OT: Tigers/Yankees/Alex Avila
Tigers are tied with the Yankees right now, 3-3 in the 8th, Alex Avila has two opposite field solo HRs off Bartolo Colon.
As I was one of the hasty idiots on this site who wanted him out of the lineup during the first few games of the season, I feel the need to come clean and admit, I was dead wrong. Guy's having a nice start to the season, and I'm glad I misjudged him!
He's playing much better than I expected him to.
on the other hand...
I just pretend he doesn't exist right now.
but his batting average is non-existent
Sizemore getting the call up today, not sure who goes down. Dirks also probably getting called up. Id say Jackson goes down and maybe worth.
this is a easy one will rhymes is finally going where he belongs why do you think he isnt playing tonight and scott sizemore got yanked from the Toledo line-up
Worth and rhymes. They are both just black holes of average with decent speed and D. Hopefully they can put guillen somewhere far away from the team, if sizemore is up he needs to start almost every day. He's too good to lose potential AB at a crucial period in his development as a major league hitter.
I assume dirks is just playing the hot hand and trying to get jackson some pressure free time to work out the kinks in his swing. Also think Dirks is who replaced zumaya on the 40 man roster
Danny Worth isn't on the Tigers Roster. He's at Triple A Toledo...so i don't think he will be sent down.
im giving him a trolling/flamebait moderation
fuck swisher
at least my packers beat both of them last season...
eh, i don't follow the nfl as much, but when I was a kid, the giants
As a Packer fan, how worried are you about losing Rodgers to injury again when the Lions come to town with Mr. Fairley?
Injury to Rodgers is always a concern. But we just won the Superbowl, so not something I'm dwelling on. When was the last time the lions did that?
...
Yet they still lost to the mighty Detroit Lions!
... this is getting old very quick.
Is it too pessimistic to say the season is slipping away already? after 2 straight sweeps and with the yankees in town, we can't afford this type of thing.
Probably a bit pessimistic considering the Twins and White Sox are behind Detroit...but nothing indicating that the Tigers can produce once the Twins/Sox start to...bummer.
is just the reverse of the pattern we've been following the last few years. Instead of collapsing at the end of the season we're getting all the losing streaks out of the way in the first half then we'll catch fire in july and august.
sound like a plan?
But that means when the fall comes around, Michigan, the Tigers, and the Lions will be dominating! #glasshalffull
Of a long summer in Tigertown.
If the Wings make an early exit and the Tigers continue this nonsense, it's going to be a very long summer.
once football season starts for Michigan and Detriot Lions(assuming the CBA are signed before season starts)!
Do you think that the Lions will be contenders in the division?
Because if they are it might make up for the long summer.
They will be contenders in the division. I predict second to that team in Wisconsin. We should be ahead of the Bears and the Vikings don't have a QB. Oh wait - they were able to snag Blaine Gabb- er, I mean Andy Dalt- er, I mean Ryan Malle- er, I mean Colin Kaeper- er, I mean Nick Sheri- er, who did they pick? That's right - Christian MFing Ponder with the 12th overall pick.
for NFC North title. They beat the Packers with a 3rd string QB starting for them(yes Rodgers got knocked out but the Lions held the Packers scoreless in 1st half with Rodgers at QB). The Lions were close in several games that a break or two could've had them finish off with a winning record. The Lions finally learned how to close out games as evidenced with 4 games winning streak to end the season.
The future is bright for the Detroit Lions and they're a team to be reckoned for the next decade. No more punch line jokes, no more disrespect and no more expecting to lose a game every Sunday!
The joys of being a Lions fan. Just when things are looking good...life comes by and kicks you in the nuts.
Of a long summer in Tigertown.
When you are near the bottom of MLB in ERA and Fielding Percentage, you are going to be a bad team.
This is embarrassing. So many changes need to be made, yet Leyland stubbornly refuses to do one damn thing. He needs to go along with others, but it won't happen until the end of the season. Stick a fork in Magglio (tough to say because of his great past seasons, but it's the reality). Inge is absolutely worthless now. Jackson needs to go to Toledo to regroup, just to name a few. They have brought up Sizemore, but that won't be nearly enough.
Dombroski has made way too many bad decisions these past few years. The Inge extension, Willis extension, keeping Guillen way too long, not resigning Polanco (this one is the worst in my opinion), Sheffield, the list just goes on and on and on. The guy has proven he can build a team out of nothing (Marlins and Tigers), but he cannot keep it going. He needs to go.
I feel good about the core of this team for the future, but there is no way they can win if they continue to play these specific guys. It's pathetic that Leyland comes out with the same lineup everyday, even though the top three hitters aren't hitting over .200. It's May Jim, track record mean very little now. So frustrating...
I still can't belive Dombrowski let Polanco walk away instead of offering him arbitration. We've had a gaping hole at 2B ever since, and Polanco is batting .385 and playing gold-glove defense.
And to think, he would have cost lessto keep than the Tigers are paying that piece of junk Benoit. Who do you think would be helping them more this year?
Polanco has had a most bizarro career. Everywhere he has been his team has treated him like he wasn't good enough, and yet all he has ever done is produce. The Cardinals and the Phillies (during his first stint there) would never give him an everyday job (kind of like Santiago now).
It is the overwhelming suck that has me saddened.
I don't mean to be that guy, but I'm going to be that guy.
The Tigers have been pretty awful the past few games, but I'm glad to see that Avila has been coming around. I've been saying since two seasons ago that I do believe he has a solid bat, and no, he wasn't only drafted because of his father in the front office. He has solid plate discipline, and while he has often had problems swinging through pitches, I generally trust him at the plate. I feel like he wasn't getting enough time behind Laird, and I'm glad to see that he is now the everyday guy.
To me, it seems like the Tigers are lacking a true leader amongst the players since Sean Casey and Polanco were there. It is good to see Inge trying to step up but the lack of production of the field kind of hurts his credibility and makes him look like a cheerleader.
The starting pitching is awful. The pitchers do not get all that far into the game. Verlander should be able to do a little bit more as a number 1 in regards to quality pitches and pitch count. The two only quality games were against Baltimore and Texas were he averaged 114 pitches in 8 innings (2-1, W vs Chi sox, W vs Balt, L vs Tex) Four other games, he reaches on average 118 pitches in 6 innings (0-4).
From the little research that I've done regarding pitch count and the win/loss of Josh Beckett, Roy Halliday, Cole Hamels, Josh Johnson, Bruce Chen, and Felix Hernandez, when you reach about 110 pitches for 6 innings, their teams were most likely to lose.
Avila's poor plays late in the game. Darn near throws a ball into left field on the throw to third, and allows a ball from Papa Grande to get by him. I'll give him a bit of a pass on the E; if you keep throwing heaters 4 feet out of the strike zone eventually the catcher is going to muff one. But still.
I'd like to find a clip of the Peralta-Granderson contretemps to cut up and show to my 8-year old boy. So many mistakes wrapped up into one nice object lesson for young players.
Baseball is a couple of big, unteachable skills and a steamer trunk of small and very teachable skills. And that play was a good illustration. Granderson has good speed down to 2nd, but starts his slide too late and unforgivably turns over because he wants to see if throw is wild and he can get up for another base. Two brutal mistakes.
Peralta uses fine natural instincts to grab Avila's less than stellar throw - see a theme there, Alex? - and has the presence of mind to make Granderson pay for his thieving ways.
But then he uses poor technique in applying the tag. Granderson has to come back. You don't go extend yourself away from the bag to tag Curtis, unless you also block the base with your body. If you can't block you must let Curtis tag himself out by keeping the glove hand close to the bag. Often the ump will give you the benefit of the doubt on bang bang plays if you use good technique.
But Peralta reaches, allowing Granderson to evade the initial reach and get a hand back on 2nd. The tag happens, but well away from the base. The two actions - Grandy's hand on the bag and Peralta's tag - happened so close in time but spatially far apart its unclear to me which came first. But the ump had his eyes on Peralta's tag and bailed Jhonny out. Good fielders don't make plays like that difficult for the ump.
Why did my comment here get tagged as flamebait?
..... just wanted an explanation. There wasn't anything remotely bad about my original reply. Please explain.
... I'd like an explanation as to why the tone of my original comment earned a flamebait tag. I'm assuming it was the tone anyway. If I should have started another thread that would be helpful too.
I can do it all day. Married guys often develop the skill of self-debasement as a survival tactic.
You can tag this as trolling & redundant and still give a reply. I don't mind; I'm trying to learn here.
I suppose the "Overrated" tag is an improvement.
I would be flagging them if I had the ability because you've posted almost 10 different times whining about it. Fortunately for you, I'm still in the penalty box for another few weeks.
Let it go. It's probably just one slackjaw and now that people know that it bothers you they will continue to do it. (Think elementary school playground)
some sort of advanced intelligence is applying an official mgoblog policy here is overstating things. Gotcha.
This place is full of retards, myself included.