Archive for August, 2003

In one of the more unusual stories of the day, Baseball Prospectus is reporting that Pete Rose will be reinstated in 2004. Tom DuPuy, Chief Operating Officer of Major League Baseball, has vehemently denied what BP is reporting. A little too vehemently and vaguely for my tastes.

I think this is sheer genius on BP’s part, whether it turns out to be true or not. I love BP, and bought their 2003 baseball guide, and it’s by far the best baseball publication I’ve ever read. The level of detail is by far the best I’ve ever seen, and I plan on getting next year’s edition as well.

With that said, if they’re correct about the Pete Rose story, then they look like they’re on the cutting edge of sports journalism by beating ESPN, CNN, and whoever else is out there to the punch. They also have 17 months in which to be correct, so there’s a ton of wiggle room involved. And even if they’re wrong, who’s going to remember, or even care, when it’s January 1, 2005, and Rose is still banned.

Either way, it’s a major coup for BP and other less mainstream websites and publications. They’ve always been a favorite site of mine, but they just put themselves on the map as far as the mainstream media is concerned.

Or at least, after the rain. The Tigers dropped their fourth in a row to the Rangers after a 2 hour rain delay knocked out the starters for both teams. Nate Cornejo had given up a run in his first inning (on no hits), and Steve Sparks relieved him once they started the game back up.

Probably the biggest surprise of the game was Ramon Santiago got an RBI, his 15th of the year in 307 at bats. Since Ramon goes weeks at a time without an RBI at times, this is a big deal. He made up for it though by getting caught stealing.

Eric Munson hit his 18th homer, and he should get to 20, which is significant because in the last two years, the Tigers haven’t had a player hit 20 homeruns. This year they should have two.

And yes, this is sarcasm, more out of frustration then anything. The Tigers on pace now to go 42-120. We’ll see if they get there.

On a good note, the Tigers managed to sign their first round draft pick, Kyle Sleeth. This isn’t in the story, but if I heard correctly on the radio, he received a $3.5 million signing bonus. Not too shabby, and hopefully it’s money well spent.

Another day of painting, which brings the total hours spent on this up to around 24 for the weekend. So I apologize in advance for another short update.

The Tigers got swept this weekend, and Sunday’s game is as odd as Nate Cornejo’s earlier bid for a no-hitter, where he went through the seventh inning, then proceeded to get shelled. This time, he got the shelling out of the way, went down 4-0, and proceeded to send the Twins down more or less in a row the rest of the way. I’m not sure if letting him throw a 123 pitches was a good idea, but this was second complete game by a Tiger’s pitcher this year. The other one was also a losing affair where Mike Maroth threw a four hitter on April 20th, but along with those four hits came four runs.

The Tigers did make a game of it by scoring three runs, and even putting the tying run on base in the ninth against Guardado. Now it’s on to Texas, where the Tigers try to stop Palmeiro’s quest for a .500 season.

I’ve followed Palmeiro pretty closely this year because he’s on my roto team, but probably the strangest thing about his blocking the trade to Chicago is the reason. He’s admitted publicly how important it would be for him to help get the Rangers back to .500, which has to be one of the worst reasons I’ve ever heard of. Who cares and what relevance does getting a team back to .500 have on anything? I would have had more respect for him if he said he didn’t want to move or that it was too cold up in Chicago in the winter. Sosa’s corked bat explanation makes a lot more sense then this. But to all their own.

That’s the Tiger’s record for games played in extra innings. That’s not good, but sort of in line with how Tigers have done this year.

And for the first time in a while, I’m going to punt reviewing the game. I’ve spent the last 12 hours painting, and will probably have a repeat painting performance tomorrow. So, I’m going to point you to Al’s Detroit Tiger Blog, who did a nice writeup on tonight’s game. He also does a nice little piece on the Tiger’s infatuation with bunting which is a good read and something I agree whole heartedly. Even the games where I only catch 2 or 3 innings has someone trying to bunt another guy over, or trying to get a bunt single.

And the AL Central race is heating up. KC won, Chicago lost, and Minnesota won, so KC takes back the lead, and is a half game ahead of Chicago (and its in the loss column, which in my mind is better then having a half game lead by being up by one win), and two and a half ahead of Minnesota.

I think Chicago is going to come out of this one. I think with the reemergence of Colon and Buerhle, this team will have the pitching down the stretch to get things done. They already have one of the better offences (granted its on paper). As always, we’ll see. But whoever wins the division could do it with less then 90 wins.

The Twins really have had our number the last couple of years. This is the 18th time the Tigers have lost to them in the last 19 games, with last Saturday’s win the first in a while.

Johan Santana threw a great game, only giving up 2 hits through 8 innings. Craig Monroe made it look good by hitting a two run shot in the bottom of the ninth, but the Tigers couldn’t finish the comeback and lost 3-2. The Tigers finally got a pitcher to throw past 6, as they worked Mike Maroth for 8 innings, and 118 pitches. It actually wasn’t a bad game for him once her got past the fourth inning.

I’m still questing Tram’s sanity by batting Petrick and Inge in the top spots. If you take the sum of the OBP of these two guys, you get .488, which is less then what Barry Bonds has by himself. On top of that, Inge got picked off of second somehow (I missed the beginning of the game).

I like Brandon Inge, but I really question whether he’s big league material. I got a chuckle out of the announcers saying how he dramatically improved when he was down in AAA, where he hit .275. If you send a player who’s in his third big league season, he should be able to tear AAA up if he’s a bona fide MLB player. I guess anything over .250 for Brandon would be considered an improvement though, so technically, the announcers weren’t lying.

And the less Ben Petrick plays catcher (and the more he plays CF), the less I feel we got something out of the Bernero trade. I still think Eric Munson would best help the team if he got back behind the plate.

Mike Maroth also lost his 16th today, and I think both he and Bonderman are going to end up losing 20. Contrary to what I’ve heard some people saying about it ruining their careers, I’m not buying it. If their psyche’s are that fragile, then they’re probably not big league material. If they lose their 20, and then come back next year knowing it’s a new year and pitch like they know they can, then they could have the mental makeup that a ML pitcher needs.

…but it’s a win. Number 30 to be exact.

In a game where the Tigers made two errors and gave up 8 walks, the Tigers somehow managed to pull this one out by beating Barry Zito and the Oakland A’s 3-2. Not to be outdone, Oakland made three errors themselves, and all three runs that Zito gave up were unearned. I didn’t get to watch this game because I was at work, but I’ll do my best.

Jeremy Bonderman notched his fifth win, but walked a season high (guess everything this season for Jeremy is a career high as well) 6 walks. His control had been pretty good the last couple of months, and hopefully this was just an anomoly.

Eric Munson had the big hit, driving in the only three runs with his 4th inning homerun. Munson’s shot was his 17th of the season, which was ironic because he also notched his 17th error of the season, allowing Erubiel Durazo to score in Oakland’s half of the fourth inning.

Bonderman lasted 5 innings, and then a quartet of relievers finished the game out, with Danny Patterson pitching 1 2/3 strong innings to get his first save of the season.

Probably the strangest thing about the Tigers in this game was their lineup. Ben Petrick led off, and then Brandon Inge, back from Toledo, was hitting second. I have no idea what Tram was thinking here.

The Tigers now get a rematch series against Minnesota at home this weekend.

….unless the Tigers can pull one out. They’re down 6-2 in the seventh. It’s tough to be an optimist with this team these days. Once again, a Tiger fails to get a quality start as Wil Ledezma only made it five innings.

Bobby Higginson drove in the only runs with a two run shot in the third. He’s shown some spark since coming off the DL. He’s 13 for 37 (.351). Even more impressive is the fact he’s only struck out three times in those 11 games.

I had to run up to Home Depot, again, but I taped the ESPN telecast with Ernie Harwell and will try to watch it some time in the next couple of days. Time is a commodity right now, since we’re in the finishing stages of some major construction on our house. I’ll be so glad when this is over with.

The Tigers just got a run in the bottom half of the seventh off of an Eric Munson home run. Maybe they can pull this one out yet……

Or more specifically, same shit, different day.

One bad inning by Nate Cornejo put this one out of reach for the Tigers, and even in a game where Detroit outhit their opponents, they still came up short, losing 7-2.

Once again, Cornejo is the latest in a line of Detroit starting pitchers that haven’t been able to pitch deep into a game. Fortunately, the Tigers had an off day on Monday so the pen got some rest by default. Cornejo is the fourth Tiger this season to post their 10th loss (joining Bonderman, Maroth, and recently departed Adam Bernero).

The Tigers are on pace now to win 42 games, and I heard on the radio that if you take their record from August 5, 2002 through August 5, 2003, the Tigers are 36-125. That’s two years worth of losses for a good team.

Rich Harden struck out two Tigers in the first inning. This is the first I’ve seen this guy pitch, and he already is impressing me.

Just a quick note on my links section. The reason I don’t have a page worth of links to other blogs is not because I’m picky about who I send people to. I have a limitied amount of time each day to post, and when I can, I’ll look for more sites and set up links to them. Just because I haven’t linked to your blog doesn’t mean I don’t like you, it’s just I haven’t gotten to your site yet. I do check my referral log, so if you’ve been nice enough to put a link on your site to mine, I make an extra effort to get your link up there to return the favor. I do appreciate it.

The Tigers have the day off tonight, so I thought I’d touch on Ernie Harwell for a moment. For those of you who unfamiliar with the Tigers, Ernie Harwell is the Tiger’s former Hall of broadcaster. If you ever want to read a great baseball book, his biography is excellent and well worth reading. My wife was nice enough to get me an autographed copy shortly after it came out.

And as a special treat, Ernie Harwell will be on ESPN’s 7 pm telecast this Wednesday as part of their Broadcasting Living Legends series. So we’ll get to see and hear Ernie call part of the Rangers/Yankees game.

As much as I enjoy listening to current Tiger’s radio announcers Dan Dickerson and Jim Price, I do miss Ernie. In my mind, nobody could call a ball game better, and I’m looking forward to listening to him one more time.

Unfortunately, I didn’t get to watch much baseball this weekend. Between paintball, running around getting stuff to finish the basement with (owning a house can be a pain), taxes (yes, unfortunately those don’t end April 15) and NCAA 2004, I was only around to watch a little bit of today’s game.

And unfortunately, it was more of the same. The Twins were up 2-0 after an inning, and then 4-0 after three. It’s been around a week since a starter has even gone 6 innings, so the pen has to be tired. Fortunately a knuckleballer like Sparks (who pitched today) can eat up some innings.

Matt Roney only lasted 2 innings. In his last 6 starts, he’s given up less then 4 runs only once, and since becoming a starter (this is his ninth start), he’s seen his ERA jump from 3.00 to 5.08 and his batting average against jump from .205 to over .250. That’s not an encouraging trend.

The Tigers have to get consistent innings from their starters. Everytime you have to go to your pen early, you lose flexibility as far as what you can do the next game, if not the game after that. Go several starts like the Tigers have without having someone go into the seventh, and its a recipe for disaster. Like we need more of those.

The Tigers only offense came off a 2 run homer by Bobby Higginson in the 6th, and I might have to eat a little crow regarding a past post since Shannon Stewart has gone 30 for 70 (yes, that’s .429) since joining the Twins a few weeks ago. He scored two of the Twins 7 runs.

The Tigers have Oakland next, then the Twins again. Both series are at home. Sunday is the Tiger’s Legends (guess they don’t call them old-timers anymore) game. Unfortunately I’ll be down in Southgate that day watching my former softball team make a run in their end of season softball tournament. I still hope to get down to the park one last time, if not two.

First off, I wanted to thank John Perricone for the kind words. Jay and I also hope you’re feeling better.

And Jay didn’t want John to do this, but that doesn’t stop me from doing it. I know little about HTML, or web blogs or anything related to the web other then how to surf it. In that arena, Jay is the expert, and is the actually the person who designed this entire site. For that, I’m grateful. I’ve said it before, but I’ll say it again, “Thanks, Jay.”

And if you ever want to talk about websites, feel free to drop me a line and I’ll be sure to let him know your thoughts.

With that, on to baseball. The Tigers broke their losing streak last night, and even got on the board first, mostly with a three run homerun by Craig Monroe. The Tigers scored their runs in bunches, getting 4 in the third inning, then adding 5 more in the eighth.

Good and bad with regard to pitching. Mike Maroth threw 102 pitches in only 5 1/3 innings, but the bullpen came in and did the job, capped off by a two shutout innings by Chris Spurling.

For the fourth straight game, the Tigers give up a big first inning by giving up 5 runs in the first against Minnesota tonight. And now I check the score, and they’re down 8-0. Sigh. Rough outing for Bonderman, after throwing a gem last week. Makes you wonder if that pitch count from his last start isn’t having an effect tonight.

This isn’t baseball related, but I bought NCAA 2004 for the X-Box. Man have games come a long way from Tecmobowl (or football on the Atari 2600, which should show my age). I haven’t played a sports game other then MLB Slugfest on the X-Box, so its taken some getting used.

Getting out tomorrow to play paintball. Hopefully the weather holds, and the Tigers can pull one out.

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