During spring training this photo hit the interwebs. When he was a Dodger, our new acquisition Jonathan Broxton – who tips the scale at more than 300 pounds – was nicknamed “Pants.” Here a couple of our smaller bullpen denizens, Everett Teaford and Tim Collins, demonstrate how he got the name.
Tonight was our first look at Broxton, who came in from the pen after Jose Mijares coughed up the lead to the Tigers. He is in fact a substantial gentleman. Even through binoculars it’s hard to judge scale from our seats, but he’s got a great big body and a little tiny head.
Amy couldn’t make it to the game (airport shuttle duty), so at least now we know that she isn’t a bad luck charm who leads to annoying defeats. Because tonight was another one.
To be sure, it had its moments. Things got off to an interesting start with what appeared to be a brief but heated exchange between home plate umpire Brian Knight and someone on the Detroit bench. It may have been something about the strike zone, because players on both teams seemed unusually unhappy with some called strikes. Mitch Maier even paused for a brief exchange of ideas with Knight after going down looking to end the fourth (leaving runners stranded at second and third).
And the wackiness didn’t stop there. In the third Alcides Escobar hit a two-run shot into the Royals’ bullpen to rob the Tigers of a one-run lead. And as if that wasn’t weird enough, Prince Fielder stole second in the top of the next inning. When I tried entering the steal in iScore, I forgot that you have to tell the software that the runner moved to second when he stole. Otherwise it thinks you’re trying to record that he just stole first, and it pops up an error message. I wasn’t looking closely at the screen, so when the error popped up at first I thought it was going to say something like “Are you really trying to record that Prince Fielder stole a base? Yes/no.”
Then in the bottom of the seventh Detroit pitcher Max Scherzer hit Humberto Quintero with a pitch. It caught him squarely on the shoulder, which must have hurt enough for some truly powerful aspersions to be voiced. Moments later he was face to face with Tigers catcher Gerald Laird. The benches cleared, but no punches were thrown. My favorite part was watching through the binoculars as Fielder strode down the baseline with a “Okay you guys, what’s going on here?” look on his face.
Weirdness aside, it was a close game and a disappointing loss. On the one hand, it was good to see our pitchers go without coughing up a morale-crushing big inning. On the other hand, a series of small innings is still enough for a loss if we don’t start putting runs on the board.
We had the same number of hits as the Tigers and didn’t strand significantly more runners than they did. So perhaps we should just chalk this one up to bad luck and try it again on Saturday. This is the first time Detroit has swept us at home since 2008 and the first time in franchise history that we’ve lost our first six home games of the season. Maybe bad luck is just in the air.
To steal Jobu’s rum is very bad. Very bad.
The box score:
TIGERS (4) AT ROYALS (3)
TIGERS AB R H BI ROYALS AB R H BI
Austin Jackson 4 0 0 0 Alex Gordon 4 0 1 0
Brennan Boesch 5 0 0 0 Yuniesky Betancourt 3 0 1 0
Miguel Cabrera 5 2 2 0 Eric Hosmer 4 0 0 0
Prince Fielder 4 0 2 2 Billy Butler 3 1 2 0
Delmon Young 4 0 1 0 Jeff Francoeur 4 0 0 0
Ryan Raburn 2 1 0 0 Mike Moustakas 4 0 1 0
Jhonny Peralta 4 0 1 1 Humberto Quintero 2 0 1 1
Brandon Inge 4 0 0 0 Mitch Maier 1 1 0 0
Gerald Laird 3 1 2 0 Jason Bourgeois 2 0 1 0
Alcides Escobar 4 1 1 2
TOTALS 35 4 8 3 TOTALS 31 3 8 3
TIGERS 010 010 200 -- 4
ROYALS 002 100 000 -- 3
LOB--TIGERS 8, ROYALS 6. ERR--Jonathan Sanchez. 2B--Prince
Fielder, Jhonny Peralta, Humberto Quintero. HR--Alcides
Escobar. HBP--Humberto Quintero. SACB--Austin Jackson.
SB--Prince Fielder, Ryan Raburn.
TIGERS IP H R ER BB SO HR
Max Scherzer 6 7 3 3 1 3 1
Phil Coke 1 0 0 0 0 0 0
Joaquin Benoit 1 0 0 0 2 0 0
Jose Valverde 1 1 0 0 1 0 0
ROYALS
Jonathan Sanchez 5 4 2 2 3 3 0
Kelvin Herrera 1 1-3 1 1 1 0 2 0
Jose Mijares 0 1-3 2 1 1 0 0 0
Louis Coleman 0 1-3 0 0 0 0 0 0
Aaron Crow 1 0 0 0 0 2 0
Jonathan Broxton 1 1 0 0 0 1 0
WP--Jonathan Sanchez, Jose Mijares. SO--Jhonny Peralta,
Miguel Cabrera, Brandon Inge (2), Ryan Raburn, Delmon Young,
Brennan Boesch, Austin Jackson, Humberto Quintero, Jeff
Francoeur, Mitch Maier. BB--Gerald Laird, Ryan Raburn (2),
Humberto Quintero, Yuniesky Betancourt, Mitch Maier, Billy
Butler.
Buck Seat - W ? (WW2 vet, former teacher, but didn’t hear details beyond that)
Guard - Firemen
Anthem - Again not too bad
Umpires
1 - Winters
2 - Bell
3 - ??? (missed his name again, and ScoreCenter was down)
H - Knight
Time - 7:10
Temp - 76
I was President Palmer.
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