I was able to watch quite a bit of that ballgame tonight except the final two outs.....its always fun to see the Tigers win....but it also wasn't the prettiest game. No style points in the standings. The Tigers will take it.
I thought the Tigers outfield defense was in fine form tonight. Austin Jackson made a couple of dandy catches and Don Kelly made a nice running grab right at the fence while also pulling a foul ball out of the stands for the third out of the third inning. Even Boesch moves nimbly for guy his size I think.
The first run allowed was probably unneccessary...Justin Verlander had bit of a lazy moment when he easily could have gotten the lead runner who had strayed off base. But he never bothered to look. Now....it may not have mattered since if Iwomura had gotten into a run down long enough the runner at first may have been able to scoot down to second, so the run would have scored on Andrew McCutchen's laser double.
Its kind of funny....Verlander had a two-hitter going for quite a while, but I was not impressed with him tonight. He allowed a lot of scorched flyballs that his outfielders ran down. He walked more than he struck out (4BB/3K) and he allowed twice as many flyouts to groundouts (12/6). What I ended up thinking is that after seeing Stephen Strasburg utterly dominate the rather scared looking Bucs the other night, it was going to be hard for any pitcher to look that good in the days following. That's okay....Verlander doesn't have to be as good as Strasburg...he's just gotta keep pitching well.
Around the minors.....not a great night. Lakeland was idle. Erie got beat 4-0. West Michigan lost 8-3 as Ramon Lebron didn't make it out of the first inning allowing 7 runs. Only Toledo had a good night. They won 8-4. Scott Sizemore continues to do solid work from the leadoff spot. 2-5 w/1 2B, 2 R tonight. Ryan Strieby was "only" 1-5...but he did have a huge three-run homer in the 9th to put his club ahead. He ended up w/4 RBI on the night.
I'm very happy to see that the Tigers have remained patient with Alex Avila and Brandon Inge...they are looking better. Will they keep it up? Dunno...but I think they both can contribute. Avila is a good example of not making too much out of 50 or so at-bats early in the year....its a long season.
Brennen Boesch.....he keeps rolling along. Very impressive. It was very fun to see him emerge in Erie last year and gain his power stroke....and I did expect a short term power boost for the club when he came up in April. But I didn't expect he'd sustain his good play into Mid-June w/o many hiccups. Fingers crossed....keep it up Brennan.
Jeremy Bonderman versus Paul Maholm tomorrow night. If Bonderman can keep McCutchen off the bases its really hard to imagine the Pirates mounting a ton of offense.....we'll have to see if Jose Tabata is in the lineup in the 1-hole tomorrow w/McCutchen sliding down to the three-hole. Tabata gives them another solid looking prospect at the top of the order to deal with. It would be great for the Tigers to get that game tomorrow, secure the series-win, and then go after the bonus of sweeping on Sunday....here's hoping.
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