Another fun game down at Comerica Park tonight. Nate Robertson took the mound and looked very rough right out of the gate but was able to pull himself together and pitch 6.1 innings. This might not sound like a long outing but for Tiger starters this year Nate’s outing was an extended one.

It felt quite cold out there with a slight breeze coming into the park the entire game but the Tiger bats remained hot. Four home runs were hit between Gary Sheffield, Magglio Ordonez, Carlos Guillen and Miguel Cabrera. For the Twins, Craig Monroe returned to Detroit and had some success for the first time this year. He’s been as cold for Minnesota as he was for Detroit.

Below are a few more pictures from today’s matchup:

1. Robertson being pulled for “Left Lat Tightness”. Since I was at the game I didn’t know what was wrong until I arrived back home but while at the game I didn’t see anything wrong.

2. Lefty Clay Rapada took the mound in the eighth inning to face Joe Mauer and Justin Morneau. He fell behind both batters but won out in the end.

3. Magglio Ordonez doubles in Placido Polanco to tie the game. Placido’s one-out walk in the eighth was key to the comeback.

4. Jessie Crain had a large number of mound visitors but it didn’t seem to help, whatever the strategy was.

5. Miguel Cabrera touching home after his 2-run shot to left field.

Spanning back through 2006, Detroit has been horrible when playing in front of the entire nation, that is if you don’t take the playoffs into count. There isn’t a reason for this but tonight would have been a wonderful night for the teams bats to slug out a few runs. Buerhle was also a good pitcher for it as well but Detroit made him look like Cy Young.

There were a few take aways:

• Carlos Guillen continues to be a shining part of the lineup. He continues to work every single at-bat and hasn’t been giving up constant easy outs like say… Magglio.
• Guillen appears to still be uncomfortable at first base. It’s not only with the error in today’s game due to dropping an easy catch, he has played over too far and gone after balls that were really for the second baseman.
• Third-base Coach Gene Lamont, who is normally very conservative, should never have waved Santiago to third base. It was an obvious very bad call and ended in a ridiculously unnecessary out.
• Magglio has swung at the first pitch in nearly all of his at-bats and it feels like he is trying to make something happen.
• Yorman Bazardo was quite a disappointment. In some of the previous games I was hoping they would go with him instead of Miner or Jason Grilli. Oh well.

I don’t leave games early too often but I did tonight. It was cold and there just wasn’t a good game out on the field. Listening to the game on the ride home made me feel good about my decision.

Below are a few pictures from today’s matchup.

1. Magglio Ordonez giving some pre-game interviews to ESPN.

2. They put out a stand for the gold glove and silver slugger awards given to the Tiger players. Al Kaline and Willie Horton were in attendance as well.

3. Many of this vaunted lineup warming up before the game.

4. Verlander on the mound. He looked pretty good, other than the leadoff home run, to start the game. It went downhill very quickly.

5. Brandon Inge on third-base due to an errant throw to first by White Sox third-baseman Joe Crede. Brandon would eventually score.

6. Magglio got a hit, one of a few so far. This ended in one of the 5 double-plays on the night.

7. Can’t think of much bad with Bobby Seay’s performance, he was as advertised.

Brandon Inge has been spectacular to start off the year and looked unlike the Inge of 2007. He’s shown great plate discipline through the first couple games, as well as back in Spring Training, and continued to show that he can play nearly any position in the field competently. He’s earned multiple walks and shown power out of the gate, yet Miguel Cabrera is better. This first three-game sweep by the Royals has brought the Inge-supporters out in droves, but nothing has really changed. If anything, Brandon is helping find himself a starting spot elsewhere which can only benefit Detroit later in the season when particular needs are more apparent.

If there is anything to be concerned about it is the one thing that can really hold this team back; injuries. The season has started with many key players out (Joel Zumaya, Fernando Rodney, Curtis Granderson) and now Gary Sheffield is appearing to have as serious problem. There have been some mixed messages in what has been in the crowd, but as Blake points out, it does not sound good. Miguel Cabrera will take Shef’s place in DH today.

Today Nate Robertson will look to carry his successful Spring Training starts into the regular season. For the Chicago White Sox, Jose Contreras will take the mound. If there is any pitcher that the Tiger bats should come alive against, it is Jose. Detroit took him for 26 hits and 4 walks in 18 IP over the 2007 season and slugged .587. He was just bad in ’07 and didn’t look as if he had straightened out at all this past spring.

Game time is 1:05 PM @ Comerica Park.

FSN Detroit, featuring the broadcast team of play-by-play voice Mario Impemba and analyst Rod Allen, will air as many as 151 games this season, including at least 75 in high definition on FSN HD. Three April and May games that conflict with the Detroit Pistons or the Red Wings are slated to air on FSN Plus, an alternate channel made available through cable and satellite providers.

Not a big change from last year with only a single game not currently scheduled to be broadcast. It’s hard to complain when only a single game won’t be shown but I had hoped for a bit more HD coverage. With such high popularity of tickets last year and this season and with high TV ratings the last two years I can only imagine there is some demand:

Not surprisingly, Tigers games have been a huge draw in the local television market. Last year’s games on FSN drew an all-time high 7.5 average household rating. In the summer months from June through August, they’ve been the most watched programs in the Detroit market in each of the past two seasons, beating both cable and broadcast shows in prime time.

Hopefully some more games in HD will be added. Additionally, two games are scheduled to be on ESPN Sunday Night Baseball. When Detroit stunk, not so long ago, I would complain that they didn’t get national coverage, now I’d rather watch Rod and Mario on FSN. I guess the grass is always greener :)

With the Pitchers & Catchers reporting in 7 days, with many already there, and position players in 12 days, the season is right around the corner!

[UPDATE] – FSN Detroit will be airing 103 games in HD this year.

Pretty surprising move as they don’t appear to have a major need in the outfield and $3.8M is a bit much for a backup outfielder. A bit much for Craig Monroe as well.

This ranking really is not a surprise but still troubling at the same time. While not taking into account youth talent levels in the farm system, which Detroit has ranked middle of the pack the last few years, the result is rather concerning.

I am certainly pleased with the overall talent level on the team but with the age of the team climbing the risk due to injury climbs. With the struggles on injuries last year I fear the “Win Now” philosophy might have consequences in only a few years that we don’t want to pay.

What has changed? Well, in 2006 Detroit had the opportunity to put some of their best pitchers out there to face Santana. That didn’t work well so this year they went with rookies and back of the rotation starters and have found the key to success.

Through this year, Tiger batters seem to step up when presented with a challenge and have surprisingly hard times when, on paper at least, they should have been able to step up. Case in-point: Edwin Jackson, who Detroit had a hard time cracking in two appearances.

Of the top three contenders Detroit has the toughest schedule and Cleveland has the easiest. That is unfortunate. Additionally the Tigers have two doubleheaders already scheduled: Sept 11th vs TEX & July 24th vs CWS. This leaves little room for additional rain outs as they would likely face more doubleheaders or take away one of the very few off day’s through the rest of the season.

“Everybody’s focusing on the bullpen,” Leyland said, “and the fact of the matter is, we need more innings from our starters. Everybody’s zeroed in on the bullpen and picking on the bullpen. I’m not picking on anybody, nor am I mad at any starters or mad at any bullpen guys. These are peaks and valleys in baseball, and you go through these. And the worst thing you can do is panic. I think it’s wrong for everybody to focus on the bullpen.”
…
“Everybody has issues,” Leyland added. “The Tigers aren’t the only team that has people hurt. But the fact of the matter is if your starters are going five innings with 90 or 100 pitches, it’s not good.”

I’d agree with Leyland that Detroit needs more from the starters on the team but not as a general statement but more because the bullpen is horrible. Right now Detroit starters are handling the bulk of the innings and, in fact, more so than most in the AL Central. Detroit relievers have handled a total of 33.44% of the overall innings load as compared with the leader, Cleveland, with 32.58%. Below is a breakout of the percentage of overall innings handled by each AL Central team’s relievers:

As another point of reference, the 2006 Tiger bullpen handled 32.56% of the overall inning load.

The Tigers stack up pretty well here overall, but it is true that some starters need to step up and handle more innings. Nate Robertson’s last 4 starts have been less than 6 innings but he started off the year strong lasting 7 innings, or a bit more, in 3 games. Chad Durbin has only lasted six or more innings in 3 of his 9 starts. This is certainly taxing on the bullpen but none more so than other teams are dealing with.

Let’s take a deeper look at the performance of the Detroit starters vs bullpen.

Asking more from the starters could be asking for more trouble. With pre-season worries about high use of rookie Justin Verlander and other young pitchers such as Bonderman the Tigers could bring a negative effect to the team by forcing more innings and higher pitch counts out of the starters. But this is all really pretty needles, the starters are continuing to pitch well and stack up very well around the Central division. Below are the top 10 starters in the American League Central by VORP:

Three of the top 10 are on Detroit which is the most of any team. It’s going to be hard to argue that a whole heck of a lot more can/should be expected out of the starting 5. Each certainly has their own issues to work with, but again, in aggregate, they are doing better than most starting squads.

On the other hand, the Detroit bullpen does not show up at all in the list of top 10 AL Central relievers by VORP with Todd Jones barely missing the list at 11 with a VORP of 5.5. Three have a negative VORP and those three are a rather important three in Rodney, Mesa and Grilli.

This is a pretty worrisome list with the top reliever being Todd Jones and the second on the 15-Day DL and it just goes downhill quickly after that. I agree with Leyland that panic is a bad thing and that it’s just May, but realizing where the problem lies is important and solving the problem before June/July is of importance as well. Requiring more innings of starters is an easy solution but at most only a short term solution with long term ramifications.

The Detroit bullpen needs the fixing and not the starters. I can only hope this is understood and where the emphasis will actually be.

Detroit isn’t alone around the AL Central in slumping bullpens as all teams, except one, are in the bottom third of all MLB teams. The Twins are the lone exception as they rank 8th with a team relief ERA of 3.41. Below is a view of each AL Central team by ERA:

The Twins have three top performers in their bullpen and recently lost a key contributer in Jessie Crain. Crain had been struggling as of late though there are four other Twins bullpen members with an ERA below 3.00 and one, Pat Neshek, with 1.47.

The Tigers best relief pitcher is the closer, Todd Jones, with an ERA of 2.37. The next in line would be Fernando Rodney at 4.74 then Wilfredo Ledezma at 5.14. That is pretty bad and Detroit has some work to do to fill the spot of Joel Zumaya who’s out for a couple of months.

So what changes need to be made? Well, Billfer is eyeing Wil Ledezma as a struggling member of the bullpen ripe for replacement. I wouldn’t go that far with Ledezma at this point in the year. The Tigers have a number of options and have a few newcomers in the ‘pen in Seay and Byrdak. Both have been pretty successful and most of Seay’s damage has come in a couple bad outings; Byrdak has been lights out in both of his outings since being called up before this past Boston series.

The Tigers will need to ride the wave of both Rodney and Ledezma’s struggles and hope that some of the newcomers step up to the plate to fill in some innings until they straighten out. Another member to the bullpen would be nice to see and to open that spot I would eye cutting Jose Mesa. Mesa’s been struggling out of the gate and his best years are likely behind him. There is no reason to risk letting a talent such as Ledezma’s to get away to keep Mesa in the ‘pen.

So who would fill the spot? The Tigers have a number of options from today’s game 1 starter Zach Miner to tomorrows starter Andrew Miller or his Erie teammates Euglio De La Cruz or Dallas Trahern. We’ve known Detroit has depth in pitchers and it’s simply time to utilize it even more.