe and Marcus Thames and hitting coach Lloyd McClendon will, too.
- Eric at D-Town Baseball has a look at the A.L. Central after the first week.
- Scott Warheit, also known as The Cutoff Man at Mlive’s blog, has a blog I can barely spell, Quo Vadimus, for his views on sports, politics, etc. He has a post on the Tigers today.
And finally, some other stuff:
- Warm weather vs. Cold Weather: The Los Angeles Angels and Oakland A’s have played seven games. The Cleveland Indians and their guest Seattle Mariners? 3.
- Allowing just one run today after some nice relief work, the Oakland pitching staff dropped its team ERA to 2.59, but has a 3-4 record to show for it, Baseball Musings reports.
- John Danks made his MLB debut for the Chicago White Sox today against Johan Santana. Sox Machine was impressed.
- Seattle Mariner blog Lookout Landing takes offense to Cleveland starter Paul Byrd’s annoyance with losing his no hitter to snow.