Monday Morning Manager: My Weekly Take on the Detroit Tigers

Week of 6/29-7/5: 2-4 record

This week: 7/6-7/8: Kansas City; 7/10-12: Cleveland

Goat of the Week

The Tigers labored for 16 innings before finally beating the Twins on Friday night, and you can thank Zach Miner for that.

Miner inherited a nifty five-run lead in the sixth inning from starter Luke French, and promptly squandered it all away in two-thirds of an inning, enabling the Twins to tie the game and leading to it going into extras. And extras. And extras.

The Tigers won, but not before taxing the bullpen, including Joel Zumaya, who threw a career-high 52 pitches. Moreover, it was a long night before a day game, thanks to Saturday’s contest being shown on Fox nationally.

Miner’s been fairly decent this season, but someone has to be the goat this week, and his coughing up a five-run lead, leading to unplanned mega-innings from the rest of the bullpen, hangs him with the MMM goat albatross.

Hero of the Week

Back to Zumaya.

He’s been rollercoaster-like this season, particularly with his control. But on Friday in Minnesota, his manager did something that earns Jim Leyland the Hero label.

In the 11th inning, with Denard Span on third base and two outs, Leyland walked both Joe Mauer and Justin Morneau (both lefty bats) in order to let Zumaya go after the right-handed hitting Michael Cuddyer.

It was a supreme show of confidence, especially considering how uneven Zumaya has been with his control. Walking the bases loaded gave Zumaya no margin for error.

So what does Zoom-Zoom do? He carves Cuddyer up on three pitches. Threat ended.

Things like that, where the manager lets his guy succeed or fail, can resonate for a long time.

It wasn’t just a bold strategic, on-field move—walking Mauer and Morneau—it was also an investment in Joel Zumaya’s confidence.

Jim Leyland—this week’s MMM Hero of the Week.

Quick scouting reports: Royals, Indians

This is a big week for the Tigers.

Their lead in the division is shrinking—it’s now just two games after going 1-2 in the Metrodome over the weekend.

But now they return home to play the two weak sisters of the Central.

The Kansas City Royals and Cleveland Indians are bringing up the rear, and for two different reasons.

The Royals, mostly, can’t hit. The Indians, mostly, can’t pitch. If the two teams combined rosters, you’d have a contender.

The Royals have a trio of capable starters in Zack Grienke, Brian Bannister and Gil Meche. The Tigers won’t face Bannister, but they’ll get Meche and Grienke.

The Indians, as Ian Casselberry of Bless You Boys said in our podcast last week, probably showed one of their red flags when they made Carl Pavano their No. 2 starter before the season. In other words, that should have been an indicator that they had rotation issues.

And rotation issues they have—big time.

Reigning Cy Young winner Cliff Lee is 4-8, albeit with a fine ERA of 3.45. After Lee, it gets ugly.

Pava