Courtesy of Fangraphs (Explanation)
Earned His Tiger Stripes: Carlos Guillen - 3-5, HR (3), 4 RBI
Earned a Lecture from Leyland: Pudge - 0-5, 2 Ks
Big time win tonight for the Tigers, who may have looked to have a rather unfavorable matchup heading in. Johan Santana, even though he has looked beatable this season, has never been an easy pitcher to face for this lineup, and the Metrodome has never been a friendly place to this team.
But why would we doubt Mike Maroth tonight? As Ian stated in his game-thread, the Tigers haven't lost a game with Mike on the hill -- and tonight fit in nicely with that reccuring theme. He scattered nine hits in 6.2 innings, only allowing one earned-run while walking zero and striking out three. This performance made way for the hot Tigers' lineup to do the rest.
A Few Random Things:
- Curtis Granderson hit his fifth triple of the season tonight, putting him at over half of his total of nine from last season. On that same note, Carlos Guillen hit his third after only having five last season. It's been a good year for extra-base hits it seems.
- Gotta hate those fielding mistakes from tonight (the Tigers were listed as having one error in the box-score, but there were really two big mistakes that helped the Twins to extra runs). Marcus Thames has to learn how to keep his foot on the bag if he wants to be a suitable first baseman, and Fernando Rodney must avoid those stupid errant throws to first -- Putting that runner on in front of Morneau turned out to be a very bad thing.
- Sheff moved his numbers against Santana to 7-19 (.368) for his career, and hit his first ever homerun off of the Twins' lefty in the first inning. Coming into the game he was batting a pretty miserable .125 against leftys. Tonight was his third multi-hit game in May, and he is now hitting .333 this month.