Seattle: 33-51
Tigers: 42-42

GAMES

Game 1: Carlos Silva vs Justin Verlander
Game 2: Erik Bedard* vs Kenny Rogers*
Game 3: R.A. Dickey vs Armando Galarraga
Game 4: Ryan Rowland-Smith* vs Nate Robertson*

Justin Verlander's first eight starts: 49IP, 30K, 28BB+HBP, 7HR
Justin Verlander's last nine starts: 59IP, 48K, 25BB+HBP, 3HR

Of course, two of those nine starts were against us and another three against the dregs of the NL West, so take it for what it's worth, but his velocity has also returned partially so if he was battling an injury at the start of the season he seems recovered from it at this point.

Kenny Rogers has reached the end of the line. His strikeout rate has plunged and his walks risen to the point that he's walked more than struck out on the year and in addition his groundball peak of last year has regressed heavily down to 43% from the 50% local maxima of 2007.

Armando Galarraga is nearly the epitome of average American League starting pitcher if it weren't for his .233 BABIP. Nate Robertson is exceedingly close to the being the same pitcher Galarraga is except with the opposite luck, victim to a .353 BABIP. Here's how similar they are:

Pretty similar huh?

Likely Starters:
C Ivan Rodriguez
1 Miguel Cabrera
2 Placido Polanco
3 Carlos Guillen^
S Edgar Renteria
L Marcus Thames
C Curtis Granderson*
R Magglio Ordonez
D Gary Sheffield

Not a lot of lefty hitters available to the Tigers so while that's good news for Carlos Silva, it's bad news for Bedard and Rowland-Smith. I guess it's something to hope that Carlos Silva can pitch like he did in 2005 the rest of this season and maybe a new wizard GM can offload him in the winter or possibly after 2009.

CONTEXT

It's Fourth of July weekend and there's several promotions going on at the Safe so I expect to see a large family-oriented crowd at all four games. I'm staying far away, most likely about 2.5 miles away to be exact, at Seattle Center, drinking my way to enough strength for another two months until Seahawks. If international beer festivals are of interest to you, I would encourage you to stop by and patronize the many breweries.

THIS SERIES BROUGHT TO YOU BY:

This thing
Seattle Center, WA

$20 one time entry, runs Fri-Sun. You get 10 tokens with entry, add'l tokens = $1.