During his first two at-bats I thought J.D. Martinez was going into another funk. He was swinging at bad first pitches and immediately finding himself in 0-2 holes. He changed that in his third at-bat by hitting his 26th home run.
J.D. also flashed some leather robbing Chris Davis of a home run with a a nice catch at the wall in right. This is slowly becoming the J.D. Martinez show.
They got enough pitching from Anibal and the pen, although, Soria scares me, to piece this one together. It’s nice to start the “second half” off with a win.
If my memory serves me correctly, the only two places the Tigers play worse than Seattle are Anaheim and Yankee Stadium, so it was nice to start this road trip off with a win.
Alfredo Simon continues to be a mess. He allowed five runs in five and two thirds Luckily, the bullpen showed up tonight with good performance from Blaine Hardy, Ian Krol and Bruce Rondon.
Everyone got in on the 12 run, 19 hit parade except Ian Kinsler who was an absolute abomination at the plate. He went 0-5 and hit into two double plays.
Don’t look now but Nick Castellanos has started to hit the last few games. He had four hits tonight including a home run,
All-Star J.D. Martinez had three hits and raised his average to .290 with another homer and three more hits. He is basically on Miggy like tear right now. I hope he continues this pace. With JMC on the shelf, the Tigers are going to need it.
Victor seems to finding his form again. At the risk of sending this offense into a tailspin with the my fingers and keyboard, this offense is firing on all cylinders, the only problem is the Tigers only have two starting pitchers. After Price and Sanchez I’m not sure where they turn for the 3-5 starting slots. I guess if they score 5+ runs a game they might be able to squeak by for a while.
Doesn’t it seem like this is 180 degrees opposite of the first two months of the season?
The Tigers got their first win of the season when trailing after the 7th and it didn’t look like they were going to get their first Sunday either. They were doing nothing with Jeff Samardzija until James McCann led off the eighth with a single.
The four run, eighth inning, rally was even more impressive because the Tigers got nothing from Miggy. Samardzija was able to blow three 95 mile an hour fast balls by him, the last up and away, for the first out of the eighth, with bases loaded. Luckily, he tried to do the same thing to Victor who took the first pitch and cleared the bases with a double.
It looks like, when the bases are loaded Miggy, is trying to hit a home run instead of just a single or a sac fly and as result he’s striking out. I believe he is 0-5 now with the bases full this season. Usually, especially with RISP, he’s fine with taking the pitch the other way between first and second. I guess it’s hard to complain about a guy hitting .350 but he did leave five runners on base yesterday.
Anyway, big win. Even thought the White Sox suck, they’ve played the Tigers fairly even this year. At this point, every win is big. The Tigers are basically a .500 team so far.
This game had to end this way. How could it end any other? When a mistake is so egregious, so odious, karmic law requires that the committer of said infraction is harmed by his own misdeed. That’s exactly what Brad Ausmus and the Tigers got today.
I’m a believer in liberty and the free flow of information. However, if there is a “book” that told Brad Ausmus he needed to pinch run for Victor Martinez, in the bottom of the ninth inning, when he was on first base, with two outs, that “book” is the first one in history that I want burned. Please. Every copy needs to be collected. Placed into a fire place. Doused with gasoline and set ablaze.
Brad. Didn’t you go to Dartmouth? Isn’t Dartmouth an Ivy League School? Aren’t we told that Ivy League Schools are elite (eyeleat) institutions? Don’t you have to be smart to get into those schools?
There was less than a 31% chance that Cespedes was going to hit safely? Much less than a 31% chance that he was going to hit for extra bases.
Where did you learn your trade?
For as mad as I am at Ausmus, did anyone hear Kinsler’s comments after the game? The little baby doesn’t like the fans booing the team. Generally, I’d agree with him, but it comes with the territory. Fans pay a lot of money to watch jackasses like him play. While I chose not to boo, because I think it is rude, it is classless for babies like him to complain about it. He should take lessons from Ryan Rayburn. Rayburn took a lot of crap when he was here and he took it with class. I’ll always have respect for him. Kinsler, on the other hand, is on the Joe Nathan list. Get your head out of your ass jackass, hit better than .257, come up with a clutch hit once in a while, the 10th inning today would have been nice, and maybe you won’t get booed. – Jackass!
This video is for Brad Ausmus and Ian “Diaper Boy” Kinsler.
It was nice to salvage one game in the Bronx. The pitching was an abomination in the first two games but Anibal was adequate in the finale. I was happy for J.D. He had been hitting the ball well for a while with not a lot to show for it. Also, maybe we’ll see Victor back to something close to last year? Who knows?
Our old friend, Brennan “B Squared Money” Boesch, just keeps showing up and I’m not sure why. Not that have any ill will towards him, or anyone else for that matter, but I just can’t figure out why teams keep having a look at him. Perhaps there is little risk and the price is right? Granted, he did win the Pacific Coast League batting title last year but he looks like the same old B Squared Money to me.
When Boesch first came up, you’ll remember, he was on fire for two months, exactly 30 days longer than Chris “Red Pop” Sheldon. In fact, B Squared Money, almost hit himself onto the all-star team. Unlike, Red Pop, who I knew was going to to cool off, I wasn’t sure about Boesch. I didn’t like his lack of plate discipline but he was making a lot of hard contact. I thought, he’s either a left handed Vladimir Guerrero or a left handed Red Pop. He was the latter. Did I mention he plays the outfield like I do? (I’m fat, have a bad back, and haven’t played since 8th grade. ) I guess my question for major league organizations is, haven’t you seen enough?
Getting to the game, Anibal pitched a gem and Miggy and J.D. might be heating up. Now add to that, Victor, JV and Rondon coming back and perhaps I had started on the obit prematurely? I’ve been told I have a tendency to fly off the handle?
Have I mentioned that I sat through about 50 home games in 2003? Remember, the year they lost 119 games?
I’m not hating this team that much right now. Funny, winning does that to me.
Forty games into the season and what I see isn’t good. Today marked the 19th time that the two-run Tigers scored two runs or less. Anibal was a nightmare but lets focus on a bright spot this year, the bull pen. The pen is number one in overall era and runners stranded. If you had told me that at the beginning of the season I would have thought that the Tigers would be 8 games up. Don’t look now but the White Sox have won six in a row. It is not impossible that the Tigers will finish behind Kansas City, Minnesota, and Chicago and in front of only Cleveland. Another bit of good news is that Victor went on the 15 day DL. I know I’m reaching but this team is hard to watch.
They’re back! After a brief hiatus, the two-run Tigers, returned to Comerica Park. The Lobber was fine. The bullpen was fine. The bats were an abomination. There is no excuse for offensive production, or lack there of, of this magnitude. Victor needs to sit down for a month. He can’t hit left handed. He can’t run, although I thought he was safe at first. I sound like a broken record but you can’t ask a pitching staff to hold other teams to two runs or less every night. Somebody has to step up and get a clutch, two-out, run producing, base hit, like Iggy had a few nights ago.
I’m as guilty of this as anyone, I’m always looking to Miggy, but it doesn’t look like anybody is going to pitch to him even if his numbers aren’t great in night games; not with Victor hitting .216. J.D. seems to be coming out his funk but he’s not driving in a lot of runs and I’m not exactly sure what Castellanos is doing. The middle of this lineup looks bad.
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.
Flashin' Leather 