Oh, well

I guess the Tigers won't go 0-162 after all, after beating the Red Sox 7-2 yesterday for their first win of the season. But the Motown Bengals are still off to an unbelievably bad start. The national prognosticators all picked the Indians or Tigers to win the AL Central, but teams that start 0-7 generally don't get to the playoffs. The Tigers' seven runs yesterday were almost half as many as they scored in those first seven games. With now 22 runs in eight games, that works out to 2.75 runs a game. And this was supposed to be some sort of offensive juggernaut. They're offensive to the Detroit fans, but ...

The Indians aren't exactly on fire themselves, of course, with a 4-5 record after yesterday's 9-5 loss to the Los Angeles-California-Anaheim-Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim. Paul Byrd couldn't keep the ball in the park, giving up three home runs, including Mike Napoli's grand slam. He's off to an 0-2 start with an ugly 11.05 ERA. And he walked two hitters in his three innings of work. Byrd was supposed to be the guy who never walks guys, but he's walked two guys in each of his two starts, for four bases on balls in 7 1/3 innings. That's not good, obviously, because he gives up a lot of hits. But he knows that. In Byrd's words:

"I'm trying to figure out how to get the ball down," Byrd said. "I'm making a good pitch, but then I leave the ball sitting on a tee over the middle of the plate. And I can't do that. When I do miss, it's like batting practice and you just watch them go over the wall."

The Tribe did get 12 hits off the Halos, including Jhonny Peralta's second home run of the season, and Kelly Shoppach's first. They were a little bit unlucky to have only scored five runs. And they still have a 3 1/2-game lead over the Tigers. Yes, the Royals are in first place, and yes, they're better than they've been the last few years. But unless they're still in contention in June, I still think this will be a two-team race, and it's nice to be ahead.