I Wonder...

if people like Lynn realize the same people that "bat" for baseball teams typically also "field" for those teams.

An otherwise solidly built baseball team has too few hitters.

It's true, the Tigers only have 7 hitters on their roster. They're the modern day version of Bugs Bunny.

But seriously, the Tigers offense was awful this year. They finished 10th in the AL in runs scored and in reality were 11th since they needed an extra game to pass the Orioles.

On the other hand, the Tigers run prevention was pretty good, 4th best in the league prior to game 163.

Last offseason, Dave Dombrowski and the rest of the Blue Shirt Crew™ decided that one of the easiest ways to improve the club would be to improve the team defense. They were very successful in doing that, as the Tigers jumped from 24th in defensive efficiency in 2008 to 9th overall in 2009.

The Tigers made that leap by signing shortstop Adam Everett, trading for catcher Gerald Laird, moving Brandon Inge back to third base, and installing Carlos Guillen in left field. They were also counting on improvement from Miguel Cabrera at first base where he landed after tumbling down the defensive spectrum.

Other than Guillen continuing his run of fragility, basically all of those moves worked. On defense.

In Lynn-speak: They have infield defense on a celestial level, as they do at catcher. But they don't have the bats.

What Lynn fails to realize is that those "celestial" (a great new adjective for Señor Thesaurus) infielders aren't allowed to play all-time defense. In fact, those same guys have to hit.

Career batting line for Adam Everett:
.245/.297/.351

Career batting line for Gerald Laird:
.247/.306/.367

Career batting line for Brandon Inge:
.236/.305/.394

That's 3/5ths of the infield star system.

That's a third of your regular batting order.

That's going to make it hard to score runs unless your other 6 guys are pretty damn awesometastic.

Meanwhile, just for fun, let's look at how those 3 celestial baseball guys "hit" in 2009:

Everett:
.238/.288/.325

Laird:
.225/.306/.320

Inge:
.230/.314/.406

Who could have seen it coming!?

Lynn continues with some other weird comments and craziness but I'm too tired to chronicle it all.

Of note, Lynn is back on the Casper Wells train which is always fun.

Captain Blue Shirt's presser today deserves a post of its own so I'll try to get to that later or tomorrow.

Until later loyal reader.

I mean readers.

Readers.