Verlander & Schlereth of the Series (Rangers)

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 2^nd 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 2^nd 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. 

Verlander & Schlereth of the Series (Cardinals)

Detroit continued to roll through interleague play with their 4th straight series win.  Don't look now, but they are only 2.5 games back of first place in the Comedy Central again.  On a side note, I should stop mocking the AL Central so much because the NL Central has 2 of the worst teams in all of baseball. 

Verlander of the Series has to go to the starting pitching in general.  Verlander, Porcello, and Turner all pitched well enough to get a win.  St. Louis had the 2nd best offense in all of the NL coming into the series and Tiger pitching shut them down for 3 games.  The Cards managed a total of 7 runs, and only 4 of them were earned.  I don't think this pitching staff could do much better in a 3 game series.  In a close 2nd would have to be the bullpen.  In their last 32 games they have been the best bullpen in all of baseball.  To keep the game tied yesterday the bullpen went out and pitched 5 shut out innings where they struck out 7, walked one and gave up 2 hits.  I am impressed.

Schlereth of the Series will go to Miguel Cabrera for the 2nd time this season.  The first time he heard me and became the Verlander the next series, I hope he can do that again.  Miguel struggled against the Cards with back to back 0-4 games.  People, you do not see this often, but it shows you how hard it is to hit a baseball at the major league level.  Two average pitchers (Westbrook and Loshe) had Miggy confused at the plate.  I guess you have to give credit to them as well because Miguel might be fooled in one at bat per game, but 8 in a row?  There is no doubt that he will start hitting again and raise the average closer to .320, but this was a rough series for the big fella.

Verlander & Schlereth of the Series (Rockies)

The Tigers continued their dominance over the NL last weekend with their 3rd straight series win and 4th overall against the inferior senior circuit.  This version of awards is pretty easy to decide. 

Verlander of the Series has to go to Max Scherzer.  While he did have a 15K outing earlier this season, but Sunday's pitching performance was masterful.  It might have been Max's best start of his career.  In the 4th inning the game was delayed for 45 minutes, and Max came back out of the dugout to finish the inning and go 4 more!  He struck out 12 Rockies and didnt allow a run.  Personally, I think the most important stat was Scherzer didn't walk anyone.  I do not expect Max to come out and pitch like this every night, but maybe this is a turning point of his season.  I think he is talented enough to be a 2nd starter on some teams, but the problem is he pitches like an ace once in every 5-6 starts, then like a marginal AAA pitcher once in that span and the remaining 3-4 starts are average at best.  If Scherzer can lower his ERA to around 4.00 and have his WHIP down in the 1.2 range, the Tigers will be tough to keep out of the division lead for long.

Schlereth of the Series will go to Jose Valverde.  He has a tendency of racking up quite a few of these awards.  The spud sputtered out on Friday night blowing a game tied at 4.  By the time he left the mound the Tigers were down 8-4 with 2 more men on base that he was responsible for.  I believed Jose was turning the corner a bit in his outings.  He was using the splitter with more regularity, his velocity was creeping back up into the mid 90's, and his control seemed to be improving.  Well, Papa took a big step back with this loss. Maybe this season is just one of those 1 step forwards and 2 steps back for the baked potato.

Tigers Week 9 Recap (30-33)

Detroit got 2 more series wins over the week as Tiger's fans flooded into the Great American Ballpark and Wrigley Field respectively.  The fans got to see some pretty decent baseball from the Boys of Summer, and it has caused the local media to believe Detroit has turned a corner of their season and will begin to assume their throne of the class of the AL Central.

Detroit played 3 one run games against the Reds.  They lost the first from a suicide squeeze play. In reality, the Reds outplayed the Tigers on the night and probably shouldn't have needed the gimmick play to win the game.  Verlander did his best to get a win on Saturday, but Delmon Young and the offense didn't want to give him any support again.  Luckily we managed to scrape a run across late in the game to win the 2nd game.  Finally, on the ESPN game of the week Sunday night, Drew Smyly did his best to make every viewer vomit a little in their mouth when a giant blood blister broke on his throwing hand. The rookie had to leave the game early, and Detroit again had to rely on the bullpen.  When all hope seemed lost, and the Tigers were laying an egg on national tv, the bats woke up against the bullpen again.  This time scoring 5 runs off of relievers, Aroldis Chapman being one of them.  Detroit got their first series win since the 3 game sweep of the little league Twins in May.

Heading into the series with the Cubs, most fans thought the Tigers needed a sweep to really make us believe they are a different team.  Well, those dreams were squashed in the first game of the series when Peralta make a mockery of the shortstop position.  He somehow had back to back routine ground balls turn into 2 errors turn into 1 game winning run for Chicago.  Boo.  Then the Tigers realized, hey the Cubs might be worse than the Twins and there are more Tiger fans here than lame Cubs fans... maybe we should play baseball.  The bats woke up for an 8-4 win in the 2nd game of the series.  Scherzer started and pitched his normal game, but luckily for him the offense bailed him out.  Boesch went off in the game, collecting 4 hits, including a home run.  The rubber match also happened to fall on Justin Verlander Day, and he did not disappoint.  The offense was slow to give him much help, but in the end JV got his 6th win of the season and Austin led the offense to a second straight series victory.

Looking forward, the Tigers welcome the Rockies and the Cardinals to Comerica Park as interleague play continues.  Folks, these teams are average at best.  The Rockies are 0-9 in games against the AL this season.  Their pitching might be worse than the Mudhens, and their hitting is close to useless outside of Coors Field.  Of course this combination will likely mean a 10 run outburst for the Rockies.  Detroit should win the next two series to continue to move closer to .500 and catching the White Sox for first place in the division.  One thing that interleague shows is how miserable the NL is compared to the AL.  The Tigers are an average baseball team, let me be honest.  Yet, they are head and shoulders better than the majority of NL teams.  It is kind of a joke.  I finally get to go back to Comerica this Sunday as well for a Father's Day celebration with my dad and grandpa.  It should be a blast.

Verlander & Schlereth of the Series (Cubs)

Well the Tigers should have swept the lowly Tigers, but they escaped with another series win which is important. Detroit just simply abused the Cubs bullpen (or whatever they call it), and Wrigley Field became Comerica Park West.  If you are a Cubs fan, I am sorry, but that was an embarrassment.

Verlander of the Series: This is a tough one between the fans and JV.  I will give JV the nod because at times he looked absolutely dominant again, and he got his first win since May 18th (his no-hit attempt). Folks, JV should never go a month in between wins, he is too good.  At some point this season will the offense bail him out or at least score 4 runs while he is on the mound?  Verlander struggled in the 2nd inning by giving up 2 runs, but then was lights out the rest of the way.  He finished with 8 strikeouts and 0 walks on the day. He also became the 2nd pitcher (after Strasburg the Great) to get to 100 K's on the season.  I am hoping JV doesn't get the extra day of rest for his next start which will allow him to pitch against St. Louis and Pittsburgh (when I visit PNC Park).

Schlereth of the Series: I have to give this to Jhonny Peralta.  Not only did he get an error on a routine ground ball to short, he followed it up on the next batter with a throwing error to first.  It was the only reason the Cubs scored a run off of Phil Coke on Tuesday night.  I don't know if the Tigers would have been able to score again to pull out the victory, but they should not have lost like that.  I knew the defense would be bad, but I thought they would at least be average in ground balls hit directly at them.

Looking ahead, the Tigers get the terrible Rockies coming to town.  These are the same Rockies who are 0-9 in inter-league play, so this probably means they will come in to Detroit and sweep the Tigers.  It would be nice to get another series win and pull closer to the White Sox (they play at the Dodgers).  The Rockies have some of the worst starting pitching that I can remember seeing.  They have a potent offense in their home stadium, but they lose their punch on the road.  Honestly, the Tigers should have no problem scoring 20+ runs in this series.  I guess at this point, let's just hope for another series win.

Verlander & Schlereth of the Series (Reds)

The Tigers headed to Cincinnati to take on the Reds at Great American Ballpark.  I was planning on heading down there for the weekend, but Chelsea and I were still traveled out from Boston (and the Sunday night game was switched to the ESPN game of the week at 8pm).  Detroit played a very good series on the road, and they continued there stretch of winning twice as much as losing inter-league games.  Let's get to the awards!

Verlander of the Series: I have to go with Austin Jackson with this series.  The man came back for the last two games of the series and the Tigers, of course, went 2-0.  He was hitless in the first game back, but then was the ultimate catalyst in the series finale on the big stage.  He hit a 2 run double against the best reliever in baseball to give the Tigers the game and series victory.  And as always, he plays a 2nd to none centerfield.  Man, how we missed our young star.  If AJ keeps this up there is no way that Ron Washington can keep him off of the All-Star roster.

The Schlereth of the Series: will belong to Rick Porcello.  This is a tough one because the bullpen technically got the loss for the Friday night game, but Rick could have pitched better.  This guy has a lot of talent in that right arm, but he just cannot stay consistent.  I know getting 14 wins a year from your 4th starter is pretty good, but when we drafted Rick we had number 2 expectations.  Yes, he is still young, but right now he is struggling.  He cannot keep the ball down with his sinker which is resulting in a lot of hard hit balls.  I hope he can turn things around, at least for the end of June and July since these have been his best two months of his career. In a close second place it has to be Delmon Young.  Part of it is that I just really dislike the inept left fielder, and trading him for a bag of seeds actually sounds like a good investment at this point.  The other part is he continually gives me reasons to be titled my Tiger... to yell at. He made one of the worst plays in left field on Saturday, of course during JV's start, that ended up making JV get a 4 out inning which led to a 2 run 2 out single (the only two runs the Reds scored). The dude is a half tool player... he cannot field a position, throw, steal bases, or hit for average.  The half tool comes from him being able to hit for power.. sometimes.

Looking forward, the Tigers have a real shot of sweeping the Cubs.  The way this season is going, they likely will not, but the Cubs are miserable.  Detroit has the pitching advantage in 2 of the games (with Matt Garza being the exception), and they have a better lineup.  Hopefully the friendly confines of Wrigley are friendly to the road team.

Verlander & Schlereth of the Series (Indians)

 Well the Tigers tried their hardest to continue their losing streak against the Tribe this week, but eventually they were able to scratch out one win in the series.  Cleveland improved their record at Comerica to 5-24 in their last 29 tries, they almost doubled their wins in one series.  Anyways, since the Tigers ended on somewhat of a decent note (good enough that the majority of the media is back on the band wagon and expect yesterday to be the turnaround game), my awards will have a more positive outlook than usual.

The Verlander of the Series is a tough one again.  There are a few guys that could be considered here, and heck, the offense even scored 13 runs in the last 2 games.  Miguel continued his hot streak, and seriously looks like he could be a .400 hitter over the course of a season if he didn’t take at bats off.  But, I am going to go with James “Marlbro Man” Leyland for his first positive review of the season.  Over the past few weeks, most Tiger’s fans have called for Jim’s head because firing a manager mid-season will instantly make the bottom 5 hitters be able to hit a 95 mph fastball.  Well, I thought I would give credit when Jim’s moves pay off.  Yesterday, starting in the bottom of the 1^st inning it was Leyland’s day in the decision-making department.  After Berry got on base, he immediately put the hit and run on with Boesch.  It caused Boesch to focus more to make contact, he shortened his swing a bit, and actually got a hit in the process which started the 4 run rally.  Then to start the next big inning, Jim had Holaday lay down a sacrifice bunt to move Danny Worth to 2^nd.  Finally, with Brennan up again and the count 3-0, Jim gave him the green light to the slumping hitter.  It was a very risky move, considering the 2 nights before Brennan “deep ball” consisted of pop ups to third base.  Brennan came through again with a ground rule double to straight away center.  Now, Jim cannot manage the same way every game because the risk outweighed the reward on most of those calls, but for some reason yesterday they paid off.  Jim set himself up to take the blame if the Tigers lost the game, and put Brennan in the spotlight (even if just for an afternoon).  Nice work skip.

The Schlereth of the Series will have to go to both Max Scherzer and the overall defense.  Max was looking to string together another quality start and try to add some consistency to the rotation.  Instead, he got abused on the mound.  He got hit hard most of the night, and he struggled to strike anyone out for one of the first times this season.  The defense could have helped him out in big ways in the game, but it was not meant to be.  Folks, this defense was expected to be bad, but it is a train wreck right now.  Prince is looking to cruise to victory in the most errors for a 1^st baseman (he already has 7), and countless other balls that would have completed a double play, stopped an error from a teammate, or if he was just average at the position he would have stopped multiple hits that got into right field.  People kept saying Miguel was just an average first baseman, but there is no comparison between the two.  Then Brennan dropped a routine pop-up in game two that extended the first inning where Scherzer gave up a 3 run home run (all 3 unearned runs), and coincidentally the Tigers lost by 3.  I know they are not good, but it would be nice to see a little bit of improvement in the field somehow.  Maybe when AJ and Dirks come back the outfield will look like Dirks in left, AJ in center, and Berry in right.  Also, Worth has been playing a very good 2^nd base lately (but nobody cares because he is hitting .200).

Looking forward, the Tigers look to extend their amazing 72-39 interleague record under Jim Leyland, and they certainly have some teams to do it against.  The Reds are first place in their division, but after that they get the Cubs, Rockies, Cardinals, and Pirates.  If the team was playing well, there is no reason they wouldn’t be able to win all of these series… but the way its going they could get swept by the Cubs.