Box Score

Summary

Well the losing streak, if you want to call it that, didn’t last long as the Tigers blasted their way to a win against the slumping Cardinals. Detroit’s offense pounded away inning after inning including a 9-spot in the 5th inning batting around on one out.

The offense overshadowed the excellent pitching by Andrew Miller in his first MLB start ever and his first win. He went 6 shutout innings and looked very good allowing only 4 hits and 3 walks. He was extremely efficient and it’s easy to see why Leyland and Hernandez have been talking him up quite a bit recently.

Tigers continue to love interleague play as they swept St. Louis last year during the regular season.

Pitching

Andrew Miller was dominant tonight which was wonderful to see after he had a few rough outings in Lakeland earlier this year. He was very efficient going through 6 innings on 94 pitches though not as much of a ground-ball pitcher as his last start in Erie. He had a 7-9 ground-out/fly-out ratio.

The strength of Tigers starting depth is really showing through with great starts from Zach Miner, who filled in for Mike Maroth yesterday, and now Andrew Miller. Chad Durbin has also been good this year with some struggles but most of the time he has enough to keep the Tigers in the game.

The worries come with the bullpen. Tonight the Tigers turned to Jason Grilli who did not look good again. The Cardinals took him for 5 hits over the two innings he was in there and in any situation where you aren’t up by 12 runs he would have been pulled.

Bobby Seay took the ninth inning and gave up a homerun to Albert Pujols. Hard to fault that to much and he did pick up a couple more strikeouts.

Hitting

Heck of a game by the Tigers offense as they killed a few Cardinal pitchers ERA’s. Collectively they batted .450 with 5 doubles and two homers, Polanco accounted for 3 of the doubles. That makes for 12 doubles in the past two games.

Three Tigers walked away with a 3-RBI game (Granderson, Polanco, Sheffield) and two with a 2-RBI game (Rodriguez and Casey.) Sean Casey came up big with a 4-hit game bringing his average up to .244, though he is no stranger to hitting NL pitching.

Another impressive game by one of MLB’s strongest offenses.