Well the stretch run is upon us just a mere 16 games left in the season with the Tigers possessing a 4 game lead currently. The most important of those 16 being the 7 against the second place Twins 3 on the road and 4 at home. The Twins get the Royals for 6 games and the Tigers conversely play the White Sox for 6 games with each team having a 3 game series against the Indians to round things out. You have to think the Twins are under a lot more pressure to pull off a 5-2 or better record in those 7 games to really apply the heat to the Tigers . Conversely the Tigers can come out ahead by simply breaking even at just 4-3 or at the worst going 3-4 and only lose 1 game in the standings with 9 other games to play.
Of course all those stat break downs would not be needed if the Tigers hadn't come of there 6 game winning streak and proceed to go ice cold in every area. Even there reliable pitching both starters and bullpen have taken huge dips with the overall E.R.A. going north of 6.00 in the last 10 games and an offense that has reverted back to there beginning of the season woes. Even our ace Justin Verlander has lapsed into his habit of having that one bad inning amongst an otherwise dominating performance. If baseball kept a stat for how many individual innings a pitcher allows a single run or more, I believe Verlander would be at the top of the list. It also scares me to no end the number of no doubt about it home runs Edwin Jackson is giving up. He really needs to find his command on his secondary off-speed pitches very very quickly. As good as Porcello has been and seeing Robertson make a strong come back from injury, I would still rather see Jackson as the solid #2 starter behind JV.
All in all I am going to believe in this team til the day I look into the standings and don't see the Tigers atop it. Our bats can easily warm back up just at the right time in an instant. In some respects maybe its a good thing that our bullpen gets those bad outings out of the way now rather than later. After all Rodney and Lyons have been lights out 99% of the time this year and perfection is hard to maintain.
All that being said I still believe we are going to the playoffs and that our pitching will come around and the hitting will do just enough to get us by.
P.S. Good Luck to those Spartans against Notre Dame as they try and add the final nail in Charlie (Cry Baby) Weis's coffin.
As always feel free to post any comments good, bad , or otherwise
Jason
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