Just as quickly as the Tigers fans were encouraged that Detroit was turning things around by winning 4 straight series they come back to mediocrity by losing two in a row. Sorry for the lack of review about the Pirates series, I was camping on the west side for the weekend and got a much needed break from the disappointing Old English D. But from what I can tell I didn’t miss too much and the series awards would be pretty easy to pass out.
Moving on to the Rangers series, the pitching matchups looked to favor Detroit in the final game (Fister vs Oswalt). The Rangers got lucky and missed JV, so most fans already gave this series to Texas. Well again it is a good thing the games are actually played on the field because Rick came out and had one of his best outings of the season, and the offense actually scored early to take some pressure off the 23 year old. Drey Smyly continues to show he is an average MLB pitcher (at-best), and Fister just looks terrible on the mound right now. Let’s move onto the awards, ahll we.
Verlander of the Series: well the offense scored as many runs in the first inning of game 1 as they did all of the Pittsburgh series, but they still frustrated me in this series. Oswalt is not the same pitcher he was 5 years ago, and the Tigers hitters let him off easy for much of the game. Folks, we should have scored 9 runs just off of Roy last night. For most of the game we outhit the Rangers, except they did it with home runs and we did it with singles. Do you realize that the Seattle Mariners have more homeruns that our lineup. The Yankees almost double. This team is built on smashing the ball around the park, there is no speed to hit an run or go first to third. We need to hit extra base knocks to score runs, it is that simple. But right now we have almost 20 less home runs as we did at this point last season. People, we didn’t have Prince Fielder last season. What is wrong with this lineup right now? Ok, sorry for the rant, but I had to get that out. I am still frustrated with the offense from making marginal major league pitchers look like Verlander, so they will need to have a 30 run series for me to give them this award. I will give the Verlander of the Series to Rick Porcello. He overcame his demons of old and got out of the first inning against the Rangers. It probably helped that the offense gave him 5 early runs to calm him down, but Rick really had the sinker ball moving around the strike zone and he located well all night. He finished with 7 strike outs in just 6 innings for his first K/IP over 1 for the season. I doubt Rick will do this every start, but he now has 3 good starts in a row and has seemed to settle into the warm weather. We will need him to step up more if Fister is going to continue to do his thing on the mound. This takes me to the next award…
Schlereth of the Series: Doug effing Fister. Do you remember last year when we picked him up from the lowly Mariners? He outpitched Verlander during the 2nd half of the season, the same guy that won the Cy Young and MVP. Us Tigers fans expected this to be one of the best 1-2 punches in all of baseball this year. No he was not going to continue his 1.75 ERA or his 8K’s to 1 BB ratio, but I think we all expected him to have an ERA in the low 3’s and to push to win 15 games. Then injury struck and Fister missed the first month of the season, he came back average and got hurt again. Now he came back from his 2nd DL stint and looks extremely average. I actually hope his side is still bothering him, it would at least give him an excuse of why he has been so bad lately. Dougie Fresh was up there throwing batting practice last night in a home run friendly park to the best offense in the league, that is not a good combination for Detroit. Fister served up 5 hits in a 0-2 or 1-2 count (3 of those were home runs). He did not locate his sinker ball well at all and looked very predictable on the mound. On a night where all he had to be was average and the Tigers would have won the game and the series, he allowed Oswalt to have a CC Sabathia win. If the Tigers have any chance of making the playoffs, they need 3 of their starters to be consistent. We all know what JV will give us on a nightly basis, but then the remaining 4 guys are a mystery right now. We knew Rick and Max would be inconsistent, and nobody knew what to expect from Smyly, but so far Fister has been extremely disappointing.
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