Tigers 19
Royals … does it matter?

Recap:

• Words that in March I never thought I’d be typing: It’s nice to finally beat the Royals.
• The offense came alive and scored nearly as many runs in the eighth inning (10) as it did the previous six games against the Royals (11), as FSN was wont to point out throughout the night. But it brought up an interesting question: just how fricken bad were the Tigers at the start of the year? I remember it being brutal, but my god, they didn’t even average two runs per game? wow.
• Awesome Tiger batters? Too many to name them all. So I’ll go with Miguel Cabrera (5 hits, 6 RBIs) and Matt Joyce (4 hits, 5 RBIs).
• Joyce hit his 10th homer.
• And we cannot forget to mention that Zach Miner’s performance was anything but minor (har har har). He went six innings, allowed three hits and no runs. He struck out 1 and walked 1. He tossed 56 strikes in 88 pitches. And most importantly of course: he won.
• Freddy Dolsi did fine his first inning, struggled the second after a long, long top of the eighth inning. I guess it’s forgivable.
• And most important non-Tiger feature of the day: The Royals shortstop (backup now, starter previously), Tony Pena Jr., pitched!  And had a 1-2-3 inning. Wow.
• To note, the great thing about the Tigers playing the Royals is we got a JoePos blog about it. Not to be missed! He also writes about Jimmy Gobble, the Royals reliever who gave up 10 runs.
• I was disappointed the Tigers again failed to score 20, but the AP gamer tells us this is the first time in 58 years a team scored 19 runs three times in a season. Those Red Sox did it four times that season.
• Also in that story, I like Miguel Cabrera’s philosophy: “When you score runs and drive in runs, you win games.”
• Makes sense.
• Twins and White Sox lost.

Analysis:

• A typically Tiger move this season would be to sweep the Royals and maybe take 2 of 3 from the White Sox (or heck, let’s go for it all and say sweep them, too), for no better reason than to get our hopes and expectations up before chopping them down. Then repeat the move around Labor Day.
• And make no mistake: While I am no believer in concrete “This is a huge series!” kind of statements, this is a huge week for the Tigers. If they were to roll over, maybe they’d end up sellers at the trade deadline. Not that there’s much to sell. And if they do a good job and win a lot, they’ll be right back in the division hunt. Or, I suppose, they could split the difference and we won’t really learn much of anything, but the sand will continue slipping through timer.
• This is a manic-depressive year. So my gut tells me, they’re going to rally and have a good week. What comes after that, well, who knows. Let’s hope they break pattern sooner than later.

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Tigers 5
Orioles 1

Recap:

• Saw The Dark Knight today so I didn’t really catch the end of the game.
• But from what I saw, the Tigers brought their power shoes. It was nice to see Marcus Thames get a little home run revenge after the “one in a billion” short from the O’s earlier in the series. He kept running around the bases while waiting for the umps to decide whether his home run shot was just a long, foul ball before getting the good news.
• Magglio Ordonez also homered.
• Also, Justin Verlander really, really had it. He got 16 consecutive batters out and came within an out of a three-hit complete game. He’s really dealing.

Analysis:

• Verlander is awesome. Simply awesome.
• I was a bit quick to say i’ll be glad when the season is over, because of course, that would suck if you’re a baseball fan. But you know, blogs and knee-jerk reactions. That loss Saturday night was a real kick in the pants. After losses by the White Sox and Twins today, the Tigers are back to being 6.5 games out of first with a series with the (dangerous?) Royals and the division-leading Sox.
• So it’s not over yet. It just really stunk to see the team blow as good a chance as it had Saturday.

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Orioles 11
Tigers 10 (10 innings)

Blowing seems to be the theme tonight. Tigers, games, umpires, standings, season. You name it.

When they led 6-0 with just one out in the first inning, I think you had to chalk this one up in the win column. And then Nate Robertson did an accelerated version of his “6 innings, 4 runs.” It still added up to 10. He pitched into the third inning and gave up seven runs.

There were plenty of highlights, plenty of lowlights, some questionable calls — Joel Zumaya pitching a second inning, the home plate umpire calling Polanco out when instant replay showed him safe — well, typical baseball game really. Nothing to be really upset over except the Tigers’ play. Misdirecting your ire at the ump or Leyland would be mistaken, I have to say. When a baseball team scores 10 runs, it should win. Unless it stinks so bad it gives up 11.

I really don’t know what else to say. The offense was great. BUT: The starter stunk. The bullpen did OK but not great. The defense had times of looking utterly ridiculous. If anything, tonight’s game, and last night’s, prove the Tigers are not really a contender. I don’t know why the national media keeps saying they are. Maybe they are not watching the games. Or they’re optimistic. But the Tigers are really just a mediocre team. Sometimes they play great and win. Sometimes they play poorly and lose.

I, for one, will just be glad when this season is over.

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Edit: Uhm, yeah, vacation just started and I already don’t know what day it is.

Some notes of important pitchers pitching in unimportant places.

• The Tigers announced Zach Miner will be returning from Triple-A Toledo to start in Monday’s game. So it appears he’s the important “fifth starter.”  He struck out 15 and walked two in his time there. Starting the previous two games, he struck out 12 and walked two. The problem, if you want some downside, if he only pitched 4 and 4-1/3 innings in the starts.
• In High-A, Dontrelle Willis pitched. That’s not all that eventful in and of itself. But this line is:  3IP, 0 BB, 4 H, 1 R.  ZERO WALKS IN THREE INNINGS!!

Does Freep.com insist on putting the same stories on its RSS feed for multiple days in an effort to get removed from my RSS reader? Because that’s where it’s leading.

• Jason Beck reports Edgar Renteria’s hamstring is still bothering him. It probably isn’t bothering Tigers fans too much, though.
• I hate the Twins.
• It was nice to see Sheffield come back to life last night. But a few things came to mind as Sheff homered once and had a second long ball caught over the fence in a defensive gem. 1) We’ve seen this before, after he came off the DL. 2) Does he need the extra rest, IE less playing time, to be consistently good? 3) Did ballpark dimensions affect things at all?
• My answers were:  1) Yes. 2) Yes? 3) Probably not given Oriole Park/Camden isn’t that much smaller to left.
• Fernando Rodney is on the trading block, the Freep reports. They didn’t have much to say. I’ll add that I doubt he fetches much. He’s basically going to fill the same role for any other team as he does for the Tigers: Some potential but not much more. No one’s going to give any useful pieces for him, I’m guessing. So the Tigers may as well just keep him around and decrease the pressure situations for awhile longer. He has some value. Just not in a one-run game.

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So the Florida Marlins are interested in trading for Pudge Rodriguez, the Miami Herald and MLB.com report. And the Tigers? Well, they’re not interested. Which is exactly the right move at this point.

It’s a little too early yet for the Tigers to decide one way or the other if they’re contenders. You want a date? I’ll give you a date. July 28. Really the night of July 27 will do. That’s 10 games from now. And, not coincidentelly, that’s when the the Tigers complete a series with the White Sox that could either assist them in clawing their way into serious division contention or knock them out of it.

Should the Tigers be 10 games out (arbitrary number, but I guess double-digits behind in the standings with 60 games left not only looks intimidating, but it’s pretty hard to overcome) at around there, I would definitely be in favor of trading Pudge if any actual A-chip or decent B-chip prospects came back in return. I don’t know how possible that is. It’s not that you trade Pudge as a salary dump. But let’s face it: he’s probably not going to be a Tiger next season. If they can trade him now and get something useful in return, they have to do it.

I hear they have this kid named Miller who can pitch …

That said, I find it unlikely Pudge finishes the season anywhere but Detroit.

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I’ve been busy with some Tigers analysis this all-star break. Just none of it was actually for my own site. So here’s a few things to read.

• Blake’s Tigers blogger roundtable
• My first-half recap for Life in the Cell
• Lee of Tiger Tales also wrote a first-half recap for them

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Thoughts while I ignore the hideous spectacle that is the home-run derby …

• But before I get to the grading thing, “saves” is an overrated stat. I know I’m not exactly breaking new ground with that view, but thought I’d like to say again anyway. A good starting pitcher should have a pretty decent number of quality starts. To achieve this, all he needs to do is pitch the first six innings of a ballgame with an ERA better than 4.50; that is, six innings, three runs. To get a save, and three-run saves are treated the same as one-run saves in the stat book, the closer just need avoid an ERA of 18, or two runs in one inning. So when we start to talk about a closer’s success rate, I start to feel like there should be a better stat than saves.
• Maybe weighting them based on run differential would tell us more. (Or, you could use Baseball Prospectus’ stat WXRL, or relievers expected wins added. That’s a nice stat because wins added is probably something a reliever should be used for, and the results it spits out are so intuitively correct: Joe Nathan, Brad Lidge, Frankie Rodriguez, Mariano Rivera are the top four.  Todd Jones is ranked 55th.
• Big Al, like Jon Paul Morosi, gave out his midseason grades. I like giving out midseason grades for, say, a basketball team. It seems like a lot of work for a baseball team. So I’ll give out midseason grades not to players, but to aspects of the game.
• Batting:  B. The Tigers are fifth in scoring in the A.L. So that’s better than average. So that’s a B. If we were grading on the curve compared to expectations, I’d say D. The offense was never going to score 1,000 runs. That was some made-up crap from the start and I think most smart baseball people called it for what it is. But Detroit’s offense was far too inconsistent to start the season and racked up the shutouts. Since then, it’s settled in. Matt Joyce has been a terrific surprise. But the Tigers have seemed to stock several hitters of his ilk in Toledo and they’ve performed admirably when given the chance. Miguel Cabrera appears to be settling into the American League after a poor start. I think he’ll return to his superstar numbers next season. Going forward, I expect  a B+ from the team if it can avoid further injuries and get Gary Sheffield either started or a cushion on the bench.
• Starting pitching: C. Again, this is a bit mixed. for one, pitching is related to defense, and as you’ll soon see, defense was awful. The Tigers’ starters have n ERA of 4.48 and sit in the middle of the A.L. The C pretty much sums it up, too. For the most part, the starters were either great or crap, except Nate Robertson, who was consistently a bit below average. In the end, it adds up to average. Justin Verlander struggled, then got awesome. Armando Galarraga has been terrific. Kenny Rogers put last year’s injuries and poor showing out of his mind and has been a pleasure to watch. Too bad about Jeremy Bonderman’s injury and Dontrelle Willis’…whatever is wrong with him. In the end, it’s not really good or bad, it just is. Going forward I expect closer to a B.
• Relief pitching: C+. The relievers have an ERA of 4.19 and sit near the bottom. The relief was not really surprising or a disappointment because everyone knew it would struggle until Fernando Rodney and Joel Zumaya got back. And frankly, I think a few guys (Freddy Dolsi, Aquilino Lopez, Clay Rapada, Denny Bautista kinda) did a nice job keeping things together until the “big boys” got back. The Tigers’ relief hasn’t been strong, but I don’t look at it as nearly the problem the inconsistent offense was. Going forward, I expect another B really. Man I’m really noncommital. Or the Tigers are really “above average but not great.” You decide!
• Defense: B-. Oy vaye, the errors they make!  I’m a bit confused about the Tigers’ defense, to be honest with you. I think really you have to divide the season into quarters. The first quarter was awful. I mean, awful. Well, you saw it. But once Curtis Granderson got back (and this isn’t a knock on Clete Thomas, who is definitely above average, but he’s no Granderson), Carlos Guillen settled in at third and Miguel Cabrera at first, it really picked up in the second quarter. For the season, the Tigers’ defensive efficiency (percentage of batted battles in play they turn into outs) is .704, or about .003 from being Top 10 in baseball. That’s maybe a play here or play there they didn’t make over the course of the year. So i’d say that’s pretty good. It’s not terrific. The shortstop’s defense is probably hardly better this year than last. I like what I’ve seen in recent weeks. And Jim Leyland seems to have sorted out his outfield. If he can find a way to get Magglio Ordonez to DH more, I’d say the Tigers get a B+/A- expectation from me going forward. They won’t be great but they’ll be capable.
• Coaching:  C-. OK. Let’s be honest here. I have no idea how to grade coaching. But on a gut level, it feels like it hasn’t done a great job. The hitters’ slumps lasted too long. The pitching was obviously not prepared to start the year. But it feels like the defensive coaching has been great givn the changing personnel, changing positions, and lack of talent they were working with. I think Guillen and Cabrera adapted to their new positions fast.
• Managing: C+. At one point this season, I thought Jim Leyland lost the team and had maybe lost himself. It was a tough stretch in May. He rebounded from it. He yelled at the team. He saved the season. He never stopped trying things out. We like to think the manager is the ship’s captain, the final say, the great decision maker. But in reality, some of Leyland’s decisions have been made for him. It’s not like he can just get rid of Sheffield, right?  As for in-game decisions, I think we can all agree it’s a crapshoot. It’s hard to measure anyway. Sometimes he does by-the-book stuff that works and sometimes it doesn’t. Sometimes he makes tuff up and it works and sometimes it doesn’t. His bullpen, again, a situation a bit outside his hands, management was awful. But his bullpen was not exactly condusive to managing either.
• General managing: C. I feel like Leyland was given a softball team. Yeah, it’s not slugging as good as it could be and I’m not a big believer in “pesky” offenses. But I’d like there to have been a bit more flexibility, a bit younger of a club by choice, not by injury. I’d also have liked to see more emphasis on defense. For those reasons, when the Tigers aren’t slugging, they aren’t winning.
• The team overall: C. It’s been average. A month of crap. A month of great. A month of average. And it’s .500 at the break. Too bad. It shouldn’t have been, but for the reasons above, it is. Going forward, I expect above average. Not greatly above average. But I feel like the team has settled in. It’ll give the fans some enjoyable, memorable moments. So probably a B or B+. Unfortunately I feel like they’d need an A or maybe even A+ to be considered truly in the division hunt.
• Bonus point: Second half prediction!
• Whether it’s a postseason team is entirely upon the shoulders of the Chicago White Sox at this point. The division is theirs to win, because Detroit simply isn’t good enough to go on an extended stretch of .700 baseball. It’ll take a skid from the White Sox. As for the Twins, yes, they have been kickers of Detroit heiny. They are built perfectly to run circles around their elders. And that gives us the interesting record of 42-37 for the Tigers in non-Minnesota games, and the Twins 43-37 in non-Detroit games. The teams only play each other three more times this year. (And Lee Panas has pointed out, they aren’t particularly good at anything other than beating the Tigers.) They are also playing above their expect W-L. So I find it hard to believe they’ll continue winning at the same rate. The final standings seldom seem to be the same as the halftime standings, anyway. So:
• Final order of finish:  Chicago, Detroit, Minnesota, Cleveland, Kansas City. Only Chicago makes the playoffs.
• Final side note: Earlimart’s Hymn and Her is a pretty good album to blog to!

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(Detroit News photo)

OK, one wasn’t enough. I had to do another. Addicting.

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Well, this weekend has stunk, hasn’t it? The Tigers lost a third straight one-run game to the Twins. We all deal with it in our own ways. My way was to play with Photoshop Elements and give my version of the Need4Sheed treatment to a Tigers photo.

That is all!

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Twins 7
Tigers 6

Recap:

• BOO
• YAY
• BOO
• BOO
• BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
• OH GOD NO
• BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!
• meh.

Actual recap:

• Tigers scored five runs in the third inning to take a commanding lead.
• Kenny Rogers itched a good game and left with a 6-3 lead.
• Fernando Rodney gave up one, then Todd Jones tried to blow up and destroy the game in regulation. Instead he just let the Twins tie it.
• The Tigers had a chance to win in regulation when the leadoff batter walked and stole second. His name would be Carlos Guillen. And he’s a good baseball player. He ended up on third after a wild pitch with one out. And two strikeouts later, the Tigers blew their best shot at winning the game.
• In Freddy Dolsi’s third inning on the mound, he gave up a home run to Justin Morneau that turned out to be the game winner.

Analysis:

• OK. show of hands. Who didn’t see the Tigers losing after they blew a four-run lead and didn’t score after the third?  Anyone? anyone?  Yeah. That ninth inning almost turned out OK after Todd Jones stunk again. But it didn’t.
• and after they didn’t score in the ninth, you — well I — knew there was no shot the Tigers could win.
• Jones is really doing his best to make sure the Tigers fail during a crucial stretch in their season. Not literally. It only feels like it. You had to figure he would have a tough stretch at some point. it’s just unfortunate it’s now. It really hurts the Tigers’ chances.
• And as far as that goes, they pretty much have to win the next three games. A split is hardly acceptable. It’s not like it’s MUST win. But it’s not exactly a good time to be splitting series with division rivals who own you in their own stadium.

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