Tigers Are in Serious Trouble

All the things the Tigers do wrong are the things that are costing them games. Not to mention the Giants basically getting every break from the baseball gods you can imagine and the umpires messing about with a horrid strike zone in game 2. (see charts below).

The Giants being an NL team with little power have an array of slap hitters and guys they can use to play small ball. Detroit on the other hand is a team that lives on extra base hits and can't do any of the little things right. They are terrible bunters, they can't steal bases, they play mediocre defense, they don't take enough pitches, strike out too much, and just plain make too many mistakes. Mistakes, that teams like the Giants live off of. The Giants play a more fundamental game and make use of what they have. They move runners over, make pitchers throw and throw and throw with an excess of foul offs. Guys like Verlander and MAx aren't exactly the greatest match ups for teams like this. They can't overpower most of these guys and K 15 like they could with teams that have more free swingers.

Coming home they go to Sanchez, who actually has faced the Giants twice already this season when he was pitching for the Marlins still. 7 IP with 1 ER @SF and 5.1 IP with 5 ER at home back in May. Tonight he's already down 2-0 in the second.

The Tigers bats are bad to put it mildly. Prince just GIDP to end a 1 out rally with men on 1st and 2nd. They got shut out in Game 2. They scored 3 meaningless runs in the 8-3 Game 1 loss. Their bats are cold. Have been for a month.

IF they Tigers win this series it will be a Motor City Miracle. Actually, it would be in San Fran. The crowd sounded dead even to open this game. You weren't going to break any bone anchored hearing aid siting in the stands to start this series at home that's for sure.

Yankees Once Again

No Cinderella season for the Orioles I guess. The Yankees finished them off today, and once again we are playing them in the playoffs. The 3rd time in the last seven years actually. While I don't particularly feel that we can't beat the Yankees I wanted to see some new fans for once. Every time we make the playoffs we end up going through NY. I wanted to see a new environment and see some fans that weren't "always there" for once. Especially someone from the AL East making it out of there again other than Boston and NY. Oh well...we match up fine with them as we do anyone. Baltimore was probably a weaker team, but NY isn't exactly a young team anymore. They have Cano though, who is my #2 most feared hitter in baseball against us behind only Josh Hamilton. He loves to make us look bad, and he's a true stud. The Yankees as a team are wily vets too. Something that always causes us trouble due to them being one of those teams that works the count. While we can hit with them, we should definitely have the pitching advantage. They just are very seasoned and know how to work pitching well enough to make guys that normally go 6-7+ IP down to 5 IP and get into our very scary bullpen. GO TIGERS! Detroit in 5. SEnd the Yanks back to their swing sets raleigh nc for the off season. :P

Ndmakong Suh Still an Idiot; Take All Their Licenses

IT wouldn't have been a week off for the Lions without someone breaking some laws would it? This Lions season has been infuriating in respect to the pure idiocy of the players and their inability to live in society. I won't rehash it as the list is getting far too long, but Suh continues to be a moron.

Last year getting suspended for stomping a player's head ion the field, this week he provided a bit of road rage. This one isn't like he was stealing a belt like Craig Monroe, or some marmot down jackets here, but shows his lack of control pretty clearly.

Here is a portion of the report:

Vines was on his way into work about 6:20 a.m. Thursday when he and other drivers merged on the Rotunda ramp along the southbound Southfield. He said the driver behind him in a black Range Rover sped around him and sideswiped his car. They stopped at the light. Vines got out of his Escort and the other driver, whose taillights were damaged, started yelling."I look over at him and he started yelling at me, 'Trying to cut me off. Get out of the way.' And I just said, 'Really?'" he explained. "He just started yelling about getting the hell out of his way and cutting him off."

Vines said the guy left the scene of the accident. He called 911 and watched the man drive into the Lions' practice facility. Dearborn Police told Vines to meet them there, but when he arrived, he said the driver gave him another earful.

"That's when he said, 'I advise you to leave, now.' And I said, 'I'm not going anywhere. I talked to the police.' (He said), 'I don't care what they said. You need to get out of here.' And then he said, 'I'm advising you to leave, now.'"

http://www.mlive.com/lions/index.ssf/2012/10/detroit_lions_ndamukong_suh_ac.html

Hard Fought Series With A's; Verlander Dominates

We all know we are clueless as to what to expect from our Tigers this year. I personally feel like I don't see a drive in this team most nights. Just not sure what the attitude is although I hear all the time that they are all very close and have a good time playing together. Just seems like they aren't producing so often and that they get a bit preoccupied when they seem to put together some tough wins.

The A's gave them all they could handle. It really was an amazing success story for these Oakland A's too. Starting 3 rookie pitchers, an MLB playoff first, they all put up fantastic outings and held their own the whole series. Giving up very few ERs while trying to figure out the fantastic pitching of the Tigers.

The A's played hard and had what I thought a winning formula against us. With us not hitting like we have struggled with for a month at least it was tough to see us taking this series. They have far superior defense, while we have very bad defense. The writing on the wall was there for defense to play an important role in these close games. Instead of it costing the Tigers the series it probably cost the A's who had some very costly mistakes on defense. Coco Crisp especially made some huge errors, but the errors they made seemed to get taken advantage of more than ours.

Then we have them as a team of guys that can hit the ball out of the park all through the order. They never really threatened in that regard except to take out Valverde, or Benoit with some ugly innings. Valverdew blew a 3-1 lead in Game 4 to lose the clinching game. Valverde is a FA at the end of the year and I'd rather see him doing drywall anchors than re-sign with Detroit.

It all came down to starting pitching though and the Tigers rolled through the series with quality starts in 4/5 games and might have gotten 5 if the questionable call of Leyland removing Scherzer early in Game 5. Verlander after giving up a lead off HR to Coco Crisp to start the series went didn't give up a run the next 7 IP in Game 1 and pitched a CG SHO in Game 5. Racking up 22 strikeouts in 16 IP. They never had a chance in Game 5.

Now we wait for Game 5 of NY vs. BAL. Baltimore wins and we get home field. NYY win we go on the road. All 4 Division Series went 5 games this year. Another MLB 1st. So we aren't the only one that won't have our #1 in Game 1. The Tigers rotation, however is probably much deeper than anyone else we will play this year, and this is our true strength.