May 16, 2011: Blue Jays (at) Tigers

It occurs to us that even though we've been at just about all the games, we have yet to live-blog a Tigers game so, what the heck, we're here....

Baseball is the only game we cover where it is expected that one will actually do work while the game is in progress.  One keeps score at the ballgame.  At all other games, one merely sits and watches and waits for statistics--halftime starts, first period summary, etc.--to be handed out.  I have no earthly idea why this is.  I've never, for example, seen a reporter take a scorecard down into the locker room in case he might need to refer to it to check on something which may or may not have happened, so I'm not sure why we keep score, but we do.  And while I was writing this, Juan Rivera of the Blue Jays made an out and I don't know how because I wasn't watching.  Used to be you'd have to ask and somebody else would have to look at their card and tell you.  Now, I can check on-line and nobody knows I wasn't paying attention.  We do live in the best of times.  We really do.  (Rivera was an f8 by the way, and by the way, if you hit the shift button after you hit the "f" when you are trying to type "8", it looks like you are writing a dirty word instead.  So, by way of a Pro Tip, don't do that.)

We are in the bottom of the 2nd inning here at Comerica Park and the main thing we can tell you is that it is cold.    44 degrees at game time.  In the middle of May?  The Tigers lead 1-0 and should lead by more.  They had the bases loaded with nobody out in the first with Miguel (.309, 7, 27) Cabrera up and wound up scoring only once off Kyle Drabek, the Toronto starter and the son of the former Cy Young Award winner.  Cabrera hit a sac fly and Victor Martinez, hitting .459 in May, grounded weakly up the middle and it was a 6, 6-3 DP.  (You may want to learn how to score a game yourself if you want to follow along.  What I just wrote is a double play in which the ball is fielded by the shortstop who steps on second base for the first out and throws to first base for the second.  It's easy when you know how.)  We'll check back in with you as events warrant.

Andy Dirks is making his Major League debut here tonight and a few moments ago he collected his first major league hit, singling to left.  The culmination of a life's dreams, wouldn't you say?  Two or three pitches later, he got picked off first.  It's hard to feel much worse than you feel when you get picked off, especially with people watching.  Which, incidentally is what we have here, sort of.  The crowd is small, probably as small an audience as we have seen this season.  We're in the fifth now and the Tigers continue to hang on to that 1-0 lead.  And I almost forgot: Max Scherzer is bidding to go to 7-0 this season.  The last Tigers pitcher to get off to such a good start was Jeremy Bonderman who went 8-0 to start the 2007 season.  BOTTOM OF THE 5TH: DETROIT 1, TORONTO 0.

The Tigers just got out of the biggest jam of the night, so far.  Corey Patterson and Juan Batista singled to open the 6th, but Scherzer escaped by getting Edwin Encarnacion to pop to the catcher, Aaron Hill to look at a called 3rd and Juan River to ground into a third-to-second force.  Nice work by Max.  Is it the key to the ballgame?  We'll know in a little while.  Cabrera has just walked with one down in the Detroit 6th--his 34th base on balls, second in the American League--and as such has no at bats tonight with a sac fly and two walks.  Victor Martinez, (did I mention he was hitting .459 in May heading into tonight's game?) bounced back the pitcher and Jhonny Peralta lined out to left and that, as Vin Scully would say, was that.  ON TO THE 7TH: DETROIT 1, TORONTO 0.


The Blue Jays have tied it up.  For the second inning in a row, the first two Jays singled but this time, a successful bunt and a sac fly produced a run for Toronto.  Cabrera was charged with an error for failing to catch a foul pop, rendering the run unearned.  Although it still counts as a run so, into the bottom of the 7th the teams have traded sacrifice flys in a 1-1 tie.  BOTTOM OF THE 7TH: DETROIT 1, TORONTO 1.


We are in the top of the 8th, Scherzer is out and Joaquin Benoit is in and for the third consecutive innings, the first two Blue Jays have singled.  So the Tigers are in a spot of trouble.  They are in a spot of trouble on offense, too.  The Tigers have 3 singles in this game.  Three.

Toronto makes them pay, again.  A double by Aaron Hill is the third straight hit allowed by Benoit and it scores a run and it means that when Benoit finally gets an out, it comes on a sacrifice fly and costs him and the Tigers another run.  And since Hill moved from second to third on that same fly ball, when J.P. Arencibia hits a fly to deep left, it's yet another sac fly and yet another run for the Blue Jays.  It's not like Toronto hasn't earned it, they've outhit the Tigers 12-3 in this one.  TWO OUTS, TOP OF THE EIGHTH: DETROIT 1, TORONTO 4.


That was quite an inning for Benoit and the Tigers.  Three runs--earned--on 4 hits in only 14 pitches as he ERA goes up to 7.98, which is a hair on the high side.  BOTTOM OF THE 8TH: DETROIT 1, TORONTO 4.