I attended today’s Red Sox – Tigers game at Joker Harmon Stadium in Lakeland, Florida and in doing so was part of the largest crowd in the 75 year history of Tigers Spring Training baseball. Why a Tuesday afternoon game with three weeks left before the season was so popular, I have no idea. The Red Sox won 2-1 on a 10th inning HR by Darnell McDonald. My main observation from the game was this: there are some weird looking people out there, especially in Florida. I did notice some baseball stuff too:
The first thing that comes to mind was that Justin Verlander looked sharp. He was locating his fastball well and his breaking stuff had some good bite. Aside from one bad pitch that Jacoby Ellsbury hit over the fence, Verlander was lights out going 5.1, allowing 2 hits and striking out 5.
On the other side, Daisuke Matsuzaka was also effective. His stuff wasn’t as good as Verlander’s and in typical Dice-K fashion he danced around the zone and took a lot of pitches to get guys out. But he did get guys out, over 5 innings he surrendered 2 hits and walked 1 while striking out 5.
Continuing with the theme of pitching, the other standout of the game was Boston’s Brandon Duckworth. Duckworth got the win in the game with good breaking stuff and a 2-seamer that sat around 89 mph but a 4-seamer that he could run up there as high as 94.
On the offensive side of the ball, Miguel Cabrera homered for the Tigers and Victor Martinez also looked good going one for two with a walk. Scott Seizemore was 0-4 at the plate but had a bunch of good swings and hit the ball hard a couple of times. The Tigers had only four hits so it was tough to gauge them fully.
Boston had only three hits but two of them were home runs. Ellsbury hit a bomb in the 4th and McDonald broke a 1-1 tie in the 10th. Jason Varitek looked particularly futile at the plate going 0-3 with a strike out and Carl Crawford’s 0-3 sank his spring average to .172. However, Crawford hit a long fly to left that easily would have been off the Green Monster in Fenway Park.
Defensively, Tigers’s catcher Max St. Pierre, a veteran of exactly 9 Major League at bats, looked solid behind the plate and Red Sox outfielder Daniel Nava made a great play down the line on a foul pop.
One interesting thing that I noticed was that with St. Pierre behind the dish at the end of the game, manager Jim Leyland was calling pitches, a common sight in high school but a rarity in pro ball.
Overall, it was a pretty uneventful game. The stars and big leaguers played well and the guys trying to make the team played like guys trying to make the team.
-Max Frankel
