Leyland planning lineup shakeup
05/04/2008 3:15 PM ET
By Jason Beck / MLB.com
http://detroit.tigers.mlb.com/content/printer_friendly/det/y2008/m05/d04/c2639793.jsp
MINNEAPOLIS -- The lineup changes Tigers manager Jim Leyland slept on
Saturday night
yielded one move for Sunday's series finale against the Twins at the
Metrdome. First
baseman Miguel Cabrera moved into the third spot in the order for the
first time this
season.
That's it for the lineup changes ... for now.
"I'm going to shake things up a little bit here shortly," Leyland said
Sunday
morning.
By shortly, he means Monday at home against Boston. The shakeup won't
include
personnel changes, but like Cabrera, the bats that have been in the lineup
all along
could find themselves in different spots.
"Same pieces," Leyland said, "but quite a bit different."
Or as he later put it, "I think you'll find it pretty drastic."
It'll mean little, of course, unless the Tigers can get different results
from it
than they've had so far.
Cabrera batted fifth in all 30 of his previous games this season. However,
he hit
third for most of the past two years with the Florida Marlins. Leyland
went into
Spring Training saying he would bat either Cabrera or Gary Sheffield in
the third
spot, with the other batting fifth. He soon settled on Sheffield at No. 3,
in part
for the slugger's ability to work pitchers and get on base.
Sheffield had Sunday off, a day of rest that Leyland had already been
planning the
past few days. Sheffield started the past eight games after returning from
shoulder
problems.
Leyland talked about shaking up his batting order after Saturday's 4-1
loss. The
Tigers entered Sunday's series finale having scored just two runs over the
first two
games of the set. They had gone scoreless for 14 straight innings when
Curtis
Granderson hit a solo homer in the eighth inning Saturday. Minnesota
starter Scott
Baker and reliever Brian Bass had held Detroit scoreless for seven innings
combined
on four singles.
Those struggles prompted Leyland to bemoan the Tigers' at-bats after the
game,
calling them lethargic and inconsistent. His opinion didn't change with a
good
night's sleep.
"I just think our offense is better than this," Leyland said. "I know it's
better
than this. I've seen a couple things that surprised me."
One has to go beyond the basic statistics to find the ailments. Detroit
entered the
day fourth in the American League in scoring, first in slugging percentage
and second
in on-base percentage and home runs. However, the Tigers have been shut
out four
times -- already more than all of last season -- and held to one run on
four other
occasions. They've scored eight or more runs in eight games, winning all
of them, but
they've been held to three runs or fewer far more often. In those
low-scoring
situations, they're 0-14.
Part of the problem, Leyland explained, is that they don't have the speed
or
athleticism to do some of the tricks a manager might try to manufacture
runs, such as
hitting -and-running, stealing bases or taking an extra base.
That could explain some of the lethargy.
"You don't look like you have energy when you're not running around the
bases,"
Leyland said. "We're tough to watch sometimes."
The other problem Leyland has noticed is no sense of urgency to get going.
"There's just not that extra kick in the pants to get you over the hump,"
he said. "I
think it will happen. I'll be very disappointed if it doesn't."
He's not disappointed now, not yet. But what he has seen is about as far
from what he
expected as it is for fans.
"I'm shocked, really," Leyland said. "This offense is better than it
showed."
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- Scott Smith: scott.smith@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
MySpace: http://www.myspace.com/choppersmith
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