The 1st Post!- Battle atop the AL Central

Hey all....

Welcome to my blog.  It's very basic now because I've spent the majority of the day playing The Show and negotiating Fantasy Baseball trades.

Let's get down to business...talking Tigers.  Today is June 14 and they are in a virtual tie atop the AL Central with the team that they will be playing for the next 3 days...the Cleveland Indians.  We all know the story of Cleveland so far this year.  Nobody (including me) expected them to be relevant at all in the AL Central race this year, they raced out to the hot start (30-15 after the 1st 45 games), but since then are just a paltry 5-14 with their last 2 victories being 1-0 ones.  Which Tribe team will show up for the 3 game set in Comerica? 

These 2 teams have played 3 times already this year back at the end of April when the Tigs were in the midst of a 7 game losing streak where nothing went right, and the Tribe won all 3 (2 of them were walk off wins, and the other the winning run was scored in the 8th when Benoit forgot where the strike zone was and Ryan Raburn was playing LF).  Tigs have been rollin' of late which has caused me many of groggy mornings the next day thanks in part to the Rod Allen Drinking Game .
What has caused the Tigs run that they have been on?  In my opinion it's a few different things, but the 2 main contributors are Austin Jackson and Joaquin Benoit.  Since the beginning of May AJax has been the AJax of last year.making highlight reel catches in the OF and getting on base and creating Havoc and distracting pitchers for the Big Boys Boesch,Cabby and VMart.  When these 2 teams played in Progressive Field Benoit had no clue how to locate the strike zone.  Remember he loaded the bases with 1 out and went to a 3-1 count on Santana which Santana sent to SOUVENIR CITY for a walk off in the 1st game of the series and then Benoit had control problems again 2 days later which lead to another Tribe late inning rally.  Since then he has gotten his stuff straight for the most part (even if he has given up runs in his last 2 appearances), which has allowed him to re-claim the 8th inning and allowed Jimmy to wake up from his slumber head to the tunnel smoke a few Marlboro's and slot in the other cast of characters in the pen where they should be.

Well that's all for now, time to make some dinner and some last min Fantasy baseball lineup changes and sit back and watch JV do work over the Tribe.