Ahira's Hangar

I am getting more and more excited about the game this coming Saturday. We will finally get to see Justin Verlander pitch - and against Cleveland's best pitcher at that. All of those games we went to see last year, and the only regular starter for the Tiggies we got to see was Bonderman. Should be a great game - hope you get a chance to catch part of it on TV, Danlo.

I picked Kenny back up off the DL in Fantasy BB so now have four Tigers:
Polanco
Guillen
and Justin

they're treating me real good!

Ouch! Justin had a rough night last night! I had 3 pitchers going in FBB-John Maine of the Mets won and Matt Morris of the Giants did well, Billy Wagner struck out 5 in 2 innings with a save, and my batters did pretty darn good. I picked up 2 points and have moved, in the past 3 days, from 4th place to 2 points behind 2nd. Halladay pitches today, so, wish me luck! GO A-Bombers!

Yeah, I think that the huge Verlander vs. Santana hype (which was extreme here in Detroit this week) got to the kid last night. When he is relaxed he picthes well, but when he gets stressed out...ouch. (Last night and World Series last fall being good examples of Verlander being freaked out).

He's still just a baby pitcher. Eventually he will learn how to handle the high pressure games.

I feel almost bad about including that last option on the poll for this thread. The White Sox really do suck this year. I have seen this behavior before in some Detroit sports teams - most memorably one year when the Wings had a ton of talent and everyone had high expectations of them and they didn't even make the playoffs (and not making it to the playoffs in hockey is a shameful thing, as so many teams make it in). I bet you couldn't get a player on that Wings team to admit it to this day, but they were obviously playing way beneath their abilities to get Bryan Murray, their coach, fired. And they did. The following year they played much, much better under their new coach.

And maybe that sort of behavior is unique to Detroit teams, with their decades of ineptitude and suckitude - but I have started wondering about the White Sox this year. This is still the core team that won the World Series only two years ago and who barely missed the playoffs last year. And yet they truly suck this year - and they shouldn't. And their manager is...well...umm...well, saying it nicely - he doesn't seem to have good people person skills.

Only time will tell...

We had a great time at the Tigers game today. Verlander had another bit of a rough trip (for him) but the Tigers scored so many runs it didn't matter and they spanked the Tribe. The rain even held off until the last out of the game.

I just hope that the Tigers can get the bull pen under control. We could possibly have the best record in baseball (or pretty darned close) if our dreaded relief corp (since Zumaya's injury) had not single handedly blown so many games.

I mean come on - we have had five run leads in the ninth inning and still manage to lose games.

If we do not make the play offs this year (and there is a good chance we might not, as either the Indians or Twinkies could easily win our division) the Zumaya injury and the craptastic relief pitching corps will be a huge part the problem.