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Alright, the Tigers had their difficulties yesterday but they picked up the win and they now sit atop the AL Central with a 9-5 record.  Mike Maroth gave up a quick run before the Tigers’ bats (i.e. Magglio Ordonez) got going.  Ordonez singled home a run in the bottom of the first and then he doubled home two in the third to gives the Tigers a two run cushion.  In the fourth, Marcus Thames hit his first homerun to make it 4-1 and the Royals finally answered with a solo shot from David DeJesus.  Then Placido Polanco fired back with a solo homer (his first of the season) to make it 5-2.  Then the wheels fell off the wagon.

Mike Maroth had been throwing a decent game but he was hit hard in the sixth.  He gave up another run and left a runner on base when Wil Ledezma came in.  Unfortunately, he could finish things out and with two outs, he gave up three more runs and just like that, the Tigers were down by a run.

The Tigers finally answered in the seventh.  With one out, Placido Polanco tripled and then he scored on Gary Sheffield’s double to tie the game.  Wil Ledezma at this point had recovered from the beating he took in the sixth and he shut out the Royals in the seventh and eighth.  Then in the Tigers eighth, Omar Infante led off with a big single, he moved to second on Neifi Perez’s bunt and he scored on yet another Placido Polanco hit for the game winner.  Todd Jones slammed the door shut in the ninth and he picked up his seventh save of the season.

Polanco finished the game three for five with two RBIs and three runs.  Ordonez drove in three and Wil Ledezma picked up the win and he’s now 3-0.  Todd Jones hasn’t given up a run yet and he’s seven for seven in save opportunities.  It’s definitely a good start for Jonesy.

The Tigers go for the sweep this afternoon.  It’ll be Jeremy Bonderman going up against Gil Meche.

While it’s never good, you’d think Nate Robertson would be used to the lack of run support.  After starting 2-0 with two fine starts, he got it done today as well but unfortunately the Tigers didn’t hit for him and they picked up just one run.  The lone Tiger run came in the first inning when Curtis Granderson scored on an error by Josh Towers.  In fact the offense was so bad that after that first inning, the Tigers racked up just two hits and they were both by Ivan Rodriguez.

Robertson was very sharp in seven innings of work.  He gave up two runs on seven hits and two walks with five strikeouts.  Joel Zumaya threw the final frame and he didn’t give up a base runner.

The Twins also lost and the Indians won so the Tribe vaults both teams and the Tigers now stand a half game back of them.  The White Sox are off to a rough start but if the Tigers hadn’t gotten a couple of key hits (like the Pudge homer last week), the Tigers might be down there with them.  But first place is just 6-3 and we all know this was going to be a shoot out amongst four teams.

The Tigers finally come home after ten games on the road and they’ll take on the last place Royals tomorrow night.  It’ll be a battle of two good young pitchers in Zach Greinke and Justin Verlander.  Justin has a thirteen scoreless inning streak going and hopefully he can get that up to around twenty or so after tomorrow.

Baseball Prospectus put out their version of the power rankings today (called the Hit List) and despite the 6-3 start, the Tigers came in at fifteenth.  Only the Cardinals finished lower then the Tigers and still had a winning record.  The Indians came in at second place and the Twins also finished ahead of the Tigers at thirteen.  Two spots down are the White Sox at seventeen. 

Not too shabby.  Tiger pitchers, led by Justin Verlander, held the Orioles to a single run on six hits through twelve innings.  Verlander threw seven shutout frames and he struck out five while Fernando Rodney and Wil Ledezma each pitched two scoreless innings.  It wasn’t until the bottom of the twelth, when the Tigers had a comfortable lead, that Bobby Seay gave up a run and got into a jam in the bottom of the twelth.  Todd Jones was there though and he picked up the final out to pick up his fifth save of the season.

The Tigers scored all four of their runs in the twelth and they were all on a Craig Monroe grand slam.  He finished the game three for six and he also picked up a double.  Carlos Guillen was two for four with two walks and he was one of the guys on base when Monroe went yard.

The Twins won so the Tigers sit atop the Central tied with Minnesota.  I know it’s early, but it’s better then trying to play catchup.  Now the Tigers head to Toronto to play four.  Mike Maroth pitches tonight and tomorrow we’ll get a rematch between Jeremy Bonderman and Roy Halladay.

40 years ago today, the 1967 baseball season started and on the American League side, we had the closest pennant race ever.  I’ve talked about this before, but with the help of some fellow bloggers, I’ve put together a website on the 1967 American League Pennant race to relive this classic season.  And for Tiger fans, this will be good introduction to a lot of the players on the 1968 team (which I’ll be doing a diary on next year).

And if you’re a NL fan, Jeff Matthews at Gas House Gang will be doing a 1967 Cardinals diary.  The opening day post should be up some time tonight.

Jason Beck wrote up another mailbag column and in it, he talks about why Nate Robertson is so good against lefties, whether Kenny Rogers will be retire after the 2007 season and why we don’t hear more about Curtis Granderson’s defensive abilities.  Good stuff as usual from Mr. Beck.

Here’s a solid story on Jim Leyland’s use of his bullpen.  He gets some good recommendations in former Tigers’ general manager Bill Lajoie and Cardinals manager Tony LaRussa.  Leyland talks about protecting his pitchers making sure relievers have the proper amount of rest.

Today, the four full season minor league affiliates for the Tigers all have their opening day.  Be sure to stop by Tigers Minors tonight as he’ll have details on all four of the games.

Nothing like a 10-9, three and a half hour game on a day where the wind was gusting up to 30 mph and the wind chill was below freezing.  Honestly, I thought this one was over in the early innings.  Curtis Granderon capped off an eight run third inning with his first career grand slam and the Tigers added another run in the fourth.  It was 10-2 when the proverbial poop hit the fan in the Blue Jays seventh.

In that seventh, the wind just became flat out crazy and Magglio Ordonez had a particularly tough time.  He never got charged with an error, but he looked like I do when thrown out in right field on a tough day out on the softball field, and that’s not a good thing.  To his credit, he made a great catch to finish up the inning on a ball that wouldn’t stand pat in that wind.

Nate Robertson picked up the win and he left in the sixth inning after he gave up two runs.  Jason Grilli bore the brunt of that big Blue Jays inning and he gave up five while Fernando Rodney was tagged for two runs.  At the plate, Ivan Rodriguez had four hits and Granderson drove in five.  The Tigers also showed some patience at the plate and they drew nine walks with Ordonez drawing three himself.  All nine Tiger starters reached base at least once.

The weather isn’t supposed to be much better tomorrow but it’s something Justin Verlander will have to cope with.  He’ll face Gustavio Chacin in a get away day game.

***UPDATE***

Here’s the WPA graph for today’s game.  You see it go up close to 100% when the Tigers scored all of those runs in the third but then things get hairy in the eighth inning.  And even though Curtis Granderon hit the grand slam, it just made a 4-0 lead an 8-0 lead so at the time, that didn’t add as much as you’d probably think.  In fact Placido Polanco led the hitters and he drove in only one run.  Todd Jones led the entire team with the troublesome ninth but he got out of his own jam so he gets the credit.

If you’ve never checked out the pregame Press Pass for the Tigers game at MLB.com, there’s a ton of interesting information.  In today’s Press Pass, I learned that Sean Casey has the highest batting average among active players with at least 20 at bats.  He’s a solid 12 for 20 (.600) against Burnett so hopefully he’ll get it done today.  Also, Casey has been known for his decent starts.  He’s a .334 hitter in 308 at bats in the month of April since the 2003 season.  He’s also hit safely in all eight of opening day starts and that .334 average is fourth amongst active major league players.

Four years ago, I started this blog.  I was going to have a contest to have some fun to celebrate but I think I’m going to hold off until May.  It’d be fitting if the Tigers would win this afternoon though.

And thanks for all of you for stopping by over the years.  I usually tell people I do this for myself but I highly doubt that I would have kept it up this long if all of you didn’t stop by now and then.

Alright, since it’s an off day, I wanted to do some announcement type stuff.  For those of you who haven’t been following it, I’ve been putting together a network of major league baseball sites that, while they all cover the current happenings of their particular team, they’ll also provide some very interesting historical baseball coverage.  One of the projects I’ve been working on is the 1967 AL Pennant Race site which will track, day by day in a diary format, what when down in what’s considered the greatest pennant race of all time.  In addition, it’s giving me a good preview of what I’ll be working on next year when I do the 1968 Tigers diary.  And if you like diaries, then Yankees History would be a nice site to check on once in a while.  Yankees blogger Nick Smith will be providing us with day by day coverage of four different Yankees championship teams (1927, 1937, 1947 and 1977).  Wrigley Field Curse will be taking a look at 1907 Cubs and Braves Baseball Blog will commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Milwaukee Braves World Series win that season.  And while the site hasn’t been active recently, the All Star Game Blog is going to let you take a look at All Star Games past and the provide you with up to date information on the 2007 All Star Game in San Francisco.

So there’s a ton to check out and to make it easier, I set up a central site called Baseball Historians which picks up all of the feeds.  So if you make that a daily stop, you’ll get coverage of all 30 teams and a whole lot more.  Some sites will be updating daily while others will be doing series recaps and then there’s the historical information.  I’m just glad this is finally coming together.

Similarly, with the help of Mike Cassidy at Tigers Minors, I’m doing something similar to provide minor league baseball coverage.  Right now, I have nine sites on line with a central site at Minor League Blogs which picks up all of the feeds for the nine sites.  There you’ll get daily minor league news and game recaps and the nice thing is, each minor league player will have his own category so if you want to see when a specific minor league player is mentioned, the sites are indexed nicely to accomodate that.  Most of these blogs have some content right now but they really kick things off on Thursday when the minor league season starts.

For those of you not famliar with Win Probablity Added (WPA), it’s basically a measure of how much a particular player added to his team’s chance of winning based on not only what he did, but when he did it.  One thing I don’t like about it is that it gives more credit to a late homerun then it does to an early homerun which may end up being just as important.  The cool thing is though, you can then map out at any particular point in time what each team’s historical chances of winning are at any point in the game, which is what Fangraphs did here for yesterday’s Tiger game.

So you’ll see the Tigers chance go way down after that rough first inning but then they slowly creep back into the game.  Joel Zumaya ended up leading the team in WPA with those two scoreless innings he threw late in the game and Placido Polanco led all hitters with his three hits.  It looks like the Tigers best chance of winning was in the bottom of the ninth.  Fenando Rodney had the worst WPA amongst the pitchers because of his horrible tenth and then Carlos Guillen was at the bottom of the hitting chart with his 0 for 5 game.

And if the chart is too hard to read, you can also check out the play log.  This is a really fun site and you can go back to the games in 2002 if you want too.

Alright, I don’t know if this is a pre April Fools joke or what, but AM1270 is talking on the radio right now about Kenny Rogers hitting the DL.  I haven’t been able to find anything else on this, but as soon as I can, I’ll let you know.

***UPDATE***

The Big Show on AM1270 is saying Kenny Rogers will hit the DL with a “fatigued arm,” whatever that is.

***UPDATE***

Alright, I got this out of the Tigers Press Pass and it confirms Kenny Rogers move to the 15 day DL and it’s retroactive to March 25.  He’ll miss at least one start but there’s a ton of mystery surrounding this right now.  The Tigers pulled Bobby Seay up from the minors to take Kenny Rogers place on the pitching staff to start the season.

***UPDATE***

And here’s Jason Beck’s take, which just came up.  It looks like for now, Chad Durbin will be the fifth starter.  I’d rather see Wil Ledezma, but then the Tigers wouldn’t have any lefties out of the pen.  Talk about an interesting domino effect.

The spring season is winding down, and at this point in the year you have players putting their time in, yet also not going to hard in the event they get hurt.  There’s just three spring games left, and then the fun begins.

Gary Sheffield had the big hit of the game yesterday.  He hit a monster three run shot in the third inning that got out in a hurry.  Unfortunately Nate Robertson gave up three the very next inning then neither team scored the rest of the way.  Placido Polanco was two for two with a run while Craig Monroe was two for three.

Robertson finished the game with five innings under his belt.  He gave up three runs (two earned) on four hits and a walk with four strikeouts.  Jason Grilli, Wil Ledezma and Preston Larrison then pitched scoreless innings to close out the game.

The Tigers take on the Astros with Kenny Rogers throwing for Detroit.  Game time is 1:05. 

Joel Zumaya is perfect no longer as he gave up back to back solo homeruns to Andruw Jones and Brian McCann.  To Zumaya’s credit, he wasn’t dialing it in there like he usually does and he got burned with two mid-90s fastballs.  After that, he started touching 99 and he didn’t get into anymore trouble.  He struck out three in two innings of work.

Jeremy Bonderman was pretty good in his five innings.  He gave up two runs on six hits and a walk with three strikeouts.  Bonderman’s next start will be on opening day when the Tigers face the Blue Jays and Roy Halladay.

Marcus Thames hit his third homerun of the spring while Sean Casey drove in three runs.  Ivan Rodriguez (three hits, one RBI, two runs) and Magglio Ordonez (two for two, two RBIs, two runs) were also sharp at the plate.

Today, the Tigers take on the Dodgers in a day game that will be on FSN.  I didn’t get any takers for a meet and greet, so some other time.  Nate Robertson will get his final tune up start before the real season starts.  Just four spring games left, and then things get real.

Alright, here’s a story on what Neifi Perez had to do to keep his spot on the team.  Interesting read and for all of the bashing that goes on about how bad of a player he is, it’s all relative.  Yes, he’s one of the poorest hitters in major league history but the guy is now in his twelth year of a major league career so I’m a bit jealous.  I just wish he played for someone else.

And then Rob Parker talks about Chris Shelton’s demotion.  I’m not always a fan of Parker’s column, but this was a really good read.

***UPDATE***

Here’s another story on Chris Shelton by Jeff Passan.  There’s some good quotes in here, especially the one by Carlos Guillen.

Well, this is a drag but it’s not neccesarily surprising.  Edward Campusano will need Tommy John surgery to repair his injured elbow and he’ll miss the 2007 season.  He came out of the gate this spring like a mad man but now there’s speculation that he might have been hiding the injury since his velocity was down.  It’s hard to blame the kid, because he’s fighting for a spot on the big leagues.  I’m not sure if the spring season just brought the injury to light or if it made it a lot worse, but that’s water under the bridge.  He’s had elbow problems in the past so this shouldn’t come as a big surprise.

An interesting tidbit from the Jason Beck column linked above is that Edward Campusano will keep his Rule 5 status next year because he’ll spend more then half of the season on the disabled list if he’s healthy (or relatively so), he’ll have to make the team’s 25 man roster for us to keep him.

Jerry Crasnick at ESPN.com penned an article about high velocity pitchers and of course the first picture that pops up is Joel Zumaya.  There’s a listing of the highest velocity pitch thrown by team and Zumaya tops them all at 104 miles per hour.  Nobody else touched 103 and only Brad Lidge and a trio of Blue Jays pitchers (Jeremy Accardo, A.J. Burnett and Brandon League) touched 102 miles per hour.  Former Tiger Kyle Farnsworth was the top Yankee a few teams had tops only 98 mph (I know, only). 

They also get into how some relievers learn they can get away with dialing it down and former Tiger Frank Tanana was used as an example.  For those of you not familiar with Tanana, he was a fireballer who actually threw on the Angels with Nolan Ryan.  Near the end of his career, and after a major injury (can’t remember what he hurt) he became a very effective pitcher even though his fast ball usually didn’t break 90 mph.  His slow curve was a site to see.

The Tigers finished up their final cuts and Chad Durbin was the final pitcher to make the team while Neifi Perez was the last position player.  Durbin had a solid spring and after Edward Campusano went down, this move made sense.  He also makes for an interesting story because of his ups and (mostly) downs.

Neifi Perez, on the other hand, was probably the last guy who deserved to make the team out of Chris Shelton and Ramon Santiago, who both got optioned to Toledo.  Chris Shelton is the better hitter although he’s hamstrung because of his lack of versatility.  I just hope Perez doesn’t take away any at bats from guys like Omar Infante or even Marcus Thames, which could happen.  If they want to give Carlos Guillen a break, they could shift him to first and have Perez play short.  Anyway, we all know Perez is one of the worst major league hitters ever but they also have his contract to contend with because he has one more guaranteed year so this move was probably more because of the dollars then the on field results.

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