Mike Valenti On Leyland's Revamped Lineup: 'It Worked!'
Before Wednesday night's Game 4 of the ALCS, Tigers' manager Jim Leyland made a highly publicized reshuffling of his team's batting lineup. Leyland moved struggling lead-off batter, Austin Jackson, down to the eighth slot, while shifting the rest of the order up.
The move seemingly paid off. The Tigers scored five runs in the second inning on three hits and two walks, including a bases-loaded, four-pitch walk for Jackson, en route to a 7-3 victory which tied the series at 2-2. But not everyone is convinced that the lineup change can be credited for the Tigers' offensive outbreak.
97.1 The Ticket's Terry Foster and Mike Valenti differ on where they stand on the lineup change due to the fact that the Tigers traditionally take care of business against the Red Sox's Jake Peavy.
"I don't know the answer. I don't know if last night was real," Foster said on his radio show Thursday. "The only thing to me that was real was Jackson moving out of the lead-off spot. That wasn't real pitching last night, Peavy would have lost to any team in the league. My gut feeling is that he had pitched a decent game, and the Tigers won, then I would say they are going to the World Series."
"We, as fans, got the change that we've been asking for the entire series," Valenti said Thursday. "We got seven runs from them because of it. It worked. It's a lineup that Leyland said he is going to roll out again. I don't think that there's any other lineup that is going to fix it."
Do you think that the Tigers will get to the World Series now that Leyland realigned the batting order? Or are the Tigers' bats just finally waking up?
Let us know in the comments below.
