If you peruse the Tigers spring training stats, you’ll see a roster full of guys with some pretty impressive numbers. Sure, Carlos Guillen is slumping a little but his 8:6 K:BB ratio is still favorable. But if you look at Omar Infante this spring, there isn’t much to like.
Infante has a 172/179/250 line thus far. He’s fanned 12 times in 64 at-bats and only picked up one walk. He has no stolen bases. He has more errors (4) than extra base hits (3).
I’ll be the first to admit that I haven’t been following Infante everyday, so I don’t know if this has been a March-long slump or a nosedive the last 2 weeks. I do know that a third of his strikeouts came the last 2 games. Either way he’s not building towards the regular season at this point.
Now you never want to make too much out of spring training stats, but you hope to see something encouraging. Since Infante is slated to be the first guy off the bench to spell Inge, Polanco, and Granderson he will get a reasonable amount of playing time.
In Infante’s limited career, he’s been an every-other-year kind of guy. He struggled a ton in 2003, rebounded in 2004, struggled enough in 2005 to warrant trading for Polanco (I know Urbina helped negotiate that deal as well), and did okay as the super sub last year.
At 25 years old anything can still happen with his career. But avoiding a down year could be a big step for Infante – at least if he wants to be more than a career back-up.
Hey Bilfer, why not put that same perusal to Inge’s numbers? Darling Brandon lead the team in errors with 3 until Omar caught him. Inge has 18 strikeouts (of course that was the last I looked, his whiff’s go up like the national debt), he has only 7 rbi’s, no homers, and is striking out at a .310 clip. But hey, at least it is better than the .340 clip he struck out at during the post season, where he still managed to lead the team in errors. In fact, he should have had ANOTHER error if it weren’t for a fabulous play by Guillen at first base that cost Carlos a nasty elbow to the head… But really, who needs Carlos Guillen?… You remember the post season? The one where the pitchers made all those errors? But who lead the team? Yep, none other than our Darling Brandon.
My bad, he is up to 10 RBI’s and 19 strikeouts (a .312 clip)… Hope he can pad his home-run stats with meaninless homeruns like last year… and he gets away with the 6-9 “friendly scoring” calls that kept Inge from having the 30 errors he richly deserved last year…. Or apologizing for him will become even more difficult to do….
I went to the game against Atlanta tuesday, and infante actually looked pretty good at the plate. I was most impressed with Pudge who had a nice hit to right. The next time he was up, the outfielders shaded him to right and he yanked one into left. Inge got robbed on a hit to straightaway centerfield about 405 ft, he smoked it, and andruw jones recovered to make the play. It looked like it was going to be way over his head.
EZ – Brandon isn’t having a great spring by any means, but I look and see a 370 OBP with 10 walks which by all accounts is a positive.
I’m not bagging on Infante, just that noting that he is the only player without something positive in his stat line this spring.
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