Back to Earth

Whew, I’m glad the Tigers lost last night!

Okay, I’m not really that glad they lost last night, but perhaps Max Scherzer and his lack of command and Oakland’s Brandon McCarthy getting an aggressive Tigers lineup to swing at all kinds of high cheese was kind of a good thing for this team.

Over the course of the Tigers 12-game winning streak, we’ve seen a little bit of everything: a blowout (or 4), a few good and close games (close enough to see Papa Grande dance), not to mention a couple of incredible 9th inning comebacks that would ultimately help save Brad Penny‘s bacon.

Last night, the Tigers just ran out of ways to cough up a win here.  What didn’t help was the 9 strikeouts (3 from the lead off windmill Austin Jackson), showing the overall impatience at the plate the Tigers should look to avoid come playoff time.  Scherzer serving up 3 home runs will never help either, but I saw in last night’s Athletics team was some well played, and well placed defense.  The ordinarily poor A’s defense made all the plays necessary to ultimately come away with a streak busting 6-1 win.

No big deal.  We all knew they weren’t going to finish the season with a 25-game winning streak, and it helps that a game like this can bring the Tigers (and their fan base) back down to the ground, if only for one game.  Thanks to losses last night from the White Sox (now eliminated) and the Indians, the Tigers magic number is 1.  Even the pessimist in me will assume that  even the Tigers won’t cough up this division with this many games to go, putting to bed the fresh ghosts of 2009’s past.  Sure they lost, something that usually is more common than not on the road, but it’s not the end of the world.

I’ll go ahead and assume that 1 bad game out of every 13 will be okay…

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You can follow me on Twitter at @DisplacedTgrFan and read more from my personal blog, The Displaced Tiger Fan.