I would love to hate on Todd Jones after this his fourth blown save. He didn’t have his good stuff this eve; not even close. What is more worrisome is that it was obvious that he didn’t have his good stuff when he first came in during the eighth inning and allowed both inherited runners score. Yet he went back out on the mound for the ninth inning and remained there for the entire 5-run inning. This one sits pretty squarely on Jim Leyland.

I’m not sure of Leylands rationale in leaving Jones out there to crash and burn. Maybe he didn’t want to dip into an already struggling bullpen. Maybe he wanted to continue, even in adversity, showing his faith in Jones as a closer. Maybe he simply couldn’t believe that Jones would blow it that bad. We’ll he did and it was obvious to everyone including the announcers Mario and Rod who stated how it was clear Jones had nothing left. 46 pitches to get 3 outs.

Wow.

One stat thrown around quite a bit this past week was the Tigers May team batting average of .309. What wasn’t was the Tigers opponents batting average of .282.

Summary

Break out the brooms once again! Verlander and the Tigers held off the defending champs (though they aren’t living up to the ‘defending’ part) once again to pick up the sweep. Detroit’s offense showed their power once again and scored six runs on nine hits including 3 doubles, a triple and a home run.

Lineup was a bit unusual today with Neifi Perez hitting in the two-spot, Mike Rabelo behind the dish and Gary Sheffield in right field. Gary made a few spectacular plays in outfield; plays that Magglio wouldn’t have made namely a catch in foul territory that took some real speed to make it there. Mike Rabelo also did a good job catching Albert Pujols in a rundown.

Tigers get a day off tomorrow then have a series with the Angels then their first meeting of co-division leaders Cleveland Indians next weekend.

Pitching

Justin Verlander had another strong outing and picked up another win. This outing wasn’t as dominant as his last , which saw him gather up 7 strikeouts, but got the job done. He had a single walk to So Taguchi who he had in a 1-2 count and lost him. Just as important, Verlander lasted 8 innings requiring little work from the bullpen.

Rodney/Seay split the 9th inning that saw Rodney give up a couple of hits and a run before Bobby Seay was brought in to get the last out. He did that with some force and struck out Chris Duncan to end the game.

Hitting

Granderson is fitting very nicly in the lead off role and lead off today’s game with a triple and was batted in by Neifi to promptly put the Tigers ahead. Granderson ended the day 1-for-3 with a walk and no strikeouts as he keeps on improving.

Sean Casey continued his dominance of the National League getting a 2-RBI double eventually touching the plate on a Mike Rabelo single. He also made a few good scoops over at first and does a good job normalizing some really bad throws from Carlos Guillen.

Brandon Inge picked up his 8th homerun of the year; a two-run shot to left field. He had worked into a full count and got the pitch he wanted down the middle and a little up. This ties him with Gary Sheffield for second on the team (Ordonez has the most homeruns with 9.)

Tigers didn’t come up with a lot of hits but their power pulled them through once again!

Summary

Nate Robertson needed and received run support today in a game that started out seeming as if it would be a drudging like last nights game. This proved to not be true as St. Louis fought back driving Robertson from the game and successfully attacking the Tiger bullpen.

Detroit offense didn’t let up and a hard hit rocket home run to left field from Gary Sheffield proved to be huge and put the game out of the red birds reach.

Cincinnati beat out the Indians to tie up the AL Central. Tonights game ended with enough time for some Tigers to go join in on the Detroit Downtown Hoedown and celebrate.

Pitching

Nate pitched well tonight and had some well deserved run support. The Cardinal offense did give him a workout and was able to force a season high 4 walks from Robertson and make him work. They continued to work him and eventually drive him from the game after only 5 innings of work but at a 100 pitches thrown.

This proved to be rather important due to the Tigers bullpen struggles which continued as Ledezma was brought in to and lasted 0.1 of an inning taking on 2 more earned runs, 2 hits and a walk. Tim Byrdak was then brought in to get them out of the inning and he did. He had yet to be scored upon and gave up his first run of the season. He eventually got into a bit of trouble but also got two strikeouts. It wasn’t a bad outing for him.

Rodney saw about an inning of work as well and gave up a hit to the leadoff batter and fell behind a few batters but ultimately got the ground balls he was looking for. I was quite pleased to see him have a decent outing.

Jones, who has been getting the good press lately with the troubles in the rest of the bullpen, came close tonight ending with 2-outs and the bases loaded getting Scott Rolen to pop out. Rollercoaster racked up his 14th save.

Is it me or does it seem that the Tigers pitchers are really making Pudge work behind the plate? They are leading the league in wild pitches even before the two extra wild pitches tonight from Ledezma and Byrdak.

Hitting

Granderson silently came up big again in tonights game starting off with a leadoff hit then scoring and following up with an RBI hit a few innings later. Combined with a solid 3-run HR from Pudge Rodriguez the Tigers were out to a commanding lead very quickly.

Sean Casey had another quality game getting two hits and a infield out that moved the runner to third setting up a sacrifice fly for Craig Monroe. Unfortunate he doesn’t get credit in the books on that much but the run wouldn’t have come through with out the hit and Casey’s ability to make contact is important.

Tigers came up with a combined 4 doubles and 2 home runs, this should put the Tigers first in the MLB in extra base hits.

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.

Summary

Tigers will walk away from this road-trip with a losing record going 3-4 and their first series lost in quite some time. For the second game of Today’s double-header the Tigers sent Chad Durbin to the mound who, while not pitching his best, held the Red Sox back enough to give Detroit a large opportunity to win.

Unfortunately the Tiger offense couldn’t find the hits needed to bring base runners home though their slugging was in full force with 8 of the 9 hits going for extra bases. Tigers will look to rebound against a struggling Cardinals team this weekend starting tomorrow with a start from Andrew Miller.

Pitching

Chad Durbin struggled from the outset but for some reason the Red Sox couldn’t make him really pay for it. He had a hard time getting strikes and routinely found himself behind hitters and ended up walking many of them (5 total.) He also struck out 4 batters and allowed only 3 hits and no extra base hits. It’s hard to get down on his performance against a powerful offense such as the Red Sox but in many ways he was lucky tonight.

Wilfredo was brought in during the sixth inning to get a couple of outs which he did get though he allowed one of the inherited runners to score. He then walked a batter in the 7th and allowed a home run to put the Red Sox up.

Todd Jones pitched a perfect eighth inning.

Hitting

How many times do you need to load the bases before you score from it? Well, the Tigers won’t find out as they didn’t in both attempts. Out of the 9 hits they had 7 were doubles yet they scored 2. They out hit, out slugged but did not out walk the Red Sox and walked away with a loss.

Mike Rabelo had another multi-hit game taking some excellent swings and very easily could have had 3 as Eric Hinske (Sox RF) made a diving play to take the hit away, and run for that matter. Brandon Inge had a weird day with 3 strike-outs and a home run over the Green Monster.

Gary Sheffield went 0-for-5 and had the most opportunity to bring folks home coming to bat with 2 on in the 1st inning and the bases loaded in the 2nd inning bringing none home. When all was said and done the Tigers left men stranded 26 times.

Summary

Boston took the first game of a day-night doubleheader with their starter Julian Tavarez pretty much stopping the Detroit offense. Zach Miner, who made the emergency start with Mike Maroth ill, pitched an excellent game as well but ultimately coming up a bit short.

Very good game to watch however disappointing that the offense couldn’t come up with some runs. There were a couple of missed opportunities but kudos to Boston pitching for capitalizing.

Detroit has one opportunity this evening to tie up the series and get back into first place in the Central.

Pitching

Zach Miner was brought up to spot start for the ill Mike Maroth and did a fantastic job. Miner did not have time to prepare, or fret, about this start at Fenway and this might have been a good thing. Zach lasted 5.1 innings allowing a single earned run with the other run coming off an error from Carlos Guillen. The defense behind Miner just didn’t live up to the task but Zach did about as good as could have been expected and beyond what I expected.

Tim Byrdak came in for the second time in relief and pitched two perfect innings getting 5 key strikeouts. He’s really starting to impress but it is hard to feel that a change is around the corner.

Jose Mesa finished the game getting two fly-outs though it took 13 pitches over the two batters.

Hitting

Offense just couldn’t get a move on today or take advantage of scoring situations. While they only had 4 hits through the game they also worked four walks and key at-bats by Granderson and Ordonez ended with them stranding runners. Both of them ended the game without reaching base.

Brandon Inge had a quietly nice game working a walk and getting a hit to help his average continue to slowly climb up. Polanco also continued to getting an RBI hit and a walk.

By the time it was the ninth inning and they were facing Papelbon the game was pretty much over as he was lights out striking out Guillen then Rodriguez ending the game getting Sean Casey to groundout.

Summary

I only caught the last inning of this one unfortunately due to travel and with the storm AM 1270 was all static for me and 97.1 was covering the Wings. I guess it just wasn’t meant to be but because of that I won’t give my normal breakout. Reading over the box score a few points jump out at me:

- Pudge goes 3-for-4. This is 50% of the total hits he had up to this point in May. (6)
- Magglio Ordonez is still tearing it up going 2-for-5 with a 3-run home run.
- Brandon Inge hit his 6th home run of the year.
- Justin Verlander’s stats look excellent and I can only assume he looked as good. 7 strikeouts with no walks and only 6 hits in 7 2/3 innings. Must have been pretty good for Leyland to let him stay in there for 120 pitches.

You can see more at the following locations:

- The Detroit Tigers Weblog
- ESPN
- Detroit Free Press
- Tigerblog
- Jason Beck @ MLB.com
- Lee @ Tiger Tales goes over Magglio’s stats and tonights game

Also, the Indians are getting revenge for the Tigers against the Twins, though right now I’d rather they not :)

Summary

For the second straight game the Tigers struggled to get hits this time against Boston’s Daisuke Matsuzaka. Nate Robertson was the Tiger starter who, while giving up a number of hits (11), kept Detroit in the ball game. Nate pitched pretty solidly but Boston’s powerful offense just wouldn’t roll over and stayed in for numerous long at-bats which drove Robertson from the mound after only 5 innings of work.

The Detroit bullpen, Bobby Seay, gave up 4 runs in the bottom of the eighth to put the game pretty much out of reach. This was disappointing as he’s the fifth bullpen pitcher to give up more than a run in their last outing over the last three-or-so games.

This game ultimately came down to the Tigers not able to score and not taking advantage of the few scoring opportunities that did present themselves. For those who were yelling for more national press when the Tigers were on a long winning streak, well we’ve gotten our share the last two days. Wednesday’s game will also be on national TV (ESPN) hopefully we can just look a bit better for that one.

Pitching

Nate Robertson pitched what looked to be a decent game. He continuously challenged the Red Sox batters throughout his outing, even when they were hitting him pretty hard. He had his control and walked no batters while striking out three but giving up 11 hits, including 3 doubles which shouldn’t count as doubles at Fenway, was too much to take.

Tim Byrdak, who was called up from Toledo before the game, pitched two innings allowing 0 hits and a single walk. He looked pretty good, I just hope this can hold as his history seems to suggest it won’t.

Bobby Seay finished the game giving up 4 disappointing runs. With the rest of the bullpen struggling the last week or more the last thing I wanted to see was Seay also struggle.

Hitting

Matsuzaka for the Red Sox pitched an excellent game against Detroit, however they had a number of opportunities to capitalize. Curtis Granderson started off the game appearing as though he had already figured Daisuke out getting 2 hits, including a home run, in his first two at-bats. Magglio Ordonez contributed a double followed by a hit by Carlos Guillen followed by the last out by Sean Casey. Ordonez stepped up to make sure he had his normal extra-base hit.

Tigers batted .182 against Matsuzaka, worked zero walks and struck out 5 times. Matsuzaka was able to keep the ball down and move it around which resulted in a 16-6 ground-fly out ratio.

Summary

This one really got away from Detroit pretty early on. In Virgil Vasquez’s first start in the bigs he lacked confidence and control but the game really was lost in the bullpen’s inability to stop the bleeding. Between Grilli and Ledezma the game slipped away because the offense was bringing in runs and getting numerous runners in scoring position.

Boof Bonser, who started for Minnesota, did OK and really survived off of his ability to get strikeouts when he needed them. Many Detroit base runners were left in scoring position due to his strikeouts, some of the runners were on with no outs. Once the game was out of reach the offense from Detroit died down. Minnesota has now exacted some revenge for the first series against Detroit in 2006.

As with the game Wednesday night against Seattle, Leyland pulled the regulars off the field to get ready for a big series against Boston this week. Hopefully the Detroit bullpen has gotten all of the runs allowed out of their system.

Pitching

Virgil Vasquez’s first Major League start wasn’t all he or the Tigers had hoped for. He struggled greatly to get out of the first inning giving up a triple to start the bottom of the inning with the inning just getting worse from there. He allowed 5 hits, a triple and a 3-run home run with the outs he did get coming from popups. In the second inning he didn’t allow any runs making it seem as if he had really calmed himself down and brought his game together. It was very apparent in the third inning that this wasn’t true and he was finally relieved after throwing 73 pitches through 2.2 innings.

I don’t read much into this start from Vasquez and you shouldn’t either. He is a good pitcher and has put up great stats in the minor leagues and tonight we simply saw a pitcher who, because of nervousness or a change in his normal pitching style, couldn’t control the ball. He’ll take tonights game with him back to Toledo and learn much from this.

Jason Grilli came in and pitched a couple innings in relief and really didn’t fare much better than Vasquez. Grill has not been the Grilli of 2006 and Minnesota continued to come up with solid hits against him, including a pair of doubles. All said and done, Grilli allowed 3 more runs and thats what he was charged with as he also let two runs in that were inherited from Vasquez.

Wil Ledezma was brought in for a couple of innings of service and couldn’t throw strikes. He walked three in his first inning of service and allowed a two-run home run during his second followed by a solo-shot. Jose Mesa was then brought in to bail him out. Mesa then stunk the place up and allowed a three-run homerun in the eighth before a single out.

This was not the game Tiger managers wanted to see with an already taxed bullpen and a big series on the horizon. Tigers pitching combined to allow 4 home runs, 3 doubles, and a triple and 22 hits. Minnesota’s team batting average against Detroit pitching was .512, wow.

Hitting

Detroit offense came sprinting out of the gates off of Magglio Ordonez’s two-run shot in the first followed by a strong second inning. After that they struggled to bring in runners and take advantage of the hits they did get. Bonser seemed to have the number on some of the batters especially with runners in scoring position as he struck out Ordonez, Guillen (three times), Sheffield, Granderson and Rodriguez.

Inge quietly had a good game coming up with two hits and an RBI as did Sean Casey (minus the RBI).

Box Score

Summary

Tigers got a big win today on national TV. Their success in 2006 on nationally televised games (other than the playoffs) was not good and if I remember correctly they did not win a single one. Well that ended today which made all that much more disappointing when I read that this game wasn’t going to be seen nationally much at all over at the Detroit Tiger Weblog.

The team played well all around and although I didn’t get a chance to watch the entire game they looked polished. They hit well, pitching was strong and fielding had no errors and the Polanco-Guillen-Casey double-play was in full effect.

This win secures their fourth series win in a row.

Pitching

Chad Durbin has really settled down and started pitching like he did last year at Toledo. He’s either had very successful starts or just gotten drilled. Today was the former and I’m thankful for that and these types of starts are becoming more common for him. I hope to see that trend continue and I believe that it will.

Aquilino Lopez pitched 3 innings of relief and looked better than any of his last outings. He allowed a few well hit balls and worked into a couple tight situations but was ultimatly able to get out without any real damage. He also did not give up any walks which has been a real issue with the rest of the bullpen thus far. After the game Lopez was optioned to Toledo to make room for tomorrows starter Virgil Vasquez.

Hitting

Standard lineup today with Granderson at leadoff except that the slumping Pudge Rodriguez sat out and was replaced by Mike Rabelo. Not sure how many more opportunities Rabelo will get before the return of Vance Wilson as I did see Wilson catching in the bullpen during last nights game, but Mike is making the most of his final outings. Today he had another RBI on a double and while having only a single hit he didn’t strikeout at all and was making solid contact.

Magglio Ordonez is still hot going 2-for-3 while also drawing 2 walks to put his average at .341 with an impressive .432 on-base percentage and .627 SLG. Monroe isn’t all to far behind in recent days getting his 5th home run of the year bringing his average up to .261 which isn’t a small feat with the slump he started the year in.