It's lunch time and that gives me a few minutes to reflect on last week for our Detroit Tigers.
Week 11 had 6 Wins and 1 Loss- the best 7 day performance of the year.
Four of the Starters (Robertson, Verlander, Rogers and Galarraga) had a quality start (6 innings pitched with 3 earned runs or less). Dontrelle Willis made a terrible start against the Indians on Monday and Eddie Bonine made an "Okay" start against the Dodgers on Saturday. By my figures* their ERA in Week 11 was 4.55. If you take Willis' meltdown (8 runs in 1.1 innings) out of the picture the Starters ERA drops to 2.90! Galarraga allowed 2 and 0, Rogers and Verlander allowed 1 each and Robertson allowed 3.
The Lineup produced 5.3 runs per game, a definite improvement over most other weeks. This probably won't shock anyone, but when the Tigers average more than 5 runs per game they win more than they lose. This season they have scored over 5 RPG over the course of a week 4 times. Those are the weeks where they have had winning records (Week 3, 4, 8, and 11). Over those weeks their record is 19 and 8.
The Defense is still not really improving (despite Inge at 3rd more) a whole lot. There were 5 errors last week, higher than their average for the year, but most of those came in a very sloppy game on Saturday. Overall they are doing better defensively than they did in '07 or '06.
For the most part the Relief staff did very well this week. Bautista stepped in to stop the blood bath on Monday for Willis and from there on they just rolled. Their combined ERA was 1.00 over 18 innings pitched. That is outstanding!
So all of this together meant 6 wins. Going into the week Detroit was 10 games behind a White Sox team that had won 5 in a row. Coming out of the week Detroit has humbled those White Sox with a 3 game sweep and taken advantage of a weak Dodgers team with a second 3 game sweep! They are now 6 games behind the White Sox. The Tigers continue their Interleague play with 3 games against the San Fransisco Giants and 3 against the San Diego Padres. Both teams are beatable so it may be another good week.
*My ERA figures are open to question so don't bet your mortgage payment on them or anything. My spreadsheet is a work in progress and I'm always tweaking it and looking for errors in it. Just so you know...
