Tigers 3 White Sox 2

Late in Sunday’s game against the White Sox, the Tigers had an emergency.  Luckily, the doctor was in.

After entering the 7th inning trailing 2-1, the Tigers put together one of their usual rallies, leaving Dr. Tim Mullally at the plate with a tie score, 1 out, and the bases loaded.  He came through with an infield single to plate Dave Hayse to put the Tigers back in the win column. 

Dan Titus lead off the inning with a walk.  After a steal of second, Titus moved to third on a fielder’s choice.  Scott Harris hit a grounder to short, and Titus attempted to move up.  The throw was late, and Harris was safe at first.  Dennis McGarel singled to drive in Titus to tie up the game.  After Ryan Lytle walked to load the bases and Anthony Perez was retired, the good doctor made everything better, pushing home the winning run.

Scott Harris (6-1) pitched the first four allowing 1 run on 4 hits, striking out 4 and walking 1.  McGarel pitched the final 3 and earned the win in relief, improving his record to a pristine 4-0 on the season.  He gave up 1 run, 3 hits, struck out 3 and walked 1.  It was a very positive performance for McGarel, erasing the memory of a tough outing in his last game against the White Sox.

The Positives

• The pitching continues to be solid.  Harris continued his recent trend of good starts.  In his last 5 starts, Harris has allowed just 5 runs in 20 innings.  McGarel was sharp as well, showing that the Tigers bullpen is just as reliable as the starting rotation. 
• Another solid defensive performance by the Tigers.  Mistakes are really being held down to a minimum lately.
• The Tigers offense came through in the clutch, sending 7 batters to the plate in the decisive 7th inning, with six of them reaching safely. 
• The Tigers got some help from the Brewers last night, as they defeated the Outlaws 7-4.  That means the Tigers and Brewers are now tied for first place with identical 12-4 records.  The Outlaws lurk just a half game back at 11-4. 

The Negatives

• The once mighty Tiger offense has lost its roar.  The Tigers have crossed the plate just six times in the past two games, a huge dropoff from the crooked numbers they were putting up during the big winning streak. 
• The injury bug bit the Tigers again, as Joe Anaya tweaked his calf making a leaping play in right field.  The injury was diagnosed as a small tear by team physician Tim Mullally.  No timetable has been given for his return, but Joe hopes to be ready in time to play on September 6th.

What’s Next

Another long layoff is in store for the Tigers, as they await a September 6th matchup with the White Sox.  That game will be played at the Steelyard in Gary at 5:30 pm.

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Game Preview–White Sox vs. Tigers

White Sox vs. Tigers

Sunday, August 28th

4 pm

These two teams haven’t met in over a month.  In that time they’ve had a rainout and a game cancelled by unplayable field conditions at the Gary Southshore Steelyard.

Don’t expect any cancellations today.  The weather is great and the Sportsplex field is in its usual pristine condition.  It’s time for the layoff to end.

The Tigers haven’t played since last Saturday, when they saw their 9 game winning streak come to an end, falling to the Brewers 4-3 in a highly competitive back and forth game.  That loss dropped the Tigers from first place, so a win today is highly important.

In the last matchup, the Tigers got a big lead early, but the White Sox made it interesting, roaring back and taking a 7th inning lead.  But the Tigers showed their mettle, scoring a walkoff win to keep their streak alive.  Hopefully today won’t be similar, and any big leads will remain just that way…big.

So come on down to the Sportsplex today at 4 to watch the Tigers start a new win streak.

 

Brewers 4 Tigers 3

The streak had to end sometime. And today was the day.

The Tigers came back from a two run deficit once again, but after the Brewers added a run late, the comeback came up just short.

After starter Dave Purkey had to leave early due to elbow pain, Mike Estrada came in and really picked up the Tigers, going three and a third innings of scoreless relief. A Juan Sanchez RBI double put the Tigers within one. It took a clutch hit to give the Tigers the lead.

In the fifth, Scott Harris singled, and Jeff Nelson followed that up with a double, putting runners at second and third with no outs. The Brewers were able to get the next two outs, bringing Anthony Perez to the plate. Perez got behind in the count, but laced a two run single up the middle to give the Tigers a 3-2 lead.

But the Brewers scored one each in the fifth and sixth, and in the seventh, the Tigers got the tying run to second with two outs. Dan Titus was stranded there, and the nine game winning streak was over.

The Positives

-A terrific job in relief by Mike Estrada today. After Purkey had to leave early, Estrada came in in a tight spot and kept the Brewers offense in check.

-Great clutch hitting by Anthony Perez to give the Tigers the lead in the fifth.

-The Tigers continued their recent trend of tough defense to keep the game close.

The Negatives

-The high powered Tiger offense was kept in check by a tough Brewers pitching staff.

-What’s Next

The Tigers can start a new winning tomorrow as they take on the Red Sox at 7 pm.

Game Preview–Tigers vs Brewers

Tigers vs Brewers

Saturday, August 20th

10 am

It took these teams almost two months of the 2011 season to meet, and it produced an instant classic. It’s been another nine days since that game. Will tomorrow produce another memorable contest?

Last Thursday the Brewers took an early lead and were poised to cruise to victory, but the Tigers, as they always do, stormed back to win the showdown, claiming their spot in first place. Since then the Brewers dropped a game to the Outlaws and the Tigers beat the Cubs. But that doesn’t make this game anything less important. The Tigers need to win this one to maintain their lead, and the Brewers need to win this one to stay in the hunt.

Dave Purkey takes the mound for the Tigers. Dave started last week against the Brewers. The Tigers D let him down early as the Brewers got off to a 4-0 first inning lead. But after that, Purkey was masterful and shut out the Brewers the rest of the way in one of his best outings of the year.

Another win would give the Tigers their tenth straight win. Come on down to the Sportsplex to see if another classic goes down.

Sanchez and Harris Headed to All Star Game

Following last night’s win against the Cubs, Tiger manager Jeff Nelson announced that shortstop Juan Sanchez and pitcher/first baseman Scott Harris were selected to participate in the 2011 All Star game.  All Stars from the Over the Hill League will take on their counterparts from the Roy Hobbs league on Friday, September 2nd at 7 pm. 

Sanchez has had a true superstar kind of season.  Check out these gaudy numbers:

Batting Average:  .634

Hits: 26

Runs Scored:  21

Runs Batted In:  15

Doubles:  5

Triples:  3

On Base Percentage:  .674

Slugging Percentage:  .854

 

Sanchez leads the team in all of those categories, and has played terrific defense at short. 

Harris has put together a nice season of his own:

Wins:  6

Losses:  1

Innings:  44

Earned Runs:  15

Strikeouts:  52

ERA:  2.38

—–

Batting Average:  .439

Runs:  16

Runs Batted In:  14

A hearty Tigers congratulations to Juan and Scott on their accomplishments.

Updated Stats

Tiger stats 8-19

Here are the updated stats through last night’s game.  Please let me know if you find any issues with them.

For those of you who are unable to open the link, I will bring print outs of the stats to the game tomorrow.

Nice work, Tigers.

Tigers 8 Cubs 3

The Tigers finally reached first place last Thursday after a long, strenuous climb to the top.  After a week there, they’re really starting to enjoy themselves.  And they’re playing like it, too. 

The Tigers won their 9th straight last night, easily displacing the Cubs 8-3.  The win moves the Tigers a half a game up on the Outlaws for first place in the Over the Hill League. 

Scott Harris started and picked up the win, improving his record to 6-1 on the season.  Harris went 4 innings, giving up 1 unearned run, 2 hits, a walk, and struck out 7.  Dennis McGarel picked up the save, pitching the final three frames. 

It wasn’t an overwhelming offensive performance by the Tigers, but when you can say your offense had an offnight, and you still put up 8 runs, you know you’ve got something special.  The top of the lineup continued to perform, as the top 6 in the order combined to go 10-16 with 7 RBI and 8 runs scored.  Ryan Lytle went 3-3 with 4 RBI, including an old school little league inside the park homerun, aided by some sloppy play by the Cubs and some aggressive coaching by Jeff Nelson.

With a man on in the 6th, Lytle stroked a pitch into the right center field gap for what looked to be an easy double.  The cutoff throw into the infield got away, trickling past second towards third base.  But for some reason, there wasn’t a Cub anywhere near third.  Lytle astutely noticed this, and took off for third.  The Cubs third baseman took a leisurely approach to retrieving the ball past third, not even really paying attention to Lytle as he approached third.  Coach Jeff Nelson saw this and waved Lytle home, where he beat the lackluster throw home easily. 

Juan Sanchez continued his stellar play, going 2-3 with a run scored.  Dan Titus had a ringing double, an RBI, and stole 2 bases.  Scott Harris helped himself with a 2-3 night as well as an RBI.  Mike Alleva and Joe Anaya added RBI’s as well. 

The Positives:

• Great night on the mound for the Tigers.  Harris breezed through his 4 innings in one of his best starts of the year.  McGarel followed suit to pick up the save.  The Cubs were held to 3 runs, and that really should have been just 1.  A stifling performance by the Tigers staff.
• It wasn’t the usual offensive onslaught, but the top of the order looked good and got the job done.  A three run first inning set the tone early, and the Tigers never looked back.

The Negatives:

• The Tigers had a few lapses on defense, but nothing major.  The defense has been a strength on this team during the winning streak, and they did make some fantastic plays last night, especially the final out of the game.  On a lazy fly to center, center fielder Mike Alleva started in on the ball, slipped and fell on the wet grass, got back up and tracked down the ball to make the catch.

What’s Next:

The Tigers won’t have much time to celebrate this one, as a quick turnaround brings about a Saturday morning matchup against the Brewers.  The Tigers look to extend the win streak to 10 and sweep the season series against them.

Outlaws Call Themselves the Favorites

With the end of the regular season in site, the race for first place is really starting to take shape.  Today finds the Tigers and the Outlaws tied for first place, with the Brewers falling a game behind.  The Dogs sit at fourth, but have threatened to forfeit their remaining games after being taken out of postseason contention. 

So it looks like the Outlaws and the Tigers will battle it out for first, despite not playing each other the rest of the season.  Both teams have one more game against the Brewers. 

Right now it could be anyone’s game.  The Tigers have surged to the lead after a slow start, winning 8 straight including a slaughter rule win over the Outlaws.  The Outlaws have won 4 straight of their own, including a shutout win over the Brewers on Monday. 

It’ll be exciting, that’s for sure.  Both teams need to take care of business and hope the other team stumbles. 

But apparently the Outlaws feel that they are the easy favorites to take first place.  Last week they provided a break down of the race for first place on their website:

8-13-11: The Dogs had to forfeit their August 6th game against the White Sox causing them to lose the opportunity to defend their Championship title. The league agreed in the winter meeting to incorporate that if a team forfeits 2 games due to lack of players, then that team is removed from the post season. The Red Sox and the Cubs each have 1 forfeit themselves. 
 
With the Dogs out of the picture you’d think the Outlaws could relax a little however, teams like the Tigers (winning streak of 7) and Brewers have tied the top of the standings with the Outlaws. Lets us look at each of those two teams.
 
Tigers
 
 The Tigers are the former team of many of the Outlaws and they made a good run for the title in 2010. They have many new faces to fill the holes left by Brian Osinski, Bobby Weinmann, and Jimmy Galvan. The new faces were recruited by team manager Jeff Nelson and they are simply good. Their line-up is topped by Dan Titus who is a solid catcher with a consistent bat. You also can’t forget that this team slaughtered the Outlaws on July 10th 18-7. Despite being slaughtered, the edge has to go to the Outlaws who not only possess youthful speed in Steve Hillegonds but also have veteran power in Gordon Sharkey and Brian Osinski. 
 
Brewers
  The Brewers strong quality is their hitting. They are a fast ball hitting team and that works in their favor if the Outlaws play their starting rotation of Sharkey-Weinmann. This team can at any point open up on normal pitching however, Sharkey and Weinmann are anything but normal. When Sharkey and Weinmann get frustrated on the mound they seem to defy the laws of physics and throw harder! No matter how good a team is at hitting fast balls the fact remains “they can’t hit what they can’t see.” Sharkey and Weinmann can do this on their good days. The Brewers pitching is not as deep as the Outlaws and the edge has to go to the Vigilantes.  (Courtesy of Outlaws website on 8/13/11, http://www.eteamz.com/outlawsbaseballclub/)

 If you can make it through the questionable grammar, it seems to imply that the Outlaws are the team to beat, without really explaining why.  But who are we to argue with journalism like that?  Guess we’ll just see what happens on the field.

Game Preview—Tigers vs. Cubs

Tigers vs. Cubs

Thursday, August 18th

7:00 pm

This time last week, the Tigers were looking to knock off the Brewers to tie them for first place.  Now, the Brewers have fallen for the second straight time, and the Tigers find themselves in a first place tie with the Outlaws.  This time they’ll have to defeat the Cubs and move their winning streak to 9 games to find themselves alone in first place. 

The Cubs and Tigers have not met since June 26th.  At the time, the Tigers were a bit of a question mark, holding a 1-2 record and playing pretty inconsistenly so far in the season.  A 9-7 win over the Cubs put them at 2-2, and they had the next 13 days off around the July 4th holiday.  All they’ve done since then is go 8-1, with all 8 wins being consecutive after a rough loss to the Dogs.  The Cubs happen to be the only team that the Tigers have not beaten during this win streak.  The Tigers hope to change that tonight.

Scott Harris will go to the mound agains the Cubs tonight.  Harris bumped his record to 5-1 with a win over the Red Sox on Saturday in one of his better outings of the year.  Mike Alleva pitched well in relief in his first appearance of the year for the Tigers.  Harris earned his first win of the season in that June 26th game against the Cubs, and has not earned a loss since opening day.

The offense has continued to roll, as it did back in June when the Tigers beat the Cubs.  Come on down to the Sportsplex to watch it continue tonight.

Game Preview–Tigers vs Red Sox

Tigers vs Red Sox

Sunday, August 14th

10:00 am

Read the one I wrote for today’s game. Same thing tomorrow, only Dave Purkey is starting. Not much else to say…come watch as the Tigers go for consecutive win number nine.