Mario Impemba

Thoughts on Miggy

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Miggy has had two good games in Chicago and while I’m not saying, ‘he’s back’, his production has been nice to see.  That being said, I have noticed a few differences in his normal demeanor.  First, when he hit his home run yesterday, he put his head down and ran around the bases, foregoing his usual stutter-step before third base.  Second, I haven’t seen him constantly clowning around with everyone at first base whether on offense or defense.

While the commentators play off his incessant clowning as ‘a love for playing the game, IMHO, he takes it to the extreme and this extreme clowning projects a lack of seriousness.  Perhaps his lack of seriousness is understandable considering the amount of success he’s had and his success came immediately.  The Marlins brought him up at 19, he hit the ground running, and never looked back.  Maybe his recent struggles have humbled him a bit and forced him to refocus and take this craft a bit more seriously.  Like I said, I’m not sure he’s back, but the last few games have been fun to watch him again.

On another note, I wasn’t a big fan of Jack Morris’ color commentary with Mario Impemba but I like him a lot with Dan Dickerson. They seem to have good chemistry.  I don’t like Gibson period.  The booth rotation has to get Rod on more and get rid of Gibson for good. He’s horrible.

Tigers 2 Royals 1

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The offense is still AWOL.  However, last night, the CY Young Award winner, David Price, showed up and shut down the Royals.  Thanks to Price, the Tigers have a chance to salvage a split in this series.

In my post yesterday, I lamented the inconsistency of the Tigers offense.  Prior to the game, Mario and Rod showed a statistic validating my complaint.  I don’t have the number committed to memory but I believe the graphic showed that the Tigers lead the league both in games scoring two runs or less and games scoring 10 runs or more.  Like I said yesterday, this goes beyond this year, this is a problem with philosophy.  It is a stubborn philosophy that has plagued this team for the last 5-8 years and they refuse to change.

Victor can’t hit right now, left handed, to save his life.  Defenses play “the shift” on him and give him the entire left side of the field but he won’t take his single. I know he can run but with the way the defense is playing him he doesn’t have to.  Same thing with Avila.

I believe someone a lot smarter than me once said “doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result is the definition of insanity.”

Mr. Illitch, I know you are a regular reader, it is time for a different direction.  Start with DD and BA.

VINDICATED…

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I have to say, I feel pretty good right now.  Remember this previous post, Tigers Lose 7-4. Dirks Embarrassing! ? In case you don’t here’s a link to the post.

The story of this game was written in the 4th inning. The Tigers scored 2 in the top of the 4th to tie the game at 2, but the White Sox came back in the bottom with 4 runs, thanks largely to the efforts of Tiger left fielder Andy Dirks. Dirks’ play in left field, makes ex-Cleveland left fielder Albert Joey Belle, look like a gold glover.

With one out and two on, White Sox catcher Tyler Flowers hit a 92 mph JV change up hard to left field that Andy Dirks completely misplayed. In fact, it looked like the ball went off of his glove, but miraculously, the official scorer gave Flowers a double and an RBI.

When I was writing the post yesterday about Jack Clark, I looked up JV’s numbers for the season.  When I saw the ERA at 3.50 it looked a little low to me.  Well, I’m watching the Tigers dust the Yankees right now, it is 9-2 in the top of the 7th, they flashed a picture of JV standing in the in dugout.  As they showed JV they also showed his 3.50 ERA and Mario commented that the era was lowered because MLB changed the scoring in the above mentioned White Sox game.  They gave Dirksy an error on the play and as a result, 4 earned runs that were originally charged to JV were changed to un-earned.

I feel a bit vindicated.

Dirksy isn’t in the lineup today, yet, anyway.

“God, I love baseball.” – Roy Hobbs | The Natural

A GEM FROM MARIO IMPEMBA!

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As a Tiger fan, I love our TV announcers.  Mario and Rod are fabulous.  And, I often said, that Rod Allen was the only thing that made the 2003 season bearable.

Today, they had a beautiful conversation.  They showed a clip of current White Sox manager Robin Ventura getting beaten into a conniption by legendary pitcher, Nolan Ryan.  As they showed the clip, Rod said, something to the effect that Ventura had a few knuckle sandwiches.  Mario replied, and I’m paraphrasing, ‘it was more like a picnic.”  I have been laughing for the last 10 minutes.

Here’s a video of that fateful day in 1993.

“God, I love baseball.” – Roy Hobbs | The Natural