Nate The Great

Badass....

Last night Nate Robertson showed once again why he's the most underrated pitcher on the Tigers' staff by throwing seven shut out innings as the they got back into the win column with a 3-1 win in Baltimore. Nate had more strike outs (5) than hits (4) and improved his record to 2-0 with an ERA of 1.38. Very very good stuff from Nate last night and hopefully he's able to keep this up during the season. Joel Zumaya gave up the only run on a solo home run to Corey Patterson in the eighth, but as a fastball pitcher you tend to give those up sometimes. Todd Jones worked the ninth and got his fourth save of the young season, and also managed not to put the tying run on base, which is a welcome change.

As for the hitters, last night was hit and miss. Curtis Granderson continued his great start to the season going 2-3 (2 doubles) with 2 runs scored. Placido just continued being Placido going 2-3 with an RBI. The problems are coming in the middle of the order where Gary Sheffield and Magglio Ordonez just aren't getting it done right now. Last night they went a combined 0-8 and are hitting .120 and .200 respectively. Does it bother me a little that the middle of our order is hitting so poorly? Yes. Am I really worried about it long term? No. I think a little of the Tigers hitting struggles have to do with playing in the cold weather, and that is going to change in the coming weeks. Sheffield is a great hitter and a lot of his outs have been screaming line drives hit right to outfielders, and eventually those are going to drop, so I'm not worried. Plus even with the hitting being so poor the Tigers are still 4-3 so they are weathering the storm.

All in all the Tigers got a nice win last night and another solid outing from their starting pitching. That's one thing (Chad Durbin's HORRID start notwithstanding) that has been going prety well for the Tigers thus far. Now if those bats heat up soon then this team is going to start clicking....