Elephant in the Room

Yay Tigers. You swept the A's. This, on the heels of getting swept by the Twins, just after sweeping the Tribe. How do we make sense of this?

The team is still wildly inconsistent. For the most part, the hitting will always be inconsistent. Cabrera is playing at an All-star level and might continue through the rest of the season. Polanco should continue to hit at a .300 clip. But after those two, though, the Tigers are streaky - and that includes Granderson, Maggs, Inge, etc. The fact that they clobbered the A's for 14, 9, and 11 runs is awesome, but I doubt they'll be able to always rely on the bats.

I've harped on it before, and my opinion has not changed. The team will go nowhere until the bullpen gets an upgrade. Let's go back to that telling statistic - Inherited Runners Scored (IS%). This season, the Tigers used eleven pitchers out of the 'pen. Two of those have always started innings and, thus, have no inherited runners (Rodney and French). The other nine:

Pitcher IS%
Rincon* 100%
Rapada 100%
Nate 75%
Bonine 60%
Lyon 50%
Seay 43%
Miner 40%
League Ave. 37%
Zumaya 20%
Perry 0%

(*released)
Folks, the Tigers have two pitchers of nine below the league average. The bullpen is failing. If Zumaya and Perry are not available (such as the 3rd game against the Twins), no lead is safe. Furthermore, Perry and Zumaya are still unproven - Perry has a career 16 innings under his belt, and Zumaya is coming off two straight injury-riddled seasons. Thank God they're pitching well, but they need help. What about Bobby Seay? He killed the Tigers last week. It's clear to me that his role is simple - situational lefty. Bring him in for one or two batters. Any more than that and he'll blow up.

Zumaya & Perry need help, and I have serious doubts these other dudes will improve. Dombrowski should look to make some moves now. The Tigers are fortunate to currently find themselves in first place. DD should take advantage. Raburn's stock is high - same with Clete Thomas and Josh Anderson. One or two of those guys could land a decent arm, right?

Galarraga
Oofff. Four straight painful starts. He needs to sit for a while. Send him to the bullpen. Let Miner fill-in. Galarraga has the goods, but he needs to retool something. On the heels of Verlander's awesome 13K outting, the Galarraga/Verlander karmic see-saw continues...

Edwin
Let's have a show of hands of the folks who questioned the Matt Joyce for Edwin Jackson trade. Anyone? Anyone? On mLive.com, many Tiger fans were livid. Where are they now?