After five excellent starts, Kenny Rogers was eventually bound to have a bad game.  And the St. Louis Cardinals pounced on the opportunity, tagging Rogers for nine hits and five runs, which is more scoring than he'd allowed in his past four starts combined.

Another guy perhaps due for a bad outing was Freddy Dolsi, who hasn't been a lights-out reliever, but often avoided throwing a bad inning.  Not so much tonight, as the Cardinals knocked four hits off Dolsi - the most he's allowed this season - and put another three runs on the board.

Despite the loss, however, there was plenty of good stuff from the Tigers tonight.  After going into the weekend with only one home run, Pudge Rodriguez has now gone deep in two straight games.  Miguel Cabrera gave Detroit its first (and only) lead of the game with a solo homer in the fourth inning.  And then there's the guy who was playing in Lakeland yesterday.  Gary Sheffield looked pretty healthy in blasting a two-run shot to left field later in the game. 

Even though the pitching really wasn't there for the Tigers, a pitcher still managed to provide the pleasant surprise of the night.  A four-run game was the sort of low-risk situation for Fernando Rodney to see if he could throw some strikes.  Not only did Rodney find the plate - though he was still wild with a few pitches, as I'm sure Rick Ankiel would tell you - he also got three outs.  Yes, really. 

There won't be a third straight home sweep this time, but losing the first game of the last two series didn't work out so bad for the Tigers.  But that was on the road.  How will it go at Comerica Park?

Roll Call

If I could give commemorative 1968 Tigers road jerseys to rock n rye, miggy4mvp, Zappatista, ThaWalrus9, pfuhrmeister, Grant E., BigAl, tbliggins, PBURGTIGER, Tony K, rook34, tplants (Welcome!), syratiger, JIMDALE (Welcome!), Juskimo, Ramon Santiago, and dettigionswings'stons, I would.  Alas, I cannot.  Just not in the budget this year.