The Detroit Tigers completed the sweep today by prevailing in the tenth inning of a pitchers' duel. Nate Robertson and Fausto Carmona, neither candidates for the all-star rotation, both turned in relatively impressive performances: Robertson went 6 scoreless while Fausto completed 6.1 with 3 ER. Carmona had an odd day: he was dominant at points, retiring the Tigers with ease after giving up a leadoff homerun to Curtis Granderson. However, his control failed him in the seventh as he walked Adam Everett and Granderson after getting the first out. Wedge decided to leave Carmona to clean up his own mess and he didn't, surrendering a triple to Clete Thomas.
Fausto's final line looks pretty lousy, mostly because of the 5 BB's. Still, you've got to at least acknowledge that three of those walks were to the aforementioned Adam Everett, a player OPSing .626. It's unclear why Carmona is so afraid of Everett. Beyond that, we saw more of a hybrid Old/New Fausto, with a 3:2 GO:FO ratio but also an effective four seam fastball. Despite his struggles today, he's looking more like a pitcher that could stick in a rotation than one that could not.
Chris Perez and Tony Sipp were outstanding again, offering up 2.2 innings of scoreless baseball, fanning five and generally scaring the crap out of everybody. Perez, especially, can't be spoken of highly enough: he is consistently throwing his fastball at the knees on either side of the plate and his breaking stuff has been swing and miss for weeks now. In short, Chris Perez looks like what many expected of Kerry Wood.
The game was probably over from the time Wedge chose Rafael Perez to start the 10th but they went ahead and played it for fun anyways. Raffy went 2B, IBB, BB, SF and the game was over. After returning from the minors, Perez turned in a pretty decent August results-wise, with a 3.65 ERA. Watching him, however, he still doesn't look like Fist of Steel and his peripherals bear this out, especially his now 14 hits surrendered in 13.2 IP with only 6 K's in the same timeframe. He's also got about 4 absolute trainwrecks in 13 appearances.
The Indians' only runs came in the eighth with Shoppach, Caroll, Cabrera and Choo contributing the hits. Choo's double into deep right plated two runs and tied the game until Placido Polanca's sacrifice fly in the 10th untied it.