In his postgame press conference Jim Leyland announced that Marcus Thames will start on Sunday. With his activation from the DL, Jeff Larish will be optioned to Toledo.
I’m a little surprised to see Larish sent out over Raburn. The Tigers are flush with outfielders and with Cabrera’s hamstring hurting they are thin at first base.
You may remember a game in Anaheim last year where Thames took Joe Saunders (tomorrow’s starter) deep twice and to the wall another time. Maybe he can do it again and break the Tigers string of 7 straight games at Comerica without a homer.
I’m sorry if this sounds horrible, but I think sending Larish down over Raburn is almost asking for Cabby to seriously injure his hamstring to where he has to go on the DL for a lengthy time.
I would assume we’ll see Thames at 1B and Magglio in right so Cabrera can DH for a few games. Raburn can also play 1B if necessary. Raburn’s hit .295 since the start of May, despite some woeful adventures in the outfield. Also, .414 in his last 13 games, but that’s being unfairly selective. And hey, the “scrub” can even catch in a desperate situation.
Exactly! Rayburn proved himself last year too. Larish needs to learn how to wear his hat so we can see his eyes and know that he didn’t just look at strike three knowingly.
I hear you Larish does need to perfect the swing a bit. However his glove at first is an upgrade, why not utilize it while Caby is sore? Gracie provides scary but true words. I wouldn’t gamble with his health DH him. Thames at first is seriously just scary. I guess we can expect a steady dose of Raburn and Thames against the ChiSux…while Anderson and Thomas sit against their plethora of lefties. Either way I back their decision it’s just crazy. Larish is an above average first baseman…use him.
Larish has been miserable at the plate of late, especially in crucial situations. The easy and obvious call.
In the grand scheme of things, I don’t have a major problem with this, but I would’ve preferred to keep Larish and send down Raburn only because of Cabrera’s hammy. Anyone remember him playing through injuries this time last year and people (’round here) were saying he was a bust? Yeahhhhh. Would prefer to not see him trying to hit on one leg, let alone playing defense.
This is exactly the move I expected. Thames can play 1st base (if necessary).
I’m extremely unforgiving how horrible Larrish has been at the plate. He had a little spurt in the beginning before opposing pitchers knew how to pitch him, but once they got his number, he was horrible, especially in the clutch. I’m sure over time Larrish will improve and make some adjustments, but we just can’t afford that little experiment to continue now with this offense on life support.
If we intend to contend, we simply can’t rely on continually limiting the opposition to four-hit games. Seriously folks. We’re playing .500 baseball over the past couple days and less than .500 hundred baseball over the past 10 days with that quality of starting pitching. We obviously are going to need some offense if we intend on winning some games… and as much as I hope to the contrary, I just don’t think we can continue to rely on the starting pitching to continue to throw shut-out/complete game preformances. It’s just not realistic.