Week 14 (or “National League, how we miss thee!”)

Twins and Mariners

3 Wins- 4 Losses

I am not too worried about a road trip to the West Coast that ends up 3 and 4. I honestly believed that Detroit would do more against the Mariners, but that was based on the first few times the teams met. Between meetings the Mariners got a new manager and have won 10 of their last 16 games (or something close to that). Seattle certainly didn’t want to remain the punching bag they had become, so they had to change something. Time will tell if they can become as good as they used to be a few years ago.

But this is a Tigers’ blog and we should focus there.

Starters’ ERA- in Week 14 it climbed to 4.93 which was not great. Robertson had the worst outing (6 earned runs in 4 innings pitched) but he was not alone- Galarraga, Rogers and Bonine all had starts that ended up with ERA’s over 4.50. Balancing it out, Verlander and Galarraga also had solid starts during the week (2 runs/ 6 innings and 1 run/ 6 innings respectively).

Bullpen ERA- 2.61. Certainly not a terrible week. The bullpen allowed 6 runs during the week over 23 innings. Todd Jones and Fernando Rodney gave up 4 of those in only 2 2/3 innings to blow 2 games. Without those performances (or at least with better performances in those 2 2/3 innings we are talking about a 5 and 2 week instead of 3 and 4. Not – so – good was allowing 6 walks over those same 23 innings. Zach Miner paid the price of too many walks (4) by walking to Toledo. Meritocracy at its finest!

The Lineup did not hold up their end of the deal this week. I had some painful memories of early April that I believed I had successfully buried deeply into my subconscious. The BA for the week was .274, SLG was .403 and Runs Scored / Game was 3.4. A major factor was that Magglio Ordonez was on the DL. They were shutout for the 10^th time this season on Wednesday (by the Twins). To add insult to injury, they committed 8 errors- the worst week of the year defensively.

As the week closed the Tigers were 43 and 44 overall and 7.0 games behind the White Sox (3rd place in the AL Central).

This coming week the Tigers return to Detroit after one more game in Seattle (which they barely won) on Sunday. They have 2 games against the Indians and a 4 game series against the 2nd place Twins. Cleveland has the worst record in the AL Central and was the only team in the division to have a losing record in Interleague play. The Twins are playing great baseball at home but not so great on the road. Detroit really needs to win both of these series as they head into the All Star Break next week.