Tigers at Pirates, April 14, 2015

Yesterday I sort of live blogged the Tigers game at Pittsburgh on Face Book - Shane Green vs A.J. Burnett.  OK - more along the line of a few random comments.  But it was fun.

It was a great pitching duel, and the Tigers showed how much better they are defensively than - well maybe ever, certainly in a long stretch of recent years.

My musings:

Burnett gets away with a balk picking off Rajai.

More and different umpiring ineptitude.

Plate ump misses a called third on Cespedes, and throws out the Pirate's Mgr.  More umpiring incompetence.

Tigers pitcher Shane Greene has an astounding 81 pitches through 8 innings. He's had 6, 7, and 9 pitch innings. Only three K's along the way.  [Note, the average number of pitches per half inning in MLB is 16.]  Strike out pitchers have to throw a lot more pitches. Tigers are also playing extraordinary defense.  Tigers up 1-0, heading into the 9th.

Iglesias breaks his bat, gets a single to center, and takes second when the Pirates center fielder McCutcheon lolligags. Greene lifted for pinch hitter V-Mart.

V-Mart gets another PH K, Rajai walks.  Kinsler squeaks a single past the SS, Iglesias scores.  Miggy up. Two on, two out.  Ack - called 3rd. Scahill handcuffed him.

Bottom of the ninth, Tigers up 2-0. Soria coming in to finish it off.  Greene's scheduled at-bat in the 9th keeps him from pitching a complete game.

Tigers win 2-0.  Pirates get only 3 hits, and nobody reaches 2nd.  Great outing by Green and Soria.

Tigers can run on the Pirates outfielders.  Watch for that in game 3.

Like yesterday, Tigers scored in the 7th and 9th innings.  I think that is a great sign.  Last year they were awful in the late innings of close games.

Shane Greene has gone 8 innings each in both starts, and given up only 7 hits, 1 walk and no runs in. At this point his WHIP is 0.5, less than half of Scherzer's 1.024.

If Castellanos starts hitting, the Tigers will roll over everybody.  [He’s killed 3 potential rallies in two games.]

Just saw the post game interview with Iglesias. He is either very modest, or very coy.