Detroit Tigers: Hot bats highlight the weekend

Starting Pitching

Francisco Liriano dominated in the loss Sunday against the Royals. He pitched 5.1 innings against the Royals giving up just two hits while fanning six batters and allowing one home run. Liriano had a no-hitter against the Royals up until the sixth inning.

His no-no was broken up by a solo home run off of Whit Merrifield. Had he gone the distance it would have been the second one of his career. His first was back in 2011 against the White Sox as a member of the Twins Organization.

Daniel Norris’s made a spot start on Friday and posted a solid inning. Going 4.2 innings and recording fourteen outs. Despite that, his mid-90s fastball is still missing and according to the Free Press “he’s still looking for it“.

Mike Fiers posted a solid outing as well on Friday posting 5.1 innings of work. He got all the help he could from the Tigers bats as the Olde English D routed the Royals 12-4 on Friday. The Tiger starting rotation has already shown signs of success this year. With new pitching Coach Chris Bosio, Kurt Mensching of the Athletic, points out that the success so far can be attributed to the slider.

The hitting came around this week and the starting rotation continued to post solid outings. The Detroit Tigers are playing good baseball early on.

There was no shortage of runs in the series against the Royals as the Tigers posted 25 runs.

The highlight of the series was a 12-run win against the Royals on Friday night. Friday and Sunday saw the most runs of the series as the Tigers scored 5 runs during the Sunday loss. In games one and three the Tigers scored a combined five runs.

During the 12-run win Miguel Cabrera reached based four times and knocked in three ones. Including one when the Tigers were up ten runs. In today’s loss the bats were another highlight. The Royals broke up Liriano’s no-no and then hit a grand slam off of Alex Wilson.

The Tigers responded in the sixth however. They came and strong and tied the game up at five. That was all the bats could do on Sunday though as the Royals tore apart in route to splitting the four game series with the Olde English D.

JaCoby Jones, Nicholas Castellanos and James McCann all contributed to the Tigers five runs in the Tigers sixth inning stand. Speaking of JaCoby, a walk-off homer in the ninth highlighted the Tigers taking the first game of the series off of Royals reliever Brad Keller.

The Bullpen was awful (again).

Francisco Liriano took a no-no to the sixth and then the bullpen got clobbered against the Royals. Which was the general theme for the bullpen in this series. Well, just for the game on Sunday.

With Daniel Norris getting the start in the second game of the Friday doubleheader the Tigers brought up Warwick Saupold. Saupold didn’t disappoint. So far this season he has 5.2 scoreless innings with three hits and a strikeout.  The Tigers are heading to Pittsburgh for their next series and with Norris and Stumpf the only other lefties Saupold could find himself with the Tigers a little bit longer.

Saupold’s strong outing gave the team the oppurtunity to rest both Joe Jimenez and Shane Greene. The Detroit Tigers currently have a thin bench (as the Detroit News points out), which means that if Saupold continues to play well he’ll find himself as a reliable reliever for the Tigers to turn to against the Jolly Roger.

Next: Who should start in left field?

The Tigers have tomorrow off as they head to Pittsburgh for a three game stand against the Pirates. The Tigers have been playing exciting baseball early on. Despite the expectations of a poor season they’ve been playing well.