It has been a tough first half of the season for the Detroit Tigers, who are struggling just to get to .500. I wrote before that the best way to get out of a slump is to invite the Royals to your yard. That sort of worked, but it didn’t really cure any ills in the longer term. After this month, though, I have a new recipe: play the National League.
The Tigers began interleague play on June 8 in Cincinnati, and they won each of their interleague series except for the last one, taking two of three from the Reds, Cubs, Rockies, and Cardinals and avoiding a sweep in Pittsburgh with a game three win against the Pirates, the team with the second-best home record in all of baseball. The Reds, Cardinals, and Pirates are good, and the Cubs and Rockies are quite bad, but Detroit’s performance on a given night seemed to have little correlation to the strength of their opponent. MLB, unlike the NFL or NBA, is a situation in which any team can beat any other team on a given day, but I think this is more a reflection of the Tigers’ internal struggles.
Injuries continue to be an issue, the most troublesome example of which is all-star catcher Alex Avila’s knee and leg problems. Fortunately, Gerald Laird has proven to be a more than serviceable backup, but Jim Leyland consistently and accurately insists he has yet to have his best lineup on the field for any meaningful stretch of games. Utility man Don Kelly also is out as a result of flinging his leg into a barrier at dead-sprint speed.
On the positive side, Doug Fister looks to be healthy and back on the path towards pitching effectiveness. Ditto on the latter for Max Scherzer and Rick Porcello. The shining star continues to be Austin Jackson, who is hitting very well in the lead-off spot while recording zero errors in center field. Keep reading…
What’s up, loyal ALDLAND podcast listeners? Chris and I felt so bad about not having a podcast for almost two weeks that we decided to record another one over the weekend. Six man no-hitters, Euro 2012 match and violence recaps . . . it’s all here. Go ahead and take a listen.
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Lately, it seems like an epic Josh Hamilton night is likely to be of the not-so-good variety, but last night was epic and historic in a very on-the-field, baseball kind of way:
Hamilton hit four home runs in a game against the previously self-defying hot Orioles, which also is historic because it probably is the best night anybody’s had in Baltimore since the days when Gram and Emmylou were singing “Streets of Baltimore.”
And this time, I was the one learning a lesson after a Josh Hamilton epic night, finally getting an answer to a question I’d had since I was a kid: When you hit a home run, do you get an RBI for yourself? The answer is yes, and it came courtesy of the radio call that declared Hamilton had four two-run homers, an eight-RBI night. I can do that math.
