Detroit Tigers Weekly Recap: Bad Weather, Worse Baseball

Whoo boy. This was not a pretty week for the sticks. Here we go.

The Good

Leonys Martin. That’s about it honestly. He was a triple short of the cycle against Carlos Carrasco and the Indians on April 11, and went 3-for-5 with two runs the next day. He’s up to .271/.352/.396 on the year and has actually looked like a true leadoff hitter so far.

Ummm Victor Martinez hit two doubles? James McCann and Jeimer Candelario each homered last week? The next highest batting average over the last seven days (behind Martin)  is Victor Reyes, who went 1-for-4 for a .250 average. Like I said, it was not a pretty week for the hitters.

The Bad

Everyone else. Over the last week, here are some numbers for the Detroit Tigers regulars:

Jeimer Candelario: .167 (4-for-24)

Miguel Cabrera: .174 (4-for-23)

Nicholas Castellanos .217 (5-for-23)

Victor Martinez .235 (4-for-17)

James McCann .154 (2-for-13)

Jose Iglesias .125 (2-for-16)

Dixon Machado .118 (2-for-17)

The bench was not any better, with Niko Goodrum (.091) JaCoby Jones (.000) and John Hicks (.143) not doing themselves any favors to earn more playing time.

The few things to pull out of this: John Hicks appears to slowly be creeping into McCann’s playing time. It’s tough to read too far into it, as catchers get more days off than regular position players, but if McCann can’t get it together it wouldn’t be surprising to see Hicks get more time as the year goes on.

Jones and Reyes seem to be competing to not start in left field following Mikie Mahtook‘s demotion to Triple-A. If neither of them can find a way to contribute offensively, expect Mahtook to be up shortly after he is eligible to return. Between the three of them, one of them will need to stand out to earn a full-time role. Otherwise, expect either Christin Stewart or Mike Gerber to make their big league debut sooner rather than later.