Five straight wins and a one game lead in the American League Central?  If you had asked me whether I’d take that at the beginning of the year and I’d be all over it.  The Tigers have had some rough stretches but so have the Indians and as most of baseball takes a break, the Tigers go into with a nice two game lead in the loss column.

They did it by sweeping the Red Sox this weekend and at the end of the day, they’re one win off from having the best record in all of baseball.  The Tigers jumped all over Daisuke Matsuzaka and he was gone after five innings after the Tigers took him yard three times.  Gary Sheffield put the Tigers on the board in the first with a solo shot, Marcus Thames hit his tenth in the third and then that same inning, Carlos Guillen hit his fourteenth.  Sheffield finished the game three for four and Sean Casey went one for three and both go into the break hitting at least .300. 

The Tiger made it through this game despite making five errors.  Craig Monroe was tagged for two but the throwing error was kind of iffy. 

Nate Robertson was very good through the first six frames but then he ran out of gas in the seventh and was tagged for two more runs.  Jose Capellan got the Tigers out of that jam but he got himself into another jam in the eighth inning that Zach Miner had to get the team out of.  Then Todd Jones did his job in the ninth in his usual way (two outs, but no runs and he picked up the save).

Placido Polanco is now questionable for the All Star Game.  Hopefully he’ll be ready to go with the time off because there’s no doubt that we’ll need him in the second half.  The question would then be who takes his place and will it be a Tiger.  You could throw Curtis Granderson, Gary Sheffield or Jeremy Bonderman all in there and you wouldn’t get much of an argument from anyone.

There’s still plenty of baseball over the next three days.  On Monday, we have the homerun derby (yawn) but then there’s the debut of the ESPN mini-series, The Bronx is Burning.  It’s a show about the 1977 Yankees and it looks pretty cool.  I’ve always been an Oliver Platt fan and it’ll be interesting to see how he does as George Steinbrenner.  And if you want more information on the 1977 Yankees, be sure to check out Nick Smith’s Yankees History website.

Then there’s the All Star Game on Tuesday, which to me is must see.  Wednesday was a tough choice.  You have the Triple A All Star Game, which I usually enjoy watching, but then Fox is replaying the Justin Verlander no-hitter so I think Verlander gets the Tivo and I’ll find somewhere else to watch the Triple A All Star Game.  And then I have the Futures Game taped and I might watch some of that tonight because the Padres/Braves game isn’t doing anything for me.

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