Today’s game, in some sense, was a battle for the last starting slot in the Tigers bullpen. Detroit played two games today (split squad) with Durbin starting against Houston and Kenny Rogers starting against the Braves. The game against the Houston Astros featured both Chad Durbin and Zach Miner both of whom are vying for a spot on the Tigers 25-man roster for the beginning of the 2007 season.
Chad Durbin
Chad Durbin had a good outing pitching four innings with the below game stats:
| IP | H | R | ER | BB | SO | HR | ERA | |
| Today’s Game | 4 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 2.25 |
| Spring Training 07 | 16 | 8 | 5 | 5 | 3 | 3 | 3 | 2.81 |
Chad Durbin has had the strongest spring and as I mentioned yesterday is more likely to be picked as the last reliever. This might not necessarily only be because of his mostly successful outings but also because he is out of options which ultimately means that the Tigers would have to risk losing him to another team if they did not select him to be on the 25-man roster. This is not the case for Zach Miner whom the Tigers can safely place in Toledo to start the year.
Durbin is a fly-ball pitcher who can be plagued by homeruns giving up 17 in Toledo last year over 185 innings pitched and has given up three so far this spring. That said, he is mostly successful and had a successful year with the Mud Hens last year ending with a 3.11 ERA and pitched 6 successful innings with Detroit in September.
Zach Miner
Zach Miner also pitched four innings but his outing did not go quite as well:
| IP | H | R | ER | BB | SO | HR | ERA | |
| Today’s Game | 4 | 4 | 4 | 4 | 2 | 1 | 0 | 9.00 |
| Spring Training 07 | 14 | 14 | 10 | 9 | 6 | 11 | 2 | 5.79 |
Zach has had a number of rough outings this spring and today was no different. I’ve talked about this before on the blog and regardless of the competition he’s shown that his end of the ‘06 season control problems are still existent and he could use more time at Toledo. Since the Tigers don’t need him and have a number of other options, dropping Miner is not a hard decision.
There are others that the Tigers could choose with the only other even likely possibility being Bobby Seay but as with Zach Miner, he has options left. Zach came in and did a great job filling in for Mike Maroth last season and I’d expect that he’ll find his way back into the bigs pretty soon, just not to start ‘07.
D-Town Baseball
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