Since last Saturday, the Tigers haven’t looked like the Tigers we all know and love. Well, I take that back a bit. They have at times resembled the Tigers. They’ve fought and fought every game, though opponents’ pitching held them to a few shutouts and low scoring games. Coming back against the Yankees, and coming within 1 out of defeating the Red Sox Friday still didn’t really feel quite like the Tigers, though it was getting close. Saturday’s 6-2 victory in front of a sell-out crowd was just what the doctor ordered.

Actually, I feel like the Tigers proved they can “play with the Red Sox.” I scare-quotes that because I don’t really think it had to be proved. If not for a blown save, the series would be 2-0 Tigers right now. But it’s 1-1, and Detroit has played soundly against another quality team. So I am not in the least concerned.

I am not as sure if the Tigers proved much against the Yankees. Not that it matters too much in the long term, but it would have been nice to at least tie that series, though the Yankees seemed to out play Detroit in the innings I saw. That and the Tigers most decidedly did not look like themselves, making mistakes left and right we havent’ seen all season.
But back to the present. Jeremy Bonderman set down 13 in a row, showing he can still be the pitcher he’s projected to be. He gave up three hits. Jason Beck points out Bonderman has been a real thorn in the side of the Boston Red Sox as of late.

He has won his last three meetings with Boston …, all of them at Comerica Park.

More later, I’m sure.

Some Housecleaning

Roman Colon is a bullpen guy, according to Jim Leyland. Leyland wasn’t going bench him after one start, he seems to want guys not to feel their job is on the line with every pitch, but he saw all he needed to, I guess. I’m not really going to dispute his opinion.

Maroth will be out 2 to 3 months, the Tigers say. We hope the best for him, not because his statistics have looked nice, but because over the years in the Olde English D, he’s always been a good guy, and you always want the good guys to find success.

The Daily Fungo Podcast gave me a couple nice compliments. Go check out the podcast if you haven’t already. And no, I was not eaten by mosquitos. But I do have a few black fly bites from my last time fishing.

Danny Knobler wonders why people aren’t showing up, even though they do for the Lions, Red Wings and Pistons. If I had to speculate, I would say filling a 40,000+ seat stadium on a nightly basis is more difficult than a 22,000-seat arena two times a week or so, or a football stadium once a week for 10 weeks over the course of 5 months. I could be wrong. I really don’t know. But I have a good feeling winning like they have, the Tigers will continue to see a mostly-full park.

At Fox Sports, the Inside Pitch thinks Jim Leyland will ignore calls to replace Jones.

But the fact is that while Jones is now 0-3, Friday night’s 2-1 lead was only the second he has blown through the early days of the third month of the season. That’s pretty good for a closer.

And Jones’ history shows he’s much more effective finishing games than he is setting them up, which is what he’d be doing if Leyland replaced him as closer.

It could be worse… Derrick Turnbow blew three saves in the last four games of action for Milwaukee.

The Yankees beat the Tigers 3 of 4 times. Fox Sports Dayn Perry rewarded them with the No. 1 power ranking. After two weeks of leading, Detroit is No. 2.

Detroit is No. 5 in the ESPN power ranking. Their top-choice, the St. Louis Cardinals, have had some injury problems, including the loss of Albert Pujols. Maybe we don’t want to be No. 1…

A few days old, CBS Sportsline has Detroit No.2 behind the White Sox. After this week I don’t know if either team will hang on to that area.

Nearly a week old, Sports Illustrated ranked Detroit No. 1 before the Yanks series.

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Again, I won’t argue with where someone wants to rank the Tigers. Eric Mack of CBS Sportline put them No. 3 behind Chicago and Boston. (Boston? How bout the Cardinals?) It’s tough at the top. But again, I think we ought to expect what they say to make sense. I guess it’s getting harder and harder to pooh-pooh Detroit, so they keep reaching and coming up with strange responses.

Detroit has played just 10 of its 44 games against teams with a current record better than .500.

Add 7 against Cleveland, who has a winning record when they aren’t playing Detroit. And records aside on this one, when you hold baseball’s best offense (the Indians) to six runs in thee games in Cleveland, including a shutout, that kinda means something regardless of their record, no?

Add nine more games for those against Minnesota, who has a record of 18-17 when it’s not playing Detroit. And Oakland was above .500 when not against the Tigers when Mack wrote that. (They’re at exactly .500 now). So right there are 19 games.

Detroit also took 2 of 3 from Cincy, including a shutout against the NL’s top offense.

Maybe that’s splitting hairs. But you know what? Detroit has a strength of schedule of .485. Not real great. Near the bottom of baseball (24th).

But the bottom? The White Sox. .454. Mack didn’t mention that, did he?

UPDATE: Wednesday afternoon, the Tigers were at .484, the St. Louis Cardinals were 29th at .472, and the White Sox were last at .456. The three best records in baseball. Might their own winning be causing their SOS to decrease? I think “yes” is a safe answer.

That was indeed 99 mph smoke Verlander was throwing Monday night in the ninth inning of his first career complete game and shutout. The first of many. But it was lowly, 30th-ranked Kansas City (10-32) that Verlander and his Tigers were smashing.

Call me crazy, after all, I took economics classes, not physics. But I don’t think a baseball changes speed based on the color of the opponents jersey. I could be wrong on that.

Aside from that, Mack can think what he thinks. That’s what makes for sports arguments. But let’s start with the facts before we get to the truth.

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It’s not that I expect the Tigers should be ranked No. 1.  But when Sports Illustrated’s John Donovon writes things like this alongside his No. 3 ranking, it bewilders me.

So how can the team with the best ERA in baseball, not to mention the best record, not be No. 1 in the PRs? The Tigers have thrown eight shutouts already, for crying out loud. They’re on a tear, winning nine of their last 10. They have Kansas City coming up this week. I know, I know. Let’s see what they do in Cleveland this week. Then we’ll talk No. 1.

“Let’s see what they can do in Cleveland this week.”  Uhm?  The Tigers are not IN Cleveland this week. Cleveland is in Detroit.  And the last meeting was a Tigers’ sweep … IN Cleveland where Detroit allowed just six runs.  So, yeah, this one doesn’t make much sense to me.

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Dayn Perry ranked them as low as 10 this year while other power rankings put the Tigers in the 20s. So along with taking hold of the top record in baseball, Detroit has scaled to the summit of Fox Sports power rankings.

Detroit boasts the best run differential in the game. They’ve been succeeding by keeping runs off the board. Despite playing in the DH league, the Tigers lead all of baseball with only 131 runs allowed (a full 20 runs better than the next-stingiest team, the Cardinals). Accordingly, they lead the majors in ERA (3.27), and they’re tied for major league lead in Defensive Efficiency, which is a measure of what percentage of balls in play a defense converts into outs. It’s tough to score on Motown this year, and that’s why they’re baseball’s best team right now.

Over at ESPN, the White Sox still rank No. 1, but the Tigers moved up to No. 2.

Jim Leyland’s Detroit Tigers … [are] tantalizingly close to pushing the defending champion White Sox out of the No. 1 spot, where they’ve enjoyed a rather comfortable five-week stay in ESPN.com’s Power Rankings.

We couldn’t put the Tigers at 1A, so No. 2 — a six-spot climb — will have to do for now. The combination of Detroit’s perfect 6-0 week and Chicago’s rather mediocre mark against Minnesota and Tampa Bay has the Tigers on the cusp of a Power Ranking knockdown.

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In John Donovan’s MLB power ranking this week, Detroit moved up to No. 3 from No. 7. He wasn’t real impressed by sweeping the Indians per se, but brought up how dominant Detroit’s pitching was.

What Detroit did to Victor Martinez, the Indians’ superb switch-hitting catcher, was truly impressive. No hits in 12 at-bats. No balls out of the infield. No walks. The guy never reached base. Ask him if the Tigers are for real.

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Carlos Guillen drove in three runs against the Orioles in Monday’s 7-6 loss at Baltimore’s Camden Yards. He also made two errors that allowed 3 unearned runs. Does that cancel out?

Neither Guillen nor manager Jim Leyland seemed too concerned. From the MLB.com story:

“I don’t know what happened,” a dejected Guillen said afterward. “The ball came out of my glove wrong and it was an error. It’s going to happen when you play every day. You make errors in baseball.”

Leyland seemed inclined to forgive a physical error, rather than a mental misplay, perhaps because the oft-injured Guillen has been healthy this year and because Guillen’s bases-loaded double in the fifth off Orioles starter Daniel Cabrera gave Detroit a 5-2 lead.

“It’s part of the game,” the manager said. “When the ball’s in the hole, sometimes you rush it. Sometimes you try to be too quick with it.”

Sill I’m disappointed in Guillen’s defense this year. Acknowledging the iffy science of defensive statistics, it’s clear to see Guillen doesn’t fully look like himself out there. His errors have led to quite a few unearned runs. He has nine errors this year, not even one-quarter of the way through the season. His career high is 18. His current error pace jumped from 37 to 44. But he’s also on pace to see more balls hit to him this year than possibly any year during his career, and he has turned 22 double plays, which puts him on pace for 114 108. That’s 34 28 more than his career high. Maybe he’s forcing things. Maybe his injury is nagging him in the field moreso than at the plate, where Guillen has has a great year so far. Maybe it’s nothing but a bad stretch.

With a pace that puts him at 93 runs and 108 RBIs, it’s possible to forgive him. Of course, he probably can’t keep that up exactly, though I expect a nice year all-the-same. And I have to think the chances of seeing Ramon Santiago at SS and Guillen at DH are pretty slim. So he’ll have to improve his defense.

Maybe a better versed sabermetrician can break down Guillen’s defense this year. I’d love to see that.

Fortunately — strangely — Kansas City beat Cleveland for a second straight game, so the Tigers lost no ground to the Indians. Meanwhile, the White Sox look like they’re going to run away with the division again.

Another interesting note, Pudge Rodriguez had a chance to play 1st base for the Tigers and looked pretty good out there. It’s a position he had played in winter ball many years ago, Jason Beck of MLB.com wrote, but it’s a position he has never logged in an MLB game.

Also, Beck answered his mailbag, about the closer situation and Justin Verlander. I’m a big fan of Beck’s reporting, you can probably tell.

On the Fernando Rodey/Todd Jones closer debate:
Once you decide on a closer going into a season, you stick with him. It’s the logical thing to do, for one, and it promotes stability to the young guys behind him. If a closer goes into June blowing save chances and getting rocked when it counts, that’s when you debate change, not when a guy blows one chance in early May.

While I didn’t find much to link to in the Baltimore Sun, there was a story on the Tigers’ rebound in the Baltimore Examiner. Nothing real exciting.

CBS Sportsline updated its power rankings. Detroit fell to eighth but Sportsline remained a believer.

They’ve lost 3-of-4 after a six-game winning streak. This should be a temporary setback with the way they’re pitching and able to swing the bats.

A side note

My boy, Dan Haren, finally picked up another win. His blog isn’t updated more than once a week or so, but it’s a good read if you haven’t looked.

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Coming off a 7-2 loss to Anaheim (Los Angeles Angels of) Thursday following an untimely change of Jim Leyland’s underpants (or something, anyway), the Tigers moved up in today’s rankings. Detroit moved up to #6 at ESPN and #2 at Fox Sports. Given the Tigers are currently playing like the second-best team in the American League, I fully buy the Fox Sports ranking by Dayn Perry. I don’t think they’ll finish the end of the season there — it’s probably the peak — but it’s fun to enjoy while it lasts! A believer from the start who predicted a good season, Perry has been proven correct thus far. He writes:

Quite a week for the Tigers. Magglio Ordonez smacks his 200th career home run, and they obliterate the Twins in a three-game set by a combined score of 32-1. On the whole, Detroit boasts the best run differential in all of baseball.

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Eric Mack of CBS Sportsline was not a believe when the season started. He’s coming around.

[T]he red-hot Tigers, now No. 7 in CBS SportsLine.com’s latest Power Rankings, AL rookie of the year candidate Justin Verlander is just a portion of baseball’s top pitching staff to date.

If the bruising lineups of the Reds and Tigers get the pitching to support them, look out. The Reds, who move all the way up to No. 8, lead an NL Central right now that also has the Cards, Astros, Brewers and Cubs all off to good starts.

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Detroit still ranks sixth in the Sports Illustrated power ranking by John Donovan.

I’m not sure they’re ready for the White Sox and the Indians yet, but the Tigers, believe it, can at least give those guys a scare.

Two points, The first is that I agree with his comment. Personally, I believe the Indians are over rated, and to me their pitching staff doesn’t look that good on paper. (But then I look at ours, and, er, ditto). However, they have a good lineup and a good team that fell just short last year. There’s no reason to believe they can’t make another run this season, and I certainly don’t salivate at the thought of playing them. In fact, they were my preseason pick to win the Central. So I think being included in the conversation is a compliment.

The second is, Detroit ranks as the second-highest ranked AL club. Given what the AL could do to the NL, I think he’s overranking the NL teams right now and the Tigers should be in the top 5.

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Fox Sports:  6  Fox Sports’ Dayn Perry has been kind to the Tigers all season, ranking them no worse than 10th this season.

Chris Shelton, a surprisingly slick defense, great bullpen and a Mike Maroth (he of the one run allowed in 2006). Still, it�s a rough stretch ahead

ESPN:  11  On the other hand, ESPN has never really been a believer, preferring to put teams with worse records, worse stats and worse opponents above them.

The Tigers have a major-league best 11 road wins. They didn’t win this many away from Comerica last season until May 27.

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