One down 161 to go

 

 

It was a day that started off well, took a bad turn in the 5th and then was broken wide open in the 7th. Justin Verlander went 5 innings giving up 4 earned runs while striking out 6. Greinke who battled control problems early in the day, out-dueled Verlander, but Kansas City’s woeful bullpen gave up 6 runs in the 7th which sealed the deal for the Tigers.

Verlander was not in mid season form today. He looked solid for the most part, but Yuniesky Betancourt sent a deep  shot over the left center field wall in the bottom of the second to give KC a 2-1 lead. Verlander went on to set 10 in a row down after that, but again worked himself in to trouble in the 5th. Billy Butler singled in two runs to give KC a 4-1 lead, at that point you couldn’t wait for KC to go to its pen.

The Tigers scoring started out in the 1st when Magglio Ordonez was able to score, when Carlos Guillen hit a towering pop up that was misplayed by Willie Bloomquist. Greinke then held their bats in check until Cabrera’s RBI single in the 5th cut the deficit to 4-2.

You realized just how bad the Royal’s pen was in the 7th, after A strong outing by Greinke things just went to hell for them. It all started with a Sizemore walk. 6 runs later later the Tigers held  an 8-4 lead. The bullpen did the rest holding KC to 3 hits the rest of the way.

Hero’s

• I’ve got to give props to the bullpen. Joel Zumaya hit 102 on the gun and dropped a couple of real nice breaking balls. Ryan Perry threw 1.2 innings of solid ball.
• Offensively Austin Jacskson , Johnny Damon, and Cabrera all had big games. Okay Jackson didn’t really have a big game but he did get his first Major League hit which was a 2 RBI double.

 Goats

• Justin Verlander, you’re not going to see his name listed here very often to I figured I’d get it out of the way now. He didn’t have a bad performance but he was out dueled by Greinke.
• Gerald Laird went 0-4 from the plate, and the Royals had two stolen bases off of him, neither one resulted in a throw.

The series resumes Wednesday with Max Scherzer(making his Tiger’s debut) taking on Luke Hochevar at 9:10 eastern time. Hopefully the Tigers can start off 2010 with a two game win streak. I’ll see you then. GO TIGERS!