Last nights game featured a heroic performance by Jeremy Bonderman who allowed no runs after the home run from the very first batter. Jeremy went nine full innings giving up six hits and zero walks with two of those hits came from his nemesis at the plate Matt Stairs who’s total batting average against Jeremy is now above .500.

On the offensive front though the Detroit hitters were not too impressive having a hard time getting on base. In last nights game though I’ll give them a bit of an out as they faced Roy Halladay but they this performance has become standard fare so far and this needs to start changing for Detroit to be successful in the long haul. I do understand that it is early and the “we are not worried” stories are in full force in the media but the full reliance on pitching will only get the team so far.

Detroit’s starters have kept the team in the game on most days so far and they can get out of this year beginning 10-game road trip with a winning record which was certainly the goal. To stress the differences between the Detroit pitching and batting stats I’ve broken out the differences thus far below and compared them to the American League overall as well as the minimum and maximum statistic in each category.

Batting Statistics

The Tigers batters started in March pretty good and much talk was around Gary Sheffield being that much needed middle-of-the-lineup slugger and key to the offense. The Tigers are the 11th in the American League in batting average and 12th in on base percentage. Five Tiger starters have a batting average of below .250 thus far, some quite a bit below:

• Craig Monroe - .235
• Magglio Ordonez - .231
• Sean Casey - .206
• Gary Sheffield - .139
• Brandon Inge - .097

Outside of their average though Magglio, Casey and Sheffield are also in the tops on the team in walks but still far from impressive at getting on base.

The team with the lowest batting average and on base percentage is the Seattle Mariners. The Mariners are also the lowest batting average in all of the Major Leagues and have a remarkably bad number of walks: 9. The highest team batting average is the Toronto Blue Jays and the Cleveland Indians have the highest on base percentage.

Pitching Statistics

The Tiger pitching, on the other hand, have lived up to the hype thus far. Tiger starters been particularly impressive with a record of 4-1. The Tigers additionally have a good K-BB ratio of 2.10 which is fifth overall with Boston having the highest at 2.60.

Oakland leads the league in ERA so far with 2.97 and Tampa Bay lags way behind with 6.07. Detroit is fourth overall with the Tiger starters coming in well below with an ERA of 2.89. Justin Verlander has come out of his Spring Training slump to allow zero earned runs over two starts with both Robertson and Bonderman having very impressive outings as well.

Again, last nights outing was no bell-weather with the game becoming the pitching duel that it was said to be. The Tigers got beat by small-ball, a game they were the one’s to come out on top of last year. It was a hard game to lose after such a great pitching performance but overall easier to take than a blow-out. It was also another game that with some offense could have been won regardless of the opposing pitching.