Bleepin Day Baseball !!!

Eighty five percent of the world's workin! The other fifteen's out at the bleepin beach listenin to the game on the radio! It's a playground for the bleep-bleepers -- 

Uhh . . . but it's Sunday . . . ? 

Well . . . that's no excuse. It's still a tough American League Central. (It's a tough American League, period.) 

Indeed it is, and that makes having Scherzer and Verlander atop the rotation reassuring. 

Scherzer starts have become Verlander-like. You'd better watch, because amazing things usually happen. 

And amazing Max was this hot Sunday at Comerica, allowing one run and four hits through seven, while striking out nine Seraphim. The outing dropped his ERA to 4.13, and a few more like it will keep him from the dubious distinction of striking out eleven per nine innings with an ERA over four.

The win was his 14th. Nine strikeouts give him 195 -- three more than Verlander -- and first place among all starting pitchers.

Prince Fielder and Delmon Young homered back-to-back in the sixth off Johan Santana, into the same wind that kept kites aloft at the beach. Final: Tigers 5, Seraphs 1; and this portion of the make-hay-while-the-wind-blows home stand thus ends with six wins and three losses. Enormously better than expected, after it began with two of three dropped to the Orioles.

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Seraph, plural seraphim, noun, a type of celestial creature first mentioned in the Old Testament. In Christianity, they are the highest order of angels.

When Your Blogger was a lad and the Los Angeles Angels were a new expansion team, sports writers routinely called them "Seraphs." Like they do "Halos" now. I thought Seraph was a word for people from California. Like "Yankee" for New Englanders, or"Yooper"  for anyone who lived north of the Mackinac Bridge.

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And, after venturing into theology and the etymology of English, one naturally starts to wonder what Lee Elia is doing. 

Google search him and most of what you find is about The Rant. A baseball lifer, and what he's most known for happened off the field. Little is mentioned about, at age 73 in 2011, his appointment as a spring hitting coach with the Braves, and a special assistant to GM Frank Wren. 

Ungrateful For Small Miracles

The Pretenders committed three errors in the first five innings, that led to two unearned runs and an early 3-0 Angel lead. 

Baseball's 20th best defense has allowed 61 unearned runs. By comparison, the two worst fielding teams, the Rockies and Orioles, have allowed  53 and 54, respectively. Saving them so far has been the pitchers' knack for piling up strikeouts (they're fifth out of 30 teams). The fewer chances the fielders get to touch the ball, the better. 

It is thus with small satisfaction that Your Baseball Blogger mentions the fifth inning RBI knocks, a Young double and Dirks single, the eighth inning three-run miracle highlighted by Peralta's two-run double, and Drew Smyly's nice effort (six innings, four hits, one earned run) in place of the tweaked Doug Fister.

Small satisfaction also for all five gifts from Heaven coming with two out. 

Because kicking it around is going to cost them, in some game they'll really need to have a shot at that one game play-in.

 

GRINK-eee

Once Zack Grienke got the lead, there was nothing to do but ... well, uh ... leave. Just turn the dial. Check on the other games. (Change it, now, please?) 

That we did, and all we missed was Miguel Cabrera's 32nd homer, hit naturally with no one on, in the eighth to make it 2-1 and give the 39K sheeple in attendance hope that the others might remember what baseball bats are for and score some runs. 

Releivers Scott Downs and Garrett Richards finished off the Pretenders who, like  properly constructed electrical circuit, offered no resistance. 

Again, a starter's only mistake cost him the game. YBB has fallen back on that baseball cliche because it's happened often lately. Howie Kendrick hit a Porcello fastball for a two-out double in the sixth, plating Meicir Isturis and Mike Trumbo. Torii Hunter having extended the frame with a take-out slide that prevented an inning ending double play. 

Those other games? Down the dial where the White Sox play, where hitters know what baseball bats are for, the Pale Hose got two in the ninth for a 9-8 walkoff win over the Mariners, ending the M's eight game win streak. The win and Pretenders' loss -- of a game one or two well-placed hits would have won -- moves the P's back to 2.5 out in the division, and 2.5 out in the bridesmaid race.

The Future's So Bright ...

Max Scherzer struck out nine in seven innings, limiting the potent Angel offense to three hits, and Alex Avila hit his first homer since May 22, as the Tigers took the lead in the AL wild-card race with a 5-1 win.

So they take the Angels series, and winning series is what Skipper Leyland says will get you to post-season. As long as you win two out of three, three out of four, awful games like the 13-0 mess don't hurt in the long run.

Since June 28: three of four from T-Bay, split with the Twins, three game sweep from the Royals, two of three wins in Baltimore, three of four wins vs LAA. Their record over the last 18 games: 13-5, and where ARE my shades? 

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We'll take help from wherever we can get it; even from the Red Sox. 

Cody Ross, the former Tiger,  won tonight's game with a three-run walkoff homer, his third three-run shot in two days, and the Carmines defeated the White Sox 3-1. The loss, and the Tiger win, reduces the Chicagoans' lead over the Tigers in the AL Central to 1 1-2 games.

Two Out Runs

All seven runners plated by the Tigers tonight scored with two out.

And -- mirable dictu -- the rally that yielded four runs in the second started with a Rugburn infield single. 

Brennan Boesch, now experiencing the Terry McMillan Effect -- getting one's groove back -- doubled and singled in three at bats.

In eight innings, Doug Fister allowed two hits and one walk while striking out ten. A work of art. You could frame it and hang it in the museum. Then Boom Boom Benoit would come by and scrawl his name in the bottom corner with a Sharpie. Mike Trout tripled off BBB in the ninth, a blast that would have been yet another home run anywhere but Comerica. 

Our team won, though, and the win moves the Tigers one half game ahead of the Indians, Orioles, and Athletics, and one ahead of the Red Sox and D-Rays, in the race for the second AL wild-card spot. Six would-be bridesmaids, but only one dress. 

Just Turn It Off

Just turn the dial ... no, put it on FM first. Then, turn it. Now. Please ... ?

Maggie did as instructed, and we did something baseball fans can do in only a very very small precious few places in the States: cruise through town with the Blue Jays on FM. 

The switch was made because Jacob Turner, making a spot start in place of the disabled Drew Smyly, got whacked for seven runs in two innings. Four batters in, the score was 4-0, in a game we sensed was doomed even before pitch one. 

Every Angel except the batboy homered. 

The Pretenders, recently elevated to Bridesmaid status by qualifying for the second American League wild card berth, managed four singles off two Halo hurlers. 

13-0 ... boy oh boy oh boy, as Harry Caray would say during particularly frustrating Cub losses. First shutout in 158 games, a streak that had been the longest active in MLB. 

"Scouts In Town To Watch Turner," read a headline in one local paper. Your cynical baseball blogger speculated: Boy Scouts, Webelos, Tiger Cubs (!), Girl Scouts maybe (yes!)  while picturing kids in uniforms with a section all to themselves, in the upper deck nosebleed seats.

No, the real scouts were behind the plate, they all left early, and Turner's status as a prospect took a hit right before the trading deadline.

You're only a prospect for so long, before you become suspect. The start was Turner's fifth over two years. The seven runs raise his ERA to 9.15, and the six hits give him 27 allowed in 19 innings.

He goes again next week, in Smyly's spot, and the start may become a career-changing moment for the young man from St. Charles, Missouri who was once regarded as a cornerstone of the Tigers' future starting rotation.

Our other home team also lost, 6-1 at Yankee Stadium.

Nothing to do but go get 'em tomorrow. There are 180 days in a season, and they can't all be rewarding. 

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Most of this blog's traffic comes from Russia, and all of it is spam. Although I imagine a young Borat Sagdiyev in the glorious nation of Kazakhstan reading it, to acquire more cultural learnings from America. He's probably baffled. "Why he write so much words about third best baseball men in region?" he may be asking his brother in law.  "And you can keep clock radio! Have American transistor radio in brown leather case, with listening phone, made in Japan. Clock radio are for little girls!"

BRENNAN BASH !!!

Boesch's two-run homer in the seventh broke a 5-5, and provided the eventual margin of victory. Final: Tigers 8, Angels 6.

That's more like it! Just for that, he gets his old blog name back.

Ben-Wah acquires a blog name, for now at least: "Boom Boom," for throwing a home run ball to Mark Trumbo leading off the next half inning. Three of the last five hitters BBB has faced, going back to the ugly loss in Baltimore, have homered.