In honor of the wonderful job the Tigers Bullpen has done five games into the 2017 season, let alone the last 10 years, I’m starting a new twitter hashtag campaign, #NiceBullpen.
Bruce Rondon’s ERA is 40.50, is that good for your setup man? Fear not, he has run into some bad luck, opponents are only hitting .500 against him.
Kyle Ryan, Anibal Sanchez, Alex Wilson, and Shane Greene haven’t been much better.
I haven’t seen a comeback win like this in a long time.
For eight innings the Tigers could do nothing with Aaron Sanchez. He struck out 10 and allowed one hard hit ball, a double off of the bat of Justin Upton. That all changed in the ninth.
Iggy led off the ninth with a single. Kinlser doubled him in. Romine, playing in place of Maybin, IMHO a questionable move, bunted Kinsler to third. Then Jose Miguel Cabrera stepped to the plate. Miggy didn’t look good in his first three at-bats but when Jays reliever Osuna came up and in on the Big Man, I had a feeling the deal was done. Two pitches after the brushback, Miggy launched a one hop double off of the center field wall to drive in Kinsler and tie the game.
Hat Tips go to Ian Kinsler for driving in the first and winning runs, Tigers starter Matt Boyd and relievers Shane Greene, Blaine Hardy and Bobby Parnell for keeping the game close. Also, a huge Hat Tip to Nick “The Quick” Castellanos for flashin’ leather at third. I dare say, Nick has improved considerably in the field.
Five in a row!
Sweep tomorrow?
Twelve games into the season the Tigers are 7-5. The offense is better than I expected, the pitching, however, is a hair shy of an abomination.
Shane Greene and Blaine Hardy were not good last night, as Sanchez was not good on Sunday in Houston.
While the offense is humming along nicely, I am little concerned about two things. First, the outs made on the base paths, it will come back to haunt them. Second, I love Miggy. I really do. He’s probably the best hitter I’ve ever seen but I’m beginning to wonder if he is on the downside of his career. His bat looks slow and he didn’t look good against Herrera in big spot with the bases loaded. That being said, if you score six runs, you should be able to win.
I hope I’m wrong about the Mighy Miggy.
Shane Greene needs to be given credit for over coming a rough first inning, in which he needed over 30 pitches to get through, and was able to tough out six good innings surrendering only two earned runs. It looked like a short outing for Shane but he found a way.
Kudos to Jarrod Salty Saltalamacchia who hit an Arquimedes Caminero pitch into an absolute CONNIPTION for the go ahead granny.
Seven games in, the offense is impressive, the defensive is adequate, the pitching, both starting and pen has ben OK.
One more thing, I’m getting ready to call Anthony Gose’s proctologist to find out if he’s found Gose’s head. What is he doing with his base running? A few days ago he gets thrown out trying to steal third with Upton and Miggy coming up and yesterday he tries to stretch a single into a double by running on Andrew McCutchen. I’ll say it again, it hasn’t hurt the Tigers yet but it will.
With the Tigers leading the O’s 9-2 I said to sometimes contributor inlovewithbaseball, ‘what if the Tigers make a run? What if all these moves change the chemistry? What if JV keeps pitching they way he has in three out if his last four starts and Sanchez pitches well, and Lobstein comes back? That gives the Tigers three quality starters and hey, the offense is showing signs of life’.
What an idiot!!
All it took was a nine run outburst for me to lose my head and forget what I’ve watched for 100 games. I forgot how many times the offense has tricked me with one game explosions. And how could I forget what was lurking in the bullpen. I think the Shane Greene bullpen experiment needs to be over although I’m not sure there are anymore options.
Where would the 2015 Tigers be without Alex Wilson, 20 games under .500? He has to be the team.
The ball hit in the seventh or eighth inning that ate up Nick The Quick, does anyone think that should have been an error? Would an average third basemen have made he play? I’m not sure? It was a shot.
Oh well, I’ll take a W anyway they can get them. Wins are hard to come by.
I’m late with this post. I was under the weather most of last week and the weekend. The Tigers play didn’t help any either. They finished the theoretical first half .500 and were fortunate to do so. The first few months of the season they couldn’t score consistently. Their pitching, including the bullpen, paced them to an impressive early season record.
The bats woke up the first week of June. The starting pitching imploded and the bullpen had a Fukushima like meltdown. Since May 16th the Tigers have the worst record in the American league. In June the Tigers bullpen ranked 29th in ERA. In July, so far, some how, they rank only 28th.
What has this taught me? An old lesson that I guess I need to learn over and over no matter how much baseball I watch. If you can’t pitch you can’t win. It is a lot more entertaining to watch a team that hits until you wake and realize you team sucks and isn’t going anywhere.
If your team can pitch it can win no matter how crappy the hitting is. I guess we’ve seen this in practice over the last five to six years. We had sit through an inconsistent offense that would score 10 runs one game then nothing for a week and they found a way to make it to the post season. Granted, we are still waiting for a World Series but we are looking at a team right now that is scoring over six runs a game but can’t pitch a lick. We are seeing a tale of two seasons in one this year. The first two months of the season the Tigers could pitch and couldn’t hit but were winning. The last month and a half they are hitting and can’t pitch and are one of the worst teams in baseball.
Here’s another conclusion i’ve come to. I don’t want to trade Nick “The Quick” Castellanos. I’ve been critical of him. However, He’s young. He’s show’s flashes. He’s homegrown. They need somebody on this team that’s homegrown. Geez. Look around this team Avila and Nick. That’s it.
Speaking of A Squared Money. There’s no hope that Avila is going to hit if he stays behind the plate. I don’t know why they didn’t leave him at first and leave McCann behind the plate. They’re not getting anything from Kraus offensively. His .135 is worse than Avila’s .192. What exactly did they think Kraus was going to give them? Put Avila back a first. McCann behind the plate. Wait for Miggy to come back. Get what you can for Price. He’s not staying. The Tigers aren’t going anywhere this year. Start planning for 2016.
FYI: You need a whole bullpen.
You could feel the lack of energy from the very first at bat. It became a matter of which pitcher was going to break first. Unfortunately, Shane Greene imploded in the sixth and surrendered four runs. But it didn’t really matter. This game was over before it started. It could have gone 20 innings and I doubt the Tigers would have scored even with the A’s defense trying to help them out with three errors. Nope, every time the A’s made an error the Tigers gave it back with a double play. How many double plays are they going to hit into this year? It was an odious display of offensive ineptitude. Not only was there not a hard hit ball, I don’t think there was a good at bat, or at least too few to remember. It is games like these that make me wonder if this team is good enough to finish at .500
The Tigers have a problem in Shane Greene. He started off ok but I think this is four bad starts in a row. He didn’t make it out of the third today. He couldn’t find the plate at all. That being said, the Tigers had chances.
The top of line up set the table but the middle of the lineup was atrocious. They are going to need Jose Miguel Cabrera to get some clutch, two out, RBIs if they are ever going to beat good pitching. This was a very disappointing game . They lost to the dumbest manager in the game.
Not this garbage again.
I’m not sure how many times I’ll write this in 2015 but the Tigers’ won a battle of bullpens this afternoon in Minnesota. Everyone they called on, Hardy, Nesbitt, Gorzelanny, Soria got the job done.
Starter Shane Greene was cruising until he wasn’t. He starting leaking fuel in the third then exploded in the fourth.
The Tigers could have blown this game by running themselves out of a rally in the fifth. I’m not sure sure but isn’t it taboo to make an out at third? Well, with runners at first and second, one out, and Kinsler at the plate, Andrew “Wheels” Romine decided it was a good idea to steal third. Like Miggy in game in one, he got nailed, rally over. Fortunately, the bats came alive and beat the Twins’ bullpen into a conniption after falling behind 7-4.
For all of my complaining, the Tigers got another series win.
Of note:
Off to KC. I hope this series doesn’t turn into basebrawl.
The Tigers took the rubber game of a big early season series this afternoon by beating White Sox starter Jose Quintana into a conniption.
Yoenis Cespedes had a monster day. He had six RBIs on a grand slam and a two run homer. Today’s game was a mirror image of yesterday’s game, it was over by the time the Sox came to bat in the top of the fourth.
Shane Greene got his third win. The Tigers are 10-2 and right now I don’t hate them.
Here are a few early season observations:
Yankee are in town tomorrow.
Flashin' Leather 