The story of this week was pitching.
Verlander pitched 2 games (16 innings) and allowed only 1 run. He struck out 11 in each game and only walked 5 over that span. It is even more impressive that he pitched BOTH games against the reigned Cy Young Award winner, Cliff Lee, and won both of them. Friday's game in Cleveland was saved by Granderson (but more on that later).
Jackson pitched one great game and one not-so-great game in the week. Saturday's game followed up Verlander's gem with another gem. 0 runs allowed over 7 innings (and this time the Bullpen didn't give the game away as it had against the Yankees).
Jackson' game on Monday was his weakest of the year- he allowed 5 runs over 6 innings on 7 hits. He still managed to strike out 7 batters in both games.
Porcello picked up a win this week with 7 innings of shutout ball.
Galarraga had the worst game of the week with 6 runs allowed in 6 innings (5 of those runs came in the 1st inning). He had only 3 K's in that game and it appeared that White Sox were counting on him not hitting the strike zone, they appeared very patient at the plate and it paid off for them.
With the starters pitching as well as they did the Bullpen didn't have a whole lot of work. They pitched only 11 innings for the week and allowed only 2 runs on 8 hits and 5 walks.
So the Tigers had a great week of pitching. It is a good thing, because they did not have a very good week at the plate.
On Tuesday the 5th Leyland mixed up the lineup and they scored 9 runs against the Twins. That was the highpoint of the scoring. Inspite of that attack on Minnasota the Tigers only managed to average 3.2 runs per game this week. This lack of scoring is beginning to concern me. During the first 3 weeks of the season they scored over 5 runs per game (5.8, 5.2 and 6.3). Over the last two weeks they have averaged only 4.5 and 3.2. Leyland clearly sees the problem and has attempted to address it: Guillen was put on the DL, Ordonez moved from the #3 slot to #6 and even benched for a couple of games. Larish and Thomas were brought up from Toledo. And Thomas has been spending time in the #3 hole. Granderson has been moved around in the lineup too, between #1 and #5. All of this moving has not had a huge impact, but we'll see how Week 6 works out before rushing to judgement.
Player of the Week:
This a very hard call. Verlander had a Cy Yound qualifying week against the current Cy Young winner. Curtis Granderson was almost all of the scoring offense (4 of the 19 runs scored) this week and saved Verlander's shutout win on Friday with an abolutely amazing catch over the wall to steal a walkoff homerun from Grady Sizemore.
I have to go with Verlander. He was absolutely dominant this week and, as I said earlier, this week was all about pitching. He was the Man this week.
