The Game I Watched Tonight

Rangers at Tigers

Let's start with the starting pitchers.  I was very underwhelmed by Colby Lewis tonight. He was using a fastball at 88-90mph, slider around 84, and changeup from 83-85.  None of his pitches had enough difference in speed to get the Tigers lineup off balance.  He also was getting no calls at the bottom of the zone, which was really making it difficult for him to be effective. He allowed 13 baserunners in 4 innings of work.  Scherzer looked better, but pitched backwards a lot.  He used his slider a lot early in the conut to get ahead, then went inside with his hard fastball in the mid 90's to get a lot of weak contact, but he only had one strikeout through his 6 innings.  His control was shaky, as it tends to be, but when he needed it, he could dial his fastball up the the upper nineties to help get himself out of trouble.  Through the middle and into the late innings both teams tapped into their bullpens as the Tigers held a 5-2 lead.  In the top of the 8th, Joaquin Benoit came in blewup, giving up a walk and two homeruns.  Who would have thought that giving Joaquin Benoit, a guy with a career 4.5 ERA a huge contract after one good year would backfire?  Brennan Boesch then came up in the bottom of the 8th and hit a go ahead homerun off of Mike Adams (welcome to the AL Mike Adams).  It was raining for the duration of the game, and the weather kind of embodied the feel i had for this game, sloppy.