Zoom-by-ya

In a pretty solid game all around from Detroit, the Tigers held on against the Blue Jays tonight for a 5-4 victory. Brandon Inge (MY GOD) provided a 2-3 night throwing in three RBI and Gary Sheffield snapped an 0-16 streak with a single in the first inning. The most impressive Tiger performance though, came from Joel Zumaya, who got his first save of the season by going two innings in relief of Jose Mesa. Joel allowed just one hit in his two innings and gave up a grand total of zero runs, and made Matt Stairs look damned foolish on a curveball that froze Stairs for a strike out for the first out in the ninth.

Mike Maroth again had a solid night, getting his second win of the year and making essentially one bad pitch to Aaron Hill, which resulted in a two-run homer. Maroth seems to be picking up where he left off when he injured his elbow lat May, when he was 5-2. It's good to see Mikey throwing the ball well again, especially striking out $100 million man Vernon Wells with four nasty high fastballs.

The bats came alive tonight, with only Curtis Granderson. Craig Monroe, and Mike Rabello, who did an excellent job filling in for Pudge defensively, being held hitless. It was good to see Sheff get a solid hit and hopefully, this is the start of a good roll for him. Inge might actually becoming around now, with hits in his last two games and already raising his average to a whopping .107, which is just staggering. Something that needs to change, however, is that the team left a total of 18 men on base collectively, with Magglio Ordonez accounting for four of those guys. Those are potential runs that simply can't be left on base like that.

Let's talk about Jose Mesa for a second. He's been in roughly three games, and I'm pretty sure I start shaking whenever I see him trotting in from the bullpen. He let in two runs in the eighth inning without being able to get an out before being pulled for Zoom Zoom. While Jason Grilli is the front runner for The Jaime Walker Memorial Award, Mesa is right up there behind him. If Grilli is this year's Walker, then Mesa is this year's Grilli, even though Mesa has made a career out of being a Jaime Walker-type pitcher.

Another banner day for Frank Thomas, who simply can't wait to not see the Old English D ever again. After being held hitless against Tiger pitching in last year's ALCS, he has gotten one hit off a Tigers' pitcher this year after being held to an 0-4 performance in tonight's contest. Seeing Big Hurt against Zoom Zoom was extremely fun, because there were two possibilities- Joel was going to make Thomas look stupid or Big Frank was taking a 100 mph fastball 400 feet away, and there was no in between. I'm just glad that Zoom Zoom won that battle.

The Tigs ensured themselves of at least a .500 road trip tonight. Check back tomorrow to see if they can finish this first 10 game swing on a winning note.