The good news is the Tigers gave themselves plenty of chances to stick with the White Sox, but the bad news is they did not execute. Detroit left nine runners on base and hit a whopping 1-11 with runners in scoring position to fritter away key runs and falter to the Chi-town Sox, 6-2.
Perhaps the most unfortunate Tigers hitter with runners on base was Miguel Cabrera, who hit two balls hard on a line with multiple runners on that just happened to go straight to the right fielder for inning ending outs, instead of a handful of RBIs.
The Tigers starter, Rick Porcello, battled through a rocky start, but was still not at his normally more than adequate level. He gave up eight hits and walked three in his seven innings of work for a 1.57 WHIP, while striking out just two. His ERA on the season actually improved to 5.93, but his reocrd fell to 3-4.
Detroit now heads out west to three different cities in seven days.
INGE SWINGS, AND IT’S BACK-BACK-BACK… CALLED BACK
Brandon Inge and the Tigers almost caught a break in the 6th inning when Inge hit one, foul, over the left field wall. It was originally called a home run and would have cut the White Sox lead to just one, but after a little umpire pow-wow, it went under review. Replays clearly showed that it was not a home run and thus, it was reversed. Tom Gage reported that the Tigers last had a home run reverseed on 6/19/09 — Dusty Ryan!
GUESS WHAT? BOESCH HAS HIS OWN SECTION AGAIN
Brennan Boesch is a friggin’ freak of nature at the plate, eh? He had another two hits in four at bats, raising his batting average to .387. His OBP may only be .397, but whatever. He also had a stolen base in the loss. It’s not all puppy dogs and ice cream, though – Boesch made an egregious baserunning error in the bottom of the 4th when he failed to run from third on contact when Ramon Santiago grounded out to the right side with less than two outs.
EPIC SCREENSHOT OP
Buddies4lyfe, per Mario Impemba.
LOOKS AT THE ROOKS
Austin Jackson, who has been struggling lately, had a double and a walk in four at bats. His BA still sits at .329.
Jackson also had his first questionable fielding play of the season when he decided not to dive for an out. Instead he tried to make a running/standing grab in order to save an opportunity for him to throw out the runner tagging to go home. Chances are that he would not have thrown the runner out anyway since Jackson was running full speed in and had no weight behind the ball to make a clean throw from the middle of the outfield. As a result, it got by him, allowing two runs (instead of one) to score, and he didn’t get an out. It was ruled as a hit, and that’s the right call, but I think it’s a dubious mental error by Jackson to not go for the out in that situation.
Brennan Boesch also made an error playing leftfield. He looked a lot like Ryan Raburn on the play. Enough said?
AROUND THE CENTRAL
Luckily, the Twins got smoked by the Blue Jays, so the Tigers did not lose a game with this one. They still trail the Twinkies by 2.0 games (they lost half a game last night when the Twins won and the Tigers were PPD).
Cleveland lost to the Rays, 6-2. And Zack Greinke lost another one with the Royals, 4-3, in extras.
Here are the standings.
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