MVN - Most Valuable Network

Tigers baseball in one onomatopoeic word: ugh.

Ugh, you guys, I don’t even have the energy. That is the face I was making for that entire 7th inning.

Bondo pitched great. He was striking guys out, and working his slider, and he appears to have killed off or at least temporarily neutralized the terrible mustache, much to everyone’s relief. He looked good and solid. He wasn’t, until the very end, trying to be overly fine with his location. He even managed to lay down a perfect bunt to move the runners over his first time up to bat.

He looked on track for a win, which of course means that everyone else had to conspire to prevent that from happening.

Why did the infield suddenly forget how to field balls? I mean, I hate to point out the obvious, but outs can still be made in foul territory. Are we sure that the Tigers know this? I know it seems basic, but are we SURE? Because, after watching this game, I am not all that sure. Cabrera did that weird flappy glove thing when a ball came his way; it ALMOST looked like he had lost sight of the ball, except I don’t think that he did. Just weird. At least Bondo managed to K that batter. It was the ball that dropped in foul territory between Carlos and Edgah, the at-bat that ended up being a walk because the out that Should Have Been did not happen, that was murder.

And the throwing error from Carlos, ugh. UGH.

Bullpen: triple UGH.

What was up with Dan Haren’s delivery, can someone explain that? It wasn’t just a hesitation; he had something that looked like a couple of freeze frames with his leg up there. I definitely do NOT remember it being that pronounced when he was with Oakland. And then on his slide step he kind of wobbles around like he’s drunk, bobbling his head up and down a little and generally looking silly. What a weird delivery. Whatever, I guess that apparently it works, and HIS infield is familiar with the game of baseball.

What was this? Was it the heat? The dry air? The… I don’t even know. Jet lag? Ugh. Ugh unto infinity.

From the Hastily and Sketchily Drawn Sketchbook: 6 possible reasons the Detroit Tigers are struggling

Oh my holy cats I don’t want to talk about it. I have already talked about it. I talked about it in the previous post. I have nothing more to say. I have also found that the more the Tigs struggle and the more disgusted I get, the more I want to just write this entire blog in sarcastic LOLcat language. We’re heading there, folks. It may only be a matter of time. I CAN HAS ACTUAL BASE BALL TEEM?

So: sketchbook! 6 possible reasons the Detroit Tigers are struggling, rendered hastily and sketchily, for your viewing (dis)pleasure!

Possible Reason #1:

Baseball am too heavy 4 Kenny.

Possible Reason #2:

The second-hand smoke generated by Jim Leyland’s stress-smoking is choking the rest of the team to death.

Possible Reason #3:

Somehow, unbeknownst to the rest of us, Ugie has come back. And this time he means BUSINESS.

Possible Reason #4:

Miguel Cabrera’s weird beardlet/goatee…. THING has so horrified his teammates that they are unable to carry on with life and baseball.

Possible Reason #5:

Why no Japanese players??

Possible Reason #6:

still blaming the bats in Detroit

Ugh, you know what? I can’t even. I am getting sick and tired of flinging the same fecal matter around over and over again. The Tigers are so out of synch that it’s not even funny except in that grim gallows-humor kind of way. Slow asphyxiation? HILARITY! Verlander’s win total? LOLARIOUS!

Did you know that they’ve had 11 quality starts in 40 games? That’s a terrible stat. Twenty-eight percent of the time they take the mound, Tigers pitchers have a quality start. I have to be up at 5 am tomorrow so I am not even going to dig around and find out what that percentage is like for the rest of the league, but I would be willing to bet Chuck Hernandez’s left kidney that it’s a good deal higher than 28%.

BUT WAIT, IT GETS BETTER.

Of those 11 quality starts, the Tigers have won only 6. PRACTICALLY HALF THE TIME THEY GET A QUALITY START OUT OF THEIR PITCHER, THEY BLOW THE GAME ANYWAYS. No freakin’ wonder this team has only won 16 bloody games.

Also: there have only been 5 times, in the 40 games we’ve seen so far, where the Tigers have scored more than 3 runs and still lost the game. There have been 20 games where they’ve scored more than 3 runs. Obviously this is a logic thing– you score a load of runs, you’re much more likely to actually win the game– but what you’re looking at is another percentage telling you how ‘in synch’ the bats and the pitching are. At least 6 innings with 3 or fewer runs allowed is a quality outing for a pitcher; I’m roughly calling more than 3 runs scored a quality outing for the bats.

HALF the time the pitchers have a quality outing, the bats screw it up. A QUARTER of the time the bats have a quality outing, the pitching (starters or bullpen) screws it up.

Since the Tigs are averaging a ‘quality’ offensive outing 50% of the time, and are getting a ‘quality’ pitching performance 28% of the time, you could definitely argue that the starters are the largest source of trouble here. But when it comes to undermining their own teammates, the bats are certainly the bigger culprits.

Does it do any actual good to assign blame here? So the bats hate the pitchers more than the pitchers hate the bats: who cares? The point is that the Tigs are sitting unpretty at .400 and dead last in the division, 5 games back from the pitching-charmed if still un-PC-ly-mascotted Indians and 3.5 games behind the FREAKING ROYALS. Stab me in the FACE, that looks awful when you type it all out.

So no, it doesn’t ACTUALLY matter that the bats are dropping the proverbial ball when the pitching actually manages to give them a metaphorical ball to hold. But the first step to overcoming a problem is admitting you have a problem, and maybe if we can realize WHERE the problem is, it can be targeted and destroyed by, I don’t know, some sort of covert baseball coaching military mission.

Most of us have been saying that this can’t go on, not with this lineup, the Tigers will hit hard and often soon enough, etc. How long can they keep doing this? There are GOOD HITTERS in this lineup, LOTS of them.

But look at poor Verlander, with his 1-and-7 record. Opposing teams have scored 37 earned runs off of him in his 9 starts. He’s not exactly averaging a quality start every time he comes out. But the Tigers have scored 20 runs in games he’s pitched (and 10 of those came in 1 game, so it’s really like they’ve scored only 10 runs for 8 of his starts). They have scored more than 3 runs in games that he started exactly twice. When Justin goes 5.2 innings and gives up 6 runs it is for sure his fault, but what about the game where he pitched 6 with only 1 earned run, or even a game where he went 7 and gave up 4?

That’s not his fault. That’s the fault of the Lineup That Should turning into the Lineup That Inexplicably Can’t.

Nate Robertson’s unrequited love

This is just a sad, sad story.

We have the lovelorn pitcher, Nate Robertson, who pines for the beautiful bats. “Sweet maple snookums,” he says, “don’t you love me? I love you so. I will do such nice things for you. I will have a quality start for you!”

Because a Nate in love is a Nate who keeps his word, Nate goes out and does just that, pitching 7 innings and allowing only TWO runs on TEN hits, with ZERO walks. That is a QUALITY START, and it’s something Nate has really struggled with this season, so it’s not like he’s giving the bats something cheap or commonplace or obviously thoughtless (like giving flowers to someone with a cat who likes to eat flowers. Congratulations, lover: you indirectly just gave your special friend cat vomit). A quality start from Nate is just about the most expensive thing he can afford to get for his bats. It takes all that he has, but he loves the bats, so when he is finally able to afford to give it, he gives it gladly.

The bats are cruel and hard-hearted (obviously, being made of wood and all) and do not love Nate back. He offers them a quality start; in return, they offer only loneliness and woe. And anemia. And men left on base. Ohhhhh so many men left on base.

Nate and the bats are like ships of love passing in the night. When the bats are feeling amorous, Nate is like a cold dead codfish; now that Nate is all a-flutter with affection and moderate pitching skills, the bats could not care less. It’s a harsh thing to watch.

Although watching Nate struggle on his own is bad enough, watching the bats hatefully ignore his hopeful effort is worse yet. C’mon, you unfeeling sticks! Surely you can’t be THIS fiendish!

Alas for Nate, they certainly seem to in fact be just that fiendish so far this season.

offday in Detroit means photoday here

Finally managed to get photos from the Red Sox/Tigers series up! Thank you, offday. The shot at the top of this post was from the Monday game; that was our view from the luxury box (well, our view as seen through a wide angle lens). The rest of the shots are from Tuesday’s game.

This will be a pure photoblog. Secretly you love it. All photos can be clicked to take you to the Flickr page, where you can see them a bit bigger. Y’know, if you’re into that kinda thing. There’s a link at the bottom of this post that says something like “click to see the rest of this post”. That’s ’cause there are a lot of photos here and I don’t want it to be TOO huge on the front page. Click the link. You guys can handle that. I have faith in you.

Hey, look who’s back! He was wicked awesome with the fans, as one might expect, spending loads of time signing and talking and taking photos with people. He even took the time to remove a MASSIVE wad of gum from his mouth before taking a photo with one lady, so that he’d have a nice smile in the shot for her. Do we still love Sean Casey in the D? Unequivocally YES.

Also still in love with The Mayor: John Keating.

While we’re on the topic of love…

Miguel Cabrera gets a hug from Big Papi.

So does Todd Jones.

And Edgah gets his shirt tugged.

The River Thames and Coco Crisp hung out for a while…

…and parted with a hug.

Sox/Tigers cross-team snorgling makes me happy in my heart.

There WAS actual BP going on, shocking as that may seem, and eventually there WAS a baseball game.

Read the rest of this entry »

Jeremy Bonderman must be stopped

There are only three things I want to talk about that actually pertain to this game. The first is Gary Sheffield doubling off of The Farns, which I found inexplicably hilarious. I don’t even know why. Just, Gary Sheffield! And The Farns! Two great crazy tastes that taste crazy together. Somewhere in there is humor.

The second is the bullpen, which today contributed 5 scoreless innings from Seay and Cruceta. The bullpen has had Issues-with-the-intentional-capital-I this season, so an outing like that should not be overlooked.

The third is Matt Joyce’s first ever big league homerun. Hugs and kittens for Matt Joyce. Some guys take weeks or months or years to get that first big league homer. He just had his first at-bat this past Monday. We salute you, Matt Joyce.

Enough about that game. We lost. I don’t want to think about it. The end. Let’s instead talk about something much more important, namely

THE HORRIBLE MUSTACHE THAT JEREMY BONDERMAN IS GROWING.

I’ll start off by saying that I hope, SINCERELY HOPE that Bondo will shave it off since he pitched so poorly today. Baseball players are superstitious critters and the return of the Deadly First Inning may be cause enough for Bondo to take action against his burgeoning facial hair. It’s possible that we’ll never see it again.

THIS WOULD BE A GOOD THING.

I don’t know if it looked extra-horrific because I was watching the game in HD or what, but holy FREAKING cats, I could barely look at this thing without being nauseated. I guess I ought to try to describe it for those of you who didn’t/couldn’t see the game… uggh. It’s just this thin, pale brown line of not-very-filled in mustache. And you know how Bondo’s lips are kinda thin? So it’s like there are his lips, then a strip of pale skin above them, then the mustache, then a little more skin, then his nose. So it’s just this little line…

It makes him look like a stereotypical child molester, it really does, or some other unsavory character with dubious personal grooming habits. It’s the kind of mustache that makes you uncomfortable to look at. Like there’s something crawling across his upper lip. Hence the caterpillar in the image on the upper right, there.

I always wonder about these things… I mean, did he just forget to shave for a couple of days? Did he honestly think it would be a good idea? He’s married; didn’t his wife stop him on his way out the door and say, “Jeremy, honey, that’s just not the best look for you”?

Maybe the idea is to make opposing batters so uncomfortable that they strike out all the time? A creative strategy, but not a particularly sound one.

Someone needs to stop Bondo, one way or another, before he lets this thing grow out anymore. It’s for the good and well-being of all.

nothing like a tasty Yankee morsel to get the Tigers going again

This was a good win for a lot of reasons, but I have to point out that Todd Jones is clearly trying to kill us all. I know that’s what he does, I KNOW, but HOLY FREAKING CATS, that inning! I cannot believe that inning turned out the way it did. I was sitting there joking around with my dad and brother about how Todd Jones was going to take a 6-2 non-save situation and turn it into a definite save situation (for someone else), but it was just JOKING, har har, imagine if he did that, OH CATDAMN NO HE’S ACTUALLY DOING IT.

Six to two. That was the score when Jonesy came in to finish out the game. It was 6-5 and Joba Chamberlain was hopefully warming in the Yankee bullpen when the game ended. I feel that we need something like a Tigers Fan Todd Jones Support System, where we set up some kind of phone tree and all call each other after Todd Jones appearances, just to make sure that no one actually died.

Aside from Jonesy, the rest of the team looked like they apparently usually do against the Yankees this year: bloody good. Kenny looked good… in fact, Kenny’s looked good in his last few starts, it’s just that this time he finally got a win for his troubles (although Jonesy certainly tried his level best to give it away). He’s leading the team in quality starts (that’s at least 6 innings pitched with three or fewer earned runs allowed, mind you), followed by Galarrrrrrrraga, so far all the bellyaching people have been doing about how old he is, how finished he is, etc., he’s actually been one of the more solid presences in the starting rotation this season.

Of course that’s all relative and removed from the sad context of our rotation might not mean all that much, but there you have it anyways.

Also good: Tigers getting hits, and being able to put men on with fewer than two outs on the board, which is something they struggle with against everyone else. It’s hard to say that the bats were on, though, when at least half of the equation was the fact that Kei Igawa was so very NOT on. Rod Allen was saying things about how the Tigers were playing with desperation now; I think they were probably playing with a bit of desperation against the Red Sox too. It’s just that here they were playing with desperation and the sweet smell of pitcher terror in their nostrils.

Still. Four and 0 against the Yankees so far this season. If the question is “How can the Tigers overcome their massive and inexplicable issues with the game of baseball in 2008?”, the New York Yankees are clearly the hamster.