Hurlers Making us Hurl

Well Justin Verlander is up to his old tricks, requiring 50 pitches to get through 2.1 innings against a Yankees lineup that was without Jeter, A-Rod and other regulars.  You'd think he'd be attacking the strike zone relentlessly this spring in an effort to reverse last year's inefficiency.  Yesterday's outing had 29 of 50 pitches going for strikes.  Not exactly confidence-inspiring, but again, not cause for ledge-walking.  I will be keeping a weather eye on Justin, however.

At least we got some good news on the Bondo/Zumaya injury-watch fronts.  Geez, if they'd both had bad reports, it would be difficult to find a ledge not crowded with despairing Tigers fans.

On to our young prospects, who are defying conventional time-tables and threatening to make a run at the big club.  I like Kurt's take on Porcello over at Mack Avenue Tigers.  Porcello's situation fills me with a scary mixture of excitement and caution.  I don't want to see him rushed, but some folks are just flat out ready.  Also, Ryan Perry has impressed.  See Sean's piece on Perry.  Could we have a crowd of would-be closers at the end of Spring Training?  I'll take that problem any day of the week.

One last non-pitching related note.  I wish I could have seen yesterday's game in which Sheff was HBP twice (not by the same pitcher).  Was he threatening revenge on Yankee-dom?  Will he have his hands full this season lurking in dark corners, waiting for an opportunity to get his hands on his countless enemies?  Why watch the soaps?  It doesn't get much better than Sheffield and his self-created drama.  And, imagine that, there will be some on-field drama as well as we follow the chase for 500.

Inherited Runners

One of the maddening parts of last season with the Tigers was the inability to prevent inherited runners from scoring.  Each time a reliever came in with runners on, I cringed, because I knew what was coming.

To me, this statistic is crucial.  We've got to have some arms(minds) that can come in with runners on and prevent them from crossing the plate.  We were absolutely abysmal at this in 2008.  Look at these numbers, our five worst IRA (inherited runners allowed) offenders:

Aquilino Lopez - 29

Bobby Seay - 16

Freddy Dolsi - 12

Zach Miner - 11

Casey Fossum - 10

(Side note, Farnsworth had 7, and he was only a Tiger from the trade deadline on.)

Total for our top (bottom) five:  78 inherited runners allowed

I'll compare this to the totals of the four AL teams that made the playoffs:

Rays - 45

Angels - 48

Red Sox - 59

White Sox - 67

You can see from the list of offenders, these are our core middle relievers (with the exception of Miner who converted to starter.)  So not acceptable, so depressing, so mind-numbing, so making me lose my sanity!