Almost there!

Rockies 1, Tigers 7

Detroit continues to rack up wins at an impressive rate. It is almost too good to be true. They have won 15 of their last 19 games (.790 ball). They have won their last 5 series (with back to back sweeps!). Tonight they finally have more Runs Scored (382) than Runs Against (380). That's not a lot more, but it's better than have more Runs Against. As of the end of tonight's play they are 1 game below .500. That sounds much better than it is, but it still sounds sooo sweet after being 8 full games below .500 on June 1st.

There is no single standout on the team. Marcus Thames was hitting a home run every time he hit the ball for about 2 weeks, but now Granderson and Sheffield (returned from 2 weeks on the DL) are taking their turn. The "a walk's as good as a hit" line that my coach used to tell me ('cause he knew I couldn't hit) turned out to be true when Clete Thomas drew two (2!) bases loaded walks against the Cardinals to "drive" in the first and third (game winning) runs.

Nate Robertson pitched 6.1 innings and gave up 11 hits- but 0 earned runs. Jason Beck reports that no Tiger has done that since 1956. I don't know if that is great or terrible pitching, but add another W to the column.

So far this week Detroit is 4 and 1 with one more game this week. This is the last series against National League Teams and then it is back to AL play. All of the American League Teams play well against the NL, but Detroit is just crazy. This year they are 11 and 5 with 2 games to go. They beat the Cards and the Padres, two teams picked by many to contend for the playoffs this year. Tigers just love NL teams!

Today they attempt to hit the .500 mark for the first time since March 30th.

The Sleepers awake?!

Can this be for real? Do we dare hope? Can we handle more ups and downs from these 2008 Tigers?

I don't pretend to know all of the answers, but let's look at the numbers and see what they say?

I've said before that although the hitting hasn't been that great this year it is really the defense and pitching that are hurting the Tigers, so how is that working out lately?

In Weeks 1 through 3 the ERA for the Starting Rotation was just north of 6 (6.17 by my figures) and they were facing an average of 4.67 batters per inning (BPI). During that stretch the Tigers' record was 5 and 13.

Compare that to Weeks 9 through 11 (we are finishing up Week 11 now)- ERA for Starters is 3.66. That number includes both Dontrelle Willis' terrible night Monday against Cleveland and Justin Verlander's amazing night on Wednesday against Chicago. Not giving up over two runs per game is huge! The Starters are also facing fewer batters per inning, only 4.21 since June 1 so they are staying in the game longer with lower ERA's.

Now to that hitting thing...
In the first two weeks the lineup scored 33 runs (3 runs per game). For this week and last week they have scored 43 runs (4.3 runs per game). Their Batting Average was .246 at the beginning. In the last two weeks is has been .254. Their slugging percentage (total bases/ at bats) was .356 in the early weeks and has been .375 in the last two.

All of these trends are in the right direction! In the first 3 weeks of the year their record was 6 and 12 (.333). In the last 3 weeks it has been 7 and 9 (with 3 games to play yet this week). If the Starting pitching continues at this rate and the batters continue to score runs there is still hope that they can make this race exciting for Tigers' fans.