Detroit Tigers Links: Tigers baseball is back!

Detroit Tigers baseball is back!

Tigers fans had to wait an extra day, but baseball is back in earnest with all its familiar sights: Justin Verlander dominating, Ian Kinsler rounding the bases, and, unfortunately, another Tigers injury.

But there were unfamiliar sights too, like JaCoby Jones hitting his first career home run. Or the bullpen only allowing one run! There was even some pressure applied on the base paths.

One game, one win, and hope springs eternal. Only 161 more to go. Thank God Tigers baseball is back.

Fear

Asche struck out three times.

That worked out well

The Tigers never had room for Omar Infante coming into spring. With Andrew Romine, Dixon Machado and Jose Iglesias/Ian Kinsler in front of him, he never had a realistic chance to make the team. But after a hot spring where Omar Infante hit .351/.368/.486, it seemed likely someone would take a shot at him. However, that chance never materialized.

This turned out to be very good news for the Tigers as Infante agreed to a minor league contract at Triple-A Toledo. It never hurts to have extra veteran depth, and Infante will be an incredible resource for the Mud Hen players.

Oops.

Rating rotations

FiveThirtyEight put together ratings of every rotation in MLB. They provide interesting visuals for the stratification of rotations highlighted by the impressive top four in Chicago. The Tigers ratings are weighed down by the relatively unknown back end, but still compares favorably to the AL Central.

Writing is so much easier with baseball back

After a barren offseason, I have absolutely no idea what to do with this sudden onslaught of baseball content that the beginning of the season has brought. So, I’m just going to post some of my favorite videos from the first two days of the season.

For your free time

Jeff Sullivan reeeally wants you to like Kendall Gaveman. Expect higher velocity numbers from StatCast this year. What did Vin Scully do on his first Opening Day not announcing? Paid bills of course. NPR (!) asks if we really need to speed up baseball. Bring back the intentional walk!

Baseball is awesome