No Hitters? No-Hitter!

Thumbs Down.jpg It seems awfully unfair for a guy to throw a no-hitter against a team that evidently has no hitters, doesn’t it?

In the spirit of full disclosure, I didn’t see any of Monday night’s bizarro-rama — Max Scherzer also had a no-hitter going into the sixth?! — because I was out at a family thing. (I think I would have put my marriage in jeopardy had I attempted to participate in Baseball Tonight Live on ESPN.com while at the restaurant.)

Nevertheless, I listened to the Rays’ announcers call the ninth inning on XM Radio on my way home. What a weird experience that was. The last time the Tigers were no-hit — June 2, 1990, by Randy Johnson — I couldn’t have listened to the Seattle feed even if I wanted to.

Whoa. Got off track there.

Anyway, what are Tigers fans supposed to do now? Their team is still — astonishingly — a mere three games out of first place at the end of July. You can’t give up on them, can you?

After all, on July 26, 2009, the eventual division champion Twins were one game under .500 and in third place just four games out.

Apple to apples? Not even close. Even though the Twins lost Justin Morneau they surged. Without Magglio Ordonez the Tigers are already showing signs of retreat.

So what if the Tigers pick up a hitter or two this week? Does Adam Dunn give them enough of a jolt — and protection for Miguel Cabrera? More than Aubrey Huff did last year. Would it help to bring Jermaine Dye back from retirement home? What about Carlos Delgado? Or Joe Crede?

Now this post has taken a turn toward the absurd. But that’s what we’re facing, isn’t it?

Even if Dave Dombrowski manages to add a few pieces will they be enough. It’s hard to believe they would be.

But he better get someone to hit the ball. Otherwise, Matt Garza‘s no-hitter might not be the last we see against the Tigers this year.

Final Thoughts: The Call Was Blown, Now Leave It Alone

Armando Galarraga‘s brilliance on Wednesday night has been tarnished enough by a bad call.

Any move by official scorers, Major League Baseball, the Players’ Union or Amnesty International to “correct” the umpiring gaffe and hand Galarraga a perfect game 18 hours later will tarnish his performance even more.

Isn’t one asterisk enough?

Seriously, how can the official scorer charge an error on the penultimate play? He can’t ding Miguel Cabrera for the throw, it was fine. He can’t penalize Galarraga either; he made the catch, he tagged the base.

For me, the bottom line is that this can only get worse if “they” start tinkering with the results. In many ways, this game will be even more memorable because of Jim Joyce‘s goof.

Think about it, even if Galarraga never wins another major-league game he’ll always be remembered as that guy who threw the perfect game that the umpire blew. Not ideal but not Bill Buckner either.

And what, pray tell, is Galarraga expected to do if he was suddenly — what’s the appropriate word here, awarded, handed, reimbursed? — a perfect game? It makes no sense to try to right this wrong.

It stinks, yes, but it’s how baseball works — or doesn’t sometimes.

Armando Galarraga’s Near-Perfection By the Numbers

What has gotten lost in all the calls for do-overs and commissioner over-rides is the remarkable precision with which Armando Galarraga pitched against the Indians Wednesday night.

A quick look at the bottom-line stats are stunning on their own:

88 pitches
67 strikes
21 balls

As ESPN.com’s Jerry Crasnick points out, that pitch count includes the five pitches Galarraga threw to Trevor Crowe for the final out.

Awesome, right? Well, it actually gets better.

Thanks to a Pitcher Report Card produced by the good folks at Inside Edge, we gain insight into these nuggets of statistical goodness:

86 percent of Galarraga’s first pitches were thrown for strikes
93 percent of his first two pitches were strikes
75 percent of his fastballs were strikes
77 percent of off-speed pitchers were strikes
93 percent of two-strike at bats became outs
4 percent of Indians at-bats went to three-ball counts

In fact, out of the 23 categories Inside Edge uses to grade a pitcher’s performance, Galarraga earned an A+ in 20 of them. The three in which he fell short were:

50 percent of 1-and-1 counts became 1-and-2 counts (the MLB average is 54 percent) – Grade: C+
7 percent of outs were strikeouts in four pitches or less (MLB average, 12 percent) – Grade: C-
7 percent of Galarraga’s pitches were swing-and-miss strikes (MLB average, 15 percent) – Grade: F

As you might have guessed, Inside Edge graded the outing an A.

Galarraga’s surgical approach to the Cleveland lineup also included first-pitch strikes to every right-handed batter he faced (73 percent to lefties). Remarkable.

For a while, perhaps a long while, baseball fans will remember this game for what happened when the 27th batter hit a ground ball to Miguel Cabrera. That’s fine.

But I hope Tigers fans will also remember how tremendous — rather, how virtually perfect Armando Galarraga’s pitching was on June 2, 2010.

How Miguel Cabrera’s Recovery is Playing in Venezuela

Jorge Arangure Jr. writes an interesting piece today on ESPN.com’s La Esquina blog [$]. Here’s the gist of it:

Cabrera needs to repair his reputation, not only in Detroit, but also in his native Venezuela where he remains a polarizing figure. Despite being perhaps the best player from his country, Cabrera is universally beloved — not even close. Even this latest news, as humanizing as it was, may not be enough to sway public opinion yet.

“Some fans were a bit skeptical,” said Venezuelan journalist Efrain Ruiz, who writes for El Univeral. “Miguel has a difficult personality, without a doubt. But he’s always been asked to replace Andres Galarraga as the country’s national idol, and he simply doesn’t have that type of charisma. I really believe that’s weighed on on a lot, the tremendous pressure that exists to replace ‘The Cat.'”

How are you feeling about Cabrera these days: holding a grudge or forgiving and forgetting?

Roger Angell on Tigers/Twins Game 163

Not sure when the last time (if ever) the Detroit Tigers appeared in anything related to The New Yorker, but Tuesday’s game was fascinating enough to earn a blog post from veteran baseball writer Roger Angell. Here’s a taste:

The only complaint anyone could mount against last nightâ€™s one-game playoff victory by the Minnesota Twins, who topped the Detroit Tigers, 6-5, in twelve innings, is that itâ€™s about to disappear. The Twins, winners of the American League Central Division, will play the Yankees this evening in the first game of the A.L. Divisional Championship, while the National Leagueâ€™s Phillies take on the visiting Colorado Rockies and the Cardinals engage the Dodgers in L.A. Tomorrow, the Angels and the Red Sox start their part of the playoffs in Anaheim.

(snip)

What we do know is that none of these games are going to be any better than the one played last night, which we will only dimly remember by the time theyâ€™re over.

It’s not the cleanest copy you’ll read — players’ names misspelled, a factual error about Miguel Cabrera (he didn’t spend “a night in jail over the weekend”) and so forth — but it’s worth a read anyway.

Hey, Tigers fans appreciate the appreciation. We’d just rather be basking in it tonight at Yankee Stadium.

Game 163: Microcosm, The Sequel Nutshell

ESPN highlights available here.

The Score: Twins 6 – Tigers 5, 12 innings

The Gist: The Tigers and Twins played a game for the ages and both teams followed the respective scripts of the past three weeks. For the Tigers, that meant squandering countless opportunities and watching a division lead evaporate. For the Twins: everything going their way. Rick Porcello was awesome, Miguel Cabrera showed up for the first part of the game and Fernando Rodney, while taking the loss, pitched almost brilliantly in what was assuredly his last Tigers performance.

The Quote: “No matter what we did, it seems like it wasn’t meant to be. This is the best game, by far, that I’ve ever played in no matter the outcome.” — Brandon Inge

The Stat: 1 – The go-ahead run scored by Don Kelly in the 10th. Oh, how I wish it would’ve held upâ€¦for his sake.

Up Next: Spring Training, Lakeland, Fla., February 2010

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2009 Player Profile: Magglio Ordoñez

Magglio Ordoñez #30

Height: 6′ 0″ | Weight: 215
2008 Stats: .317 – 21 HR – 103 RBI

Few hitters can weather a 50-point drop in batting average and still be within shouting distance of a batting crown. But that’s how 2008 shaped up for Tigers rightfielder Magglio Ordoñez. Ordonez Magglio

The 2007 A.L. batting champ served up an encore performance in 2008: .317, fifth in the league, 22 home runs and 103 RBI. Certainly, having Miguel Cabrera batting ahead of him helped Ordoñez see more strikes in 2008, but since joining Detroit in 2005 all he’s done is hit.

Last season, Ordoñez fluctuated from month to month — .296 in April, .350 in May; .266 in June, .386 in July — but finished the season strong, batting .330 in the second half and mounting a credible defense of his batting title.

Ordoñez is a top-tier hitter thanks to a stroke that can deftly handle pitches across the strike zone, but the closer the pitch is to the inner-half of the plate the better. Like most power hitters, he can crush a fastball but he takes more delight in change-ups from righties — a .407 average when he hits one — and curves from southpaws, an astounding .600 clip.

At 35, Ordoñez shows no sign of slowing and looks at home as the Tigers’ cleanup hitter. And that should worry A.L. pitchers, again, in 2009.

2009 Player Profile: Miguel Cabrera

Miguel Cabrera #24

Height: 6′ 4″ | Weight: 240
2008 Stats: .292 – 37 HR – 127 RBI

Miguel Cabrera wasted little time in 2008 showing Tigers fans why he’s one of baseball’s premier hitters. His towering home run on Opening Day set the tone for a season in which he’d lead the league with 37 round-trippers.

After a cool start to ’08 — and a shift from third base to first — Cabrera quickly discovered his stroke and began feasting on A.L. pitching staffs, finishing with a .292 average.

The four-time All Star had particular success in 2008 against lefties, posting a .311 average and a .596 slugging percentage — though only nine of Cabrera’s homers came off a port-sider. This is just one anomaly in 25-year-old’s swing: a closer look at his hitting chart shows a decidedly pure pull hitter on ground balls and liners but more of a spray hitter on fly balls. In fact, most fly balls put in play Cabrera — roughly a quarter, including more than half his home runs — traveled to right- and right-center fields.

But perhaps the biggest mistake an opposing pitcher can make on Cabrera is to leave a ball out over the plate; and the higher the pitch, the better the chance he’ll crush it.

Look for more of the same in 2009.

The Top 10 Tigers Stories of 2008: #7 – Miguel Cabrera Can’t Field

Just three weeks into the season — or perhaps sooner — Jim Leyland realized that Miguel Cabrera was no Brandon Inge at third base and, at the same time, knew that Carlos Guillen was not Sean Casey at first.

So what do you do when you have to immovable objects on the corners of your infield? Swap ’em, of course.

On April 22, Leyland announced the switcheroo (“I’m telling you all now so you won’t be surprised tomorrow. I’m not going to take any questions about it because that’s what we’re doing.”) and it was the first sign that a team with four designated hitters was in deep trouble.

Cabrera was flashing a cast-iron glove at third — five errors in just 14 games; .900 fielding percentage — but proved to be more than serviceable at first base (.992 and 9 errors in 143 games). In fact, I’d go so far as to say he’s going to be a decent first baseman.

He came to Detroit billed as the long-term solution at third and in that regard he was a bust. But, man, can he hit.

The Top 10 Tigers Stories of 2008: #9 – Edgar Renteria Can’t Play

Number 9 Sure, it hurt when the Tigers sent Jair Jurrjens and Gorkys Hernandez to the Braves for Edgar Renteria. There was some — i.e., a tad — concern about Jurrjens’ durability and, well, to get a player of Renteria’s caliber at such a vital position you have to part with some value.

We know how that worked out.

In 2007, Edgar Renteria hit .332 with 12 homers and a .390 on-base percentage. The most glaring part of the Failed Renteria Experiment was his .977 fielding percentage; but that tells only half the story. His fielding percentage was virtually .000 on balls he should’ve had. He and Miguel Cabrera and then Carlos Guillen helped give the Tigers one of the most ineffective left-sides of the infield in the majors.

If not for a strong second-half of the year, Renteria would’ve finished nearly 80 points below his ’07 average. (He batted .254 before the All Star Game, .296 after.)

Now he’s the Giants problem — maybe for two years. For Tigers fans, it only felt like two years that Renteria played in Detroit.

Discuss.