Opening-game defeat could yet burn Detroit

Detroit

What the Tigers, Minnesota Twins, and anyone else on hand for a 10-hour day and night of marathon baseball at Comerica Park might have taken from Tuesday's doubleheader split (Twins 3, Tigers 2 in 10 innings, followed by a 6-5 Tigers triumph):

The Tigers could yet be haunted by Tuesday's afternoon loss: The Twins victory in the opener was crushing from Detroit's perspective because it was a rare game served by the Twins to the Tigers on a platter. And the Tigers promptly blew it.

Twins starter Nick Blackburn was all over the place early when the Tigers had runners galore. They got one run. Meanwhile, Rick Porcello was throwing a gem of a game for the Tigers. It was Detroit's game on two fronts and instead ended up a Twins victory.

Should the back end of the Tigers' rotation (Eddie Bonine and Nate Robertson) not hold up in tonight's or Thursday's game, that inaugural series defeat could be the one they'll most remember, and most lament, all winter long.

Magglio Ordonez has returned as a vital player: You cannot argue with a .405 batting average in September, not when Ordonez slammed an RBI double to left that drove in two big runs in the third inning of the second game.

Ordonez has taken a bruising this season (from this critic, in particular) because of his awful first half and his relative lack of extra-base power and run production. Tuesday was his first multiple-RBI game since July 21. While it may speak to how off-kilter Ordonez was ahead of the stretch, he is swinging the bat with some of his old crunch. And what a storyline that could turn out to be during these final games.

Porcello is developing into a national story: With baseball's spotlight on the Tigers-Twins series, those who had not seen the 20-year-old right-hander's power and poise saw it Tuesday. There is always a tendency from afar to think of a pitcher so young and so successful as more of a phenom than an elite performer.

But Porcello is no one-time act and the baseball nation is beginning to understand it. The gem he threw Tuesday was another reason Leyland appeared to have been all but gutted by that afternoon defeat. He knew how brilliantly his kid pitcher had performed. And neither he nor his team had a thing to show for it.

Aubrey Huff's struggles have the Tigers over a barrel: More than any hitter in the lineup, his awful at-bats Tuesday took the Tigers out of a game they could have been leading easily. Take away one hit (his home run against Toronto earlier this month) and he has produced next to nothing since arriving in an August trade.

The Tigers have too many other options to keep using a hitter who simply hasn't begun to hit the way everyone, Huff included, expected.

Bad time for a bad scoring decision: Official scoring hasn't been an issue at Comerica Park this season, but it became one, unfortunately, in the ninth inning of Tuesday night's game when Delmon Young was credited by scorer Chuck Klonke with a hit on a ball Placido Polanco clearly botched.

A lot of national press is on hand for the Tigers-Twins series and everyone was wondering afterward if this is the way scoring goes in Detroit, and if this is a reason the Tigers infield has had so many errorless streaks.

The answer is no. As has been noted here before, Detroit's official scoring has been consistent and solid. And it was Tuesday -- I thought Curtis Granderson deserved a hit that was ruled a hit on a tough ball bobbled by Nick Punto in the fourth inning -- until the Polanco error was judged to be a hit. Ouch.

It's difficult to believe the Tigers-Twins playoff sprint will be decided before Sunday: These teams have effective pitching, they play good defense, and they get just enough big hits to take turns winning ballgames.

You can wonder what a couple of Twins, Justin Morneau and Joe Crede, would mean in a series like this.

But the Tigers have been slammed hard enough on the starting pitching front in 2009 to feel any undue sympathy for a rival, even for one they genuinely respect as much as the Twins.

The next two games, let alone the next five days, will be some kind of theater.

lynn.henning@detnews.com">lynn.henning@detnews.com.