Box Score

Summary

Wow, A game where the Tiger offense showed up behind Bonderman to allow him to gather his second win of the season. This was great to see and very much needed as Bondo wasn’t in his finest form and struggled from the first inning blues as he has many games this year. The Tiger battery fought back from deficits twice to finally take and keep the lead.

We had another look at some key bullpen pitchers now that Joel Zumaya will be out. Rodney wasn’t his best allowing two runs but Bobby Seay was impressive. Behind the bullpen and a stressful 9th inning the Tigers took their 8th win in a row.

Pitching

Jeremy Bonderman had a rough outing but walked away with a win regardless. Once his first inning home run was given up he, as with all his other starts, pulled himself together and pitched like the Ace that is expected of him. There were a few times you could tell he wasn’t confident with his stuff; case in point was his walk to Sexon. Bondo had Sexon in a 1-2 count and just couldn’t put him away. Turns out his best wasn’t needed tonight and he stole a win.

Bobby Seay was brought in the seventh and pitched a perfect seventh inning throwing only seven pitches. All strikes. For some reason Fernando Rodney was brought in, maybe to keep Seay fresh and give Rodney a chance for some action as his last outing was May 4th. He didn’t do quite as well giving up two runs starting with a tough walk that ended up scoring.

Todd Jones came in and picked up his 13th save on the season. This inning saw three spectacular catches from Craig Monroe, Curtis Granderson and Magglio Ordonez. Craig and Maggs both had diving, on the ground, catches both of which I didn’t expect to be made. Grandersons catch, while looking routine, wasn’t and it showed why Granderson is put back in for defense because I don’t think Infante would have made it had he been left in centerfield.

Hitting

The doubles kept on coming with the Tigers combining for another 7 doubles. These have been huge and led to a large number of runs. With a lefty on the mound Leyland went with Omar Infante in centerfield and almost saw him hit for the cycle. Omar was in need of a home run to do so but settled hitting 3-for-3 with 4 RBI’s.

Gary Sheffield went deep in the seventh inning giving a bit more cushion to the lead. Overall 5 Tigers had multi-hit games and were struck out only 3 times. One of which was Pudge with the bases loaded, but you can’t get em all :)

The bottom of the lineup continued to show they can bring something to the plate and Brandon Inge started creeping closer to the Mendoza Line going 2-for-3 with 3 RBI’s (one off of a HBP.)