Detroit Tigers end season with shutout of Chicago White Sox

The Detroit Tigers 2015 season is over. Your favorite baseball team ended it with a 6-0 shutout of the Chicago White Sox to avoid the season-ending sweep and finish with a pedestrian record of 74-87.

Whether you’re happy about this year being over because of the draining trials and tribulations of this team, or sad that no Detroit baseball will be played deep into October for the first time in a while, in a week or two both factions will probably miss their baseball team equally.

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Daniel Norris bounced back nicely after his awful 54-pitch first inning outing against Texas last Tuesday. He apparently loves to pitch against the Chicago White Sox, holding them hitless until one out in the fourth inning. Two starts prior, he threw a perfect five innings against Chicago at Comerica Park.

The Tigers gave Norris an early lead when Nick Castellanos doubled home Anthony Gose in the first inning to put the visiting team up 1-0. It stayed that way until J.D. Martinez‘s sacrifice fly scored Gose from third, after a one-out triple in the fifth inning, to increase Detroit’s advantage to 2-0.

Norris ended up surrendering just one run, a one-out triple in the fifth inning that was erased on a double play two batters later. He struck out three and walked one.  As expected, Randy Wolf came on in relief in the sixth inning, after Norris reached his pitch max and predictably got into a jam, with two runners on, but got out of that inning harmlessly.

Jeff Ferrell, Ian Krol and Kyle Ryan each pitched scoreless innings to nail down the shutout.

After escaping the jam, the Tigers bats went to work, loading the bases in the ensuing inning before Tyler Collins, swinging on the first pitch, sent the ball into the gap to score all three baserunners with a triple. They added another run in the eighth inning to round out the scoring for the 2015 season.

Miguel Cabrera revealed he has been dealing with injuries much of the second half of the season, which is why Brad Ausmus has been giving him so much time off down the stretch, including in Sunday’s season finale. This assures his fourth batting title in the last five years with a .338 average.

Miggy is still something special.

Regulars Victor Martinez (out for more than a week), Jose Iglesias (out for most of the month) and Ian Kinsler (day-to-day) also sat out in this meaningless game.

This is normally the space where we provide a brief preview of the Detroit Tigers’ next game. Sadly there will not be another game until April 2016.

So as the Tigers’ players and coaches go their separate ways, the real work begins for Al Avila and the front office: rebuild this team back into one of the American League’s finest clubs.

So while we as fans lived and died in this season, mostly dying, arguing against every lousy move, blown play, and bullpen-surrendered home run, if all goes well this offseason it can be forgotten.

Hope springs eternal each season, and 2016 will be no different.

Thanks for a great year (and years) of reading us at Motor City Bengals.

‘Til we meet again… Goooo Tigers.