Detroit Tigers: Hot bats highlight the weekend

The Detroit Tigers split their series against the Kansas City Royals taking games two and three. Hot bats highlighted the series as The Tigers scored 25 runs in total.

The Detroit Tigers played a homestand against the Royals over the weekend. Fortunately for Tigers fans, the series went better than the stand against the Indians.  In years past the Royals pitching staff has shut down the Tigers offense, fortunately, the last four days the Tigers offense had a better outing.

The Tigers showed signs that early on they needed to improve their offense. This series showed that the Tigers offense is already starting to improve. The season started as bad as the weather for the Olde English D. As the weather so has started to improve so as Tigers baseball and it’s been (surprisingly) fun to watch.

Here’s a recap of the series against the Royals. Everything from the good the bad and the ugly.  Some notable highlights include prospect Mike Gerber making his brief debut at Comerica Park (the good). Daniel Norris is still looking for the velocity in his pitching (the bad).  Finally, the ugly is Alex Wilson giving up a grand slam to the Royals.

Let’s take a look at the offense, rotation, and bullpen as we go through the series against the Royals.

Starting Pitching

Francisco Liriano dominated in the loss Sunday against the Royals. He pitched 5.1 innings against the Royals giving up just two hits while fanning six batters and allowing one home run. Liriano had a no-hitter against the Royals up until the sixth inning.

His no-no was broken up by a solo home run off of Whit Merrifield. Had he gone the distance it would have been the second one of his career. His first was back in 2011 against the White Sox as a member of the Twins Organization.

Daniel Norris’s made a spot start on Friday and posted a solid inning. Going 4.2 innings and recording fourteen outs. Despite that, his mid-90s fastball is still missing and according to the Free Press “he’s still looking for it“.

Mike Fiers posted a solid outing as well on Friday posting 5.1 innings of work. He got all the help he could from the Tigers bats as the Olde English D routed the Royals 12-4 on Friday. The Tiger starting rotation has already shown signs of success this year. With new pitching Coach Chris Bosio, Kurt Mensching of the Athletic, points out that the success so far can be attributed to the slider.

The hitting came around this week and the starting rotation continued to post solid outings. The Detroit Tigers are playing good baseball early on.

The Bullpen was awful (again).

Francisco Liriano took a no-no to the sixth and then the bullpen got clobbered against the Royals. Which was the general theme for the bullpen in this series. Well, just for the game on Sunday.

With Daniel Norris getting the start in the second game of the Friday doubleheader the Tigers brought up Warwick Saupold. Saupold didn’t disappoint. So far this season he has 5.2 scoreless innings with three hits and a strikeout.  The Tigers are heading to Pittsburgh for their next series and with Norris and Stumpf the only other lefties Saupold could find himself with the Tigers a little bit longer.

Saupold’s strong outing gave the team the oppurtunity to rest both Joe Jimenez and Shane Greene. The Detroit Tigers currently have a thin bench (as the Detroit News points out), which means that if Saupold continues to play well he’ll find himself as a reliable reliever for the Tigers to turn to against the Jolly Roger.

Next: Who should start in left field?

The Tigers have tomorrow off as they head to Pittsburgh for a three game stand against the Pirates. The Tigers have been playing exciting baseball early on. Despite the expectations of a poor season they’ve been playing well.