18th
April
2008
Game 16: Tribe catches Tigers by the tail
posted in Random |Cleveland 11,
Detroit 1
Recap:
- Justin Verlander didn’t have it. Early on he couldn’t find his location. Walked guys. Hit guys. Threw no faster than 93. Eventually he got up to 95 but he still couldn’t find the strike zone in the first two innings. It took him 52 pitches to make it through them (28 balls, 24 strikes).
- He settled in to go five complete innings and throw 60 strikes in 104 pitches.
- Oh, and Zach Miner allowed five runs, five hits and a walk in one inning of work. Not one-plus innings. No. He came in at the start of the sixth and left after the inning.
- Fausto Carmona also struggled, using 49 pitches for the first two innings, but he settled in, forced grounders and went 6 2/3 innings in the loss.
- Verlander is 0-3 and hasn’t won in four starts.
- The Tigers batters tried a few times to get something started on Carmona. They had a good chance to score some runs in the sixth inning. But Gary Sheffield decided not to slide, got tagged out, and that was that.
- Miguel Cabrera had the only RBI, driving in Ramon Santiago with a sac.
- The Tigers had 7 hits, 3 walks and stranded nine.
- Brandon Inge played catcher.
Analysis:
- I, too, was struggling to figure out if there’s anything wrong with Verlander. I don’t know that there is. I mean, obviously, he wasn’t throwing strikes and his velocity wasn’t up near 100 like we expect. But I don’t know. I’m not gong to jump to assumptions right now. He seemed to settle in after the disconcerting start to the game.
- Send Zach Miner to Toledo. He is definitely not helping the team this year or showing improvement.
- Tigers were bound to lose. But they’re 5-4 after the 0-7 start.
- I don’t know what much they could do different. They got on base, but Carmona is a guy who typically pitches out of problems by forcing grounders and he did a fine job.
Other stuff:
- Curtis Granderson is throwing and catching and hitting again. He’ll take a trip to West Michigan to get some game experiences in Friday, play in Toledo Saturday and Sunday, and may rejoin the team as soon as Monday. (per Jason Beck at MLB.com)
- Dontrelle Willis played catch. (per Jason Beck at MLB.com)
I’ve heard that they (the coaching staff) actually want Verlander to be throwing consistently in the low to mid 90’s. He can still dial it up to the 96/97+, but they feel he gets more movement and can spot the ball better when he lets up. It also gives him an additional pitch when he can have two different speed fastballs that move differently.
Come to think of it, I think you’re right and that slipped my mind. But I still didn’t like his control being so horrible.
I agree with you on Miner, he looks awful, he’s been worse than Grilli. He seems to have made no improvements over the past year and actually looks a lot heavier than he did last season. That can’t help.