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Tigers Trounce Twins by Combined Score of 33-1, Win 16 Games in April

April 30th, 2006 | Brian

The Tigers haven’t had much luck against the Twins the last few years.Â You have to go all the way back to 2000 to find a season when the Tigers had a winning record against the Twins, and even then they were only 7-6.Â This wasn’t any ordingay weekend series though.Â The Tigers had struggled at home as well and to take care of their division rival like this was pretty impressive.Â Â And it sort of makes you wonder whether the Twins that won the division from 2002 through 2004 were really that good or whether they truly took advantage of how poor the AL Central was.Â They never won a playoff series and once teams like the White Sox and Indians improved their team, they went from good to mediocre in a hurry.Â Now they look downright bad.

I didn’t watch the game today, so I’m not sure why Kenny Rogers got pulled in the ninth.Â He had only thrown 93 pitches and he had a chance for shutout.Â And it’s not like Rogers is going to throw out his arm.Â Todd Jones got the job done though and he hadn’t thrown since Tuesday, so maybe Leyland wanted to get him some work.

The last time the Tigers won 16 games in a month was August, 2000.Â The last time they did it in April was (gulp) 1984.Â With a White Sox loss today, we’ll be a game back in the loss column.Â The Tigers play a two game series against the Royals and I’m going to call this a relatively important series (I guess they all are).Â These are the kind of games a mediocre team would drop, so hopefully the Tigers take care of business and take both games.

Permalink | Posted in 2006 Tigers

Not to nitpick, but the Twins won the ALDS in 2002 against the A’s (before losing to the Angels).

The Tigers are looking pretty good right now. I wish they’d be a bit more patient at the plate though – against good pitchers they’ve been getting themselves out quickly (hence the shutouts against LAoA).

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Posted by David on April 30th, 2006 at 5:38 pm

Thats right the Twins won the 2002 ALDS is 2002 and had to go up against stacked Yankee teams in 03 and 04, and nearly had them down two games to none in 04. So I’d say the 02-04 Twins were much better than many of the 90s Indian teams that literally had no competition. The Twins pitching is underachieving this year, thats why they look so bad so far. The Hitting has been getting worse every year since 03, hence the slip from winning divisions to an 83-79 season. Hard to stay in the race when you lose your team leader Torii Hunter though.

The Tigers look really good right now, Indians and Twins will obviously play much better the rest of this season, and it could be a very interesting race between Sox, Tigers, Twins, Indians for 2 playoff spots.

Hard to say what will happen since the Indians weren’t above .500 until June last year and the Twins actually led the Wild Card most of the year and then fell apart after Hunters injury.

Its a long season, so hard to tell.

I like the Tigers team a lot this year though, especially if their pitching continues at this rate.

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Posted by Troy on May 14th, 2006 at 6:58 pm