nedwrd12
04-16-2007, 02:59 PM
Monday, April 16, 2007By Danny Knobler
TORONTO -- It's not that they hate the road. That's not it at all.
You do get the feeling, though, that the Detroit Tigers would like to be reminded that they have a home.
"It feels like we've been gone a month," reliever Joel Zumaya said Sunday, as the Tigers packed up after a 2-1 loss to Toronto to -- finally -- head home.
A month?
"A year," shortstop Carlos Guillen said.
It's not that they hate the road. The Tigers had baseball's best record away from home last year (49-32). Sunday's game was a three-hit bummer, but the Tigers still won six games on the 10-game trip that began in the Kansas City deep-freeze and ended under Toronto's dome.
"I've always liked to take my team on the road," manager Jim Leyland answers, whenever anyone cares to ask.
Sunday, he loved to take his team home.
The Tigers opened the season at Comerica Park two weeks ago today, but they've barely been there since. They've played just two home games, the fewest in the majors. Even Cleveland has played more, and the Indians got snowed out of one home series and had to move another to Milwaukee.
"We're tired of being on the road," pitcher Nate Robertson admitted. "I haven't really unpacked my bags from spring training yet."
Robertson showed no signs of road rage Sunday. He gave up just two runs in seven innings, and the only problem was that the second came on a tie-breaking seventh-inning single by ninth-place hitter John McDonald.
Check that. The McDonald single wasn't the only problem. The bigger problem was that the Tigers had just the three hits, two from Pudge Rodriguez and one from Curtis Granderson. They went without an extra-base hit for the first time this season, and scored only when Granderson came around from second base after an errant pickoff throw.
The winning pitcher was Josh Towers, whose career 3-0 record against the Tigers is deceiving, because both previous starts came during Detroit's 119-loss 2003 season. What happened Sunday is deceiving, too, because the box score suggests that either the Tigers are a team full of bad hitters (they're not) or Towers is a quality pitcher (he's not).
"We were surprisingly just dull," Leyland said. "We weren't lazy. We were dull. Maybe it's just that it was the last day of the trip."
Leyland didn't sound angry. There's no reason for anger, not when the Tigers have a 7-5 record despite their .229 team batting average.
Besides, if the Tigers were anxious to get home, no one would blame them. It's time to unpack those spring training bags, isn't it?
"It's time to get home," Sean Casey said.
They're finally there.
Conspiracy theorists, take note: While the radar gun used by Blue Jays television showed Zumaya throwing eight triple-digit fastballs Sunday (including one at 102), the Rogers Centre scoreboard never registered more than 97 mph while Zumaya was pitching. . . . Outfielder Marcus Thames was in the original Tiger lineup Sunday, but had to be scratched because of the flu. . . . Leyland saw that a horse named Katie's Fortune was running in a harness race Saturday night, with a driver named Todd Jones. "It finished second; it turned out he couldn't close," Leyland quipped, in reference to Tiger closer Todd Jones.
TORONTO -- It's not that they hate the road. That's not it at all.
You do get the feeling, though, that the Detroit Tigers would like to be reminded that they have a home.
"It feels like we've been gone a month," reliever Joel Zumaya said Sunday, as the Tigers packed up after a 2-1 loss to Toronto to -- finally -- head home.
A month?
"A year," shortstop Carlos Guillen said.
It's not that they hate the road. The Tigers had baseball's best record away from home last year (49-32). Sunday's game was a three-hit bummer, but the Tigers still won six games on the 10-game trip that began in the Kansas City deep-freeze and ended under Toronto's dome.
"I've always liked to take my team on the road," manager Jim Leyland answers, whenever anyone cares to ask.
Sunday, he loved to take his team home.
The Tigers opened the season at Comerica Park two weeks ago today, but they've barely been there since. They've played just two home games, the fewest in the majors. Even Cleveland has played more, and the Indians got snowed out of one home series and had to move another to Milwaukee.
"We're tired of being on the road," pitcher Nate Robertson admitted. "I haven't really unpacked my bags from spring training yet."
Robertson showed no signs of road rage Sunday. He gave up just two runs in seven innings, and the only problem was that the second came on a tie-breaking seventh-inning single by ninth-place hitter John McDonald.
Check that. The McDonald single wasn't the only problem. The bigger problem was that the Tigers had just the three hits, two from Pudge Rodriguez and one from Curtis Granderson. They went without an extra-base hit for the first time this season, and scored only when Granderson came around from second base after an errant pickoff throw.
The winning pitcher was Josh Towers, whose career 3-0 record against the Tigers is deceiving, because both previous starts came during Detroit's 119-loss 2003 season. What happened Sunday is deceiving, too, because the box score suggests that either the Tigers are a team full of bad hitters (they're not) or Towers is a quality pitcher (he's not).
"We were surprisingly just dull," Leyland said. "We weren't lazy. We were dull. Maybe it's just that it was the last day of the trip."
Leyland didn't sound angry. There's no reason for anger, not when the Tigers have a 7-5 record despite their .229 team batting average.
Besides, if the Tigers were anxious to get home, no one would blame them. It's time to unpack those spring training bags, isn't it?
"It's time to get home," Sean Casey said.
They're finally there.
Conspiracy theorists, take note: While the radar gun used by Blue Jays television showed Zumaya throwing eight triple-digit fastballs Sunday (including one at 102), the Rogers Centre scoreboard never registered more than 97 mph while Zumaya was pitching. . . . Outfielder Marcus Thames was in the original Tiger lineup Sunday, but had to be scratched because of the flu. . . . Leyland saw that a horse named Katie's Fortune was running in a harness race Saturday night, with a driver named Todd Jones. "It finished second; it turned out he couldn't close," Leyland quipped, in reference to Tiger closer Todd Jones.