Ron Gardenhire shakes up the Detroit Tigers lineup heading to Minnesota
By Bob Heyrman
The Detroit Tigers will welcome back their young, powerful left-fielder Christin Stewart as the team heads to Minnesota for a four-game, three-day series.
The baseball season is still relatively young but for a Detroit Tigers team that continues to hang around .500, this weekend in Minnesota is a critical series. I mean, no one expects this team to be a playoff team or anything and if you asked fans truthfully where they expected this team to be just six weeks into the season; the answer wouldn’t be hovering around .500.
The Detroit Tigers are 6.5 games back of the Twins with a chance to make up some ground over the weekend. Christin Stewart will rejoin the team as an everyday player after nursing a quad injury for the last few weeks. He appeared in the blow out loss to the L.A Angels Thursday afternoon as a pinch hitter and popped out.
Manager Ron Gardenhire is shaking up the lineup in hopes to rattle a few chains, potentially waking up a few of his hitters. Miguel Cabrera will slide down to the clean-up spot, Jeimer Candelario is being removed from the leadoff spot in favor of Niko Goodrum. Nick Castellanos is moving from his regular two-hole to three as the skipper will insert Stewart back into the lineup hitting second.
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Look at the names Gardy has here to work with; it’s not Jim Leyland‘s Tigers’ or even Brad Ausmus‘ Tigers. I’m always left to wonder, what if Jim Leyland stayed just one more season? Say what you want about him, although he wasn’t able to win a World Series with the Tigers his players played hard for him. Ausmus would be perfect for the Tigers right now–a contending team had no business hiring a first time manager who was just getting his feet wet. If Gardenhire were the skipper immediately after Leyland departed things could have been very different.
Gardenhire shaking up this lineup heading into the series is a breath of fresh air. It’s something Ausmus and Leyland for that matter failed to do. They always wrote out their lineup nearly the same way, it’s as if they would just photocopy 162 copies and post them up each night. Brad was terrified to move Cabrera or Victor Martinez from their spot in the batting order trying to avoid conflict or hurt anyone’s feelings.
Sometimes you need to shake things up; I am happy Gardy is experimenting. Stewart is a welcoming sight for the power-less Tigers. Detroit ranks second last with merely 25 total home runs on the season, the only team worse is Miami with 24. The league leader is Seattle with 75. Seattle also leads the league with 218 runs batted in; the Tigers again rank second last with 114; still, the only team worse is Miami.
The Detroit Tigers team batting average is atrocious only hitting .230 as a group with a .673 OPS. The league-leading Houston Astros are batting .276, with a .841 OPS as a team. The Twins are hitting .261 with a .822 OPS which is good for third & second respectively league-wide.
Next. Christin Stewart returns from injury. dark
Tyson Ross will look to rebound tonight after a terrible outing last time out where he only lasted 1.1 innings allowing 7 hits and 5 runs. He takes a 5.34 season ERA to go with his 1-4 record into Minnesota tonight. First pitch is set for 8:10 pm.