Operation Send Brandon Inge to the All Star Game is a resounding success! BRANDON FREAKIN' INGE IS AN ALL STAR!

*insert high-pitched screaming here*

You guys! You guys! You guys! WE DID IT. We voted our scraptastic little dork of a third baseman into the All Star Game!!!!!! More exclamation marks!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Squee!!

All you cats who voted: awesome work. You have done a beautiful thing with your clickin' and textin' fingers. You should be proud to be part of such a glorious collective effort, to be one of so very many people who realized, YES, we DO want to see this awkward, goofy Tiger get a chance to call himself an All Star at least once in his life.

Brandon Inge is the longest continuously-tenured Tiger on the roster right now; Brandon Inge is having a great first half; Brandon Inge's defense deserves to be acknowledged somehow or other, since Gold Gloves are a joke. This is a feel-good vote. Do you feel good? I FEEL GOOD!

I just want to say this again:

BRANDON INGE IS GOING TO THE ALL STAR GAME

:D :D :D

Now if you'll excuse me, I need to go pass out from excitement.

This was supposed to be the accidental match-up. Luke French was going up against Zack Greinke not because he had the best chance of playing along with Greinke's frankly awesome '09 pitching, but because it was just how the rotation happened to fall. The thinking was probably something along the lines of, "Eh, these are the Royals, by the time French comes up there's a good chance we'll have a couple of wins in the series anyways."

Of course the Tigs only had one win going into this last game of the series, thanks to BULLPEN SHENANIGANS, but the point remains the same. Leyland et al. will say nice things about Luke French, but I am 99% sure that they did not actually think he could outpitch Zach freakin' Greinke.

WHAT DO YOU KNOW

Luke French got his very first win today, allowing only one run over 6.1 innings, a singleshot homer off the bat of Alberto Callaspo that came at the very end of his outing. Big Cat Congrats to Luke French. I mean, 6.1 scoreless innings before giving up a run? I'll take some more o' that, thank you very much.

The only really curious thing was that Billy Butler was 3-for-4, and every time he got a hit, it was a double. Weird? Yes. Ultimately bad for French? Nope! Works for me.

Greinke gave up three runs over 6 innings, with the scoring starting early. He struck out 9 Cats to French's 2 Kings, but part of that is just the fact that Greinke's more of a strikeout pitcher than Luke French is, and the fact that Tigers tend to rack up the Ks, unless they're named Placido Polanco-- who, by the way, had another couple of hits today.

Only one Tigers extra base hit in this game (a Josh Anderson double), which is WORRYING, but... buuuuuuuut... it was Greinke, so I'm not freaking out. Honest.

Fernando Rodney had a clean 9th inning. Shock, amaze, etc. It was, of course, a save situation. When it comes to Fernando I am deeply happy that the All Star break is coming up. A few days off without any pitching at all will be a nice thing for his inflammation-prone-yet-still-sort-of-overused arm.

AND SO

Thursday is THE LAST DAY TO VOTE BRANDON INGE INTO THE ALL STAR GAME. Last I heard, he had a slim lead over Ian Kinsler, which we obviously must maintain. Circumstances might be in our favor, though, because Dustin Pedroia's wife might be giving birth right around the time of the ASG, so he might not go... which might mean that Kinsler goes as the starter at second... which might mean that if Inge can just stay in first or second place in the Final Man voting... I am getting ahead of myself with excitement. Anyways, have you seen this?

I am not going to lie, I have no idea what is going on here. Apparently it is some sort of Phillies cross-promotional voting push? Vote Bran-torino? Really? Is that supposed to recall Gran Torino or Brangelina to my mind? Because I hate to say it, but my first thought was the second one. I guess that makes Shane Victorino the Angelina Jolie of the equation. Hot.

WHAT ARE YOU STILL DOING HERE, VOTE! VOTE! VOTE!

So I was at Fenway tonight (bear with me here). Beckett was pitching, Sox winning, crowd chanting "We want Nomar" at random intervals, much excitement, etc. Of course I was also scoreboard-watching the Tigers game, but since Fenway has that old school manual scoreboard, updates are... let us say, spotty.

Imagine then my UTTER DELIGHT when some wonderful soul in the video room decided to show brief highlights of the Royals/Tigers game between innings, when the scoreboard had been stuck on the 8th inning for, like, an hour. Marcus Thames, hitting a Comerica homerun, on the Fenway scoreboard! And then they finally let us see that the 8-5 score was final, and I heaved a sigh of relief and was able to go back to the very important business of loudly abusing Jason Giambi at all times.

I gather that this one was not exactly pretty, judging from the fact that Verlander gave up five runs with three of those in a single-inning chunk, and the fact that two runs were unearned due to the dreaded errors (in the boxscore it says that Laird's error was 'catcher interference', what in the hell happened there?). I see that Verlander was relatively inefficient AGAIN (over 110 pitches in 6 innings). I note that Detroit ONLY hit homers or singles, with no other extra-base hits at all.

But I do also see some good stuff:

--Placido Polanco had another really good game. This time around he went 3-for-5 with 2 runs scored and 4 RBI, including a two-run homer. The singles are typical Polly, but two homeruns in a set of three series is not so usual for him. It's nice to see, though-- every indication that he's getting his swing back into some sort of consistent order is a welcome one.

--Six Tigers walks! OK, one of those was apparently intentional. Still. A near-pathological fear of taking walks is one area in which the Tigers are sadly consistent; I keep hoping that they'll get over it one of these days, even though they've showed no inclination to do so in any meaningful way yet.

--Verlander struck out 11 Royals, and didn't walk a single one. So he was dead in the zone-- I assume that had a little something to do with the five runs as well. I do enjoy seeing evidence that he has some sense of control over the ball, though.

--No damage from the bullpen, including Zoom. I shall assume that the glaring scared him into compliance.

--It also looks like Fernando pitched OK, of course he did, the little jerk, it was a save situation. But I also see that, of course, he had to put at least two men on base first, just to keep things interesting. You know, when Jonathan Papelbon took the mound to close out the Sox game, I did not automatically start cringing in fear. Something to think about.

AND REMEMBERRRRRRR

Click the banner, go to the ballot, vote for all that is good in baseball and the world, vote for fluffy kittens, vote for making a blogger very happy, vote for Brandon Inge.

Oh, I know that Joel Zumaya had thrown more pitches than ever before in his last outing, but he had had a couple of days off and should have been ready for Monday night. If he wasn't... maybe he should have mentioned that.

Arrrrrmando, trying to scrape his way back to respectability, had a great game. Five hits over seven innings... 7 Ks, and only one run... that's a quality start any way you slice it. I was encouraged by it, Leyland was probably encouraged by it, and I'm sure Armando himself was much encouraged. The Tigers were winning 2-1 when he left the game, trustingly leaving it in the hands of a Guitar Hero fanatic.

At which point Zoom threw his hands up in the air, shrieked, and flailed around until the Tigers were losing 3-2. Lovely.

Fernando did his bit, of course, giving up a homerun, because this was not a save situation and Fernando clearly believes that pitching energy is wasted on games that do not involve save situations.

This was just frustrating. The Tigers should have won this game. Armando should have had it; Ryan Raburn's good game (2-for-4) should have been in the context of an actual good game. I hate games like that, games that aren't blowouts, that are well within reach and then get squandered and frittered away. That brings out the Stern Glare, as you have seen.

But let us be pleasant! You cats still have until 4 pm Thursday to VOTE FOR BRANDON INGE, ALL STAR AT HEART.

Click on the terrible cartoon to access the ballot. FOR VOTING INGE.

Friends, neighbors, fellow fans, cats and kittens, WE HAVE A MISSION! A challenge has been issued, and we must rise up, together, to meet the occasion! OSBIASG is in full effect!

All Star rosters were announced today. Justin Verlander, Edwin Jackson, and Curtis Granderson are already on the team. Awesome? Yes. But you-- yes, YOU!-- have the power to make it EVEN MORE AWESOME. How can you do this?

VOTE FOR BRANDON INGE!

Inge is one of five AL players up for the Final Vote, which is Major League Baseball's obnoxious way to keep us visiting their site(s) thousands of times before the All Star Game. But that's not the point. The point is that everyone who is anyone will be voting their little hands off this week, and they will have a choice of

--Chone BabyEater Figgins
--Ian Kinsler the Kittenstomper
--Adam Lind, Terrorist
--Carlos Not-a-Tiger-Anymore Pena
--BRANDON INGE, EIGHTH WONDER OF THE WORLD

I'm just sayin'.

Does Brandon Inge deserve this more than anyone else? Look in your heart to find the answer (cheat sheet: the answer is yes). If you have watched the Tigers with anything like regularity, you know this to be true. It is Logical, it is Right. Brandon Inge is Truth, Light, the American Way. He will probably never have a season this good again. Strike while the iron is hot and LET JUSTICE BE DONE.

Do you require more convincing? Here are some of my photos of Brandon Inge, telling you why you should vote him into the 2009 All Star Game. It is important to keep foremost in your mind the glory that we would be bringing to a national stage if we can pull this off; these should help you do that.

Feel free to spread any of the images in this post around the internet, so long as they are used in the service of voting Brandon Inge into the ASG.

I am pretty sure that it is unlimited voting this time around, which means that you should spend all of your free time voting for Brandon Inge and that you should tell all of your friends and family to do the same. We have from now until 4 pm ET Thursday.

VOTE VOTE VOTE

Sixteen innings' worth of pitchers. In other words, the literal entire bullpen. Plus Luke French.

Apparently all sorts of terrible stuff happened early? Like, we had a 7-1 lead and blew it? I do not know; my town has its fireworks on the third of July, so tonight was, let us say, eventful. That I got to see any of the game at all was a freak occurrence, thanks to the SIXTEEN INNINGS and the 5+ hours that were needed to complete this unwieldy mess of a game.

Bits I saw:

--Freddy Dolsi getting his first blown save of the season and his first win of the season.
--Two whole innings of non-doom from Fernando.
--Placido Polanco fouling a ball off his own nuts, bending over in agony for a while, then going 2-for-2 with a couple of RBI in the at-bats immediately following the incident. Obviously now someone will have to punch him in the nuts before every game.

I also note that Joel Zumaya threw an absolutely insane 53 pitches, over the course of 2.1 innings. Wow. That's... wow. Who knew he had it in him? Especially after all that hand-shaking his last time out. He should be glued to the bench/bullpen folding chair for the rest of this series, though.

SIXTEEN INNINGS. And a win. At least we scraped the win. The Wrong Sox are riding up the division fast (ugh, ugh, ugh) and if you have to play nearly two back-to-back ballgames, followed by a late afternoon game the next day, the way to do it is with a win.

Happy Fourth of July to those of you celebrating that. Happy Third to those of you who celebrate as my town does. Happy 'laugh at Major Leaguers forced wear those terrible hats' Day if you get bored.

Bad game, good game, stupidly bad game. What have we learned from this series? Nothing except for the fact that Jason Giambi is loathsome, which we already knew, and that it is always funny to see Cabrera guarding first base while Cabrera is the runner at first base.

So have a look at that image up top. Guess what came in the mail today? It should not be hard to guess because there it is.

WORLD BASEBALL CLASSIC BASEBALL CARDS

I tore open the box like a junkie and what is the first thing I see? A Fu-Te Ni Chinese Taipei baseball card. I did a literal dance of happiness. Feet movin' and everything. It was a perfect moment, a moment in which all was right. It was like Topps was calling out to me, "Yes, you have been rewarded for your love! Here is a Tiger you would never in a million years otherwise expect to see at the top of your baseball card pile! Just for yooouuuuuu!"

And what was right beneath him? A YU DARVISH CARD. And then Miggy! And then Yulieski Gourriel!

Basically I am a happy happy cat right now, because you know what I love? Baseball cards. And you know what else I love? The World Baseball Classic. And not even Dallas Braden's stupid Tiger-baffling fastball can take that away from me.

Just a couple other things today:

--ALBERT PUJOLS IS THE GODFATHER TO PLACIDO POLANCO'S CHILDREN. They are, according to Rod, "that close". I... I love it.

--Magglio had the high socks today. He went 0-for-4. Stick with it, Magglio! High socks for great justice!

--Nate Robertson's surgery was successful and he 'should' be throwing in about a month. They're calling the offending bits "muscle masses" now. I still think we might have a freak teratoma situation on our hands.

--Brandon Inge had today off, and everyone will have tomorrow off. His knee has been wonked since he had that baserunning hiccup on Sunday, and the next series will be on the famously knee-hating turf in Minnesota, so this was a reasonable move.

"That son of a gun -- he'll be mad," Leyland joked. "No, he won't be mad. ... I need him for the long haul. I was going to DH him. I slept on it last night, woke up and said, 'You know what, when he gets on base, he's got to run the bases.' Thought he could use the day off."

Adam Loberstein, MLB.com

Only Jim Leyland would unironically utter the phrase "that son of a gun".

--Happy Canada Day!

It's pretty late and I am pretty tired. Luckily for you, I took notes on this one. Instead of synthesizing them into some sort of paragraph system I am just going to throw them in here as-is and you are going to deal with it.

--Gio Gonzalez started this game for the A's. Edgar Gonzalez finished it. In between they had three innings of non-Gonzalezes, so this was a mostly Gonzalez-pitched game on the Athletic's side of things.

--Armando was rockin' the one long sleeve early. His throwing arm was sleeved, his glove arm was bare. Jacoby Ellsbury did that a lot last year. Later in the game Armando dropped the other sleeve so that he was sleevily balanced.

--Ryan Raburn got an error because he dropped a ball in foul territory. I know why that's an error, but still, harsh.

--NOMAR! I forget about him sometimes, take my Red Sox fan card away immediately. And Orlando Cabrera is on the same team, in the very same lineup, oh my goodness, I did not realize that. How awkward. Do you think Orlando Cabrera sometimes starts telling a story to his teammates and he says, "So back in 2004 in Boston..." and then he kind of awkwardly trails off and everyone tries to not look at Nomar? Do you think that happens? I think it does. That '04 team was the kind of team that would have a lot of stories in it.

Also for some reason it is hilarious to me that Nomar is wearing number 1 now.

--Such a good game for Placido Polanco. He was 2-for-5 with 3 RBI and a run scored, including his first inning two-run homer. Polanco homeruns are like little freaks of nature, so it is always nice to see them supplemented with other solid hitting.

He has the exact same batting average as Curtis Granderson does right now (.259), which freaks me out for some reason... shouldn't Curtis be higher, with the kind of year Polanco has had? PANICKY PANIC. Curtis' OPS is a lot higher, though (.704 vs .821).

--Armando has been having Bondo-esque first innings. This is especially evident since tonight he settled down so nicely after that first inning. I almost want to have him talk it out with Bondo, except clearly that will not work because a) Bondo never really worked out his mental pitching issues and b) Bondo does not communicate well, or sometimes at all.

Armando also walked six guys today (in 6.1 innings... he only struck out five), which is not good. Not good at all. But he did get his second consecutive win, which IS good, considering how long he went between wins prior to that last one.

--Every time Adam Everett takes off his helmet I am struck anew by how glorious his hair is. That is some serious blonde-streaked fluff he's got up there. He has, like, volume and bounce and other things that people desperately try to get out of their shampoos.

--Rod Allen says that Matt Holliday has "no body fat". He says it with relish.

--I am so heartily sick of those Foundation for a Better Life ads. I don't particularly enjoy having 'behavioral values' shoveled into my face while I'm trying to watch a baseball game. To be quite honest I find the whole thing skeevy, partly because its founder/funder is skeevy, and partly because I just object to the tone of the whole campaign itself. I'm a fan of a baseball team that employs Fernando Rodney, I am not going to get excited over someone cloyingly insisting that I take "optimism" and "pass it on," you moose-lickers.

--A shot of Fu-Te Ni on the bullpen bench. He appeared to be either talking to himself, or singing to himself. Freddy Dolsi was sitting next to him. They were not speaking to one another.

--They have got to get a new font for the on-screen player stats, Rod Allen can't read them half the time. Today he couldn't tell if Zoom had allowed 16 or 18 walks because the 6 looked ambiguous (it was 16 before the game).

--Magglio didn't look so hot at the plate tonight, he was taking some bad swings, didn't seem to be seeing the ball well at all. His one hit was pretty bloopy, if I may use that word. So clearly cutting off the hair was not some sort of panacea, THINK ABOUT THAT NEXT TIME, MAGGLIO.

--Zoom had to momentarily hold things up in the 8th so that he could take his glove off and properly bite a loose bit of fingernail or skin or something off of his throwing hand. He was shaking his hand a ton, and after the inning ended he had a huge crowd of Tigers and Tigers trainers staring at his thumb in the dugout. Inge was all over his shoulder.

No word as of right now what it was, a blister or a hangnail or what. I would imagine there probably will be in an hour or so, but screw you guys, I'm going to sleep as soon as I post this.

--No hitting at all yesterday, so much hitting today. Whatever, Tigers. Clearly I don't understand you and you don't want me to understand. Be that way.

--In the 9th inning, Miguel Cabrera swung so hard that he let go of the bat and it went flying... but he made contact. The ball ended up being caught by the second baseman, who backpedaled out to the outfield grass, but Miggy was watching the bat and didn't move from home. What if it had landed, or the fielder had dropped it? So weird. I can't remember the last time I saw a player lose his bat and make contact, usually it happens on wild misses.

--Someone in the crowd near the end of the game was screaming like a loon during Tigers pitcher windups.

--FERNANDO. This was a textbook example of What He Does in his ongoing Attempts to Kill Us All.

Polanco had singled in a run in the top of the 9th, so the score going into the bottom of the inning was 5-1 Tigers and, thus, no longer a save situation. Fernando was all warmed up, though, so Leyland put him in. Rod and Mario say a bunch of things about him having a quick, clean inning so that he could pitch in tomorrow's day game if needed.

He immediately walks Nomar on five pitches. I begin grinding my teeth. Jack Cust flies out to left. I temporarily cease dental destruction. I even dare to think something along the lines of, "It's late, maybe he will just finish the game and I can go to sleep."

So of course (OF COURSE) he throws a few pitches to Mark Ellis and then Ellis hits a two-run homer to make it 5-3. And then Adam Kennedy singles. Why? Why prolong the agony? Because this is what Fernando Rodney does. THIS IS WHAT HE DOES. You have probably already looked at the boxscore for this game and so you know that we turned a double play to get out of the inning and did not lose, but Fernando had to come in and give up a walk and two hits and two runs. He basically forced Leyland to get Brandon Lyon warm in the bullpen, in case things got even more epically dire.

He only (?) threw 19 pitches, so it's at least theoretically possible that he would be available in the Wednesday afternoon game, but even if there were no actual negative impacts to the Tigers' record, this was still an infuriating performance. He drives me clean out of my mind. WHY DOES HE DO THIS? I ALREADY LIVED THROUGH TODD JONES, OK, I THOUGHT THAT TIME WAS OVER.

--Twice in the first two innings, the Tigers had a man caught out between third base and home. TWICE! That's unacceptable. If it's bad to make an out at third, it's even worse to make an out halfway to home. I don't want to see those sorts of shenanigans again.

The nice thing about this game was that, because it was in Oakland, I did not have to sit through 9 full innings. That's about the only nice thing, though.

--So you know how yesterday I said that we should get to see Fu-Te Ni fairly soon, since the Tigers go through bullpen pitchers like a house cat goes through kitty litter? Yeah. That happened.

In his big league debut, Fu-Te Ni pitched 1.2 innings, coming on in the 5th in relief of a struggling Rick Porcello. Ni allowed only one hit, but this was most unfortunately a homerun off the bat of Ryan "Not Mark" Sweeney. The Tigers were down 5-1 before the homer and 6-1 after it. As those are almost equally impossible deficits for the Tigs to make up, it wasn't a big deal. Ni also struck out 3 and didn't walk anyone. It took him 27 pitches to get through 6 batters, which is not bad at all.

He didn't look like he was overtly freaking out. FSND had a shot of him in the dugout afterwards, doing an elaborate pantomime with Gerald Laird, which seemed to have something to do with keeping pitches down and making sure to follow through on the pitching motion. At least the language barrier is being cheerfully tackled with grappling hooks, even if no one's exactly vaulting lustily over it just yet.

Overall it was an encouraging first appearance. I for one look hopefully forward to a productive career for Fu-Te Ni, filled with Monty Python jokes.

--Raburn moved from left to first in the bottom of the 8th, and was using Miguel Cabrera's glove. I don't know if this is because he doesn't have a first baseman's glove of his own (or he didn't bring it on the road), or because he just felt like using Miggy's glove, perhaps as a sort of safety blanket. I would understand that.

--There's a Curtis Granderson Q&A thing over at the Big Stew right now. How amazing would it be to see Granderson on an episode of Psych? Holy cats. I might die of Amazing Overdose if that were to happen.

I agree with him that the Lowell Spinners' ballpark is really nice. And his statements about ballplayer book readin' (lack thereof) are very sad. The response to the last question is A+, though, you should check it out just for that.

--Magglio stole a base today. Many lulz. Inge also stole a base, on his gimpy leg.

--Basically terrible hitting from the Tigers in this one. How? Why? Who knows. This team is so damn inconsistent, not to get all Joe Morgan-y on you or anything. FSND had a shot of Jim Leyland and Lloyd McClendon in the dugout. Here is Rod's take on the scene:

"Jim's askin' Lloyd what happened, and he can't say nothin', just shakes his head... that's a beautiful shot. He couldn't say nothin'. Just shook his head."

It was a very sad, disbelieving shake of the head. Most eloquent.

--Mario: This might be the smallest crowd the Tigers have played in front of this year.
Rod: And a lot of them are Tigers fans too...

The official attendance tally for this game was 10,563, and the actual number may well have been less than that.

--The Tigers starting rotation right now has an average age of 24. The youngest member of the rotation is Rick Porcello, at the tender (under)age of 20, and the oldest pitcher is Armando Galarraga, a veritable geezer at the advanced age of 27. Just think about that for a while.

--Nate is having surgery on Tuesday. Now the mass is being described as "fibrous", so... yeah, I still have no idea what it actually is. How crazy would it be if it was a teratoma and there were, like, teeth and hair and eyeballs growing in Nate's arm? Let's believe that it is until we hear otherwise.

--I keep forgetting that Jason Giambi is still in baseball. So grotesque. I wish there was a way to watch this series without accidentally seeing his face sometimes when I look at the TV screen.

Brandon Inge is a hero and a gamer and a scrapper and a magical pixie! Brandon Inge wields a mighty bat contrary to all expectations! Brandon Inge is the myth of clutch, on occasion! Brandon Inge wears his socks up! Brandon Inge is My Tiger! Take that and stuff it in your blandly phrased craw, 'Always a Tiger'!

In case you missed it, in the 5th inning Inge was running hard into first, tried to stretch out his stride to make sure he beat the throw, and did something heinous to his leg. It looked like he had strained a tendon, or rolled his ankle, something like that. He stayed in the game and in fact immediately had to run all the way home from first, as G-Money hit a long double.

"I was trying not to limp," Inge said. "I looked like an idiot."

Jason Beck, DetroitTigers.com

After he scored, he gestured out to Laird and said something that looked an awful lot like, "Hit it out!" As in, Next time hit it all the way out of this catforsaken ballpark so I don't have to hustle my injured rump around the bases. Rod and Mario were delighted.

Awesome? Yes. BUT NOT SUFFICIENTLY AWESOME FOR BRANDON INGE.

You see, Curtis Granderson had hit a (at that point) game-tying homerun in the 6th-- his 18th of the season, putting him ahead of Brandon Inge for the team HR lead. What could Brandon Inge possibly do to top that?

Oh, just a little somethin' like a game-winning two-run homer in the 9th, to tie Grandy for the team lead, and to blast the Tigers past the Astros so that we could avoid the series sweep. DEEPLY WICKED AWESOME.

Other things:

--After his, *cough*, unfortunate start on Saturday, Alfredo Figaro has been sent down, reducing the team Fred count by one. Luke French has been called up and will apparently start the first game of the Minnesota series on Friday.

"We just felt like giving French a shot against them," manager Jim Leyland said.

Jason Beck, Beck's Blog

If ya say so, Chief.

--Edwin Jackson was quite good in this one. Three runs over seven innings, 98 pitches, five hits, five Ks, ZERO walks. He allowed a couple of doubles and one triple, but no homers. Unfortunately, because of the way the hitting was timed, he gets nothing, and Bobby Seay (who did pitch a single clean inning) gets the W.

--Fernando gave up a single but nothing else, so he is still, amazingly, unbelievably perfect in save opportunities. He's actually been good lately, but it makes me nervous. I'm waiting for the arm soreness, I am in the duck and cover position of Fernando tendonitis readiness. Or maybe he'll sulk now that Figaro has been sent down. Something. I just don't trust this.

--Pudge was 0-for-4 on Sunday and made the last out of the series. On Saturday he was honored before the game because he had set the ALL-TIME MAJOR LEAGUE RECORD FOR MOST GAMES CAUGHT a week previous (against the Rangers, appropriately enough). That was his 2,227th game. This is his 19th season. Crazy. Crazy.

--Gerald Laird had to leave Saturday's game with back spasms. He looked fine on Sunday though, so hopefully it was just a temporary thing.

--Nate Robertson has been put on the DL with a 'mass' in his elbow. Who knows how long it's been developing/impeding his ability to throw a baseball, but that would certainly explain some things. Apparently it had begun pressing on his ulnar nerve, causing numbness down the line in some of his fingers.

"He's had the masses, but it's like someone who has bone chips," [head trainer Kevin] Rand said. "People who have bone chips or bone spurs in their elbow, they don't do anything with them until they become an issue. It's something that had not affected him in any way pitching prior to this. It's starting to affect him with numbness and tingling in his hand."

Jason Beck, DetroitTigers.com

The only description given is "the mass of tissue", which is "[comparable] to a cyst" in some way. So... I have no idea what that actually is. Sounds kind of freaky. Nate just has random masses of non-bony tissue growing in his elbow? Is he a mutant?

Fu-Te Ni has been called up to take his place, so we should get our first look at him fairly soon, given the Tigers' tendency to tax the bullpen.

Friday's game was not the first time the Tigers had faced Pudge since he moved on to less awesome things-- they played the Yankees once after the '08 Farnsworth/Pudge Swap o' Surliness. But that was just a makeup game. This was the first time the Tigers and Pudge came face to face at the start of a proper series, having spent the entire season thus far apart. DUN DUNNNNN.

--Pudge looks exactly the same. I don't think he's actually aging. Also, Rod and Mario claimed that Wandy Rodriguez was the first Rodriguez he had ever caught in his career (making for a Rodriguez-Rodriguez battery), which is kind of remarkable if true, but I am WAY too lazy to fact-check them on that.

--Miguel Cabrera's homerun was enormous. Vast. Gargantuan. It hit the back wall of the stadium, on the edge of the windows. Placido Polanco also homered in this one, although it was not nearly so jaw-droppingly magnificent. He compensated by hitting his with two men on base.

--In his return to Minute Maid, Adam Everett had only one hit, a double. He looked awfully relieved after he hit it, though.

--Late in the game, Josh Anderson stole second off of Pudge. Oh my holy cats was Pudge angered by this. He very plainly thought that he had thrown Anderson out (it looked like the throw beat Anderson, but the tag might not have gotten down fast enough), and he uttered a few choice words when the ump called Anderson safe. Ballsy of Josh Anderson, especially since he's been vaguely disastrous on the basepaths in the last few games.

--According to Rod and Mario, Magglio's hair was weighed after it had been cruelly shorn from his head, and it was found to weigh TWO POUNDS. I am not sure that I believe that, because HOLY CATS TWO POUNDS. But, if true... well, it could definitely explain his at least temporary hitting bounceback. Imagine losing that much weight from your scalp all at once! Didn't help today, though, as Maggs stranded something on the order of seven billion Cats on base.

--Verlander was back to his early-season inefficient ways. Very disturbing to see, I kind of felt like I was having some sort of hallucinatory flashback. He threw 118 pitches in 5.1 innings. Wandy Rodriguez wasn't that much better (106 in 6), but I just found it particularly worrying to see Verlander regress like that, you know?

Quoth Justin: "I'm not gonna adjust until I have to." Oh, OK.

--Polanco made a brilliantly good turn on the 6-4-3 double play that ended the 6th. Michael Bourn slid directly at him, but he held his ground and managed to get the ball out of his hands about a millisecond before Bourn upended him. The kind of play that makes you love double plays a little bit.

--The Return of Tim Byrdak! He struck out Donnie Kelly and walked Curtis Granderson. He was not wearing pitching goggles.

--JOEL ZUMAYA. We need to have some STERN WORDS here.

At one point Zoom hit 105 on the Minute Maid radar gun (not the FSND gun, they don't take it on the road, they just use the readings from the local stadium gun), and he was throwing in the triple digits for pretty much the entire 8th inning. Now, I would suspect that the Houston gun was running a little hot, because 105? Really? REALLY?

But there's no denying the fact that Zoom was leaning HEAVILY on his fastball tonight, and he was pumping it up as high as he possibly could-- it doesn't really matter if that actual speed was 105 or 100 or 99 mph. We have discussed the fact that Zoom tends to get in trouble when he relies on his fastball too much. That happened here. He wasn't locating it, but he just kept going right back to it.

Zoom, darling, if you can't control your fastball at 99, the solution is not to pump it up to 103. Throw a different pitch. I know you love the fastball like most people love their children, or their pets, but some days your kid is gonna be an unrelieved brat, and some days your cat is going to be all hairballs all the time, OK? And that metaphor is going to get convoluted pretty soon so I'm going to abandon it now, but you know what I mean.

The blown save and the loss both belong to Zoom here. Double-whammy. I can't say that he didn't deserve it tonight, though-- Justin was in position to get his 9th win, a respectable number of runs had been scored, the winning streak was in order, Fernando Rodney was not likely to pitch. All seemed well. Alas, alas.

--G-Money got hit in the nuts on a backswing. He went down like he'd taken a bag of bricks to the face, and it looked like he was crying (or screaming) into the trainer's shoulder for a bit. He stayed in the game though! And people say baseball players aren't tough. A soccer player would have milked that for 8 thousand years.

--Mario made the obligatory Darin-Erstad-was-a-college-football-player mention, but Rod spiced it up by immediately mocking him for calling a punter a proper football player. We were then treated to a story about how Rod used to perform all manner of football kicking duties when he was in high school, except he was terrible at field goals.

--Saturday's game will be Alfredo Figaro vs. Felipe Paulino. Felipe isn't related to Ronny Paulino, right? They're both from Santo Domingo and they're a couple years apart, but I just don't know.

This was such a good series. I mean, we always want to see the Tigers win, and we always want to see them sweep series, and we always want to see them give the hometown crowd some quality entertainment, but for some reason it was even better when the opponent was the Cubs. Maybe because anticipation was running so high for this series? And all of the games were wicked close, so it was good baseball all 'round. I don't know. This series gave me a little spring in my typin' fingers, put a smile on my face, cliche cliche, etc.

In fact, this is how happy it made me:

Just look at that smile.

Arrrrmando finally gets a win! The last time he managed to hang a W on his name was back in April, so this is heartening, heart-warming, encouraging, etc. He was far from perfect-- after that first inning I thought we were going to see a performance that would make his continued presence in the starting rotation Highly Awkward-- but he was good enough to out-duel Ted Lilly, and that's the main thing. When he came out of the game he got an enormous hug from Rick Knapp in the dugout, much to the delight of Rod and Mario and all right-thinking people everywhere.

By the by, did you know that Ted Lilly's full name is actually Theodore Roosevelt Lilly THE THIRD? He and Frederick Alfred Porcello THE THIRD ought to start a club, or maybe a support group.

Magglio hit a two-run homer in this one and was 2-for-4 last night, making him 3-for-8 with 2 RBI in the Post-Hair Era. This is plainly terrifying. Now he has reason to believe that the... the shearing had the desired effect, i.e. it was a slumpbusting move, and lo, the slump has been rendered bust.

We don't want to encourage this! First Fernando cuts off his triangular pharaoh beard, then Nate kills his huge sideburns before they even have a chance to grow properly, and now Magglio removes a priceless work of art. Actually I feel that this string of bad decisions dates back to last season, when Brandon Inge did this.

SIGH.

Ramon Santiago also hit a homerun today, bringing his total for the season up to five, that being two more than Magglio now has. At the start of the year, who would have predicted that, by late June, Ramon Santiago would have more homeruns than Magglio Ordonez? Nobody, that's who, excepting possibly Ramon Santiago's mom.

Since we're on the topic of homeruns anyways, we may as well address one of the few :( moments from Thursday's game: the Miguel Cabrera Lost Homerun. If you didn't see it, the ball hit the outfield fence rail in front of the seats, well above the wall and the yellow line. Because it hit the fencing, it dribbled down the wall and ended up back in the field of play, where it was called a double. For some reason Leyland didn't challenge it, even though instant replay definitely would have given Miggy the HR.

For a short period of time, when the game was 3-2 Cubs, it seemed like it was going to be a big deal. Miggy did homer in the Wednesday game, and all's well that ends well, I guess, but he was robbed, yo. Rough.

Oh, I suppose we also owe a small tip of the cap to the bullpen, who were used a crazy lot in this series (every single reliever except for Freddy Dolsi pitched on Wednesday) and did not, in general, Ruin Everything. Fernando made things dicey today by getting too cute and giving up a homerun and a double, as is his way, but he managed to scrape the save, keeping him deceptively perfect in that stupid category. I think I have trust issues when it comes to Tigers closers.

Just as a side note, do you know how many errors the Tigers committed in this series? That would be a grand total of ZERO. I don't know what it is about the Cardinals, but it just gets creepier and creepier the more it looks like the problem really is with the Cardinals.

Now the Cats are off to Houston, for THE AWESOMELY AWKWARD PUDGE RODRIGUEZ REUNION! I want to see him and G-Money exchanging stilted, uncomfortable smalltalk on the field. FSND, you know what you must do.

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOooooooooOOOOOOOO!

Jason Beck has the scoop.

"Change," Ordonez said. "Overhauling. Maybe I hit like old Magglio."

The first 90-degree day of the summer in Detroit might've also had an impact.

"Hot," he said. "Too heavy."

FSND's Twitter has a picture of the new/old look. Sigh. It's not bad, it's just... it's not as fun. And I LIKE fun, catdammit.

I have hastily compiled a timeline of my own photos of Magglio's hair. You will note the changes in camera quality and photographic ability as we trundle through the years. These images range from 2005 up into the 2009 season.

Now you may truly understand what it is that we have lost.

Sad Cubs are sad.

On the whole I am pleased with this game. Edwin Jackson did not look as sharp as he normally does-- he walked four Cubbies today, when he's averaging about two walks per start this season. But he still managed to pitch 7 innings while only giving up two runs, which is a) quality, b) respectable, and c) enough to keep a team logically in a game.

Now, there have been days of late where two runs were an insurmountable obstacle on a par with Mt. Everest for the Tigers' bats, and it looked like that was going to be the case again, as Cats were left stranded at third with less than two outs (the worst of all strandings) over and over again. But no! Tonight they managed to scrape together just enough runs for a walkoff win.

There were discouraging things, namely Magglio and Zoom. Magglio, in his first day back since Jim Leyland benched him out of disgust, went 0-for-2 with a walk, and was pinch run for in the 7th. Not exactly the scintillating, world-beating return that we (or Scott Boras) would have wanted.

Zoom blew the save, giving up a two-run homer to someone named Micah Hoffpauir. What is a Micah Hoffpauir? It's something that doesn't hit many homers above the triple-A level. But Zoom grooved one right at him. He also hit 104 on the FSND radar gun (grain of salt) at one point, which makes me worry that he's falling in love with that velocity again, to the detriment of his location and his other pitches. I know that in some ways his velocity is what makes him a good pitcher, but I think we've all seen the kinds of problems he can have when he tries to make it ALL about the speed.

Enough discouragement: this was a good win. Thank you Brandon Inge, thank you Ryan Raburn.

Etc:

--Gerald Laird is throwing out 37% of the guys who try to run on him right now. Pudge is throwing out 38%. Just sayin'.

--Polanco and Magglio both had those Breathe Right strip things on their noses today during the game. What's up with that? Do they have colds, or is it some weird attempt to make sure they're breathing enough to ward off cramps?

--Freddy Dolsi is back up, Ryan Perry is back down. So now we have Freddy Dolsi, Alfredo Figaro, and Frederick Alfred Porcello the Third. They're multiplying!

--All Star voting is stupid, it is terrible, but you know what? Go forth and stuff those e-ballots with Tigers. Just go to the Tigers homepage and click where it says "Always vote" at the top, it'll take you right to the ballot.

'Cause, you know what? I don't really care that Evan Longoria is OPSing .972 or whatever. Brandon Inge is OPSing .906 and has one more homerun than Longoria does and is much more awesome on defense AND DESERVES TO GO TO THE ALL STAR GAME, SCREW YOU IN YOUR STUPID EYEBALLS, EVAN LONGORIA.

SPREAD THE WORD. VOTE BRANDON INGE, FOR TRUTH AND JUSTICE!

VOTE MIGUEL CABRERA IF YOU LOVE KITTENS!

VOTE CURTIS GRANDERSON BECAUSE HE IS PERFECT!

Feel free to spread those images around wherever. You have until 11:59 PM eastern, July 2 to get your vote on. You can vote up to 25 times... per email address. And I KNOW many of you have more than one email address. DO IT. DO IT. DO IT.

Ah, how refreshing it is, going into an offday with an interleague sweep under your belt. It should be a rule of baseball that if you sweep the Brewers, you have to wash down the sweet taste of victory with some sort of beer. Unless you're Rick Porcello, of course. We don't want to encourage illegal behavior.

Friday was a mess of rain and delays and instant replay. Arrrrrmando didn't get the win, as the 2+ hour delay knocked him out after four innings. Play resumed, soggily. The Tigers managed to make it an official game and an official nightmare for Braden Looper with a glorious flurry of homers (Miggy, Granderson, The River Thames [who hit a second homerun off of the poor sod who came in to relieve Looper]).

Instant replay giveth, and instant replay taketh away. The first instant-replay-overturned play in Comerica history was a Miguel Cabrera 'single' that was actually a homerun. The ball had bounced back onto the field, which I guess confused the umpires? It seemed pretty obvious to everyone else in the entire world, but to their credit the umps went in to look at it and they got it right in the end.

The second replay was similar-- Dusty Ryan hit a ball that bounced back onto the field. This one was originally called a homerun, although again the player at least seemed to feel differently, as Dusty pulled up at second and looked for the call before continuing around to home. Melancholy Ken Macha argued it, the umps had a look, and sure enough the ball had bounced off the fence, not the (out of play) wall, as I guess the umps had first assumed.

So instant replay gave the Tigs a homerun and took a homerun away from the Tigs, and was correct both times. Why were people so deathly afraid of introducing this to the game of baseball? TECHNOLOGY, HELL YEAH.

Also, Brandon Inge had his first triple of the season.

The game ended up getting called in the 7th inning, but by then it was 10-4 Tigers, so it's not like a near victory was being cruelly snatched away from the Brewers or anysuchthing.

Saturday was the big league debut of Alfredo Figaro, who fanned seven in five innings, gave up two runs, and got his first win out of the way early. Who is Alfredo Figaro? He's a 24-year-old righty who throws pretty hard, and IS THE COUSIN OF FERNANDO RODNEY. He also says things like this:

"I was a little bit nervous in the third inning," Figaro said. "But then I thought in my mind, 'You know what? That's baseball. Throw your ball how you've thrown it for a long time and if he wants to hit, hit. And if he doesn't, strike out.' "

...

Figaro said his teammates poured beer on him in the clubhouse to help him celebrate his first win.

"I'm happy with that," he said, "because I'm in the big leagues with all the stars, all the big guys. I'm very, very happy for that.

"I know they need a fifth starter. I can be that fifth starter. I believe in me."
Chris Iott, MLive article

He thought in his mind! He believes in himself! I believe in you too, Alfredo! I believe that you are wee and adorable! I believe that the blood you share with Fernando will not automatically doom you to a career of frustrating, inconsistent, stressful outings. Prove me right.

Fernando actually threw a 1-2-3 inning to finish off the game for his cousin. Could this be the start of something beautiful?!

Sunday was basically the Return of Justin Verlander. He had a crummy outing in his last start, so this was precisely what he needed: nearly 8 innings, five hits, two runs, EIGHT strikeouts. Both the runs came off of singleshot homers.

Yovani Gallardo is nothing to sneeze at, so the fact that the Tigers were able to squeak out a win here (thank you Brandon Inge for your glorious three-run blast!) is legitimately commendable. And, hey, Fernando had another 1-2-3 inning, which I will note for the sake of fairness, given all the piling-on I generally do where Fernando is concerned.

Now! In addition to the mostly quality pitching and the bats that actually did things, the Tigers had 3 errors this entire series, all of which came in the slippery wet rain game, as opposed to the 6 errors they had against the Cardinals. Are the Tigers really getting their act together, or was this little burst of effectiveness just a combination of luck and Brewers? The Cubbies are coming to town, on a win streak of their own, so we shall see what we shall see.

I really hope it wasn't just luck and Brewers.

ETA: OH, I nearly forgot! Look at who I saw at Fenway on Tuesday! :D