Opening Day! Questions about the Tigers.

Baseball's under way. Conventional wisdom has the Tigers walking through the AL Central and winning it by 50 games…at least that’s what the sports pundits think will happen and want us to believe. No other team stands a chance against the Tigers, who are portrayed as the team that has all the talent in the world to get a World Series champs parade in downtown Detroit in November. Well, the Tigers give me pause to ask the following questions as I go position by position, as I am thusly concerned about:

1.       LF -- Can Delmon Young again crush pitches like he did last year as a Tiger, not as a Twinkie?
2.      CF – Can Austin Jackson strike out only 120 times this year instead of 181 and hit better than .250, like last year?
3.      RF – Can Brennan Boesch play the whole season without getting hurt?
4.      3B – Can Cabrera be counted on fielding his new position like Inge does while still hitting .344 with 30HRs?
5.      SS – Can Peralta be counted on to hit.300 with power again? He hit .299 last year with 21 taters.
6.      2B – Can Rayburn finally hit over .250 from April to July 4 instead of his annual .180 and still finish strong after the All-Star game like he always does?
7.      1B – Can Fielder hit 30+ taters while playing 81 games in Comerica Park, a park very friendly to taters only from mid-May to mid-September?
8.      C – Can Avila avoid a huge slump and repeat his fabulous 2011 season of 19 taters and a .295 BA?
9.      DH – Can Leyland find one as good as Victor Martinez was last year?
10.    SP – Can Verlander, Fister, Scherzer and Porcello win more than the 61 games they won among themselves last year? Can Leyland find a 5th starter to win 10 games from the rookies and second-year guys on their roster now or do they have to bring back Bad Penny from the scrap heap in Japan?
11.     RP – Can Valverde save every game as perfectly like last year? Can Benoit be near perfect like he was after May 15th? Can Coke not be a choke against right-handed hitters? Can Al Alburquerque’s right arm heal so he can be Leyland’s go-to-guy in the 7th inning? Can Daniel Schlereth keep the wolfman look at bay by shaving every day and still eat up lefty hitters like last year?
12.    Subs – Can Cringe finally hit better than last year’s .197? [Probably not!] Can Santiago hit more dingers than Inge did last year, 5 to 3?  [yes.] Can Gerald Laird be a decent back-up to Avila and hit over .200 for once in his life? Can Don Kelly be Leyland’s every-position-guy and hit better than last year’s .245?
13.    Coaching – Will Leyland continue to diss the media, win or lose? [Sure hope so.] Will Gene Lamont continue his impressions of Wendell Kim sending runners to an easy out at home plate?