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.

Looking back in the crystal ball, having Willis pulled from the game was probably for the best, at least for this particular game. I’d never wish an injury on someone to be pulled from the game but Willis was not pitching well and struggling to find the strike zone even before the injury. The injury, however, might make the win not worth it.

Detroit is not in a good position to handle an extended outage from any of the starters. Billfer from the Detroit Tigers Weblog has outlined some of the possible replacements if it comes to that. Another option was Macay McBride, who the Tigers acquired in a trade for Wil Ledezma last year, was recently lost for the season due to surgery to repair torn ligaments in his elbow. McBride was part of the Tiger bullpen last year but was being moved to a starting role with the Toledo MudHens, likely to handle situations such as the current one.

The bullpen, consisting of Aquilino Lopez, Jason Grilli, Denny Bautista and Todd Jones, pitched the entire game and pitched very well. But with the struggles as of late, the last thing the team wanted was to have them cover a full nine innings. Which makes it all the better that they performed well as not to rely on further bullpen arms.

While the large number of walks allowed was glaringly obvious tonight, the problem isn’t a new one this year. Going into tonight Detroit pitchers lead the American League with a WHIP (Walks Hits per Inning Pitched) of 1.59, the bullpen had a WHIP of 1.65.

This will get worse after tonights game. While I have no doubt that Tiger hitters will perform up to expectations, it might not matter unless Detroit pitchers can turn around their own issues. When Bostons’ bullpen ran into trouble in the seventh inning they were able to bring in Hideki Okajima to shut down Detroit. When Bostons’ bullpen began bleeding in the eighth inning they were able bring out Jonathan Papelbon stop it. Detroit has no such go-to bullpen pitcher that can be depended upon and this needs to change.

The bullpen must be more than Bobby Seay who can be depended on to get a K against a lefty when needed but not for more than an inning of work. The team cannot wait until the return of either Fernando Rodney or Joel Zumaya, both of whom are making progress.

Pitching coach Chuck Hernandez has a lot of work ahead of him to figure out how some guys who were good Triple-A pitchers, such as Yorman Bazardo, can’t buy an out in the bigs.

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.

The optimist would say he threw a one hitter and that a bit of wildness can help a pitcher throw batters off. This is something not even D-Train himself seems to believe:

“I was terrible and that’s pretty much it,” said Willis, obtained from Florida along with Miguel Cabrera in a six-player deal. “But you still have to battle and try and keep your team in the game.”

Outside of the 7 walks allowed (3 of which went to Nick Swisher) over just 5 innings pitched there are a number of other worrisome stats that, while possibly helping Willis during this outing, won’t last for future starts. In yesterday’s start, Willis threw a total of 89 pitches with only 46 of them being for a stike. That means that an astounding 48% of his pitches were balls, this against a team that is not the most patient in the league.

Where some combination of luck, a large park and good defense helped out was with balls that were hit into play. Looking at stats such as BABIP and what happened with balls put into play shows a drastic difference between Willis’s one start and those of the rest of the starters. Below is a breakdown of each Tiger’s first start of the season:

One might think that Willis is a fly-ball pitcher from these stats, but he has historically not been such a pitcher as his lifetime GF/FB average is 1.34. Willis coaxed a large number of infield fly balls, which are easily handled, as well as outfield fly balls. The White Sox were struggling to get a good hit and these stats show that but they weren’t giving anything to hit. In reality, against a more patient lineup there should have been a much larger number of walks and a much worse score.

D-Train needs to get his control fixed and quickly.

Thing’s didn’t go quite like Justin Verlander had planned yet his outing was far from horrible. Verlander managed to rack up 6 K’s and had a only gave up his first hit in the fourth inning, a single to Billy Butler. He appeared very dominant and it’s hard to take anything negative from his outing.

The weather held up as perfectly as you could imagine given the horrible forecast. It was overcast the entire day and the lights remained on throughout the game. This interfered with the military jet fly-by rendering them not visible by the crowd.

There was quite a bit of good and some bad on the day:

• Denny Bautista failed to look anything like his Spring Training performances. He lacked control which prompted multiple visits to the mound and gave up 3 hits and 2 walks in only 2 innings of work.
• Brandon Inge played like a man possessed or one looking for a starting job. He swung the bat today far better than we all saw last year. He laid off the low pitches, swung at the good ones and even took a walk. Additionally, his performance in Centerfield was good and he had the chance to show off his arm throwing out Mark Teahan at home. That said, he doesn’t have Grandersons range.
• Clete Thomas doubled in his first major league at-bat and made two catches in left field. He replaced Jacque Jones late in the game for defense and, as it turned out, offense.
• Gary Sheffield walked four times in five plate appearances. Some of which he started off 0-2. Nuff’ Said.
• Polanco came up hitless today but he looked his normal self. He couldn’t seem to get the ball out of the infield which led to him stranding 6 runners.

While the lineup didn’t produce the needed run support, there were definitely spurts at which you could see the potential. While it’s easy to blame this loss on the bullpen, I won’t as they combined to perform better than Justin. Grilli and Lopez both allowed inherited runners to score though they were called in with runners at the corners and no outs. This will be a great squad to watch this year.

Below are some pictures from today’s match up:

1. It was quite a cloudy day and things were very soaked. Luckily the ushers had plenty of dry towels for the seats.

2. Pre-game lineups standing for the National Anthem.

3. Miss America threw out the first pitch; it might have been a strike.

4. First pitch for Tiger Baseball 2008

5. Reliever Bobby Seay holding runners. He did so though it was with a heck of a catch by Edgar Rentaria at short.

6. Guillen trotting around the bases after his monster tater to left field.

7. Clete Thomas takes the field for the first time.