Tigers’ Lefties Combine to Take Down Jays

Tigers 8, Blue Jays 2 (box)

At the risk of becoming a Dontrelle Willis apologist (too late?), here’s yet another D-Train update for you. In the Tigers 8-2 win over Toronto today in Dunedin, Willis tossed a scoreless sixth inning, lowering his spring ERA to 0.82.

Willis worked just the one inning, apparently by design, as he was working on two days rest. MLB.com’s Jason Beck tweeted that Willis is slated to start Thursday, again on short rest. Dontrelle’s first pitch was a 93 mph fastball that missed upstairs to Lyle Overbay, he then came back with three straight strikes and fanned Overbay on another 93 mph fastball.

Throughout his inning, Willis was consistently 90-93 with his heater, an obvious sign that (a) his back is okay, and (b) that he read Lynn Henning’s article yesterday and was as miffed as I was.

Willis allowed a single and a double, but escaped the jam by getting a ground ball double play. In fact, if not for a poor route taken by centerfielder Don Kelly, John Buck’s drive to center likely would have been caught. All in all, it was another strong effort in a growing list of them for Willis this spring.

The other main competitor for the final rotation spot is Nate Robertson, who started the game today. Nate got him self into trouble in the second and third innings, but limited the damage to two runs over 4.1 innings. He threw 74 pitches, 44 of them for strikes. The two runs he allowed came on a homer by Randy Ruiz. Robertson allowed five hits, walked a pair, and struck out four.

The Tigers got off to an early lead thanks to a three run homer by Brandon Inge in the first inning. It was Inge’s first of the spring, and came against left hander Brian Tallet. Ryan Raburn added a solo homer later, also against the Jays’ starter, who allowed eight hits and five runs over his five innings today.

Magglio Ordonez, Inge, and Carlos Guillen each contributed two hits to the Tigers’ 13-hit attack.