Tigers Weekly 2008 Season

WEEK 11: 6/13/08 - 6/19/08

Interleague play continues to treat the Tigers well, 
and the buzz is picking up in the sphere of Tiger 
fans.  Already, those on the message boards are 
discussing how to deal with the people who are 
getting back on the 2008 bandwagon.  Starting 
pitching continues to rack up the quality innings 
and the late-inning heorics we were once used to 
are making a comeback (no pun intended).  
Fernando Rodney came off the disabled list this 
week, and both Joel Zumaya and Gary Sheffield 
are set to return soon.  The Tigers will be as 
close to "full strength" as they have been in a 
while once these players return.

While it's possible to chalk up the recent success 
as an artifact of the interleague competition, we 
have to remember how well the team played 
against Cleveland and Chicago before this began.  
Now, it's doubly important to keep the wins 
coming, as the AL Central is, on the whole, 
having their way with the National League.  The 
exception has been Cleveland, whom the Tigers 
passed for third place this week.  Next in our 
sights is Minnesota, just 2.5 games ahead.

New Subscriber...

George "Sisler" Fuller

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Week of 6/13 - 6/19

Record:  5-1  WWWLWW-

Undy-Five-Hundy:  The Tigers chopped a leg out 
from the Undy-Five-Hundy this week, halving the 
index from eight to four.  Another week like 
we've just had and the UFH will be history... for 
now.

Up Next for the Tigers...  (teams' last two series 
in parentheses)

June 20-22  @ San Diego  
              (1-2 vs. CLE, 0-3 vs. NYY)
June 23     no game scheduled...
June 24-26  St. Louis  
            (2-1 vs. PHI, 0-3 vs. KCR)

AL Central Standings...

CWS  41 31 -
MIN  37 36 4.5
DET  34 38 7
CLE  33 40 8.5
KCR  31 42 10.5

Tigers Division...

CHC  45 28 -
|
ATL  36 38 9.5
TOR  35 39 10.5
DET  34 38 10.5
LAD  34 38 10.5
PIT  34 39 11

Tigers News and Notes:  Brandon Inge is battling 
a strained oblique muscle, which has briefly 
halted his platoon with Pudge Rodriguez.  He 
should return to the field soon.  Clay Rapada was 
the pitcher sent down when Eddie Bonine made 
his major league debut on Saturday.  Bonine will 
make his second start of the season in pitching-
friendly Petco Park against the Professor, Greg 
Maddux.  Fernando Rodney made a most non-
triumphant return to the majors, getting knocked 
around in San Francisco on Monday night.  
Aquilino Lopez was sent to Toledo to make 
room, and the rumor is that Lopez will begin to 
throw longer sessions in hopes of becoming a 
starter.  Clete Thomas rejoined the team, 
swapping places with righty Brent Clevlen.  
Finally, Joel Zumaya is expected to make his 
return to the bullpen on Friday in San Diego.

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Tiger of the Week...
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Marcus Thames beat out Placido Polanco as the Tigers' most money player of the past week. Not only did Marcus belt six home runs (part of an eight home runs in eight hits streak), all of the home runs came in close games. In other words, there were no Dean Palmer shots. The production from this position (left field) is something this lineup has desperately needed. First we suffered through the Jacque Jones era, and then the Gary Sheffield experiment ended in injury. Marcus has been taking care of business (every day) and then giving way to a defensive replacement in the last couple of innings (which Brent Clevlen has justified with some nice plays). Thames hit just .273 this week, with three walks, but if he's goin to knock in eight runs on six homers (five-game homer streak), that's just fine with me.

Honorable mention to the rest of the line-up: eight hitters had an average of at least .300 this week!

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You're Fired!!!
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It's that time of the season once again where team 
owners use the managers as scapegoats for the 
poor performance of the product on the field.  
Losing their jobs just this week were Mets 
manager Willie Randolph and Mariners skipper 
John McLaren.

I don't quite get the idea of firing a coach like 
McLaren at this point.  The Mariners are dead 
last in the American League, but a new manager 
won't be the thing to change that, will it?  The 
Mariners made a lot of moves before this season 
which have not panned out.  To the owner's 
credit, though, the general manager was also 
fired.  Perhaps new blood is the new mantra in 
Seattle.  The Tigers will roll into town in a couple 
of weeks.  Hopefully the turmoil has not ended 
by then.

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Poll Question...
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Fernando Rodney was hit pretty well in his return 
to the bigs.  Joel Zumaya should be back in 
action this week.  The bullpen has not been great 
this season, so their returns are welcome.  
However, if they come back and can't get the job 
done, it could throw a real wrench into the 
current mojo.  Assuming that one of these two 
relievers has a bad first three or four outings, 
what do you think should happen?

A. Send them back down to Toledo (or 
elsewhere) to figure things out.
B. Stick with them; long-term success is 
contingent on these relievers.
C. Keep them in the majors but let guys like 
Dolsi or Miner take their setup innings.
D. Sign Matt Anderson to a contract.

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Game Linescores...
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June 13:  Los Angeles 0 - Detroit 5
Starters:  LAD: Lowe 7IP
           DET: Galarraga 7IP
LAD  000 000 000  0 3 1
DET  000 021 02X  5 9 0
W: Galarraga (6-2)
L: Lowe      (4-6)
S: Dolsi     (2)

June 14:  Los Angeles 7 - Detroit 12
Starters:  LAD: Penny 3.2IP
           DET: Bonine 5.1IP
LAD  010 303 000   7 13 1
DET  001 631 01X  12 15 3
W: Bonine (1-0)
L: Penny  (5-9)

June 15:  Los Angeles 4 - Detroit 5
Starters:  LAD: Kershaw 4IP
           DET: Robertson 6IP
LAD  000 000 004  4 10 0
DET  000 032 00X  5 14 0
W: Robertson (5-6)
L: Park      (2-2)
S: Jones     (12)

June 16:  Detroit 6 - San Francisco 8
Starters:  DET: Verlander 6IP
           SFG: Lincecum 7IP
DET  010 200 102  6  8 1
SFG  010 110 05X  8 10 1
W: Yabu  (3-3)
L: Dolsi (0-2)

June 17:  Detroit 5 - San Francisco 1
Starters:  DET: Rogers 7IP
           SFG: Sanchez 7IP
DET  000 001 022  5 9 0
SFG  000 001 000  1 9 0
W: Rogers  (5-4)
L: Sanchez (6-4)

June 18:  Detroit 7 - San Francisco 2
Starters:  DET: Galarraga 6IP
           SFG: Zito 2IP
DET  230 110 000  7 10 2
SFG  010 001 000  2  8 2
W: Galarraga (7-2)
L: Zito      (2-11)

June 19:  no game scheduled...

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Readers Write In...
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Adam "Doc" Goyt...

Dear Matt,

I thought the readers might find this story 
interesting.  It was on Talk of the Nation Science 
Friday.  A sleep expert discusses a long term 
project that studied the affects of jet lag on sports 
players.  He called it a "circadian advantage".  
Being a nerd I found this interesting.  I hope the 
readers of the weekly do too.

Best Wishes,
Adam

Editor's Note:  The actual link was notincluded in 
the submission, so I did a quick search and found 
an article which talked about the study.  
Hopefully the advantage works for us on Friday 
(Padres coming back from out east).

Click HERE for article from SCIAM

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Nic "Gilby" Gilbert...

Just read that the Tigers have contacted Freddy 
Garcia about a contract with the Tigers.  Coupled 
with Lopez being converted to a starter, they 
must really feel that there is nobody left in the 
system and Bonine is not the answer.

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Brian "Stymie" O'Toole...

Toolie,

Boy old Todd Jones sure does like to make 
things interesting!!!  Good to see them winning a 
close game late.  They keep this up and they'll be 
tied with the Sox by the time next week rolls 
around.

Collins' and I are so excited to be there for the 
wedding and all the festivities!!!

Yo' brother!

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Toolie's Trashtalk...

Going back to the manager discussion, I think 
that Jim Leyland has done a lot of things which 
assign himself a good deal of resposibility for the 
Tigers' performance.  Namely, he has put a 
number of different lineups and configurations on 
the field.  Some of the moves have worked out, 
while others have not.  One of my recent 
favorites is the decision to play Curtis 
Granderson even against left-handed pitchers.  
This keeps the best defensive outfielder we have 
on the field every night, and allows Granderson to 
get more experience hitting lefties.  If he is going 
to develop into a three-hitter (as Leyland seems 
to think he will) then he can't be sitting half of the 
time.  It's not all about offense, as the Angels can 
attest to (they have a run differential of just +2, 
yet sport a 43-30 record atop the AL West.

From Jason Beck's blog:
Armando Galarraga was the first Tiger pitcher to walk
twice in a game since Bryce Florie in 1998.

Click HERE for Jason Beck's blog

Two of the most impressive Tigers' home runs 
this season came on Tuesday night in San 
Francisco.  First, Ryan Raburn came on in a 1-1 
game to pinch hit for Kenny Rogers.  Raburn 
blasted a shot to left field that left Rod and Mario 
in disbelief.  Then, in the ninth, Thames crushed a 
fastball to center field which easily cleared the 
wall.  Both shots deserve a look if you missed 
them.  They can be viewed through the links on 
the page of the game recap:

Click HERE for article from Detroit Tigers

It looks like the Tigers may not have a starter on 
this year's All-Star team.  The two most likely 
candidates to start (based on current votes) are 
Pudge Rodriguez and Magglio Ordonez, but both 
are trailing a starting spot by about 250,000 
votes.  At the beginning of the year we drooled 
over our All-Star lineup.  Funny that it is unlikely 
we'll see any Tigers on the field in New York 
until later in the game.

Eddie Bonine's first start was a bit of a mixed 
bag.  I enjoyed watching him go after hitters, 
though they didn't seem to have much of a 
problem getting the ball to drop.  The Padres are 
a pretty weak offensive team, so there's hope that 
the rookie can keep the run total down Friday 
night.

I'm not real sore at Rodney for what happened 
on Monday.  OK, he got rocked in his first 
outing, but he needs to be in there doing his thing 
if the Tigers are to have sustained success.  He 
should be all right.

Mike Hessman and the Mud Hens were involved 
in a strange situation last Thursday.  Click below 
for the story (via Nic "Gilby" Gilbert):

Click HERE for article from Detroit News

Barry Zito racked up his eleventh loss of the 
season on Wednesday.  It will be interesting to 
see how he does the remainder of the year; 
specifically whether or not they keep running him 
out there if he nears twenty losses.  For the 
money he's getting paid, I wouldn't cut him any 
breaks in the name of pride.  The Giants have a 
face full of egg after signing Zito to his monster 
deal.  The least that he can do is take the ball 
when asked and be a man about it.

This past Monday our department softball team 
won the grad-league championship in convincing 
fashion, 12-2 (Toolie was an unhelpful 0 for 3).  
I'm still considering putting together another 
Tigers Weekly baseball game later in the summer, 
perhaps sometime in August.

Big week coming up here for Toolie.  Next 
Saturday I'll tie the knot with my fiance, Lia "The 
Scorekeeper" Bottinelli.  She's a Tiger fan 
(specifically, a Carlos Guillen fan), so we're going 
to be just fine!

That's all for now.  I don't feel too badly about 
staying up late to write as we all have to be on 
west coast time to watch the Tigs anyway.  I 
always feel a twinge of pride when Rod, Mario, 
Jim, or Dan give a shout out to those "back 
home" who stayed up to watch/listen to the game.  
It's tough to imagine life as a west-coaster; get-
away games on at 10AM, and most games 
starting at 4PM... and being able to watch playoff 
games without cutting into the beauty rest.  But I 
wouldn't trade my Tigers for those perks... no 
way.

I'm out.
 





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