The Tigers’ batting order has remained mostly unchanged this season, as long as all the players were healthy. On a typical night, it looked something like this:
1 – Uemoto (2B)
2 – Yamato (CF)
3 – Toritani (SS)
4 – Gomez (1B)
5 – Murton (LF)
6 – Fukudome (RF)
7 – Imanari / T Arai (3B)
8 – Umeno / Tsuruoka / Fujii (C)
9 – Starting Pitcher
Sixth and seventh sometimes flip-flopped, especially when Fukudome was struggling earlier in the year. However, reports in today’s news reveal a potential huge shift in the order for the playoffs, in an attempt to generate more runs. This is what reporters are saying the lineup could look like:
1 – Murton (LF)
2 – Yamato (CF)
3 – Fukudome (RF)
4 – Gomez (1B)
5 – T Arai (3B)
6 – Toritani (SS)
7 – Fujii / Tsuruoka (C)
8 – Uemoto (2B)
9 – Starting Pitcher
Wow… talk about shuffling the deck late in the game! Let’s see if this materializes or not, and what kind of results it produces. For now, the question is yours to answer:
always a great idea to make radical untested changes the day before a must-win series. umm, or not.
what does wada care, he got re-upped for a year.
No kidding. By the way, great meeting you and taking in the game today! I’m sure we can do that again sometime in the future!
Here is my proposed lineup:
1 – Nishioka (3B) — give him another chance, it was his first start in months!
2 – Toritani (SS) — best OBP% guy should be higher
3 – Murton (LF) — best hitter should see more ABs than he does
4 – Gomez (1B) — keep him where he is!
5 – Fukudome (RF) — the man had an amazing September!
6 – Uemoto (2B) — drop him some but don’t put him in 8th!
7 – Yamato (CF) — hot September but let’s not get carried away here
8 – Umeno (C) — he needs experience to become the go-to guy at C
9 – Starting Pitcher