I guess that we knew it couldn’t last forever. During the 2nd inning the Tigers played incredible baseball. They won 14 of 18 games. Their starters were 12-2. The hit with a team BA of .288 and a OPS of .778. They played out of their minds and we all knew it wasn’t sustainable, they had to come back to earth. Would that be a gentle, soft landing or a plummet to the ground?
The last 18 games have corrected any ideas we may have had that this was the 1984 Tigers reincarnated. They won only 7 of the 18 games (.389). This was an almost complete team collapse. Starting pitching was not good. Relief pitching was not good. Team batting was not good. Fielding was not good. This whole Inning was not good.
Starting pitchers had an ERA of 4.74. That is almost 2 runs higher than the previous 18 games. They gave up 13 HR in this stretch (they had given up only 14 in the previous 36 games!). The sudden largesse for HR was combined with more walks and hits per inning (up to 1.46 from 1.09) to balloon the Earned Runs to 59 over these 18 games. Again, the previous 36 games allowed only 68 ER total. The bottom line for the Starters was a record of 6 and 7.
The Bullpen was not able to pick up the slack for the Starters. Although the ‘Pen was better in the 3rd Inning that it was in the 1st Inning (when they sucked) it was certainly worse than during the magical 2nd Inning when they dominated. The Bullpen’s ERA rose to 4.56. Their WHIP came up to 1.37 and their Homeruns/ 9 jumped to 1.01 (from 0.53). The strikeout rate dipped a little (down to 8.10 per 9 IP) but their walk rate jumped to 3.71. That combination led to a 1 and 4 record for the ‘Pen. You simply cannot walk that many batters as a relief corps. And then to give up twice as many HR (6 compared to 3)? Just a horrible combination.
The fielding had been improving as the year went on. The error rate was dropping (0.8 to 0.4) but this has also reversed. The 3rd Inning saw 11 errors charged against the Tigers (0.6 per game).
The bats were inconsistent. Cabrera, Victor and Kinsler are just hitting like crazy. Others have spurts but fade away. This has dropped the number of runs from 101 (5.6/game) to a mere 67 (3.7/ game) in this Inning. They actually hit more HR and more doubles. They also took more walks. But the strikeouts hurt them (136 Ks this Inning or 0.22/ AB, up from 0.19). The team had hard time putting together strings of hits to generate runs. In 9 of these games they scored 3 runs or less. They were shutout in 2 of those and scored only 1 in two more.
So we watched a team that couldn’t prevent runs and also couldn’t score runs. They started the Inning by completing a sweep of the Red Sox in Boston and then got swept by Cleveland. The Rangers had their way with the Tigers and then Detroit earned a split of a four game series with a very good Oakland A’s team. Seattle took 2 of 3 and the Blue Jays turned a pitchers’ duel into a HR Derby as the Bullpen imploded to finish the 18th game.
On the positive side, the Starters seem to be sorting themselves out. Sanchez has pitched brilliantly in his last two games since returning from the DL. Verlander looked much better in his last start. Porcello looked very solid in 2 of his 3 starts this Inning. Scherzer has not gotten his groove back yet. Smyly isn’t inspiring confidence in me right now. Chamberlain is solid. Alburqueque has done well. Coke appears to be used only when it's impossible to lose a game.
Most importantly, in spite of a truly painful stretch of baseball, the Tigers are still in 1st place (with a 4 game lead). Although they lost more games than they won, they only gave up 2.5 games of their lead. They have most of the next 18 games at home (11 of the 18) and they normally play better at home. This is still an excellent team and I’m excited to see them correct (again).
