Baseball By Paul

The Tigers entered game three with Minnesota trying to avoid a sweep. The problem was they were about to face Johan Santana, so a sweep was all but locked up for the Twins. I guess no one told Magglio Ordonez that Santana is baseball’s best pitcher. Or if they did, he just doesn’t care. With his effort today, Ordonez has a .429 career average with four home runs and 14 runs batted in against the lefty. His 2-run homer helped the Tigers jump out to a lead, but it was Brandon Inge‘s walk-off homer in the bottom of the ninth that finished off the Twins today. The homer, his fourth, can’t mask just how much Inge is struggling as his 3-for-3 performance today raised his average to .156. Chew on that for a second… 3-for-3 raised it to ONE FIFTY SIX!!!!

There is no in between with this Tigers lineup right now. They are either raking or getting raked over the coals. The OPS of the starters in today’s lineup:

I.Rodriguez – .779
P.Polanco – .860
G.Sheffield – .619
M.Ordonez – .951
C.Guillen – .908
C.Monroe – .561
M.Thames – .690
B.Inge – .462
C.Granderson – .875

Wow, some of these numbers would barely stand up as slugging percentages let alone as OPS totals. The first month is nearly in the books, so while we don’t need to pound the panic button, we might need to start making our way over to it. If I see Craig Monroe do the “swing through a pitch so hard that you end up with only one hand on the bat and do the helicopter twirl afterwards” one more time, I’m going to scream. You can’t fix everything with a home run, Craig. I am now a little worried that Inge’s newfound patient approach is something of a detriment as he seems to be taking pitches for the sake of taking them and letting some great ones go to waste. Of the three struggling the most, I’m (for obvious reasons) most confident in Sheffield getting back on track. In fact, with hits in five of his last six, he’s come from .119 to .193. Still plenty of work to be done, but I think he’s finding his stroke. He’s also sporting a remarkable .350 on-base percentage despite the early season slump.

I love avoid the sweep and beating Santana, but I’m definitely missed at the series loss to the Twins. I thought without Francisco Liriano and very suspect starters behind Santana, they wouldn’t be such a threat. Though early, they have fought through that loss as well as the loss of Brad Radke to retirement. Carlos Silva has righted himself, for now and Ramon Ortiz has the beginnings of a career-year on his hands. I’m still leary of trusting him from a fantasy standpoint because he has been so awful in recent seasons.

The win today assured the Tigers with a better than .500 record for the first month of the season and they can end at 14-11 with a win over Baltimore tomorrow. Jeremy Bonderman faces Daniel Cabrera.

See? There was nothing to worry about with Brandon Inge. I don’t know that anyone was legitimately worried and thinking his season was toast, but I do feel that some unnecessary hoopla surrounded his sluggish start. He is now 3 for his last 8 with a home run (his first of the season) and three runs batted in. The Tigers are now on a 3-game winning streak, an AL best and second only to, who else, the St. Louis Cardinals and their 4-game winning streak.

My least favorite thing of game nine was Curtis Granderson back to his old ways with three strikeouts. That is five strikeouts in his last nine at-bats for a total of 12 in 36 at-bats for the season. He is striking out 33% of the time already this year! One of my biggest hopes coming into the 2007 season was that Granderson would significantly cut back on a disgustingly high 174 strikeouts from 2006. In the early going, it does not look like he will make any significant cutbacks on his alarmingly high totals.

I was working during the game, so I only saw bits and pieces, but Mike Maroth‘s final line looks solid. If he gets back on track to where he was headed a year ago, that will definitely ease the loss of Kenny Rogers and the necessary usage of Chad Durbin. I’m not trying to throw Durbin under the bus after one start, but I’m also going to make sure I have tempered expectations about what he can do in Rogers’ absence.

Opening Day redux tomorrow with Jeremy Bonderman facing Roy Halladay again. Gametime is 6:07 because Canadians are weird! 😀

It wasn’t pretty two nights ago, but it was last evening and the Tigers leave Baltimore with the series win. Brian Roberts threw away the game last night and the Tigers pounced (pun intended) on the opportunity. Tonight, Adam Loewen matched Justin Verlander nearly pitch for pitch allowing eight hits between the two of them in 12 innings of work. The regulation nine innings ended at 0-0 as the game went into 12 innings before Craig Monroe cracked a game-winning grand slam!

My Brandon Inge prediction failed last night because he didn’t play, but he did come through tonight with his first hit of the season! He’s now 1-for-25 for a .040 batting average. Inge’s struggles are only a part of the team-wide struggles at the plate as they still weren’t able to get right in Baltimore. The team was 26-for-109 (.239) scoring just nine runs in the three games. That said, it was enough to get the job done and they leave with a series victory and the AL Central lead.

Listening to ESPN’s podcast called Baseball Today with Alan Schwarz and a bevy of guests from the ESPN landscape, a few of the guys are looking for the Blue Jays to pick up the series victory (meaning they will take three of the four, no ties) this weekend. I see them as having one legitimate starter in Roy Halladay and then a bunch of mush. If the bats finally wake up, then we should grab the series despite being away from Comerica.