Inge, Washburn win it for Tigers

-Courtesy of Brooks Baseball, that is the strikezone plot for Jarrod Washburn tonight. An overwhelming majority of his pitches were either roughly in the middle of the plate or down in the zone. Washburn is a "pitch to contact" pitcher and he has to be able to keep the ball low and away and hit those spots in order to induce lazy fly balls or ground balls. He did it tonight and will need to continue to do that during his tenure here.

-As Jimmy Leyland said in the post-game presser, this was a perfect baseball game. Great defense, great pitching by Washburn and Lyon and a HR to win it. And, despite our lack of hits, we had a good approach at the plate tonight. We induced 4 walks off Zack Greinke even though his stuff was good most of the night. Some more thoughts...

-In the last 30 days, here are some offensive totals for certain players on our club...

Inge has a .533 OPS and .248 wOBA
Laird has a .516 OPS and .234 wOBA
Everett has a .354 OPS, and .159 wOBA

-on the other hand...
Ordonez has a .881 OPS and .378 wOBA

-It did not really matter tonight as Inge was the one who got the big hit, but this is a sampling on why our offense has been so putrid lately and on the road. Everett and Laird are simply terrible offensive players and the injury that has been bothering Inge has reduced him to a negative player since the All Star break.

-Back to back gems from Verlander and Washburn certainly will help an anemic offense. The Royals have an even worse offense and Jackson has a chance to redeem himself after a poor start last time out.