Plight of the starters

West coast games during the school year are just not possible to watch.  I'm getting older and 10 PM is staying just as late.  So this is how I've been waking up this week: Alarm goes off, snooze, alarm goes off again, snooze, alarm goes off, news, weather, sports.  No, I don't snooze because I'm sleepy (well maybe).  It's because I want to hear how the Tigers did.  Here are the "summaries" I've heard the past two days.

Tuesday morning: Doug Fister pitched a great game, but Dotel (or Notel in this case) loses it in the 9th.  
Boo

I still like you Dotel, I'm just disappointed

Wednesday morning: Well the Tigers won last night, but it wasn't easy.  Justin Verlander almost got thrown out in the 3rd inning (Wha?) and Valverde loads them up in the 9th (again?!).
Argg

An emotion you know a lot about lately: Shame

First of all, I've never seen JV get aggravated.  That's just not his style, he goes out there and just gets it done.  But, can you blame him?  He finally got some run support and he knew he couldn't hand things over to the bullpen.  I hope someone bought Dougie a cold one after the game the other day because everyone on that team owes him a win!  This is not an original thought.  Tigers might have the best starting 5 in the league.  But everything else is struggling right now (ie: offense and relief pitching).  It doesn't surprise me that Smokes got ejected.  He will often get thrown on purpose just to motivate the team (Managing 101).  This wasn't one of those cases considering he never left the dugout.  This may be the only time I say this too so note the day and time... Thank Zeus for G-Money.  I think he stepped in front of the ump just as JV was really going at it.  G-Money gets it.  JV is who is winning games.  To get him kicked out (in the 3rd!!!) would be disaster.

So, relievers better get their act together or Dombrowski better get on his little hamburger phone to start trading them off one by one.