Posts tagged BrandonInge at FanHouse

It's only been a couple of days since the smoke cleared and Detroit's last-place finish was cemented in stone, but already the team is making moves to prepare for next year. Without making a single roster move they significantly upgraded their defense by announcing that Brandon Inge, a Gold Glove-caliber fielder, would return to third base, mercifully ending the Carlos Guillen experiment. Guillen, who's been shifted from shortstop to first to third in the past year, is now expected to take over in left field.

Inge's return to the hot corner won't be the only change to the left side of the infield -- Dave Dombrowski also announced Monday that Edgar Renteria's 2009 option would not be picked up. Given Renteria's struggles at the plate (84 OPS+) and the field, this was a no-brainer, especially when you consider the Red Sox are the ones on the hook for Renteria's $3 million buyout.

With baseball using instant replay for the first time on Wednesday night to give Alex Rodriguez his latest pointless home run (Alex also homered last night to help the Yankees only lose by two), it's obvious we've entered a new age in the sport. Of course, all the opponents of instant replay were against it because they weren't sure where it would end.

Yeah, it only starts with home runs, but soon it will be safe or out, fair or foul, and ultimately, balls and strikes. Well, while it looks like umpires can still judge a pitch's location, we may end up needing robot umpires anyway. The human ones the game utilizes now can't count.

In the fourth inning Thursday, [Sean] Rodriguez struck out on what the scoreboard said was a full-count pitch. But a pitch-by-pitch replay of the at-bat confirmed that Rodriguez actually struck out on a 4-and-2 pitch.

Neither plate umpire Tim Welke nor Angels Manager Mike Scioscia noticed the mistake. At 2-2, Rodriguez said Welke asked Tigers catcher Brandon Inge what the count was.

"He said he thought it was 1-2, and I said I thought it was 1-2 also," Rodriguez said. "He thanked me for my honesty."

See, this is what happens to a sport when they draft players straight out of high school and let them skip college. Their math and counting skills just deteriorate.

Our MLB editor provides weekly dispatches from major league games in Notes From the Clubhouse.

The Tigers have done a nice job of recovering from a wretched start to the season. Expected to be a 1,000-run juggernaut, Detroit stumbled out of the gate, losing its first seven game and going 23-32 over the first two months. Entering play Saturday, the Tigers stand at 48-48. While they aren't expected to drop back below .500 for the rest of the season, the Tigers have a long way to go to catch up with the Twins and White Sox in the AL Central.

Maybe that's why both utilityman Brandon Inge and reliever Fernando Rodney are sporting brand new buzzcuts today. Detroit needs that extra push in the second half. Sure a reliable starting pitcher would go a lot farther in helping the Tigers' chances, but a new hairstyle can't hurt can it?

Who better than manager Jim Leyland, ever the gruff kidder, to comment on the new locks sported by his players?

"There's something wrong with Inge," joked Leyland before Saturday night's game in Baltimore. "He's [expletive] rowing with one oar."

"He has a good time and he plays his ass off," added Leyland in a moment of candor about Inge, who, after losing his starting role this winter, has played all over the place this season and been extremely valuable to Leyland.

As for Rodney, who is holding onto his shorn locks so he can show his mother, Leyland had a few more wisecracks. "If he shaves that [expletive] goatee, he'll look even better," said the Tigers manager. "The [expletive] shampoo will finally get to his head."

Will all this actually help Detroit? Who knows? But for a team that faced high expectations and still has a big hole to climb out of, the Tigers appear to be an awfully loose bunch.

With the trade deadline right around the corner, our MLB editor brings you the top five rumors every day until July 31.

- The Mariners are done, and they have been for awhile, which means the next two weeks could bring a flurry of activity in the Pacific Northwest, writes the Seattle Post-Intelligencer's David Andriesen. Perhaps the most intriguing name? Adrian Beltre, who is under contract through 2009 at a somewhat modest $12 million. Beltre won't save a team's offense by himself, but he does have decent pop, he's a terrific defender at the hot corner and he's probably the Mariners' most valuable asset they're actually willing to part with. A reunion with his old team, the Dodgers, could make a lot of sense.

- The Phillies can't be feeling too great about their position these days. The Mets are charging hard in the NL East and the Brewers moved to the head of the wild card class by adding CC Sabathia. All-Star second baseman Chase Utley says he would welcome a pitching upgrade. For now, it appears he'll have to settle for Brett Myers, who will return to the Philadelphia rotation July 23 after a stint in the minors.

The Phillies have been connected to every big pitching name on the trade market that's even been joked about -- from Matt Cain to A.J. Burnett to Erik Bedard. Still, considering the cost and quality of those pitchers and the relative lack of depth in their farm system, the Phils' best bet might be to gamble on Myers, who hasn't pitched nearly as badly as his 5.84 ERA would suggest, returning to form.

In fairness, Brandon Inge is not blaming his inability to properly lift a pillow for the entire extent of the injury that has him headed to the disabled list. The injury has been bugging him for a while, and this just put it over the top. Because, lifting pillows can be a pretty dangerous activity.

Inge said he aggravated the injury moving a pillow for his three-year-old Monday night. He said if not for that mishap, he probably would have tried to continue to play with the injury, which he said has bothered him since he suffered it on June 1 in Seattle.

Told of Inge's account of the pillow, Tigers manager Jim Leyland said, "That's a first."

Yes indeed it is. There are tons of horrible injuries in baseball (meaning stupidly ridiculous ways that the players get hurt) but this is kind of absurd. I mean, sneezing (Sammy Sosa) and Guitar Hero (Joel Zumaya) are at least respectable.

Okay, not sneezing. But if you move your three year old's pillow around and see a vertabrae lying on the ground when you're done, just pull a Vladrad and tell everyone it happened while you were lifting weights or something.

Via FanIQ

June is here so it's well past time for the Detroit Tigers to write anything off to a slow start. It's getting later and later and if they're going to make a charge for the division title, it has to start right away. That means doing anything possible to get their best team on the field, even if it means moving Carlos Guillen for the third time since the end of last season.

Guillen moved from short to first full-time to accomodate Edgar Renteria after the trade bringing him to Detroit from Atlanta. Then they moved him to third when Miguel Cabrera's errant fielding made the hot corner too toasty for comfort. Now Guillen is moving to leftfield, starting with today's game against Seattle, so that Jim Leyland can get Brandon Inge's power and excellent glove into the lineup a little more often.

He did say that the move wouldn't be permanent but the manager is running out of ways to jumpstart his team. He's dropped Cabrera in the lineup and rejiggered the defense but nothing has worked. The biggest reason why is that none of those moves has to do with the three-fifths of the rotation currently posting ERAs north of five. Unless Justin Verlander, Kenny Rogers and Nate Robertson start turning in effective starts consistently, nothing in the lineup will help the Tigers climb out of the ditch they've dug themselves.

Well, you all know the old saying: When it rains, it pours. Man is it pouring in Detroit right now. It's pouring so much that one man has even built an ark and is loading animals on it as we speak. Not only are the Tigers incapable of winning a game, (or hitting the baseball, or tying their shoes, or standing upright...) but they're also blowing record streaks.

Remember last season when Placido Polanco set the record for consecutive games by a second baseman without an error? Well, that streak came to an end at 186 games on Tuesday afternoon in Boston.

Polanco received this error when third baseman Miguel Cabrera couldn't pull off a catch-and-tag in one motion on sliding Manny Ramirez.

Ramirez had boomed a Kenny Rogers pitch to the deepest part of Fenway Park, the triangle in deep right-center. Polanco took center fielder Brandon Inge's strong relay and fired a one-hopper to third as Ramirez bid for a triple. Cabrera tried to backhand the ball and tag Ramirez all in one motion.

Given the description of the play, I didn't see it, I'm not sure Polanco really deserved the error. The throw got to Cabrera, and it sounds like he was able to catch it, but messed it up when he tried to catch the ball and tag Ramirez out on the play. If an error even deserved to be called, and I don't think it should have, then Cabrera should have been tagged with it.

Too bad this game wasn't in Detroit, because Polanco probably would have gotten the benefit of the hometown scorekeeper. Though if the game had been in Detroit, there's an off chance that Polanco and his teammates wouldn't have made it out of Comerica with their lives. So maybe in the end, this error was the best thing that could have happened to Placido.

The Tigers have already lost the first two games of their opening series against the Kansas City Royals, and as I write this, they're currently down two runs in the 5th inning trying to avoid a sweep. Things would be a little tougher for the Tigers today, though, as prized acquisition and $153 million man, Miguel Cabrera, was removed from today's lineup before the game thanks to a pulled left quadriceps muscle.

Tigers manager Jim Leyland said that Cabrera could be available as a pinch-hitter, but wasn't sure when he would be able to play the field again.

"He could hit, but he can't run, so I don't want to use him," Leyland said before the game with Kansas City. "He had some trouble with it over the winter and it was sore during the spring, but I don't know if he hurt it during the rundown yesterday or what."

The injury doesn't sound too serious, but still, it's not exactly what the Tigers or Miguel want to be dealing with right now.

If there's any good news for the Tigers, it's that the fact they weren't able to move Brandon Inge in the off-season has been a blessing in disguise this first week. He started the first two games in centerfield for the injured Curtis Granderson, and now today he returns home to third base to fill in for Cabrera.

What I'm wondering is if Cabrera isn't able to play defense for a few days, do the Tigers just rest him until the quad is healthy again, or put him in the DH spot and leave Gary Sheffield on the bench? Though admittedly, that's a problem a lot of teams would love to have.