Box Score

Summary

Tigers quickly disposed of Jered Weaver forcing him to pitch 70 pitches in just 1.2 innings of work. The bats were very hot to start off lead by Curtis Granderson who hit a home run, a double and a single. The Angels weren’t far out as Maroth struggled in a number of innings and was saved numerous times by great defensive plays by Granderson and Inge. The Tiger bullpen was a force in the game as they came in and held off the Angel offense that is pretty strong and certainly was building momentum and battled back throughout the game.

Even though the score was high for the Tigers the Angels never felt out of it. It was great to see the Tiger batters in full force with five Tiger batters having multi-hit games. (Granderson, Sheffield, Ordonez, Guillen, Rodriguez) on their way to the win.

Pitching

Maroth started off getting the hits he wanted but they seemed to just keep finding holes and there were some mental mistakes in the field mainly a fly ball that dropped between three Tiger defenders. The Angels worked him pretty hard with Maroth’s pitch count sitting at 80 after four innings of work. Unfortunatly Mike was not left in the game long enough to get the win as he walked the bases loaded and Grilli came in to safely close out the inning.

Command was also an issue for Grilli but he survived a few innings work with just a single run against. Bobby Seay then pitched an impressive eighth inning shutting down the LA offense. Zumaya was brought into what became a scary ninth inning. Tigers started off with a five run lead though Zumaya gave a leadoff homer followed by another batter getting on base due to an error on Carlos Guillen which brought Vladmir to the plate who he then struk out. Zumaya then induced a few popups, along with a hit, to get the Tigers the victory.

Hitting

Tigers offense was hot & cold again getting off to another quick start then sizzling out in the middle innings before heating up again at the end. Gary Sheffield had two hits, nuff said there. Curtis Granderson couldn’t have been much more on, well he had a lone strikeout, but also contributed 3 hits and 2 runs. Curtis also made a key run preventing assist throwing Guerrero out at third during the fifth inning. Magglio Ordonez was a huge contributor as well with 3 runs scored on two hits and a walk.

The bottom of the order was pretty bad as Casey, Monroe and Inge contributed zero hits and four strikeouts. The one walk came from Sean Casey. Those three need to start producing as they effectivly shutdown each Tiger rally.