The Big Sticks the Tigers Swing

by Ian Casselberry on Jan 22, 2008 12:13 PM EST in News Comment 0 comments

Ever since the Tigers acquired Miguel Cabrera from the Marlins, Detroit fans have been rubbing their hands together, thinking about the lineup that will take the field in April. Just how many runs are these guys going to score?

Baseball Musings analyzes the Detroit lineup today, figuring the Tigers could score 5.75 runs per game. They tallied 5.48 last season. And even the worst lineup the Tigers could put together would average the third-highest per-game total (5.40) in 2007.

The lineup the team is likely to use is predicted to score 0.1 more runs per game, or about 16 runs more than last season. Part of that is Ordonez coming back to his averages after a career year and Gary Sheffield continuing to age. Dombrowski not only compensated for that loss, he actually improved the offense. With a team that good, it would have been easy to do nothing. The Tigers instead acquired a cornerstone in Cabrera that improves the team now, and likely makes Detroit an offensive power house in the future.

We know that Jim Leyland is trying not to get too excited. He's mentioned the conversation he had with Don Mattingly about hitters in a really good lineup waiting for their teammates to drive in runs, and making sure the Tigers don't fall into that trap. But c'mon, even Leyland can't harsh his mellow too much when he starts goofing around with potential batting orders.

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