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.

There was no shortage of runs in the series against the Royals as the Tigers posted 25 runs.

The highlight of the series was a 12-run win against the Royals on Friday night. Friday and Sunday saw the most runs of the series as the Tigers scored 5 runs during the Sunday loss. In games one and three the Tigers scored a combined five runs.

During the 12-run win Miguel Cabrera reached based four times and knocked in three ones. Including one when the Tigers were up ten runs. In today’s loss the bats were another highlight. The Royals broke up Liriano’s no-no and then hit a grand slam off of Alex Wilson.

The Tigers responded in the sixth however. They came and strong and tied the game up at five. That was all the bats could do on Sunday though as the Royals tore apart in route to splitting the four game series with the Olde English D.

JaCoby Jones, Nicholas Castellanos and James McCann all contributed to the Tigers five runs in the Tigers sixth inning stand. Speaking of JaCoby, a walk-off homer in the ninth highlighted the Tigers taking the first game of the series off of Royals reliever Brad Keller.