Scoring shocker: Tigers doing fine after Ordonez's injury

There isn’t much hard statistical data that can answer that question definitively, but I’d say yes for the following reasons:

1) His BABIP isn’t an outlier. At .304, he’s right around league average (where he should be). It’s not like he was Brennan Boesch in May/June with a BABIP around .400.
2) Continuing use of BABIP (because I like it and it’s fun to say), if you go to his splits at First Inning, you can see that it’s about where it should be throughout the year. The difference between then and now are regular plate appearances, and there’s at least anecdotal evidence to support the idea that consistent plate appearances leads to better performance.
3) He’s hitting less grounders and liners and his HR/FB is currently at 10.5% as opposed to the 17% it was last year. Even if we assume it sits at around 10 for his career (which would be fair given his career numbers) then his current line of .254/.319/.446 is reasonably accurate.
4) Raburn is also walking slightly less and striking out slightly more than last year. Even if we concede the strikeouts (which is iffy considering he struck out at around 20-22% when he was still getting consistent PA’s), the walks should come up from the season number of 6.9, especially considering he put up walk percentages closer to 10 (between 8-9%) in Toledo. In fact, his August is reverting to that norm, with a K% of roughly 24% and a BB% of 7.5%. To me, that’s a reasonably fair indication of overall talent after you examine his minor league numbers.

Another factor to consider aside from batted ball data and performance is Raburn’s pedigree. BA ranked him 8th in the Tigers system in 2005, which isn’t horrible. If it wasn’t for his ATV accident (no, seriously, look it up) he probably would have made the show sooner. I also know that Baseball Prospectus has been touting him as a potential role player/starter since 2007 (it was my first annual and I virtually memorized all the Tigers player cards).

In short, yes. I am much more satisfied with Raburn’s statistical profile, pedigree and even scouting background (at least as far as offense goes) then most players that get hyped around here. I keep saying that he’d be the perfect candidate to be a super-utility player due to his versatility with the leather (he stinks everywhere equally). There’s value in not only preventing a huge dropoff between “regular” and “bench player” but in Raburn as a whole. He’s one of my favorite Tigers, too.