The long local nightmare is over in Detroit. The Tigers have
won back-to-back games for the first time in over a month.
From April 15-18, the Tigers beat the White Sox once and then swept the Kansas
City Royals in a three-game road series.
Since then, Detroit has lost as many as four in a row but weren't able to win
consecutive games.
But after defeating the Minnesota Twins 6-3 on Saturday afternoon at Target
Field, the Tigers finally had a positive streak.
"That's for everybody else," manager Jim Leyland told FOX Sports'
Detroit's John Keating on the postgame show. "I knew we'd win two in a row
before the season was over or I wouldn't have been here to see it."
The Tigers (22-24) have had pretty good starting pitching in that span but the
offense had been lacking. In fact, in 14 of their 21 losses since the four-game
winning streak, the Tigers have scored three runs or fewer.
Admittedly, at 15-31 the Twins are the worst team in the big leagues and have
had several injuries to their pitching staff, but the Tigers have lost to bad
teams before.
So it looks like a good sign that in two games, they have scored 16 runs on 28
hits.
"We come out swinging the bats pretty good again, we came ready to
play," Leyland said. "I was excited about it. I told them before the
game today, not that it had anything to do with anything , but I told them the
key to today's game is energy. You gotta come out with energy.
“Nice win last night, turn around in 12 hours and play
again, the key is going to be energy. Come out with some energy and we
did."
Among those who had a lot of energy was Prince Fielder, who went 4-for-4.
"He's starting to get it going," Leyland said. "I knew he would.
His track record's too good."
Fielder was less excited about his perfect day at the plate than he was about
the team winning again.
"Four-for-four is great, but to be able to get a win, you can get excited
because everybody on the team contributed and we got the victory," Fielder
said.
The relief of winning the game wouldn't have come without great relief
pitching. Max Scherzer had to leave the game in the sixth after a 42-minute
rain delay. When the rain came, the Twins had runners at the corners with just
one out.
Octavio Dotel calmly struck out Josh Willingham and then induced Justin Morneau
to pop out. As if getting out of the jam wasn't enough, Dotel also pitched the
seventh, striking out the side.
"That was impressive," Leyland said. "That was not an easy
situation to come in there and get both of those guys like he did and then
another clean inning. That was tremendous for us and we needed it. He picked us
up today. A lot of nice hits again today. But the hero of the game for me was
Octavio Dotel."
The Tigers have already won the three-game series and removed the back-to-back
victory monkey off their back, but the one thing better than a two-game winning
streak is a three-game winning streak.
"No question about it," Leyland said. "You can't rest on it. You
gotta come out, no matter how it turns out. You gotta have another day of
coming out with energy, coming right out of the chute. You've got two wins
under your belt, you've got to come out of the chute (Sunday) ready to
play."
