Drew And Fernando

Drew Smyly showed the Fox Saturday Game Of The Week audience that he belongs. Fernando Valverde showed them why he's running on reputation alone.

In six innings, Smyly allowed two hits and one run, a first inning homer by Nick Swisher, and earned his first major league win.

Andy Dirks, playing in place of Delmon Young, hit a three run homer and made two fine defensive plays in left field, on drives that would have had Delmon Young twisting in the wind. 

With the score 7-2 Tigers, in came Fernando to pitch the ninth. We know to never tune away when the game is in Fernando's hands. Despite a perfect 49 for 49 in save opportunities last season, Mariano Rivera he isn't.  

We got: home run (Swisher, his second of the game), fly out, walk (A-Rod), foul out (two outs, yeeeha!), they give A-Rod second, single (Granderson, A-Rod scores), they give Granderson second, Ibanez doubles him in. 32 pitches into the inning, now it's 7-5, Eric Chavez is the tying run, and Your Baseball Blogger wants to play Strangle The Closer.

One more biscuit for breakfast, and Chavez would have hit it out. Don Kelly went deep into the right field corner to grab his liner, and the 27th and often hardest out to record was in the books.

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We got our wish again: Danny Worth is back, Hinge is gone, and we can put away the circus music that played whenever Delmon Young went after a fly ball.

Young will be examined by doctors on Monday, when the Tigers come home from this three game road trip, and could be cleared to play then. Or he might never play another game or the Tigers.

Maggie and I aren't rednecks, but we get called rednecks now and then, by well-meaning, ignorant, slightly drunk acquaintances. We apparently look and act the part. She lets it pass. I'm offended. I think "redneck" is the equivalent of the N word. But we don't have favored nation status, and it will never become "the R word."

Either no one should be called names, or everyone should be called names. As Maggie's liberal middle-aged girlfriends like to say: that's only fair, isn't it? 

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Four teams have expressed interest in Hinge. That is, four teams more desperate than the Tigers to field a lineup of nine major-league quality players. The Twins and A's, and the Orioles despite their 13-8 record, but also the Diamondbacks, last season's NL West champs.