Apologies to William Blake. Try as I might I couldn't come up with a more creative riff on Detroit or Tigers. Though, if you say it with a working-class London accent, it almost rhymes.
Rick Porcello, who pitches tonight for Detroit, is seriously hot stuff. He throws strikes with both a four-seam and a two-seam fastball, a really good low to mid-eighties change-up, a curveball, and a slider. Right-handed batters have been pretty much useless against him. Lefties, meanwhile, haven't had huge amounts of success but at least they stand a chance. He doesn't get a lot of strike outs but he makes up for it with a lot of weak grounders. When he does leave the ball up, on occasion, he can be made to pay. The Yankees hit him up for six runs on six hits in 3.2 innings. Because he's up a little bit earlier than most expected (common thought was that he wouldn't be ready until the All-Star Break at the earliest) he is on a strict pitch count and other than Ryan Perry and Joel Zumaya, Detroit's bullpen isn't much to write home about. In other words: Go Rangers!
Armando Galarraga is the scheduled pitcher for Wednesday's game. Last year he put together a pretty good season but that success seems to have eluded him thus far. Of course, assuming last year was all luck (.247 BABIP) and that this year will be a regression to the mean might prove to be fatal as E6 has moved on to San Fransisco and their infield defense is much improved. He throws a slider and a fastball to right-handed batters. He gets strike-outs on the slider mostly by fooling the batter. He'll also throw a change-up to left-handed batters. But while he can, mostly, command the fastball and the slider, the change-up is a different story. He also continues to have a home run problem.
Dontrelle Willis is probably the probable pitcher for Thursday afternoon's game. He's made four starts since being activated from the disabled list: 1 good one, 1 not so-terrible-one, and 2 yeesh-that-wasn't-pretty ones. He's very hittable, more so to lefties than righties. But he did baffle Texas: 2 walks, 5 strike outs, 1 hit, over six and one-third of an inning.
Offensively, Placido Polanco and Magglio Ordonez *tilde implied* are really struggling. Apart from Miguel Cabrera, (surprisingly) Brandon Inge-who has settled in nicely at third base, and Curtis Granderson, you're not going to see a lot of power from the lineup. They don't run and they don't walk a lot. They also don't strike out in drastic numbers.
They don't score a ton of runs and so they're winning on pitching and defense. Edwin Jackson, freed from the clutches of Jim Hickey in Tampa, is having a stunning year. Justin Verlander is turning back into the Verlander that he was a couple of years ago. And they can go get the ball with the best of them.
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