MVN - Most Valuable Network

Tigers decide to start 4th of July celebrations off with a bang

I know this might seem weird to people who aren’t used to it, but my town has its fireworks on the 3rd of July (so as to avoid conflicting with neighboring towns and their larger displays). That and the lateness of the game have combined to make me basically useless so far as blogging goes right now. You’ll really be lucky if these sentences make any kind of sense in the morning. Whut are a grammar?

(The photo up there, by the way, is my town, right before the fireworks show began. The shot had a lot of orange-y shades in it so I figured I’d post it.)

Good win… rather, good TO win, and the kids came up with some awesome bats. The win itself was not exactly 100% happiness and goodness, mostly because our pitching was still unforgivably shaky. Yes, I’m looking at Todd Jones (who, after allowed 3 hits, 2 runs, and a walk after getting only 2 outs in the 9th had to pulled so that he might still be available for tomorrow’s afternoon game) when I say that, but I am ALSO looking at YOU, Mr. Verlander.

But, you protest, Verlander went 6 innings and only gave up 2 runs and got the win! It’s a quality start! To you I say: NO. It really, really wasn’t a quality start. In those 6 innings Verlander threw 109 pitches, which is breathtakingly not OK. It is ESPECIALLY not OK because this is what he does and it’s his habit now and we’ve seen what happens when starting pitchers get into bad habits: JEREMY BONDERMAN AND THE DEADLY FIRST INNING happens, and surely Justin does not want that for himself.

The bats, though, those were nice, especially the youthful bats of Mike Hollimon and Matt Joyce. Hollimon hit his first ever big league homerun, earning himself a pat on the head and 50 adorableness points. Matt Joyce just did a lil’ somethin’ called Going 4-for-5. It was basically a day of tiger cub domination at the plate, and even a bit in the field: Clete Thomas, the only cat today who had trouble with his bat, finished off the game with a very long run and a diving (tripping) basket catch.

For your 4th of July Tigers game, Kenny goes up against Eric Bedard, that filthy Canadian. The game’s at 4:10 pm EDT so, if you’re me, you’ll be busy making your special from-scratch cookout guacamole (this is my way of saying that I probably won’t have a post up after tomorrow’s game– it’s a holiday, so sue me), but still, Go Tigers! Happy 4th of July!

(ETA:  Holy cats, it’s a night later and there are SO many typos in here.  I’m gonna leave it up as a warning to everyone against blogging in a state of extreme exhaustion.)

Eddie Bonine meets the American League

Heeeeeey, Eddie! Wow, it’s great to meetcha! I’m the American League! Welcome to me!

*inaudible muttering*

Sorry Eddie, didn’t quite catch that. What’dja say there?

*more muttering about already playing with an American League team*

Oh Edster, no no, that ain’t how it works! See, you’re a pitcher, what counts is when you pitch AGAINST an American League team!

*embarrassed silence*

Aw heck, you don’t mean… you didn’t think it was ALL like the National League, didja? Awwww, I’m sorry, kid. It can be rough over here for a pitcher, yeah, I know it.

*embarrassed silence*

Hey, hey. It ain’t just you, yanno? Lotsa guys, um, give up 7 hits and 2 walks and 5 runs in 2.2 innings. Happens to everyone sooner or later!

*mumbles that only 2 runs were earned*

Sure! See, there ya go. It ain’t so bad.

*quietly asks why HIS bats weren’t so good if the bats are good in the AL*

Well. Well. Stuff happens, yanno? I mean, Nick Blackburn happens to your team sometimes! And then whaddya gonna do? Joe Nathan happens, whaddya gonna do? It ain’t pretty when it does happen, but you just gotta shake it off and look to tomorrow. I mean, who you guys playing tomorrow?

*mumbles ‘the Mariners’*

OK! So that’s what you gotta do, you just forget about the Nick Blackburns and the Carlos Gomezes of the world and you go out there and hope you can handle the team with the worst record in, well, me.

*melancholy sigh*

Look on the upside, kid: you still got better numbers than Nate Robertson.

*visibly brightens*

That’s the spirit!

Craig Monroe’s revenge

Sometimes you win games. Sometimes you lose games. Sometimes games are rained out. And sometimes games are just completely freakin’ weird (also you lose).

After putting up three errors and looking like a bunch of inept fielders in their previous game, the Tigers today decided to commit ZERO errors and to make FIVE double plays. Why? Monday is ‘what am a base ball gluv?’ day, but Tuesday is ‘I eat groundballs for breakfast’ day? This has not been a good year for Tigers infield defense in general, in part, YES, don’t deny, because Brandon Inge hasn’t been at third much, and in part because Guillen and Cabrera didn’t even know where they were playing for most of the season. So five double plays, that was all kinds of encouraging to see.

The Tigers also managed to come back from a big deficit again, as they were down 6-1 after the 5th (which was pretty much entirely Nate’s fault). They scored twice in the 6th and once in the 8th. Better than a poke in the gallbladder, but not enough. At least the bullpen looked OK… and by ‘OK’ I mean ‘pretty good if you discount the ultimately harmless but still kind of terrifying 4 walks issued by Miner’.

It seems weird that the Tigers could turn so many double plays, that the Twins could leave so many guys on base, and the Tigers still managed to lose. A big factor in that was Craig Monroe, who I think takes a special kind of glee in hitting Tigers. I can understand this, but cannot condone it. Today he used his Super Ninja Powers of Nate Robertson Prior Sekkrit Knowledgez to hit a 3-run homer. As the Tigers ended up losing by two runs…. ouch. The revenge of Craig Monroe wounds deeply indeed.

Miggy did manage to get into the game as a pinch hitter, which could mean one of two things.

Optimistic: The hip flexor really WAS just a little bit stiff or sore, and he’s already fine.

Pessimistic: They’re going to try playing him through pain that’s still there, thus preventing the bloody thing from EVER healing.

I tend to favor the pessimistic version of this, but hey, only because the team has set a precedent for behavior exactly like that!

Oh, and The River Thames homered again, bringing his season total up to 16. It is only barely July. We all remember Chris Shelton, but it’s hard to not get excited about watching The River come up to bat these days.

(PS: Dear Marcus, if it ever comes out that you use(d) steroids or other PEDs, I will cry. For serious. So if you were even toying with the idea, just bear that in mind. K?)

It’s still possible to dome-raid here. We just need to win this next game, which is at 1 pm EDT…. which I don’t quite understand. That’s noon for the people where the game is being played, and doesn’t that seem AWFULLY early for a mid-week game? Why not just have it be the regular 1 pm start? It’s not going to make a difference to most people on the east coast if it’s at 1 or 2 pm, and it might make a good deal of difference to the people heading for the actual ballpark. Is there actual reasoning behind this decision?

Anyways. At 1 pm, the Bovine kid goes up against Nick Blackburn, whose name is actually Robert. Just so you know. Go Tigers!

one small step for a few Tigers, one giant leap for Tigerkind

The deficits were many (5 innings trailing, 6 trailing or tied). The extra-base hits were few (3, out of 12 total hits). The errors were numerous (3). But somehow the Tigers prevailed.

Yeah, the game was frustrating. The singles. The fact that two out of the three extra-base hits came from replacement batters. The errors. Oh, the molar-gnashing anguish of the errors. Really the only way in which this was a clean game was the lack of walks. Arrrrmando issued one, and that was it for Tigers pitching. It was generally not the kind of game that you want to see repeated against a team on a run like the Twins are (were?).

Still! After tonight, Granderson is batting .301/.351/.498. I know that OBP is not attractive, but when you consider the fact that he began the month batting .254/.313/.448, that’s pretty bloody good. Polanco and Sheff each had another couple of hits. The River homered AGAIN– I don’t need to remind you that he’s slugged .761 so far in June. Matt Joyce had a triple, making this the second night in a row where Tigers triples hit by unusual triple hitters have played a big role in the eventual victory. And this one wasn’t even hit in Comerica, so nobody can give the outfield all the credit.

Arrrrmando was solid, even if the defense behind him was very much NOT. Fossum was fine. Zoom was GREAT. I don’t think he threw a single pitch that wasn’t a fastball, but maybe he just didn’t have the feel for his offspeed pitch tonight? Getting Mauer at the end of the game was as crucial an out as you’ll see. I don’t know that this outing proved much about the return (or lack) of Zoom’s control, but it can only have helped his confidence, and I’m sure he felt good about being asked to pitch the 9th after getting out of the 8th.

It’s his first save of the year too. Not that that actually means anything, but again, I’m sure it makes him feel good.

The bad news? Cabrera had to leave with what the team is calling a ‘tight hip flexor’. Whatever, you can’t fool us, Tigers. It’s obviously a previously-undiscovered extension of the oblique muscle that he’s gone and pulled.

The good news? The Tigers are still 5 games behind the Wrong Sox, and are now just 2.5 games behind the second place Twinkies. If we can dome-raid this series, it will be MOST helpful indeed.

And hey! If you haven’t voted for the All Star game yet… well, it doesn’t actually matter a whit, but I think it would be nice to see Polanco go, don’t you? Since he’s hitting better than Pedroia and all.

Get on that, kids. Voting ends soon!

Tomorrow Nate goes up against the maker of pastry. Another 8:10 game, another chance to claw our way a little farther up in the division. Let us hope that Miggy’s hip flexor oblique decides to unkink. Go Tigers!

Dane Sardinha rides the Rocky dinosaur

I think this is the first dinosaur-related post on RotT that wasn’t in some way referring to the Spazzosaurus. A landmark occasion!

For the first time EVER this year the Tigers have been over .500! I am so consumed by excitement that I do not even know what to do with myself. Over .500, why, that means…. that means that we win MORE than we lose. Did that seem like a possible thing at the end of May? No. No, it did not. It took the death of Jeremy Bonderman to energize the Tigers to this point. Of course that was an unfortunate event but at least something good has come from the senseless tragedy.

There were many good things today. There was Kenny, whose pitching was solid after the 2nd inning and whose fielding was, let us not put too fine a point on it, WICKED HAWT. When he covered first on that play where Miggy had to field the ball between first and second and so Kenny had to make a big first baseman-style stretch with his back foot on the bag to get the out? That was hot. And when a ball was hit back at him going 500 mph and he stuck his glove out as cool as you please, plucked the screaming linedrive from midair, and flipped it to the infielders like, hey, ain’t no thang? That was also hot.

I am not usually the kind of blogger who goes all squee! on Kenny Rogers, but if you did not squee at those plays, it is probable that you do not know how to squee at all.

And then we got two scoreless innings out of Freddy Dolsi, and the Rollercoaster earned his name once again by completely forgetting about his previous outing to get a perfect save today. This is why he is Rollercoaster Jones. He can give up 709 runs one night, something that would completely traumatize most pitchers to the point where they’d have to go back to AA to get over it, and he can carry on like it never happened. This should be the only thing that people mean when they talk about the Closer Mentality: the pitching-specific amnesia. I know that people talk about bulldogs and crocodiles and other tenacious things when they talk about closers too, but I’ve never seen someone bulldog their way past a bad outing. What would that even entail? Peeing on a tree stump? Biting the neck of an umpire until it snapped?

A moderate amount of hitting accompanied these pitching marvels, but really the best bit was the one illustrated up top: Dane Sardinha, ridin’ that purple dinosaur. Mr. Sardinha got his very first big league hit against the fairly hapless Rockies pitching. I say ‘fairly hapless’ because not only did DANE SARDINHA, a dude who has basically never hit at any level, get a hit off of them, but it was a TWO-RUN TRIPLE. Nice way to get your first hit, for sure, although if he ever does it again I will have to do a happy little jig of utter disbelief.

Oh, and Magglio is on the DL. I know it seems kind of extreme, given the fact that Sheff played through his oblique injury for a while, and Inge did the same, but truthfully this is what SHOULD have been done with both those guys. Sheff would have been DLed long before he was if only he wasn’t so stubborn, and Inge would have been DLed long before he was if only we had another catcher. Hopefully the prompt DL designation of Maggs will let his oblique heal more quickly than Sheff’s and Inge’s.

Tomorrow the Tigs return to games against the non-imaginary league, although they’ll be in the Metrodome, which is probably at least partially imaginary. Arrrrrrmando goes up against Glen Perkins, whose name makes it sound like he should be working in a cubicle somewhere. It’s at 8:10 because it’s in one of those fake timezones people keep telling me about. Lies, all lies. Go Tigers!

o magical day, the Tigers have achieved .500!

This will have to be somewhat brief’n'choppy, because I didn’t even get home until after 1 am and wat i dont no how to maek wordz no morr.

For the first time all season, the Tigers have won baseball games as often as they have lost them. Our heartache is balanced by our… heart-joy! The glass is evenly split between fullness and emptiness! The utter filth of the start of the season has been answered with some squeaky clean good play in this past month! Happiness and sadness dwelling within the same batch of ballplayers! Perfectly average mediocrity! .500! .500! .500!

Man, if only we were in the NL West. We’d be GOLDEN right now.

Stuff I am totally unable to work into connected paragraphs at 2 am:

–Magglio left with an oblique spasm. WHAT DID WE EVER DO TO THE GOD OF OBLIQUES, SERIOUSLY, DAY-UM. Sheff, Inge, and now Maggs? This is the worst season in the history of the Baseballverse for Tiger obliques. I swear to cats, if Leyland pulls an oblique tomorrow during a deep-lung coughing fit, we’re going to have to take drastic measures.

–Freddy Dolsi’s first win! Awww, we pat him on his fuzzy wittle Tiger head.

–Rollercoaster Jones’ first blown save. No fond head pats for him on this day.

–Jason Grilli: somehow still weak horses**t.

–Another solid outing from Fernando. Maybe the tiger yelling at him helped? We do what we can to help here at RotT.

–JUSTIN STOP THROWING SO MANY PITCHES SERIOUSLY JUST STOP 118 PITCHES IS TOO MANY IF YOU’RE NOT EVEN GETTING THROUGH 6 INNINGS AND I DON’T CARE HOW SOLID THOSE 5.2 INNINGS ARE, THEY ARE STILL 5.2 INNINGS. I know Jeff Francis threw a lot of pitches too, but this is a recurring issue with Justin and it is NOT OK ANYMORE. It’s for your own good, Justin! Leyland can’t do poo to help preserve your arm if you’re going to be so bloody inefficient!

–Ryan Raburn with the grand slam! That’s gotta feel good, especially with all the yo-yoing the Tigers’ AAAA-type guys have had to do this season. At least he can sleep secure in the knowledge that there wasn’t much more he could have done tonight to demonstrate his worth on the big league roster.

–Miguel Cabrera with the walk-off! We’ve had quite a few of these lately, which is not great– I’d rather win games in the 4th inning; a series of walk-offs seems awfully flukey and unsustainable– but nervewracking as they are, they’re still undeniably enjoyable when they turn out for your team. And anything that makes Miggy feel more comfortable here is good, because the more comfortable he gets the better he’s playing (with the bat and the glove both. He’s made some really nice grabs at first lately, although of course he’s still needing work on some of it, especially knowing how to position his body in response to various different plays).

–From Friday: Eddie Bonine, wtf? Eight innings, one earned run? Skow! The kid has surprised his last two times out.

Tomorrow Kenny goes up against some Rocky I don’t know at all but man that facial hair is awkward. Ouch. Maybe he will be too embarrassed of his own chin to properly hold a baseball. Potential yay! Go Tigers!

Brandon Inge vs. pillows: the truth of the matter

Brandon Inge is on the DL. All Tigers fans know this. In fact we already covered it right here in this very blog, but it has become, against all reason, a Big Story, and I’m afraid that people who are NOT Tigers fans (or who are more casual Tigers fans) do not understand what actually happened here. Yes, Brandon Inge is a dorktastic dork, but he’s OUR dorktastic dork, catdammit, and people should get it right.

I’m mostly reacting to the fact that this is the headline story on Yahoo right now. The story is right here (don’t read the comments unless you want to lose faith in all of humanity. seriously), but at the moment it’s the very first thing you see when you visit the Yahoo homepage. This will probably (hopefully) change by later tonight, but the fact is that lots and lots of people who wouldn’t know Brandon Inge from Justin Verlander right now are reading this story. On the off-chance that people come looking to Tigers blogs for more on the story, well, here ya go.

THIS WAS A PRE-EXISTING INJURY. This seems to be the biggest thing that people are NOT GETTING. Inge’s oblique has been bothering him since early June, if not before. It’s not like he gave himself an injury moving a pillow. HE AGGRAVATED AN EXISTING INJURY. He has been in pain for almost a month, he has been playing THROUGH pain as much as possible.

Because this was a pre-existing muscle strain, it had the potential to be aggravated by anything small. The oblique muscle, in case you are not familiar with it, is in your side, below your chest muscle, alongside your abdominal muscles. It’s connected to the lower bit of your ribcage. This Gray’s Anatomy illustration (the original book, not the lame tv show) gives you a good idea of its location. Seeing that, you can surely see how both hunching motions (contracting the abdomen) and twisting motions might strain an already-strained muscle even more.

So WHY did Inge badly aggravate his oblique while shoving a pillow, and not on the baseball field? For one thing, he HADN’T BEEN ON A BASEBALL FIELD for several days; he was put on the DL on June 25 (presumably the aggravation occurred overnight), and his last previous at-bat had been on June 22. Why? BECAUSE HIS OBLIQUE WAS HURTING. We’ll return to that in a second. The point is that he didn’t have an opportunity to aggravate the injury on the field. But why the pillow?

He’s in bed with his wife and kid– presumably already a mildly cramped situation. He goes to shove the kid’s pillow down into a better position. He probably had to contort himself a little to try to do that, maybe trying to keep from waking anyone else up too. The point is that he did not need a forceful injury to send his oblique over the edge; it was already strained! It only needed a little tweak to ratchet up the pain to the point where he could no longer even pretend to play through it. An awkward twisting motion of his torso and arms, that’s all it takes, see? Suddenly it is not so weird that he aggravated his injury this way.

The reader who is not as psychotically obsessed with the Tigers as most of us may be wondering why, if Inge was hurting so much that a little tweak was all that it took to make him completely useless, he wasn’t ALREADY on the DL. And this is a valid question, because the truth of the matter is that he probably should have been. Muscle strains are not going to heal if you keep doing the same things that caused them, and there’s a whole lot of abdominal contraction and torso rotation going on when you swing a bat or play catcher.

Inge was not on the DL because he was the backup catcher, and THE TIGERS DO NOT HAVE ANOTHER BACKUP CATCHER, because the guy who was SUPPOSED to be the backup catcher is having his second Tommy John surgery in as many seasons at the moment and might never play baseball again. The guy playing backup catcher now with Inge on the DL, Dane Sardinha, is someone the Tigers wanted to avoid calling up if at all possible, because as much as people may complain about Inge’s bat, at least he HAS one. Sardinha may as well go to the plate holding a handful of cooked spaghetti. Inge was out there because the team desperately needed him to be, not because he was healthy enough to actually be on the active roster in a sane situation.

Are we clear? Yes, no, maybe? Feel free to ask questions if you’ve got any and I’ll do what I can to answer them. As I said elsewhere, this is still a stupid situation, yes, pillows, ha ha, lulz, etc., but it’s stupid in a ‘holy cats why does this happen to us?’ kind of way, not stupid in a ‘holy cats our players need to be slapped in the face with a dead codfish for being morons’ kind of way (*cough*JordanTata*cough*).