West coast trip finally ends
posted in 2007 season, LA Angels |Game 20: Tigers at Angels, 3:30 p.m.
TV: FSN
Pitchers: Jeremy Bonderman (0-0, 2.25) vs. Kelvim Escobar (1-1, 3.18)
Pregame thoughts — Bonderman is still looking for his first win of the season in his fifth start. Very efficiently he has improved his ERA every outing this year and has just three walks and a WHIP of .86. After the schedulers sent Detroit to the West Coast for a 36 hour jaunt, Jim Leyland and the Tigers would like nothing more than to exact a little revenge for it with a two-game sweep of the Angels.
Escobar is coming off a disabled list stint with a sore pitching shoulder. Magglio Ordonez (.824 OPS) and Curtis Granderson (1.000, 8 at-bats) have hit Escobar fine. Pudge, Craig Monroe and Brandon Inge struggled against him. Only Marcus Thames has homered off him.
Bonderman has just owned Vlad Guerrero (.229 OPS) so far. Only Gary Matthews Jr. (1.250, 8 at-bats) has had any success at all against Bonderman, actually. The rest of the likely starters have OPS under .520.
Postgame thoughts (Tigers lose, 9-8, 10 innings) — Sometimes you steal a game. Sometimes you have a game stolen. And today, coming back from a seven-run deficit, taking the lead, and still losing? I have no idea what you call that.
I’m going to macro “10 innings” into my keys. I’m sick of extra innings games. I hardly saw any of this one. Got to a TV with one out and nobody on in the ninth. Saw Vlad at bat. Knew no good could come of that. Sure enough… Jones blew the save when he helped Vladdy get around the bases and score, then proceeded to pick up a loss in the 10th inning.
Now Jim Leyland surely must remember never to use Jones for more than one inning, so I guess he wanted to keep his bullpen rested for the White Sox series with Chad Durbin pitching. Notable were the two perfect innings Fernando Rodney threw with three strikeouts.
Also notable are the bats are on fire. The Tigers surpassed the 100 run mark, still third in the American League. Magglio Ordonez went 3-for-3 with a ninth inning two-run home run of Francisco Rodriguez that nearly gave Detroit the victory after it fell behind 7-0. Curtis Granderson also homered again. In all, the Tigers had 11 hits and six walks. I really hope that means the offensive funk is officially over. Fans of other teams would probably read that and go “100+ runs and you call that a funk?” So I’m pretty optimistic about the coming months.
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