Doug Fister, Drew Smyly, Anibal Sanchez, and injuries

This is good news, ok news, maybe bad news situation. Last Saturday we saw Doug Fister really struggle against the Baltimore Orioles. It was not his scheduled day, but he was on full rest as the Tigers decided to skip Anibal Sanchez’s turn, due to two off days over the last seven. Usually with a lead Fister is lights out, and when the Tigers scored five runs early it looked like he could cruise to the win. Things didn’t work out that way and it looks like he had a groin injury and insisted to the coaching staff that he was ok to go. Doug has had a rough year, and the training staff maybe should not have allowed it, but what can you do.

The Toledo Mud Hens played a double header yesterday, with Drew Smyly scheduled to start the second game. He did, but pitched just one inning of reported lights out ball before he was mysteriously pulled from the game. Of course the likely reason for that is he will return to the big team should Fister not be able, or need to skip his next start. Right now Fister is scheduled to start Saturday’s game against the Los Angeles Angels.

The problem with Smyly is he hasn’t pitched much for Toledo since coming off the Disable list with a similar injury to the one that side lined Fister earlier this year. He pitched one inning last night, two stars ago he was ejected in the second inning. In fact Drew has not thrown more than more than four innings in four of his last five starts. That could be disastrous for a under performing Tigers bullpen if he gets the start Saturday and struggles.

For tonight, after a splendid performance by Max Scherzer, Anibal Sanchez comes back to the hill. Hopefully he and pitching coach Jeff Jones have discovered the reasons for his struggles since coming to Detroit. However, to be perfectly honest Sanchez has always been an up and down kind pitcher. Lights out at times, and frustratingly inconsistent at others really he is a slightly better version of Rick Porcello, but we have yet to see that in his time in Detroit.

The Thing that is going to sting is the team gave up Jacob Turner to get Sanchez. Since Sanchez is likely only going to be here this season, that trade will forever be judged on what Anibal gets done from now till the season ends. For the time being it looks like the Miami Marlins have finally won a trade with Dave Dombrowski and the Tigers. However, since Dave fleeced them out of Miguel Cabrera they are still up over the baseball team owned by Jeff Loria.