Saturday, March 05, 2011

Who Are the Missing Locks In The Tiger's Line Up? LF, 2B, DH, and C?

IF you asked me I think that the best line up would feature V-Mart as the regular catcher, Ryan Raburn in LF, and Guillen at DH with possibly Scott Sizemore playing 2B. Avila will get his time the other days at catcher, and V-MArt can hit up DH on those days. Guillen could field 2B on those days as well. This would easily be our most lethal offense in my mind. Not as good defensively, but we aren't great anyways so who cares right? Hitting trumps defense everyday for me. Pitching can handle that job.

What are we hearing though? I think LF is still a bit open to interpretation. Raburn I believe is the best choice there for the everyday guy due to him being able to hit both LHP and RHP about the same average. A nice thing to be able to do for an everyday player obviously. Makes him less likely to need to be in a platoon situation. He also has about 30 HRs in a little over 700 ABs so the power is certainly there as well to go along with a .280 or so average. He has never played everyday, and many think he is an awful fielder, but I say give him the shot and he may also get better playing ONE position all the time.

According to MLive: "He [Dombrowski] reiterated that the job belongs to Carlos Guillen if healthy, and that Will Rhymes, Scott Sizemore and Danny Worth are in a “quiet competition” for the spot while Guillen is out."

I'm really not against Guillen playing 2B, but I feel having him at DH would keep him in the line up much more this year than him actually playing everyday. I most certainly don't want Rhymes playing a lot. OF course he may be alright. He just has no real skills at the plate IMO. He's Everett with a few more lucky hits last year. That's what those guys are. Little slap hitters that are subject to the baseball gods and balls sniffing open infield. Nobody is going to be hanging banners off of chandeliers because of guys like him being in the line up.

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