lead the Tigers to their 7th consecutive victory and series sweep of the Texas Rangers.
Freeway Ricky, pitched his second career complete game. This time it was a shutout. Ricky is 10-4 on the year with a 3.41 ERA.
The Tigers are running well right now. I know they can’t win out the rest of the season but I’d like to avoid another .333, 30 game run.
It’s off to Houston for three with the Astros.
On another note, if you’ve been reading the comments, you might have noticed trade rumors. In fact, the one most mentioned is with San Diego for Huston Street and Joaquin Benoit. I would like to go on record right now as opposed to this moved. Benoit was already here and Street is too old. Well, I guess I’m wrong on that, Street is only 30 but I’m still against it. Unless the Tigers can Street only for a humpty dumpty. Dirks perhaps? 🙂
“God I love baseball.’ -Roy Hobbs | The Natural
Flashin' Leather 
Perhaps…..rumors well they are just that (till the end of next month) anyway the one thing I am sure of is I had no issues with the pen in this game. We shall see if tomorrows starting pitching can repeat the performance………be nice would it not?
Nebraska, the pen was lights out last night! That’s the kind of pitching the Tigers need to end the 30 drought. LOLOLOL!
I’m against the trade as rumored too.. Benoit had his chance here and failed in the biggest moments.. Street also pitches in a low-risk and low-stress situation right now, and also failed in his biggest moment in 2006.. re: Magglio walkoff… Don’t see it happening… Nor do I think they trade AJ until the off-season… As for tonight this shows why the Tigers traded Fister instead of Porcello.. RP’s career win total places him among the games elite, since he is only a few wins behind Kershaw for total wins before age 26.. And he is only going to get better.. As I said last week this trip would define the rest of their season and they responded with a good string of games pitched..
Sark, I still don’t like the Fister trade. They should have kept both of them and kept Smyly coming out of the pen. At least in MYO. 🙂
In hindsight that trade doesn’t look very good.. But my guess is the Tigers in the offseason were committed to putting Smyly in the rotation to give them a LH, which meant either RP or Fister had to be traded. In the long run they made the right choice, even though we have no immediate benefit from the players received… As for the bullpen, I don’t expect them to do too much different, other than keep working Hanrahan back into shape and maybe pick up a veteran middle guy. I think they righted the ship for the time being and feel confident they can get thru the regular season as division winners. Once the playoffs start Smyly is back in the pen and they’ll ride the starters as much as last year, if not more… Remember last year, in spite of our messy bullpen, we would have won it all if not for a bumbling manager.. And how he managed the 8th inning of game 2 against Boston as if he were winning by 1 run, instead of the 4 run lead we had… Just saying.. Overall this team is simply better than the rest of the division based purely on starting pitching… Assuming KC has the next best staff, here would be the match ups head-to-head… JV vs Shields, Max vs Vargas, Sanchez vs Duffy?, RP vs Ventura?, Smyly vs Chen/Guthrie? I would take the Tiger pitcher over anyone of theirs, in any matchup.. It’s not even close… Now all they have to do is perform to their ability and stay healthy… 2 big ifs.