Willis & Cabrera Work Royals

Tigers W 7-3, (2-1 Overall, 2-1 v. Royals)

(AP Photo/Ed Zurga)

Every time I think D-Train, I always picture that Coors Light Train from the commercials sweeping through a stadium. And yes, that song, "People of the world/ Join hands/ We're on a love train/ Love Train" is also playing in my head. It's nice to finally be able to associate Willis with good news and even better to say, "I told you so."

It's true this wasn't the dominant performance of a 2005 Cy Young winner, hell it wasn't even a win, but Dontrelle made alot of progress yesterday. You could see him, inning by inning, improving his control and you could actually watch his velocity climb. He was throwing mid to high 80's in the first, walking the first batter in 4 pitches. You could have bailed on him at this point, saying here we go again, or wondering if you'd see him run off the field with an anxiety attack, but he didn't fall apart. He composed himself and got the next guy out. He had two walks in the first inning and that's it. Most of the hits he gave up we're on 0-2 counts; he was getting ahead of hitters more and more each inning and by the 6th, his fastball was 92-94 mph and his control was there. With a line of 6 IP, 7 H, 2 ER, 2 BB, and 4 SO, you might think it wasn't that big of a deal, but it was. Dontrelle showed that he deserved to be on the pitching staff by putting his team in a position to win, not winning it all by himself. And I called that.

Let's give a big shout out to Cabrera too. He hit his second homer (a 3 run shot after a walk to Damon and an infield single by Ordonez) in less than 24 hours yesterday. After 3 games, dude is batting .571 with 2 HR and 7 RBI's. He's a one man wrecking crew. He went 4-5 yesterday, with Mags going 3-4. Also, Valverde came into the came in the 9th inning and shut shit down. 1 SO in 1 IP, but it was good to see him be able to bounce back that next day instead of stewing in a blown save for a few days.

Miguel Cabrera got high-fives from Johnny Damon and Magglio Ordoñez after his three-run homer. - Kansas City Star

All in all, we looked pretty good this series. We could have used some more early offense (before Cabrera's homer, we were 0-10 with runners in scoring positions yesterday), but we put ourselves in a position to win in every game and that's all you can really hope for.

Next Up: Indians v. Tigers 1:05 ET (Home Opener), Huff v. Porcello