Yes, I opened my mouth a little too soon. After praising them late last week for winning three series in a row, the Tigers are now mired in a five game losing streak, and they’re only one up in the loss column from dropping into a tie with the last place Royals, and they now sit eight games below .500, which I think is the lowest they’ve been all year.

Unfortunately, there’s not one thing that can be identified. Generally, the starting pitching has been strong, but not game in and game out. The pen has lost them some games, and then the fact that they haven’t scored more then three runs in a game during this stretch hasn’t helped them either.

I did agree with Pat Capoto, who on his radio show mentioned that when German was brought up, it should have been Levine that was sent down, and not Colyer. Colyer has the excuse of being young at least. Levine doesn’t. And you can never have enough hard throwing lefties coming out of your bullpen.

Alex Sanchez is also struggling, going 3 for 23 during this five game stretch. Does anyone find it odd that despite hitting .321, and having some nice bats behind him, Sanchez has only scored 32 times? Getting caught 11 times in 29 steal attempts doesn’t help. Nor does walking a grand total of five times. I wonder what the record is a hitter who has an average above .320, but has a low OPS (Sanchez has a .718 OPS). Just taking a look at some of the league stats shows me that there’s quite a few players hitting below .270 with a better OPS. How valuable does that make Sanchez?

Just a few more odds and ends. The Tigers signed Carlos Guillen to a three year deal. You can read about that, and Tiger trade rumors, over at the Detroit Tigers Weblog.

Permalink | Posted in 2004 Tigers