Thoughts on the defense

Man is it great to have Curtis Granderson back patrolling CF. Inge was decent in relief, but Granderson is clearly a step-up defensively. At 3rd, Inge has been stellar so far. While he doesn't have enough innings at this position yet to qualify for leaderboards, his zone rating ( percentage of balls fielded by a player in his typical defensive "zone," as measured by STATS, Inc.) of .931 would rank first amongst MLB 3rd sackers. Over at 1st base, things have gone smoothly for Miguel Cabrera as the Tigers attempt to cover up his horrid 3rd base play. His lack of range at 3rd was costing Tigers pitching a ton of base hits. At first, however, Cabrera has a zone rating of 1.000 with 0 errors. However, he has only logged 49 innings at the position.

So now that 1st and 3rd are in good hands while Carlos Guillen is out with an injury (he's slated to play 3rd upon his return), how are the other positions shaping up defensively?

At 2nd, Placido Polanco is off to a rough start. He has made 2 errors and his zone rating of .800 ranks only 17th amongst 2nd basemen. However, this may be attributed to his bad back. Now that Polanco appears to be snapping out of his early funk (4 hits in his last 2 games), look for his defense to heat up as well. Remember, this is the 2007 Gold Glove winner in the AL.

At SS, Edgar Renteria has been a vacuum, scooping up everything sent his way. His zone rating of .878 ranks 4th in MLB, indicating his range appears to be in good shape. Further, his error in today's game was his 1st of the year. He was the only starting SS in MLB without an error up to that point.

Magglio Ordonez's zone rating is a little down early on in the season. However, his .906 rating still puts him at number 9. He still hasn't made an error in over 160 games dating to last season.

LF has been the Tigers most unstable position. Not only are they struggling to get any offense from the position early on, they're also not exactly lighting up the field defensively. Marcus Thames has a surprising .923 zone rating, but in limited innings. Jacque Jones range has been poor (.826), ranking near the bottom of MLB LF'ers.

Overall, the defense appears to be coming along nicely as the season moves towards the final week of April. This will hopefully take a little stress off a pitching staff still searching for its groove.