The Detroit Tigers announced several roster moves immediately after being swept by the Cleveland Indians. Most of them were injury related and not unexpected.
- Being his abdominal strain is not improving, Austin Jackson will be placed on the 15 day DL, retroactive to May 17th.
- Luis Marte will come off the DL Friday, joining the team for their weekend series with the Minnesota Twins.
- To make room for Marte, Luke Putkonen was optioned to Toledo.
- Ryan Raburn will return from bereavement leave on Friday.
It's best to nip an abdominal injury in the bud now, rather than have it linger for weeks. So placing Jackson on the DL was overdue. Obviously, his subtraction from a badly misfiring offense has been a huge loss. For 2 games, Quintin Berry has been fine as the replacement to Jackson's original replacement, Don Kelly. But Jackson was playing at an MVP level over the first 2 months. Any team would have issues losing such a key player.
After throwing 3 scoreless innings during his Monday rehab appearance with the Mud Hens, the Tigers have deemed Marte ready for the big leagues. Marte had made the team out spring training, but had been shelved with a strained hamstring suffered during the Tigers' final exhibition game. He will hopefully help solidify what's been an iffy middle relief corps.
As for Putkonen, he was living on borrowed time, and time finally ran out. He dodged one bullet when the Tigers released Collin Balester when Berry was called up. But an 8.59 ERA and 2.59 WHIP had already sealed his fate. Putkonen was the obvious player to be sent down when Marte was ready.
Let's hope the time away cleared Raburn's head. For all we know, maybe his family issues had something to do with his lengthy slump. Despite the cries to replace Raburn with either Ramon Santiago or Danny Worth, their recent unimpressive play confirms why the Tigers still believe he's is their best in-house option at 2nd base.