In my experience of watching Tiger baseball over the last decade there have been one or two players on teams within the American Central division that have absolutely destroyed Detroit Tigers pitching in the past. A couple of examples I can think of are Jim Thome, Paul Konerko, and who can forget the one and only Joe Crede. Those three guys (I could probably add plenty more to the list) always seem to come up with a clutch hit against the Tigers. And of course guys that used to play for a certain team always seem to come back and do well against their old club. Which brings the question: Will Ryan Raburn be the next person to haunt the Tigers?

He was released from the club prior to the season and has made an impact with his new team, the Cleveland Indians. In 22 games so far, Raburn is hitting .329 with 4 home runs and 11 runs batted in. We (meaning Tiger fans) have seen spurts of this from Raburn before. In 2009, he hit .304 with 4 home runs and 27 runs batted in. He only had 138 at-bats. So this limited success is not something new to people but the scary thing is he is hot right now.

He didn’t play in last night’s game but he could play today against Justin Verlander. Not sure if he will be in the lineup but I believe that he has the potential to be one of those “Tiger Killers.” However, I feel Raburn’s success early on this season will not last into the summer months. It seems like he has made a few adjustments in his game but I don’t know if he can keep it up over the course of the season. But this is only the first series against the Tigers and I have a strange feeling that he will get a few clutch hits for the Indians against the Tigers this summer.

What do you think? Will Raburn make a turnaround all season? Or will he show Cleveland fans what he showed in Detroit? Will he crush the Tigers this summer?

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