Posts tagged JustinVerlander at FanHouse - AOL Sports Blog

On Deck is FanHouse's look at the day's most intriguing baseball matchups

San Francisco Giants (30-40) vs. Detroit Tigers (32-37) - 10:05PM Est.

It's been a very odd year for the Detroit Tigers. After getting off to a horrible start this season, there have been times when they seem to be getting their act together and then suddenly they're horrible again in the blink of an eye. As Joe Morgan would probably say if you asked him about it, "I'm friends with Gary Sheffield." "They're consistently inconsistent."

Still, after sweeping the division-leading Chicago White Sox last week, I asked the question if this was the start of the Tigers turnaround. Was it a sign of things to come?

Well, the Tigers didn't stop there as they followed that sweep with another one against the Dodgers this weekend, and they've now won six in a row to creep back into the race.

While the failures of Dontrelle Willis in 2008 have been well documented here at FanHouse the last couple of days, it turns out not everything is going horribly awry in Detroit for the Tigers. After all, Willis was basically just a throw-in (a $27 million throw-in, but a throw-in nonetheless) in the deal the Tigers made to bring in Miguel Cabrera, and after he got off to a slow start to the season, his bat has been catching fire as of late, as have been the other bats in Detroit's lineup.

Cabrera hit a walk-off home run in the ninth inning to give the Tigers a 2-1 win over the White Sox this afternoon, and help complete a sweep of the AL Central division leaders. The win was Detroit's fifth victory in their last six games, and they've crept to within striking distance of the White Sox, moving to within eight games.

Of course, even though the Tigers offense is starting to come to life now that the weather is warming up, the real key to whether or not the Tigers are going to make a run is still, and always will be, their pitching staff. Which is why they have to be happy with what they saw in their three games against the White Sox.

The trio of Nate Robertson, Justin Verlander, and Kenny Rogers combined to go 23.1 innings while allowing only five runs, 16 hits, and three walks (Verlander's performance being a work of art on Wednesday night). This against a team that had been averaging over eight runs a game during a seven-game win streak. It's only been six games, and the loss of Jeremy Bonderman isn't going to help, but if the Tigers pitching can keep this up, their offense will put runs on the board (it's just too talented not to) and Detroit may just get back into this thing after all.

If you are in a single season fantasy league, there is absolutely zero reason you should not be trying to sell high on Edinson Volquez right now. Okay, actually, there are actually a few reasons why you don't want to move him. His sparkling ERA (1.12), coupled with his six wins (tied for second in the bigs) and 57 K's in 48 innings have made him a valuable fantasy commodity.

But, as is often the case, things are not all that they seem. Reality tells us that there are several factors working against Volquez' current success, and that makes him a superb sell high option.

First, his stats. A 1.12 ERA and a 10.61 K/9 ratio are wonderful. But there are some other mitigating factors to those numbers. His WHIP (1.26) is actually higher than his ERA. That's not obscenely shocking, but it does indicate some luck. As does his ERA when compared to his 4.84 BB/9.

Both of those numbers tell us that he is frequently allowing baserunners, but not letting them score. And that checks out perfectly with his 90.8 strand rate, 20% above the big league norm. In other words, some of these guys getting on base are going to start scoring more frequently.

Sometimes it sucks to have everything you said in writing for all to see. It's not like you are sitting there in the bar sipping on some cold ones while making proclamations. In those cases, you can easily claim you were misconstrued or your friend wasn't paying close enough attention.

But when you do post something, and watch the last Wednesday Cubs/Reds contest (to recap, Lieber was awful and Volquez was brilliant), well, that sucks. It's times like those that one must remind himself that giving fantasy advice isn't fortune-telling. It is something I hold near and dear to my heart, though, and that's gambling.

In the case of full disclosure, I made four really good calls (the non-Volquez five down ones) and six really, really bad ones. We should know going into this column that it is the bizarro world pitching write-up. I'm going to tell you "no-brainer starters" to not play, and "don't start this guy" pitchers to start. Disasters like last week's version are bound to happen.

Remember, you are gambling here, and we love gambling. Please keep that in mind as you delve cautiously into the world of craziness that will follow the jump.

(Oh yeah, and Brinson had to remind me after the Cubs/Reds game that homerism doesn't really work in fantasy. I should know better anyway... )

Coming into the season, the Tigers were everyone's darlings. Why not? They had a ridiculous offense and a starting rotation capable of piling up the wins with the large expected run support. The problems that most overlooked were that the bullpen is awful (with injuries to Fernando Rodney and Joel Zumaya the main benefactors), Dontrelle Willis sucks, and Kenny Rogers is ancient. Personally, I didn't like them as much as others because of all this. Still, though, no one expected Justin Verlander and Jeremy Bonderman to struggle this mightily. Both should have been armed and ready for a big season.

Bonderman is still only 25 -- doesn't it seem like he's been around forever? -- and has shown the ability to strikeout hitters (202 K in '07) and control his pitches (only averaged 56 BB/season from '05-'07) with the best. His ERA has never been stellar, but with a natural progression and the bashers supporting him you had to expect he'd be able to garner the victories in '08.

Verlander is also 25, and he's a phenom. He won 35 games in the past two years while upping his punchouts to 183 last year in just over 200 innings. With a triple digit heater and some filthy off-speeders, you'd figure him for the Cy Young race this season.

Instead, something is wrong. With both of them.

On Deck is FanHouse's look at the day's most intriguing baseball matchups

Arizona Diamondbacks (22-12) vs. Philadelphia Phillies (20-15) - 3:40PM Est.

If I were a member of the Philadelphia Phillies, I'd probably just skip the trip to Chase Field and go straight to the airport to catch my flight to San Francisco. I mean, Brandon Webb is starting for the Diamondbacks this afternoon, so you already know you're going to lose, why waste your time?

Webb has won his first seven starts of the season, which makes him 7-0, and has an ERA of 2.49 while doing so. Now he's looking to get off to the fastest start ever by an Arizona pitcher, as he's already tied Randy Johnson's mark with his first seven starts. The Big Unit accomplished his feat in 2000, and then went on to win the second of the four straight Cy Youngs he won for the DBacks.

The crazy thing is, if Webb does win today and move to 8-0, it may set a team record for the quickest to eight wins, but it won't even be the first time in Brandon's career he's started a season 8-0. He did it in 2006, though it took him eleven starts, and went on to win his own Cy Young award.

I'm not going to go into everything that's wrong with the Tigers right now, as their problems are pretty obvious to any baseball fan that cares to look. They can't score, and they can't keep their opponent from scoring. It's the type of equation that leads to 2-10 records and manager blowups.

What I want to know is when it's safe to pronounce the Tigers as dead.

It seems that no matter where you look, there's somebody saying that while the Tigers are off to a horrid start it's still too early to abandon all hope with this team. After all, they've only played 12 of the 162 games on their schedule. I'm one of those people as well, but if you'll allow me to play devil's advocate for a bit here, why is everybody so afraid to say what seems to be growing more obvious with each passing day? That maybe, just maybe, the Tigers aren't as good as we all thought they would be.

Is it pride that is keeping everybody from writing this team's obituary? I hear that once Curtis Granderson comes off the disabled list, the Tigers are going to start hitting and climb back to the top of the Central division standings. Really? A team that consists of hitters like Magglio Ordonez, Gary Sheffield, Miguel Cabrera, Carlos Guillen, and Ivan Rodriguez is dependent on Curtis Granderson? Are we really supposed to believe that?

We're only a game into the season, but I've got good news for Tigers fans: The Tigers bullpen is in mid-season form.

After a pretty strong effort from Justin Verlander on Monday afternoon, the Tigers bullpen came in and promptly blew a lead which ultimately led to the Tigers 5-4 extra innings loss to the Royals. As any Tigers fan knows, this is probably going to be a recurring theme all season long, or at least until Joel Zumaya and Fernando Rodney get healthy.

Of course, it's only one game so it's way too early to start panicking about the Tigers pen right now. There are still 161 games left to go, after all. Though, that's not doing much to make Todd Jones happy, as the Tigers closer is already sick and tired of the bullpen catching all the heat.

"The storyline's already been set by everybody," Jones said. "They take their shots at the bullpen and make fun of 'em and it hurts. Guys try to do the best we can and everybody wants to make a knock-knock joke out of our bullpen and it (ticks) me off."

Really, Todd? Does it tick you off as much as it does Tigers fans to see you guys blow the lead?

Jones does have a point though, because it wasn't entirely his fault or the bullpen's that the Tigers lost yesterday. Jim Leyland probably would have been better served to get Verlander out of the game a bit earlier than he did, and nobody in the bullpen was responsible for the 10 runners the Tigers left on base throughout the game.

Unfortunately for Todd and the rest of the Tigers bullpen, when you look at the Detroit roster as a whole, it's the bullpen that stands out as the glaring weakness. So everytime the Tigers blow a lead late in the game, whether it's actually their fault or not, the bullpen is going to take the brunt of the criticism until they prove they can do the job on a consistent basis.

Seriously, this game is flying by. If you're joining late, here are innings 1-3, innings 4-6 and and we're joining the seventh in progress.

Top of the Seventh: Is Justin Verlander losing steam? He just walked Mark Teahen, the leadoff hitter, his first of the day.

Ugh -- Ross Glaod singles, putting Teahen, the tying run, on third. Jim Leyland has seen enough, bringing in Jason Grilli. Here's a timely commercial break for Tigers fans to go get their Pepto Bismal.

Grilli did what Grilli does, giving up an RBI base hit to John Buck to tie this game up.

On a side note, there's a very real possibility Detroit's bullpen will take 2-3 inches off my hairline this year. Just saying.

Tony Pena grounds to Polanco, and following a mini run-down, Buck is out at second, leaving Gload and Pena on the corners with one out. Jim Leyland comes to the mound (a few minutes too late) to take the ball from Grilli. Lefty Bobby Seay gets the call to face Joey Gathright. Let's continue these hijinks after the jump, mm-kay?

If you're joining us late, here's the first three innings. The Tigers are up 1-0, Justin Verlander is pitching like he has somewhere to go and the Royals have yet to figure out what those little white square things are for in the infield.

Top of Fourth: Verlander brushes Mark Grudzielanek off the plate ... literally. The pitch deflects off Grudz's hand, giving him a free trip to first and an afternoon full of pain.

Alex Gordon is up and Mario Impemba and Rod Allen are bringing up all of last year's ill-fated George Brett comparisons. All that pressure didn't work out too well for him, did it? What do we say we do the kid a favor and forget about those expectations.

Gordon grounds to short, Grudz is out -- fielder's choice.

Billy Butler smokes one past a diving Miguel Cabrera for a base hit. Anyone think Brandon Inge could have gotten to that one? Asking that question every time Cabrera misses something is going to be my least favorite game to play this year.

In the end it doesn't matter: Mark Teahen ground back to Verlander to end the inning.