Tigers Blast Royals 19-4

The Detroit Tigers did their best Kimbo Slice impersonation Monday night when they manhandled the Kansas City Royals 19-4 in Kansas City. The Tigers used a 10 run eighth to propel themselves to their third 19 run game of the season. According to Elias Sports Bureau that last team to do that was the 1950 Boston Red Sox. The team that was projected to score close to 1000 runs at the beginning of the season is starting to come into form. And that should be a scary thing for not just teams in the AL Central, but for the entire league. Miguel Cabrera went 5-6 with 6 RBI's while Matt Joyce was just a double away from a cycle going 4-6 with 5 RBI's. All this damage came at the hands of a team who had dominated the Tigers in their previous encounters earlier in the season. The Royals entered this game with a 6-0 record against Detroit in the 08 campaign. Also the Tigers did this with arguably their best hitter Magglio Ordonez out of the lineup. On the pitching side of things the Tigers got an incredible start from Zach Miner. He was making his first major league start since April 2007. Sandwiched in between those two starts were 32 relief appearances. Zach threw 6 shutout innings giving up 3 hits and one walk while striking out another. He gave a sleek start that should give confidence to the Tigers organization that they have finally found their guy to be the fifth starter in the rotation. The number one overall pick in the 2006 draft Luke Hochevar started the game for the Royals giving up 8 hits and 7 earned runs in 5 innings. Believe it or not he did not have the worst line of the game for the Kansas City pitching staff. That belonged to Jimmy Gobble who walked 4, gave up 7 hits and 10 earned runs in just one inning! It was a night that he would soon like to forget.

 Looking Forward: The Tigers look to capture a 2-0 series lead Tuesday night at "The K" (weird nickname for a stadium I always thought…wouldn't "The Kauff" be so much better? I mean "The K" just is too easy, that's like The Ballpark in Arlington. Kinda lame.) They start the ageless Kenny Rogers (7-6, 4.62 ERA) against Kyle Davies (3-1, 4.59 ERA) trying to make up some more ground on the Twins and White Sox before they start a series of their own against the White Sox. Detroit is only 5.5 games behind the division leaders and has gained 2 games in 2 days and it is looking more and more that the AL Central will be a three team race in September.