Archive for the '2004 Tigers' Category

If there’s one place I love more then my house, it’s the library. For those of you who don’t know me, I love to read. And I love to read about a wide range of topics. At this very moment, I’m reading the following:

Damn Right – A biography of Warren Buffet’s partner, Charlie Munger
John Adams – A great biography of our second president
Havana – a novel by Stephen Hunter, great author
Song of Susanah – a recent start, the sixth book in Stephen King’s Dark Tower series
Options as a Strategic Investment – Basically a text book on investing in publicly traded options.

Also for those of you who don’t know me, I’m a business junkie. I have an MBA in accounting, and when I get home, I don’t flip on Sportscenter, I flip on CNBC. I was in the library last week looking for the book Liar’s Poker by Michael Lewis, which is basically about Mr. Lewis’ time with Salomon Brothers as a bond trader.

Unfortunately, they didn’t have it. I purchased it, along with a reprint of the 1940 edition of Security Analysis by Graham and Dodd. What I did find instead was Moneyball, which was also written by Michael Lewis.

And after just finishing it, I found it a great read. I lean more on the side of the Sabermetric crowd, so I buy into the Billy Beane philosophy. I thought the chapter on Bill James was particularly interesting. There was even a brief mention of the Jeff Weaver deal. He was right about Ted Lilly, who’s pitching in the All Star game for the Blue Jays. Instead of writing a full blown review, I’m going to defer to Aaron Gleeman, who was nice enough to provide me with some links to some excellent columns he wrote on this very subject:

Moneyball
The Boys of Moneyball
The Boys of Moneyball, Again

For the first time in a while, the Tigers have two members playing in the All Star Game. And for the first time since 1988, they actually had a player voted in. I’m looking forward to seeing both Carlos Guillen and Ivan Rodriguez play in the All Star Game this year. This will also be the first All Star Game I get to spend with my four week old son, which is exciting by itself.

And the Tigers start a three game series with the Twins tonight. They’ll be riding their two blowout wins over the best team in baseball right now, the Yankees, so it should be interesting. Will it be the Tigers who manhandled the D-Backs, or the Tigers who blew three straight games to the Rockies? If the Tigers can sweep, they’ll be guaranteed to be only five games back in the AL Central, and that’s if the White Sox sweep their series with the Angels. Three out of four would be very nice as well. But it’s a big series for them.

Hopefully they get off to a good start tonight against the 41 year old Terry Mulholland. Mike Maroth is coming off of a couple of bad outings, so hopefully he can bounce back. Mulholland hasn’t pitched well this year, so this could be their best opportunity.

Last weekend, the Tigers could seem to do no wrong. This past weekend, the Tigers seemed to be able to do nothing right to win, including blowing an eight run lead on Sunday.

You can add the Yankees to the short list of teams Nate’s had problems against. His two starts against Anaheim were his worst of the year, but this one is right there with it as he didn’t even make it out of the second inning. He did strike out three of the five guys he got out though.

Anyway, now the Tigers are mired in a five game losing streak and sit seven games back of both the division leading Twins and .500.

I got to watch a lot of the game last night, and one thing jumped out at me.

43 for 86.

That’s what Ivan Rodriguez hit for the month of June. That’s .500. They showed a quick listing, and only two others players have hit .500 in a month ever. Todd Helton was one, and another person, who I can’t recall, hit exactly .500. So that’s tied for second best ever.

Seven Tigers had a multihit game last night in a 12-5 drubbing. The Tigers scored nothing in the first two innings, then scored at least one run in each of the next six innings. And Nate Robertson, who should be looked at to pitch in the All Star Game, threw seven quality innings to earn his seventh win. His .220 batting average against leads all AL qualifying starters.

Yes, you read that right. ALL AL starters. He’s also near the top in strikeouts, despite not getting his first start until he second week of the season. And if you want to read even more on Nate, Billfer has a nice writeup over at the Detroit Tigers Weblog.

I also got to listen to a good interview with Brandon Inge on the The Big Show on AM 1270, with Doug Karsch and Art Regner. Brandon credits his recent hitting with a more relaxed approach at the plate. Brandon sounds like quality guy, and I’m really glad he’s “made it.”

And speaking of The Big Show, when the Locker Room got cancelled on AM1270, I was pretty bummed because I liked the show a lot. And despite Doug Karsch and Art Regner being very different from Gary Danielson and Eli Zaret, I’ve really taken a likely to the show. Between the quality guests (the interviews with Chuck Daly and Scotty Bowman are definitely great) and a nice interview style, I still enjoy my ride home from work.

The Tigers now stand tied for first in all of baseball with a .284 batting average. They’re 4.78 ERA is closer to the bottom, but it’s still a nice improvement from the 5.30 ERA last year. And most importantly, they now stand two games below .500, and only five games back of the White Sox. It’s been a few years since we’ve had excitement in baseball around here in July.

It seems like just when you start counting the Tigers out, they come back and have a weekend like they did. Coming off of a series loss to the Royals, the Tigers bounced back in dramatic fashion to sweep the Diamondbacks. We saw a one hitter on Friday, and then two walk off homers by Eric Munson and Carlos Pena on Saturday and Sunday.

Eric Munson has been in such a perpetual slump this year, that you forget how good of a hitter this guy can be. When I first saw it go over the wall in deep center, I remember thinking “Boy did he hit that ball far.” Little did I know it was billed as the longest homer in Comerica Park history.

The drama didn’t end there. On Sunday the Tigers came back from a 5-2 deficit to tie the game up. Then in the bottom of the ninth, Carlos Pena hit a grand slam into the bullpen to end the game.

The four game streak matches their best of the year (they’ve had two others), and they now site four games below .500. Encouraging depending on how you look at the numbers. If you take away the opening season four game streak, and take away this one, they’re record is 27-39 (.409). Annualized, that’s a 66-96 record. Of course they all count, so 80 wins isn’t entirely out of the question at this point.

My travel plans are coming together for this years baseball trip. My wife and I went to Fenway two years ago, and Yankee Stadium last year. This year we’re going to the Skydome to see the Jays and the Devil Rays play. We plan on getting a room at the hotel connected to the ballpark and watching Friday’s game from our room. Then Saturday I have tickets. I have mixed feelings about taking my son to his first baseball game in a park other then one in Detroit.

Cleveland is on deck for Detroit. A sweep would move the Tigers back into third place. The Indians are somewhat of a surprise this year.

This weekend at Comerica Park, the 1984 championship team will be honered. Like the festivities for the 1968 team last year, I won’t be able to make it down to the ball park. But, as everyone who’s frequented the site knows, I’ve been doing my own little thing to commemorate that historic season, and I hope everyone is enjoying. I know now that we’ve gotten past the 35-5 start things are kind of in “long haul” mode, but I hope people enjoy stopping by to see how this great team accomplished what they did.

The 2004 team did a nice job of honoring the team tonight by throwing a combined one hitter against the D-Backs. Former Tiger Luis Gonzalez got the only hit and ended up scoring, and despite a great outing by Brandon Webb, the Tigers walked away with a hard fought win. Brandon Webb now has two career complete games, and they’re both against the Detroit. The game did have some drama, because with two outs in the ninth, Steve Finley took Bobby Higginson back all the way to the wall to make the final out of the game.

The big news this week was the Carlos Beltran trade. He already made an impact by getting two hits for Houston tonight, and he makes their defense that much better. If Petite can come back down the stretch and is healthy, a playoff rotation of Clemens, Oswalt, and Petite is pretty nice. Losing Dotel weakens their pen, but Lidge should be more then up for closing duties. Now of course, all they have to do is win the division.

As it stands, the Tigers are 25th in attendance this year. They had a 30,000+ crowd tonight, and that might push them ahead of the division leading Twins, but even at 24, you have to be a little disappointed, considering the Expos, at 30th, don’t even count. The Tigers average is a touch above 20,000. Even Seattle, who’s stuggling mightily, is 11th. Colorado is having a tough year, and they’re 15th. The Marlins have to be disappointed standing at 20th, as they’re in first place and are coming off a World Series win. Last year, the Tigers average 17,000 and were 27th in the league, just ahead of……the World Champion Marlins.

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.

Last night the Tigers lost yet another one run in extra innings,this time to the Mets. In the bottom of the 10th inning, Mike Cameron came to bat. He hit the game winning single to give the Mets the 4-3 win.

Mike Cameron also beat them in the first game of this series when he hit the game winning homerun in the 11th inning.

Jason Johnson went 7 2/3 innings strong. Two of the runs he allowed were on errors.

These losses for the Tigers are getting ridiculous. They are now 3-12 on the season in one run games. Their pitching has been strong enough to give them the victory in these close games but their hitting hasn’t been up to par.

Yesterday the Tigers played a double header against the Phillies. They lost game one 6-2 but in game two they pulled off a nice 5-4 victory in the 11th inning.

Brandon Inge hit the game tying homer in the 9th inning to tie the score at 4-4. Carlos Guillen then singled in Greg Norton to give the Tigers the go-ahead run in the 11th inning. In the bottom of the 11th the Tigers held them back to pick up he victory.

Knotts threw another good game. He went 5 innings strong and gave up only 2 runs.

Ugueth Urbina(2-2) pitched a scoreless 10th and 11th inning to pick up the win.

Maybe it’s just me because I’ve been caught up in the Pistons Championship run and the whole baby thing, but it doesn’t seem like the Tigers are getting much attention despite putting together a pretty nice run the last couple of weeks.

They’re finishing up their series with the Phillies as we speak (the game just entered the ninth). If they win the game, they’ll have won three straigh series against three quality teams. The Braves aren’t what they used to be, but they’re a quality veteran team. The Marlins lead the division, and here the Phillies are right behind them. If they beat the Phillies, they’ll be three games below .500, and only six games back of Minnesota. A far cry from what a lot of thought this team would be coming up on the beginning of July.

Brandon Inge hit his seventh homerun tonight, one short of his career best. His average is down to .285, but this is a guy people thought would be either dealt, or sent down to the minors. Like Robert Fick a few years ago when he was told he would never catch for this team, Brandon Inge has looked his critics in the face, including myself, and stared them down. He’s played catcher, third, and all three outfield positions. And he’s also been used six times as a pinch runner. He’s also hitting .268 against right handed pitching, which is a far cry from his career average.

On the other end of the spectrum is Steve Colyer, who has been a disappointment so far. We could have gotten sixteen walks in 21 innings from Franklyn German, and we wouldn’t have had to give up an outfield prospect to get him.

Speaking of German, he has sixteen saves, a 2.45 ERA, and 31 strikeouts in 25 2/3 innings. Combine that with no wild pitches, and only 13 walks, and you have a guy who could help this team down the stretch. Toledo is playing some good ball overall, and is tied with Columbus for the division lead.

The Tigers had the bases loaded with one out in the tenth and couldn’t score, so I’m going to bed. Congrats to the Pistons. And I’ve also updated the 1984 diary so it’s current (I cheated and back dated the entries).

I’m sorry for the lack of updates. Everyone says things change immensely when you have a kid, and you think you know how it’s going to be. But of course, you really don’t. So I apologize for the lack of content, at least from me. But I’m hoping to get some time in the next few days to catch up on the 1984 diary, and write about a few other things.

Thank you for your patience. In the meantime, Steve wrote a nice column that’s worth reading, and I still have a couple other authors who are busy working on topics.

It looked like the Tigers were going to drop the first series in interleague play. They were down 4-1 going into the bottom of the 6th inning against the Braves. They hadn’t gotten a hit and they didn’t have their manager(Trammel was tossed earlier in the game). In that 6th inning they scored 2 runs and in the 7th inning they scored 4 runs to seal the 7-4 victory over the Braves.

Maroth(5-3) gave up some runs early but settled down to pick up the victory. The win also ended his personal 4 game winless streak.

Urbina got another save and now has 9 on the season.

This was just the second time this season that the Tigers have trailed through 6 innings and still won the game.

This was a good series for the Tigers. They took 2/3 games from the Braves to start interleague play. Their next series is against the Marlins.

Joe Morgan, who I enjoy as a baseball commentator, but usually find myself disagreeing with time and time again, wrote a column on ESPN about Eric Gagne’s consecutive save record. And in this instance, I find myself agreeing with him.

You can check out the column, and decide for yourself. Although I don’t neccesarily agree that the Cy Young should exclude relievers, I do agree that a pitcher who throws just over 80 innings isn’t nearly as valuable as a guy who throws 125, much less 225, no matter how effective he is. Probably the best write up on this would be in Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract (required reading for a baseball fan, the book is excellent), where he talks about Dennis Eckersley. Also be sure to check out the thread Bllfer wrote about using his relievers over on the Detroit Tigers Weblog.

Hopefully everyone enjoys the new writers. Dan is doing a fine job reporting on the day to day activities of the Tigers, while Kevin is writing a semi-weekly AL Central report. Also, I’ll be taking a short hiatus. I’ll most likely be in the hospital tonight or tomorrow as my wife is more then ready to have the kid. In my place, a good friend will be doing a little writing for me.

The Tigers lost another close game, this time against the Braves. The game was tied 3-3 in the 10th inning when Danny Patterson threw Rafael Furcal’s sac bunt attempt past first base and into right field for a two-base error, allowing Mark DeRosa to score to make it 4-3 Braves. The Tigers couldn’t score in the bottom of the 10th and they lost 4-3.

Jason Johnson(4-6) pitched good going 8 innings while giving up 3 runs. He also struckout 8.

The Tigers were down in this game 3-0 when they scored 3 runs in the bottom of the 6th inning to tie the game.

Detroit is now 25-32 on the season.

As always, I have mixed feelings about this time of year. I still think the best playoff format was no playoffs like they had it back in 1968, but I’m probably in the minority on that one.

Interleague play is another one of those things. At first I liked it, and in certain respects, I still do. If the Giants were to come to town, I’d love to go see Barry Bonds play. I missed Mark McGwire’s appearance a few years ago at Comerica Park, but I would have liked to see him as well.

And then you have the stories like last night, where East Lansing native and former Tiger’s farmhand John Smoltz made his pitching debut in Detroit, pitching a perfect tenth to seal the victory for the Braves. Yeah, the Tigers came up on the short end, but it’s a warm feeling none the less.

But I think what it does to the schedules around the league is more of a detriment then the benefits it brings. In a tight playoff race, every game counts, and if one team has a weaker schedule then the next, it gives them a distinct advantage. Getting rid of interleague play would also, in my opinion, make the All Star Game, and even the World Series, more interesting.

The Tigers finally won a road game Saturday after losing 5/7 away from home. They beat the Minnesota Twins 6-0.

Gary Knotts(3-1) threw another gem going 7.2 innings while giving up only 3 hits and 0 runs.

The Tigers got all the runs they needed when Pena hit a solo shot (9th of the season) in the second inning. Carlos Guillen then padded the lead when he also hit a solo homer in the third inning.

Monroe continued his hot streak with another 2 hits and 4 RBIs. He now has 24 RBIs on the season.

Pudge went 4-5 on the day with 2 runs scored.

This was the first game that the Tigers have been on FOX in several years. It was nice to see them get a victory on the road against a Central Division foe.

This was the Tigers’ third shutout in their last 15 games and their second in 4 games. Their pitching has been stronger of late and hopefully they can keep it up.

In the bottom of the 9th inning the Tigers were tied with the Twins at 2-2. Torii Hunter came up to bat and hit a walkoff homerun off Jamie Walker(0-2) handing the 3-2 loss to the Tigers.

Even though the Tigers lost, Mike Maroth pitched great. He went 7 innings giving up only 2 runs, and striking out 5. Maroth is now winless in his last four starts,but 3 of those starts have been no-decisions.

Carlos Guillen hit his 7th home run of the season to give Detroit a 2-1 lead, but it highlighted a critical out on the previous at-bat. Alex Sanchez reached base on a bunt but was caught stealing just before Guillen went deep. If he hadn’t tried to steal, the Tigers would have probably taken the 3-1 lead rather than the 2-1 lead.

The Tigers are 2-6 when tied after 8 innings this season.

Pena knocked in the first Tigers’ run in the 4th innning when he hit a RBI single.

This was just the 4th win for the Twins in their last 12 games.

The Tigers tried to make a comeback yesterday against the Royals. They were down 9-2 when they scored 4 runs in the 7th inning. After that the Royals didn’t allow the Tigers to score any more runs and they picked up the 9-6 victory.

Jeremy Bonderman(4-5) had a rough outing giving up 7 runs in just 3+ innings of work. At one point he allowed 7 straight Royals to reach base. In his last 2 games his ERA has went from a season-low 4.66 to 6.31 now.

Monroe had another good game with 2 RBIs and 2 hits.

Carlos Guillen also added 2 RBIs. His batting average is now .316.

The Tigers are now 24-29 on the season.

The teams in the American League Central didn’t exactly set the world on fire in their first series of June. The mid-week matchups saw Cleveland and Minesota get thumped in their own parks, while Chicago suffered a two game sweep on the west coast and Kansas City fought Detroit to a stalemate in D-town.
In Cleveland, the Indians, who had previously won their last four, suffered a two game sweep at the hands of a pitching-deficient Rangers squad. In game one of the series Rod Barajas continued with his knack for the dramatic as he homered in the top of the 12th inning to give the Rangers the extra innings victory. The Indians roller coaster bullpen was the story of the brief series as in game two the bullpen that gave up three hits in 6 innings the night before saw Rafael Betancourt give up the two winning runs in the 9th inning. Cleveland now swings out West for a 4 game series with Anaheim.
Minnesota did not look like the team many picked to win the division as they dropped 3 of 4 to Tampa Bay at the Metrodome. Ultra-prospect Joe Mauer returned to the lineup Wednesday for Minnesota, but that did not help as they could only manage 4 runs in the final 18 innings as the Twins had no answers for Doug Waechter (the best pitcher that nobody knows) and Mark Hendrickson of the D Rays. The Twins get ready for a pivotal series with the Tigs, as fans in Detroit will get their first chance to see what all the Joe Mauer hype is about.
The White Sox suffered an odd two-game sweep in Oakland that saw both games end on walk-off home runs for the A’s. Bobby Kielty hit one Tuesday to end it, and Mark Kotsay ended it Wednesday with his first homer as an A. The White Sox got two pretty good starts from Mark Beuhrle and Esteban Loaiza but it wasn’t enough as yet another sub-par AL Central bullpen blew two games in a row.
The good news comes to the Royals and Tigers as their split series in Comerica Park actually gained them both ground in the division. Kansas City travels home to host a road-weary Red Sox team and the Tigs travel to Alan Trammell’s least-favorite park, the Metrodome. Detroit will send Mike Maroth, Gary Knotts and Nate Robertson to the mound against Kyle Lohse, Seth Greisinger and Carlos Silva.

Hello to all you great Tiger fans. I will be writing for Brian most of the Tigers game reports from now on. I am excited about writing for this great Detroit Tigers site. If there is any time that you think my writing isn’t as good as you want it, just let me know and I will try to improve on what you said. To contact me just email me(Brian is going to set me up an email address for this site) or you can instant message me. My AIM name is nuthingbutnet04.

I also currently run the site Detroit Sports.

The Tigers picked up their third shutout of the season yesterday by beating the Royals 2-0.

Jason Johnson(4-6) threw a great game going 7 2/3 innings without giving up any runs. He also struckout 3 and walked none.

After Johnson went out the bullpen picked up where he left off. They didn’t give up any more runs to pick up the 2-0 victory.

Brandon Inge provided all the offense the Tigers needed when he hit a 2 run homer in the second inning. It was his 5th homer of the season.

Urbina threw a scoreless ninth inning to pick up his 7th save of the season.

The Tigers have now won 2/3 games.

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