And the Tiger Kryptonite struck again this week. Detroit made the trip to Seattle for a 3 game series, and found a way to lose 2 of 3. Luckily for us, we do not have to play the Mariners again this year, and we finish with a 1-5 record against the worst team in the AL. Let's jump into the awards...
Verlander of the Series: This one seems pretty easy for me, Doug Fister. I could go with all of the starting pitchers in this series (Dougie, JV, and Smyly), but it was Fister's first start back with the Tigers. All he did was go 7 innings of shutout ball, and did so with only 73 pitches. It is nice having him back in the rotation, and hopefully he can stay healthy for the rest of the season. Detroit will go back to having one of the best 1-2 punches in the entire league. The other 2 starters deserve some credit here as well, as they pushed the consecutive quality start streak to 8 in a row. The sad part here is the team is 4-4 in those 8 games, pretty embarassing.
Schlereth of the Series: I hate to do this, but I am going to go with Miguel Cabrera. I will blame it on the fact that it was a west coast series and I couldn't watch all of his at bats (and I bring good luck to Miggy Poco). Miggy finished the series 0-13 with 3 GIDP. Yes, a few of those AB's were hard hit balls, and he had some bad luck with the BAIP, but I mean 0-13 against the Mariners? We didnt even have to face King Felix. The entire lineup continued to struggle at the plate during this series, only scoring 9 runs (6 in one game). But I am tired of giving the crappiness award to all 9 hitters. The bats need to get going to relieve some pressure from the bullpen. Yes, the pen struggled a lot at Safeco Field, but it is hard to win scoring 3 runs in 2 games. The 1A option for Schlereth is of course the bullpen. The stat that infuriates me the most is the starters threw a comined 19 innings and gave up 4 runs. The bullpen pitched 8 innings and gave up 5 runs, really guys? Detroit has now lost 5 games after leading 7 innings or later, last year they finished the season 77-0. As mad as I am at the bums in the pen right now, I can't look past the lack of run support we have given them this season. You cannot expect a bullpen to come in every night and try to pitch with no cushion for error, eventually it will come back to bite you. And it had multiple times this season. If the bats can start to score more runs (5+ per game), you can expect the bullpen to not look so bad. Because even though they will likley give up a run or two still, Detroit is still winning the game. Winning cures all.
Looking ahead, the Tigers get to play the fighting Inges in Oakland. They lost their rookie slugger for a few weeks, so now Inge gets to hit in the top half of the order. The A's are last in a lot of offensive categories, so Detroit needs to win this 4 game series. I dont know how much longer the starting pitchers can continue their impressive streak, but Oakland is a good team to do that against. I have a feeling Miguel will come out hot in the series, and hopefully it will spark some big offensive games before heading back to the Midwest.
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