The Tigers came into last night’s contest with Cleveland 6 games behind the White Sox for 1st place in the division. They welcomed the Indians to Comerica Park for the first time this year after being swept by them earlier this season. Over the past 2 seasons, Detroit had only lost to Cleveland a hand full of times at home. Looking at the matchup last night it seemed like the Tigers had a big advantage on the mound with Drew Smyly. Cleveland is the worst team in the AL against left-handed pitchers, and they countered with what is left of Ubaldo Jimenez. Some people might have remembered what he did in the first half of 2010, but since then this pitcher has been borderline awful. He entered sporting a 6.5 BB/ 9 IP, dead last among AL starters. To make matters worse, it was 7.6 BB/ 9 IP on road starts this season. He was 0-4 with a 9.00+ ERA in his career at Comerica, and had a 6.35 ERA in road starts this season. Do I need to continue? Ok, one more for good measure, Jimenez just came off a 7 ER outing. If Phil Hughes is the definition of average, Ubalado is nowhere close. The game was over before it started, right? The Tigers were going to come out and score 9 off Jimenez and force Manny Acta to use his bullpen early in the game.
But as it should be expected now with this offense, Detroit went out and scored 1 time off of the dominant Jimenez. What is worse is they drew one walk in Ubaldo’s 6+ innings, which happened to come on his last batter, Ramon Santiago. Last night I was not in a good mood, but I have had time to step back and cool down a bit from the extreme frustration that the Tigers are causing me. Even now looking back on the game last night, it was the worst approach I have EVER seen a baseball team have. If you know me, you know that I like to exaggerate some stats once in a while, but this time I actually mean worst I have EVER seen.
Detroit hitters were gifted with 9 2-0 counts while Ubaldo was in the game. This is the best count for hitters to face, it is a dead fast ball count. The Tigers were 0-8 with 1 walk in these at-bats. Did you catch that? They didn’t get a hit in any of these counts. Brennan Boesch was graced with 3 of these at bats. In two cases he swung at the 3rd pitch fastball which were out of the strike zone, once missing and once popping out to the infield. Even though 2-0 is a great hitters count, I don’t understand why watching the 3rd pitch against Jimenez is such a bad idea. The guy could not consistently throw 2 strikes in a row. He finished with 102 pitches, and was close to a 1 to 1 ratio of balls to strikes. Then moving on to Delmon Young, his at bats might have been even worse. In his 3 at bats against Ubaldo he saw a total of 5 pitches. He had 2 one pitch outs. I know he has never seen a first pitch he didn’t like, but at some point you have to adjust to the pitcher you are facing. Ubaldo was under 50% on first pitch strikes, even with Delmon swinging on 2 of them.
I understand that Leyland does not have much to work with right now to make this offense click, but there has to be someone who can add more to the lineup as Boesch and Delmon Young have so far this season. Watching this team right now is nearly impossible. I hope it turns around quickly, but I just don’t see it happening.
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