Game one of the doubleheader in Detroit went pretty well.
Vicente Padilla took the hill for us, and was pretty decent, given his rather sub par 2007 season as a whole. Pidente’s line was six innings, three hits, no runs, three walks and six strikeouts. 99 pitches in all. Pretty good line. Mike Wood followed, and gave up the brunt of the Detroit offense in a rather poor looking line. 1.2 innings, 6 hits 5 earned runs, and one strikeout. Not good. AJ Murray was the only other pitcher we used, and he went 1.1 innings, and gave up the the final Detroit run.
Offensively, this game was all about the longball. We hit seven of them. That I believe breaks a club record for most home runs in a road game. I think that’s what I heard Eric & Vic say during the broadcast. David Murphy had one, Marlon Byrd had two, Jarrod Saltamacchia had one, Ramon Vazquez one, Hank Blalock had one, and finally Freddy Guzman had one. That was Guzman’s first major league home run, too. What’s amusing is that Guzman had taken over for Byrd in center, so that was three jacks from the CF position.
In all, of the 14 hits we had total, 11 of them were extra base hits. Just three singles in all this. Which is a nice segway into…
David Murphy almost got a cycle. He did have a shot, he needed just the single, and was up, but struck out. At least he got the chance, unlike Cat the other day. Speaking of Murphy, he’s starting to look like a realistic candidate to be a regular player next year. He’s certainly taken advantage of his late season opportunity. He definitely seems like a more realistic option than Nelson Cruz, or perhaps even Marlon Byrd. Problem with that is that Cruz has a friggin cannon of an arm, and Byrd seems to have become a fan favorite. Heck, he’s doing a lot better than Jason Botts. Anyway, Murphy looks like a good bet to be around for awhile.