Bullpen Put To Work In Finale Of Indians Series
The fact that Justin Verlander is pitching Monday night could have had something to do with it, but Jim Leyland using a half-dozen relief pitchers from the fourth inning on showed that one game might have been a tad more important than some others.
Verlander's track record suggests he'll go seven, eight or nine innings at Tampa Bay, throwing anywhere from 100 to 125 pitches.
The means Leyland might only have to use one or two members of his bullpen, if any.
Which means he could let it all hang out in the finale of Detroit's three-game series against Cleveland -- which he did in an 8-7 win Sunday.
After Detroit scored seven times in the third to take a 7-0 lead, it looked as though the Tigers could coast to a weekend sweep of Cleveland and go to Tampa with a fully rested bullpen -- and a lead over runner-up Cleveland that had grown from 1-1/2 games to 4-1/2 games in the space of three days.
Rick Porcello couldn't get the last out of the fourth as the Indians bounced back smartly with a five-run inning to turn a runaway train into a commuter.
Leyland was a little critical of Porcello for using too many ineffective sliders and not enough of his best pitch, the sinker, while at the same time saying Alex Avila was complicit for letting him get away from his best pitch. (He didn't say he could have shouldered some of the blame for letting both stray from what was working.)
But, as he has done at least once before with Porcello, Leyland showed his dissatisfaction with the pitcher by not letting him work out of his jam. Four straight two-out hits prompted the exit of Porcello and the entrance of lefty Duane Below.
Then it was Ryan Perry in the fifth, Daniel Schlereth in the fifth, Phil Coke in the seventh, Joaquin Benoit in the eighth and Jose Valverde in the ninth.
Copyright (C) 2011 The Sports Xchange. All Rights Reserved.
