Penny Shelled, Tigers Drop To 0-2

To be frank, this is nothing entirely unexpected. To start the season on the road against the Yankees is, in all likelihood, to start the season in a bit of a hole. I wouldn’t have been unsatisfied, before this series began, to get out of it with a 1-2 record. Thanks to Brad Penny (and we all love to blame the starter, that’s why we give him that collectible ‘L’) that is now the best we Tigers fans can hope for. Penny gave up 8 runs on 7 hits and 4 walks while collecting only 13 outs – the Tigers tried to rally, but never came close. We’ll have to attach part of that blame to Brad Thomas, who inherited runners on first and second. A home run to Russell Martin plated both of those, credited to Penny, and put the Yankees lead entirely out of reach. If anyone else named Brad was in the stadium, he probably shares some of the blame too.

On the plus side, the Tigers did put a little offense together. 6 runs against a decent pitching staff is a bit more than the shabby spring training showing might have led us to expect. One particularly encouraging sign (in an extremely small sample, I know) – optimistic projections for Austin Jackson require him to offset a drop in BABIP with more power and more patience. Well, today Ajax had a homer and a walk to go along with it.

Around the division, the White Sox beat the Indians again (no surprises there, they are the Indians) and the Twins (thankfully) dropped another to the Jays. At least one of our nemeses is matching our weak start out of the gates. I suppose we shouldn’t leave them out, so: KC won the third game of the series against the Halos to put them up to 2-1, good for second place behind the Sox.

By the time you read this Scherzer may be taking the mound against Phil Hughes. We know what we’d like to see from Scherzer, but we won’t be sure what we’ll get until we get it. Lets hope for some better luck this time and avoid that deadly sweep.