Leyland Shows Why He's the Skipper

I love it. Jimmy Leyland is not going to accept losing anymore in Detroit, and he's telling the players just that. Come out to the park to win. If you don't want to win, then don't bother coming out.

"We stunk, period," Leyland said. "Stunk, and it's not good enough. It's been going on here before, and it's not going to happen here [now]. It's not going to go on here."

Shelton did hit his ninth homer of the year, the fastest player to nine in AL history, but it wasn't enough for the Tigers, who lost the game in ugly fashion 10-2 to the Cleveland Indians. Leyland knows what he's doing. He has to get some wins for his ballclub. The attendance is already up from last year (19,126 came out for this one), but there's a long way to go to convince the Motown crowd that the Tigers are worth seeing. Especially when the Pistons make winning look quite a bit easier.

Tonight the Blue Jays go up against the Bronx Bombers in a series to see who's going to compete with the rejuvinated Boston Red Sox. Can the Big Unit get it done? I think he can, and it doesn't hurt that he's matched up against Chacin tonight. They seem to be worried about Randy in NY, but 2-1 with a 2.25 ERA and 16 K's isn't something to get your panties all bunched up about. We are talking Yankees here, so I'm sure they are expecting 3-0 with a 1.53 ERA out of him, but let's see how he does tonight before we flambe the lefty just yet.

Speaking of the Red Sox, did you see that walk-off by Mark Loretta? If you are saying "who?!" then you know how big that was. It was his first walk-off at any level of competition for the man. He is a career .300 hitter, but his career high for a season was 16 in '04 for the Padres. Not the "go deep" type. We're not talking Big Popi here. That made it all the better when the ball was sent high up over the Green Monster to send the Boston faithful home happy. It came after Guardado made Wily Mo Pena and Dustan Mohr look silly on two K's. Then, on a 1-2 pitch, Kevin Youkilis (again, who?) hit a grounder to second. But, instead of putting his head down in shame and walking to the dugout, he put his head down and ran like mad for first base, barely beating out the throw from the Mariners' Jose Lopez. Then came Loretta's heroics for the Red Sox 7-6 win. What a game. This is what baseball is all about.

Matt, I won't talk about last night's Mets v. Braves... Cool?

Alrighty then. I can tell you one thing for sure, Braves ERA be damned. Matt and I are definitely sky-high with Baseball Fever. The Cubs and the Braves are hanging in second place right now, and the Twins are only 1.5 games out, so we're happy. At least when Jorge Sosa isn't pitching. Or Glendon Rusch. Nice thing about April Baseball, everyone's still in it. And my bro is probably happy with the ChiSox 8-5 start, but we may never find out since he hasn't posted since the Cubs last won the Series...

I'm ready for some more baseball already. I just can't get enough.

♦Digg it   ♦del.icio.us   ♦Technorati   ♦StumbleUpon   ♦Google   ♦Yahoo   ♦reddit