Killing Two Bad Starts With One Stone

If it wasn’t painful before, we didn’t just get a horrific Kenny Rogers outing or a Nate Robertson outing in this 13-3 loss to the Cheesy Royales.

We got … BOTH.

K-Rodge: Six innings, six runs, eight hits, two walks, three dingers. Oddly enough, of all the bad pitches he threw, none of them were this one.

AND THEN!

Louis Skolnick: Six runs, six hits, two walks … four outs.

If they could have scientifically found a way for Fernando Rodney to blow a save as well, it would have been the entire second half magically compressed in one easy-to-swallow-but-gives-you-the-runs 9-inning baseball game. Then we could just end the 2008 season, trade Edgar Renteria for 10 Reuben sandwiches and work exclusively on Detroit Lions jokes. Er, uh, I mean … sure, Drew Henson can help the team!

The saving comic grace of the night, though, is brought to you by the Detroit Free Press. Spot the irony, win a Mal-O-Mar:

Save us, Merciful Tilde, and give us something to jauntily sportsblog about in September.

Read Full Post »

Tilde Trade Rumors: Ungammonized

There’s a reason Peter Gammons works for the largest sports media outlet in the country and Lynn Henning works for a still large metro newspaper but nevertheless the antagonist for this metaphor.

From Gammons’ Insider Only blog, which is not yet named Gammoblog because he’s not taking my suggestions:

• There are rumblings that the Tigers may have to lop $40 million off their payroll before the beginning of the season. But on Tuesday, manager Jim Leyland let it be known to upper management that he’d like his contract extended through 2010, and says “I’d like to manage another five years.”

Since the Tigers are already committed to more than $100 million for 2009, getting down to $100 million may be very difficult. Pudge Rodriguez is gone, Kenny Rogers, Edgar Renteria and Todd Jones may be as well. But if Jeremy Bonderman comes back and Justin Verlander returns to his 2007 form — as anticipated –and if they can add another starting pitcher, the feeling is that Detroit can contend again.

Getting rid of Rogers, Jones and Renteria? But who will fill the badly needed role of underperforming old guy? Oh … sorry, Gary Sheffield. Didn’t see you standing there.

But the important part here is that in an item about the Tigers cutting payroll, it directly omits Tild-A-Bear from the salaries that can be given up, thereby putting to bed Lynn Henning’s idea to move the bastard to a different team with a high payroll.

I think Curly ‘Fro Besser has another year left on that contract, so hopefully he can survive through ’09 and get a clause in his 2010 lifetime contract with the Tigers that he cannot be traded to any team as long as an Internet weblogpage is still posting regularly in his honor.

Read Full Post »

Something positive? Maybe? Yes? Eh, not so much…

While our hero continues his march back to the AL batting title (currently hitting .317, trailing Dustin Pedroia and his .321 avg), we check in with a fallen hero – Da Train himself, Dontrelle Willis.

Dontrelle has had a rocky road to recovery in the past few months since The Cleveland Incident, but Da Train has found his way back into the loving arms of Toledo. In fact, he picked up a win last Friday night down the road from me a bit in Richmond.

The final line:

6 IP 8 H 2 ER 2BB 5K

So, not bad, really. Still too many hits in just 6 innings (a WHIP of 1.67 is a bit much, no?) but the 5K and only 2BB is a reason for minor celebration.

And after the last two weeks, minor celebrations are about all we’ve got left…

Read Full Post »

WHAT HAVE I BECOME?

/sighs

Read Full Post »

Dude, Stop Saying That

The News‘ Lynn Henning has hinted before at the blasphemous notion of trading The Marquis de Tilde. The reasons against doing this are numerous, the most pressing of all being this blog might cease to be.

Henning’s still on it.

Now will come the corrections.

And what one wonders is whether the Tigers can sufficiently prune their paychecks in any way other than to trade Magglio Ordonez, a marketable player with a big but movable contract.

Who’s this Or-don-ez character? Some upstart young ragamuffin earning his squiggles the ol’ fashioned way?

Read Full Post »

Is That All There Is?

WHOA HO HO

WHOA HO Hooooooo……..

Can’t do it.

Can’t stay positive any more. It was bad enough allowing the AAA’s to break their losing streak on Friday. It was bad enough following yet another shitshow against Chicago. But watching JV get torched by the Blue Jays, who I think may have rolled out their long awaited Little League World Series lineup tonight, well, that’s kind of a breaking point. Oh sure, we’ll still check in to talk about The Tilde – especially with Maggs still very much in the race for the batting crown again. At least Big and Mig are choppin’ wood still. We look forward to the youngsters coming up in a few weeks and we hope we can see another start (this time successful…) from Da Train.

In a season of enormous lows and only occasional highs, we tried to stay positive as long as we could. But getting blown out by the Jays with Burnett and Halladay still to come? That’s just too much for me right now.

Read Full Post »

Now that’s just rubbing it in

According to the Chase Field scoreboard, the Least Hot player in all organized baseball is Kyle Farnsworth. Way to point that out, NL West.

Read Full Post »

How Can These Guys Lay Off Pitches That Close?

Read Full Post »

I Used To Rather Fancy Baseball

Earlier Tuesday night, Fernando Rodney was demoted from “closer” to “one of the closers.” The plan was to make Rodney, Joel Zumaya, and O’Doyle Kyle Farnsworth all closers. And a funny thing happened.

Farnsworth and Zumaya — the kids to help Walk Off Rodney — were the ones that blew saves. Rodney actually tossed three scoreless.

In a game where Bonk hit two home runs, the closers returned the favor by allowing the White Sox to have equal and/or greater value dinger force.

There once was a time when I liked baseball. I remember it like it was last Thursday. Which is funny, because it was actually last Wednesday. The game was simpler then. Detroit scores runs. Other team scores a few more runs. Then Detroit ultimately scores more runs, and the final score would be 32-31, with Todd Jones blowing 5 saves in the game, Miguel Cabrera going 9-for-21 with 3 home runs and 14 RBI, and Casey Fossum going a perfect 1/3 inning.

Read Full Post »

Where Do We Begin?

Spotted in the Comerica parking lot

Does it feel over to the rest of you? I know the numbers say the Tigers are “still in it”, but after this past weekend, it all feels kind of lost. The brief glimmer of “well, maybe the trade for Professor Farnsworth (I’m not l33t-ing it out after yesterday) will help the pen” has faded. The “Holy Shit! Look At That Lineup!” shine went away a while back, and now it’s hard to believe it was ever there at all. Now, here we are. Back under .500 and with three games at the Cell awaiting. When you look back and realize how close things are and how close to making the move the Tigers have been so many times this year, it’s all you can do to not drink and drink a lot.

Through it all though, our hero has remained constant. The Big Tilde is tied for 3rd in the batting race with Milton Bradley, hitting .320 with 14 dingers and 65 RBI. So, at least we’ve got that going for us. Thank you, Big Tilde – without you, all would be lost over here.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ll be over here listening to the Smiths the rest of the night.

Read Full Post »