Game 45 Recap

It's just one game, but it appears the stale and stagnant atmosphere might be lifted a little tonight. Those words were from former Tiger Jason Grilli. Tonight the Tigers hit like Grilli was pitching to them. Edgar Renteria was a double away from the cycle, going 4 for 4 with a HR and 5 RBI. Magglio, Curtis Granderson, and Carlos Gullien also added HRs with Guillen's hit to straightaway centerfield. Weird that the guy that's been supplying most of the power these past few weeks, Matt Joyce, went hitless tonight. Joining Joyce in that club was Gary Sheffield. With Grilli and Jacque Jones gone, those looking for a scapegoat might be starting to point their eyes at Sheff...until Todd Jones blows a save.

Justin Verlander had a season best 7 K's to match season-tying bests of hits (4) and runs allowed(1). While the velocity wasn't there (according to MLB GameCast he only topped 94 mph once) the location was. Only one of the 7 K's was the third strike a fastball. He did throw over 100 pitches through 6 innings of work, but finally got run support and his second win of the year.

If you hadn't stuck around for the end and flipped over to the Piston game, you might have been surprised to see the Tigers were sweating out the final innings. Seattle racked up 9 of their 13 hits and 7 runs in the final three frames, including 4 in the bottom of the ninth. This brought Todd Jones into the game with 2 on and one out. He promptly got Miguel Cairo to ground into a game-ending double play.

Carlos Silva was supposedly the best on the three pitchers the Tigers would face this series. Silva was also a guy who seemingly had the Tigers number with the Twins over the past few years. So it would seem the rest of this series would bode well for the Tigers. But if we've learned anything this season, is that nothing is certain. One game back toward normalcy, tomorrow needs to be a second.

Tigers 12 Mariners 8
W: Verlander (2-7)
L: Silva (3-3)
S: Jones (7)

Tigers Record:
W - L
18 - 27