Pretty promising altogether. Yes, he did give up three runs on two homers. Yes, he did walk two. However, he felt no pain and threw 60 pitches. He likely could have gone longer, and I wonder why they sent him out there to pitch the fourth, as he would have thrown more than sixty had he gotten three outs. Maybe they gave him three batters, who knows?
Anyway, he was throwing strikes (38-60), and he was likely a little soft on the elbow, which would take some movement away from his pitches and, because of this, would come the home runs. The only other hit was a soft grounder to 2nd by none other than Carlos Pena that could have been an out, and likely would have been if Polanco was playing 2nd base.
Tiger Blog says "he got shelled," but that is really not the case. And even though he did give up 3 runs in 3 innings, allowing five baserunners, he was almost expected to, and supposed to. The point was to get him on the mound. He'll have a couple more starts. It's likely they'll keep him to 80 pitches or so next time, and he'll try to go at least five innings. Then, he'll let it all hang out and throw around 100. The next two are what to look at. As for yesterday, it was a success because he took the mound.
