Hey, good scoop. That's pretty interesting. Boston's pitching sucks as evidenced by the Yankees scoring 26 on them in a doubleheader.

Tigers lose 3-1, and two in a row. I can slowly feel them slipping with their offense. Their pitching has been great. Where has all the homers gone? And all of their base hits? They can still take the series, but if they don't I can hear the the white sox/twins slowly creeping up in the standings, while we go down

Bezeach, they are definitely showing signs of fading. I hope they can hold on. Still have 40 games to play. They might be fighting for the wild card before long.

i'm definitely not a student of baseball and i definitely am a bandwagon ass-cat when it comes to the tigers. but i've following them with enthusiasm all season. i like their players and i like their manager and i like what i have been told which is that there is a lot of effort and a lot of selflessness on the team (kinda like the 04 pistons).

i've been watching more of their games of late and i see that their pitchers still seem to be pretty effective (though verlander seems less so). but as you say, their hitting seems to be getting worse. earlier in some other thread, darth pointed out to me that pitchers do get tired as the season wears on. does that happen to hitters too? i would have thought that as the season wears on the advantage would swing to the batter a little bit since a) the pitchers do get tired and b) batters have had more of an opportunity to see pitchers. Is this not the case?

i also wonder if it could be that the tigers players (many of whom are fairly young, right?) are starting to get a little bit tight, concerned, self-doubting... i'm less concerned with something like a 5 game losing streak than i am with a more sustained slide to 500 or sub 500 ball. since the 5 game losing streak i think they are only 3 and 3 (or something like that) and their games don't have that feeling (very vague and impressionistic i know) that they're gonna win it.

two nights ago, when monroe tripled to lead off the 9th and young, maglio, and guillen only needed to hit the ball into the outfield but couldn't really seemed to me to signal some sort of sea change.

maybe somebody who is more of a student of the game than i could offer some sense of what might be going on...i'd sure like them, even if they don't beat texas tomorrow, to win a few from the white sox who seem so smug in relation to the tigers (and i guess with reason since they've pretty much cleaned our clock all year).

Tigers Trade:

The Detroit Tigers announced today the club has acquired infielder Neifi Perez
from the Chicago Cubs in exchange for catcher Chris Robinson.

I'm not sure I like this trade. How many catching prospects do the Tigers have without Robinson? Answer: Not many.

Well another loss and the Sox coming to town. Need to shake up the batting order. Offense is really sputtering and now they are 9-10 for the month. The seven runs they gave up today was the most this month, so 10 losses means that they are either tight or in a real slump when it comes to moving runners around the bases to the plate. You don't expect the league leader to blow a 6 run lead and then get shut out the rest of the game.

The wild card is starting to look valuable now. The hope now is that both Bosox and the Twins play .500 ball the rest of the way just to guarantee that the Tigers hang on and make the playoffs.

Gotta take 3-4 from the Chisox this week just to maintain the cushion before they head over to NY next week.

Hopefully, Leyland can get them to peak toward the end of the season, the way Chicago did last season. I'm not sure their lineup is good enough. Pudge, sans the steroids, hits with very little power, although he was very good today in the leadoff role. Maggs is completely screwed up. He rarely hits for power now. I'm sick of watching Thames pop up curve balls. I didn't expect the boys to keep the pace they had in the first half of the season, but I just hope their latest fall from grace won't be a resounding thud.

__________________
"I don't believe there's any problem in this country, no matter how tough it is, that Americans, when they roll up their sleeves, can't completely ignore. - George Carlin

Even the '84 team that lead wire to wire slumped some late. If this team was going to fold I think they would've started right after the Allstar break.
I say we don't panic until we are 2 games away form the wildC.
Poor Red Stockings they just look pathetic against the Yanks.

NO team can go through 162 games without a slump. better to happen now than the end of the season. good win tonight.