Minnesota routs Detroit Tigers

Minnesota routs Detroit Tigers

by Danny Knobler | Gazette News Service
Saturday May 03, 2008, 12:27 AM

http://www.mlive.com/news/index.ssf/2008/05/minnesota_routs_detroit_tigers.html

MINNEAPOLIS -- At least Dontrelle Willis threw strikes.

That has nothing to do with the game the Detroit Tigers played Friday
night at the Metrodome, the game they lost 11-1 to Minnesota. But in
the big picture, maybe Willis throwing strikes, even in a minor-league
start for Triple-A Toledo, could be as important to the Tigers as
anything that did happen at the Metrodome.

Or maybe not, because as this game turned seriously one-sided in the
late innings, the Tigers came down with a new injury concern. Set-up
man Denny Bautista left in the eighth inning with what was described
as a sore right shoulder.

"They said it happened on one pitch, a changeup," manager Jim Leyland
said. "I thought it was important to get him back out there after (a
tough outing) the other night, and he was one pitch from getting out
of it."

Instead, Bautista walked off the mound with athletic trainer Kevin
Rand, giving the Tigers something new to worry about.

There was little reason to worry about this game. The Tigers had a
great early chance against Twins starter Livan Hernandez, loading the
bases with nobody out when it was 1-1 in the second inning. But they
didn't score, and soon enough the Twins had taken charge.

Rookie Armando Galarraga gave up the first four Minnesota runs, but
didn't pitch poorly and finished six innings.

Reliever Aquilino Lopez had a tough seventh inning, and Bautista gave
up three more runs in the eighth before he had to leave.

But at least Willis threw strikes. Quite a few of them, actually, in
his first rehabilitation start for the Mud Hens. He threw 51 strikes
out of 72 pitches.

He didn't walk anybody, either, which is a whole lot different from
what Willis was doing before he hurt his right knee. He gave up two
runs in 4 2/3 innings, but the big thing was that he threw strikes.

Again, that didn't do much to help the Tigers Friday night. But once
they failed to score after loading the bases with nobody out in the
second inning, it didn't seem that anything could help them.

They ended up with just one run, a Magglio Ordonez solo home run. In a
way, that made this as typical a 2008 Tiger game as those three
straight wins in New York.

How's that, you ask? How does a game where they score once fit in with
those games where they scored six times, or eight times?

Simple. It fits the pattern. When the Tigers score five runs or more,
they win. Four runs or fewer, and they don't win -- ever.

One of these days, you'd think the Tigers would win a low-scoring
game. The fact is, they haven't, and now they're 0-14 when they don't
score five runs.

So when the runs don't come in bunches, they hardly come at all.

At the end, with the Twins in double-digits, this wasn't really a
low-scoring game at all. In the end, in fact, there was little to
recommend this game from the Tigers' standpoint.

The only really positive news for the Tigers was those pitch-count
numbers from Toledo. Dontrelle Willis threw strikes.

"He can be a real big factor for us," Leyland had said the other day
in New York. "He's real important to our team."

He wasn't a factor for the Tigers Friday, except to give them a bit of
good news on a day where the game turned ugly. He wasn't important, at
least not in the sense of helping them in this game.

But he threw strikes, and that's something.


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