Scott Sizemore blasted a big three run home run in the top of the eighth inning to break a 3-3 tie in the Tigers 6-3 win over the White Sox yesterday.  It was just his second home run on the season in what’s been a disappointing year for the upstart second baseman.  It’ll be interesting to see what the Tigers do at second base in 2011 and a lot will depend on what happens to Carlos Guillen, who the Tigers have for one more year (more on him in a bit).  Three players started more then 30 games and five different players started at least ten games at the position.  Even worse, as a team the Tigers got just a combined .727 OPS from their second basemen.  That’s not their worst position hitting wise but it goes to show you why the Tigers have struggled at times to put runs on the board.

Ryan Raburn drove in a pair of runs.  He has 40 RBIs and a .933 OPS since the All Star Break.  Raburn has not only played six different defensive positions, but he’s also hit at every spot in the lineup.  It’ll also be interesting to see what the Tigers do with Raburn because this coming year will be the first one that he’s eligible for arbitration.

On the pitching side, Justin Verlander was, well, Justin Verlander.  He struck out eight and went the distance for his third complete game and seventeenth win of the season.  I’m not sure why he was kept out there for 123 pitches in a meaningless game but Jim Leyland must have had his reasons.  Yesterday I talked about Verlander reaching 200 strikeouts and now he’s just two away from that mark.

And since we talked about Guillen earlier, he has a microfracture in his knee that’s going to require surgery.  The Tigers haven’t said Guillen won’t (yes, double negative, I know) be ready for the start of spring training but it looks like we need an optimistic healing and rehab time table for that happen.  Dombrowski has said he’s comfortable with a Rhymes/Sizemore platoon at second base but I don’t so we’ll see.

The Tigers are playing on ESPN tonight.  Jeremy Bonderman will go up against John Danks and depending on what’s happening on the home front, I might do something I haven’t done in a long time and that’s sit and watch a baseball game.

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