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A slew of baseball musings and factoids on this sunny May morning…
Prince Fielder
- There is no hotter hitter in baseball right now than Prince Fielder. Try these numbers on for size. In Fielder’s last five games, he has collected 14 hits, bashed 5 homers, and knocked in 15 runs. It’s no surprise that during this stretch the Rangers have caught fire as a team too, rattling off seven wins in a row to pull even at 23-23. The Prince and his eye-popping .371 batting average lead all of baseball in that department, a surprising turn for a player that topped .300 just once before in his decade-long career. We will see if Fielder’s production can stay at this level as the summer drags on and the mid-season grind sets in, but for now, the Rangers can finally sit back and smile that they dealt for the slugger two winters ago.
- J.D. Martinez is off to a solid start power-wise, with nine home runs in 45 games played, but he needs to find a way to keep the strikeout numbers down. He is currently sixth in all of baseball in the K category, with a whopping 56 punchouts in just 173 ABs. There was a disturbing stretch connecting April and May in which J.D. whiffed 20 times in only eight games. Such wild-swinging ways can do serious harm to one’s batting average, and in turn, on-base percentage. It’s been six straight games with at least one K for J.D. going into today. Whether or not he registers a base hit or long home run this afternoon, he’d be wise to just try and put the ball in play. A day without a strikeout would be a welcome sight.
- Raise your hand if after last season’s heroic near-MVP type season, that after two months of baseball, you thought Ryan Raburn would have more home runs than Victor Martinez. That’s where we stand today, with Raburn cracking dinger #2 last night and the hobbled Victor sitting on the DL with a lonely one. Just goes to show you how hard it can be to predict success from year-to-year in this game, especially when you’re talking about a 36-year-old DH with a pair of knees on loan from Carlos Guillen and Loy Vaught.
Brad Ausmus
- Interesting Brad Ausmus trivia note of the day. If you had to guess, would you think the current Tigers skipper had more home runs or stolen bases during his big league career? If you said steals, you’d be correct. The quick-for-a-catcher Ausmus swiped an impressive 102 bags over his 18 years, a good amount more than the 80 round-trippers he clocked over that same period. Unusual to have SBs outnumber HRs for a guy that caught for virtually his entire career. (Virtually only because Ausmus did have one start out of his 1,767 that occurred somewhere other than catcher: 2007, as an Astro, at second base. Very, very useless piece of trivia, but semi-interesting, nonetheless.)
- Before you go complaining too much about the Tigers’ lackluster rotation or shaky bullpen, just take a breath and harken back to the 1996 version of this ball club. There were a grand total of TWO pitchers on that team that won more than five games, and even then, it was by just a hair. Omar Olivares tallied a team-leading seven, with Felipe Lira next at six. Those were the pitching sensations of 1996!! So even though Anibal Sanchez is fighting it a little bit, Shane Greene has come back to Earth, and Justin Verlander is still rounding into game-shape, remember that things are still one zillion times better than they were in the 90’s.
- Let’s also give a quick congratulations to hurler Todd Van Poppel from that season for somehow figuring out a way to start nine games at the major league level with an ERA of 11.39! One would think that after one or two horrendous outings, you’d be shown the door back to the minors, but on those truly talent-starved Tigers clubs of the mid-to-late 90’s, there were third and fourth chances…and in Van Poppel’s case, an actual nine lives.
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Strange to see the Tigers in third place to start today’s action. The Minnesota Twins have been super-hot in the last month and actually pushed the Detroiters down a peg in the standings. Of course, it’s all still very close at the top. The Royals top the division by a game over the Twinkies, and the Tigers are next, just two back. Even the Indians and White Sox haven’t dropped to the ocean floor just yet, both still semi-relevant at eight games out of first. Remember, though, that the Tigers have captured the Central crown four years running, so KC and Minny still have loads of work to do in order to take the belt from the champ.
