Last night, Armando Galarraga complained about a lack of run support. Max Scherzer will likely commiserate with him, as the Tigers' offense could do absolutely nothing with Jeremy Guthrie in a 5-3 loss to the Orioles.
The expected pitching duel between the Scherzer and Guthrie did take place...for five innings. Scherzer didn't have his best stuff, scattering 12 hits in six innings, allowing no runs through five, while pitching out of 1st and 4th inning jams.
But in the 6th, the O's sent eight batters to the plate, getting four straight hits before there was even an out, and scoring four times before Scherzer could end the inning (with help from another marvelous catch by Austin Jackson, turning what looked to be an extra base hit into a sac fly). The true back-breaker in the rally was a two RBI triple from the light hitting César Izturis. Those four runs would be all the Orioles needed.
Only after Guthrie was pulled after the 7th could the Tigers make a game of it. They plated three runs in the bottom of the 8th, two scoring on Jhonny Peralta's double. Peralta continued his second half salary drive, with two hits, and two RBI, making a case to have the Tigers pickup his contract option in 2011. If Peralta had hit like this with the Indians, the Tigers wouldn't have been able to pick him up for a song at the trade deadline.
But the Orioles scored an insurance run the top of the 9th, and the Tigers went meekly down 1-2-3 against Koji Uehara in the bottom of the inning...just giving more credence to Galarraga's complaint.
It doesn't matter if Galarraga's contention is true or not. What is true the Tigers' offense has been sorely lacking since Brennan Boesch stopped hitting, Magglio Ordonez broke his leg, Carlos Guillen came up lame and the opposition stopped pitching to Miguel Cabrera. (Of course, Cabrera was able to get two more hits tonight, Miggy gets his even when he's being pitched around.)
But no matter how good the Tigers' pitching is (and it wasn't all that good tonight, allowing 16 O's hits), it's not good enough to overcome a string of zeros on their own side of the scoreboard.