Detroit Tigers: Projecting the 2020 opening day lineup
By Tyler Kotila
The Detroit Tigers have a set of five outfielders who are going to make up the platoon. The remaining two outfielders will serve as bench players for Manager Ron Gardenhire.
On Opening Day, it is going to be Stewart, Jones, and Reyes in the outfield, but besides those three, there is Travis Demeritte as well as utility man Castro. Castro is someone who can slot into centerfield and be an off-day insert for the Tigers lineup.
When the Detroit Tigers face a left-handed pitcher, Demeritte will crack the lineup as a right-handed bat, unlike Reyes. The downside of Demeritte is that he struggles significantly with discipline and strikeouts. If he can get this under control, Demeritte could develop into a sneaky power threat, but he must stop chasing pitches first.
The Tigers will see Stewart in leftfield the most, Jones in centerfield, and Reyes in rightfield. But the other two will rotate in here and there as discussed above. Now, with the additions of Schoop and Cron, the bench players change up a little bit.
The catcher’s platoon leaves Greiner on the bench until Rogers gets promoted to the big leagues to try and develop some more. The infield bench players are mainly made up by Candelario and Castro. In the outfield, it will be Demeritte and Castro available to swing it for Gardenhire.
If it has not been made clear enough, Castro is going to be a super-utility player for the struggling Tigers team. For fans wondering what kind of player he can be compared too, think of like Don Kelly or Ryan Raburn in terms of versatility, but Castro is much better than both of these two. These are the players who will round out the bench for Gardenhire on March 26th at Progressive Field.