Tigers 2014 Games 76, 77, 78: non satis cursus

The Tigers deserved to lose the Sunday game, as Drew Smyly had terrible outing, but the previous games featured pitching performances that, while not dominant, were theoretically good enough to win when given average run support. Now, in the 2014 American League, that means four or five runs. Rather logically enough, the Tigers split the games. In Max Scherzer's start, the Tigers, just, scored four and won. For Justin Verlander, however, the Tigers could only score three, and lost. What's more is that there were few chances for the Tigers to add a run or two more. Their bats were shut down pretty completely by throughout the game by the Astros' Brad Peacock. The best chance came in the third inning, when both Torii Hunter and Miguel Cabrera failed with runners on first and second. Both are among the worst performers with the bat as far as LI Win Values tell us. All of this is a roundabout way of saying that the defeat was not entirely Blaine Hardy's fault.

QMAX ratings:   (4,3) for Verlander (Success Square)
                (4,2) for scherzer (Succcess Square)
                (7,5) for Smyly (Hit Hard)

Bullpen Awards: Goat's Head for Hardy

Batters' Aggregate LI Win Values: 
Suarez        0.637
Kinsler       0.506
Castellanos   0.276
Holaday       0.102
Romine        0.080
Avila        -0.004
JD Mart      -0.031
V-Mart       -0.259
Cabrera      -0.340
Jackson      -0.419
Hunter       -0.447
Rajai        -0.685