Detroit Tigers: Tigers look for series win in national spotlight

After a 3-2 win over the Royals in Kansas City on Wednesday night, the Detroit Tigers look to win their first series of June on Thursday but will have to do so with the entire nation watching.

It’s not every day that an average three-game series in the middle of the MLB regular season changes venues, but that is what will happen for the Detroit Tigers and Kansas City Royals on Thursday. The two teams travel just over 200 miles northwest of KC to Omaha, Nebraska for Thursday night’s series finale.

The Tigers and Royals get to take part in a bit of baseball pageantry as the rubber match of this week’s series also happens to be the 2019 edition of MLB In Omaha. Instead of Kauffman Stadium, Thursday’s contest will be held at TD Ameritrade Park Omaha, the home of the College World Series, and will be broadcast on ESPN.

The event kicks off festivities in Omaha for the upcoming College World Series, which begins later this weekend. Thursday’s starter for the Detroit Tigers, Matthew Boyd, should be eager to get back to Omaha, where he helped lead the Oregon State Beavers to a national semifinal appearance back in 2013.

In his last start in Omaha with Oregon State, which you can read more about here in The Detroit News, Boyd tossed a complete game shutout to lift the Beavers over Indiana. Hopefully, some of that past Omaha mojo comes back for the lefty tonight, as Boyd’s 5-4 record and 3.08 ERA have made him the closest thing the Detroit Tigers have to an ace this season.

Another player returning to Omaha after a CWS appearance is JaCoby Jones, who was also there in 2013 with the LSU Tigers. Now in 2019 with the Detroit Tigers, Jones has seemingly gone from zero to hero in the course of about three weeks as he now posses maybe the hottest bat in the entire Tigers lineup.

Before May 24th, Jones was batting just .173 and had only seven RBI, but his performance at the plate has completely taken off since his four-RBI performance against the Mets. Since that night, Jones has seen his BA rocket up to a solid .254 and brought his season RBI total up from seven to 21, though he is without an RBI so far in this current series against the Royals.

With the Tigers and Royals being two of the worst teams currently in the American League, it seems a bit surprising that they were chosen to take part in such a big event, although KC is the closest MLB team geographically to Omaha. The atmosphere will surely be special, though, and you can watch the game live on ESPN on Thursday at 8 pm EST.