Raburn Finally Comes Through

Who guessed that Ryan Raburn would hit his first home run of the 2010 season on June 15?  It took a long time but he made it count.  He hit a three run blast to left field in the bottom of the fifth to put the Tigers in front 7-4.  That would be the final score as the Tigers won their fourth consecutive game in interleague play.

Raburn, who had two hits and 4 RBI today, is now hitting a paltry .180 with a .575 OPS in 97 plate appearances.  Keep in mind that he also got off to a fairly slow start last year when he was batting .243 with four homers in 85 PA through June 15.  From June 16 to the end of the season, he batted .310 with a .933 OPS   One can only hope that he can have a similar rebound this year.  However, barring an injury to one of the outfielders (something we certainly don't want to see), he's not going to get a lot of at bats. 

It was great to see Magglio Ordonez return to the line-up today after missing six games with a sore oblique muscle.  He celebrated with a four hit game, his first of the year and 22nd of his career.  It's a much different team with Ordonez in the third spot and they can't afford to have him miss a lot of games.  What a difference a year makes.  Many fans were singing a different tune last year hoping he would miss enough games so that his vesting option would not kick in.

Gerald Laird started versus the left-handed John Lannan and got three hits today.  Yes, three hits for Laird and all of them were hit pretty hard.  He did make a throwing error which led to a run but who needs defense when you can hit like that?  His batting average soared to .178 with the performance. 

Max Scherzer allowed three earned runs on seven hits but struck out nine in six innings.  He is a new pitcher since returning from Toledo.  He was averaging 5.6 strikeouts per nine innings prior to the demotion.  Since coming back to the majors he has struck out batters at the rate 12.4 per nine innings.  Phil Coke, Joel Zumaya and Jose Valverde nailed down the victory with three scoreless innings of relief.