Anibal Sanchez continues to make his case for this year’s AL Cy Young award. He improved his record to 14-7 and lowered his league leading ERA to 2.50. Anibal was masterful tonight in spite of an asinine strike zone from home plate umpire Larry Hanover.
Even with a strike zone that nobody could figure out, Sanchez managed to pitch 7 and 1/3 without allowing any runs. He gave up only 5 hits, walked 4 and struck out 10.
A few weeks ago I thought Max Scherzer had the Cy Young locked up but Anibal is right on his heels along with Yu Darvish of the Rangers and Chris Sale of the White Sox.
The offense was pathetic tonight which is pretty much what I expected. After scoring 9 runs last night. the Tigers managed only 1 run on 10 hits. They were 1 for 11 with men in scoring position.
I’m not sure what the issue is but Miguel Cabrera doesn’t not look good at all. I’m not sure if he just needs to get his timing back or if his injuries are plaguing him much more than we are lead to believe. However, if continues hitting the way he did on this road trip, the Tigers are in trouble.
Veras, Smyly and Benoit were aces coming out of the bull pen to preserve the 1-0 win for Sanchez.
Nick Castellanos was 1-4 tonight. I thought his most impressive at bat came in the first inning. After falling behind 1-2 he worked the count back to even. He then fouled off three pitches then took ball three to move the count to full. He ended up striking out but he did make Jose Quintana throw him 9 pitches.
The Tigers lead in the central is back up to 6.5 games courtesy of the Indians loss to the Royals earlier in the day.
This was a nice win. After losing the opening game, and third in a row, they managed to win the final two and take the series.
The Royals come to Comerica Park this weekend. Friday’s game features Justin Verlander against Bruce Chen. Let’s hope it goes better than the last time these two faced each other.
“God, I love baseball.” – Roy Hobbs | The Natural
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