Tigers Trying To Get Over the Hump
By Blake VandeBunte • Sep 2nd, 2009 • Category: 2009 Season, Aubrey Huff, Cleveland Indians, Rick PorcelloLast night Tigers fans saw Aubrey Huff break out of his 3-30 slump as a member of the club. Ian at Bless You Boys said that he thought Huff would just need one big hit to break out of his slump and that was the case for at least one night as Huff reached base four times. The Tigers have a similar monkey on their back.
Back on June 25th the Tigers were 41-31 and were a season-high 10 games over the .500 mark. They have not gotten back to 10 games over since then. They have been 9 games over an astounding 11 times since then and have lost every single game after reaching that point. They are 0-11 when they are 9 games over .500 since June 25th, that’s really hard to do.
My belief is that if the Tigers can just get back to that point, being 10 games over, they can turn it on from there and finish the season 15 over or something nice like that.
So, here we are again on September 2 and the Tigers are 9 games over .500 heading into their game tonight against Cleveland. Rick Porcello will start for the Tigers against Aaron Laffey of the Indians.
The 20-year-old Porcello has tossed nearly 130 innings this season and the Detroit brass has done a great job of limiting his innings. My guess is that if the Tigers can expand this lead in the AL Central, we’ll see Porcello sit a start or two down the stretch. Porcello has two starts against this Indians this season and has been pretty darn good (1-0, 1.38). He’s tossed 13 innings and Cleveland hitters are batting only .191 off of him.
Laffey, 24, is arguably the staff ace in Cleveland now that Cliff Lee is gone. The lefty is 7-3 this season with an ERA of 3.40. He has one start against Detroit this season and it didn’t go well (5 ER in 3.1 innings). Over his three year career he’s given up 7 ER in 10 innings of work, so he has not had great success against the Tigers.
Should be great weather in Detroit tonight when the game starts at 7:05.
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I wonder if they would go to a 6 man rotation when Gallaraga comes back. Might not be a bad idea for at least a couple of turns through the rotation.
I’m with Mike, I think a 6-man rotation is just what the doctor ordered. It could help JV/Edwin get rested as well should the Tigers make the playoffs. I think they have to have a bigger lead than 3.5 games to go that way, though. Maybe 5-6 games would be sufficient.
[...] Tigers had lost 11 straight times when they were 9 games over .500 prior to today’s [...]