gehringer_2

Retro baseball makes its appearance. a Bunt.

LOL - 20 deg, 104mph, out.

There have been a bunch of low hit games the last few days. I wonder if the league sent the Umps a "call more strikes" directive after some of the football scores we were seeing and they have overdone it - or at least this crew.

Which team has a player get tossed fisrt for blowing up at Marhley?

Umpiring is just getting stupid now. Neither team may ever score if this K zone continues.

Rodriguez perfect after 5. If there ever was an offense that could lose a game when its pitching was perfect, this is it.

Scales talking about Riley needing to hit the ball out front more, but he's not going to be able to put the ball in air if he tries to hit is further out front unless he lowers his bat path. The two go together.

This team must have insulted all the favorite wives of the chief baseball god.

Ironically, I bet if Riley would level out his swing just a bit, a little he would hit fewer ground balls. That much inclination puts him on top of the ball if he's infront of the pitch.

Meadows on base in front of him.

yeah - even though Tork saved his AB with a walk, he also had good pitch to hit and fouled it off, as did Riley in his AB.

this is feeling awfully familiar

I also wonder though, the Tiger brain trust puts the equation as "don't swing at pitches out of the strike zone", but how many hitters are trying to do that? How much good does it do to coach players to do something they are not capable of doing? Isn't the real question pitch recognition? It seems if you can give a player some kind of tools to help him recognize when a pitch is going to be out of the zone, then you are giving him something he can use that helps him stop swinging out of the zone, but to just tell him to 'be disciplined" and not to swing out of the zone? What does it do for him if the player doens't know how (or in then end doesn't have the capacity) to get there? Besides make him a tentaive hitter anyway. I can believe there are a few guys who just have to focus better but I doubt that is the case for most. if you do something like help a guy develop a swing that gets him to the ball quicker so he can wait longer on his swing decision, then you might get better K zone control as the secondary benefit. When I look at Javy, I see a guy with a long, huge swing who commits before he knows the pitch is a slider. No amount of 'discipline' fixes that without a mechanics change. If I'm coaching Javy, I'd almost rather just work on helping him go ahead and hit the bad pitches he's going to swing at.

leaves you wondering what the point of it all is if the most you get out of it is PR for the fans to make the org look like it's doing something.

One thing true the last two nights was that when faced with an umpire that was expanding the zone, the Tigers didn't follow and paid the price for it in called strikes. Maybe they are so focused on 'staying in the zone' they are not adapting when they should be. Once an umpire shows you what he's going to call, you'd best go with it as best you can.

Maybe they can get on the board tomorrow before the terrible umps get in their heads, which had to be a factor in these first two.

good to see Tork still battling in his last two ABs.

Parker with 3 hits, 2 doubles and a HR on the day.

you can a talk about rebuild schedules and contracts all you want but this is still a do of die year for Green, Tork, Rogers, Baddoo, and no less for the guys Harris's picked up who were all sitting on the edge of being or not being major leaguers (Maton, Vierling, McK). Bottom line is that even if the org isn't approaching this season with any particular urgency, these players need to be.

signs of life - a barrel for Tork and HR for McK.

and he isn't even an Avila guy.

Baltimore hitters adjust to Wentz. Tigers appear to be incapable of in game adjustments. It's something that's impossible to quantify but watching this team over the last three season I always wonder if there is such a thing as too much game planning. Not enough just relax and see ball - hit ball?

Bad week for Tork and Greene is going to be a bad week for the Tigers, and it's getting to be a bad week for both.

and now the wheels come off. It's amazing how pissy little things that extend innings end up making all the difference in a baseball game.

Dan talking about how many Tigers in the lineup have less than 500 career AB. Most of these Tigers actually haven't seen that much of anyone.