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On Canada Baseball Day at the Rogers Centre, the Blue Jays will be sporting a slightly different lineup. Ben Revere moves to the Jays' leadoff spot while on a mini-hot streak, going 4-for-5 yesterday and hitting .475/.543/.525 in his past (arbitrary) 10 games.
I would imagine that the move is primarily to move Troy Tulowitzki, who has been scuffling (for him) at the plate hitting .227/.331/.373 since joining Toronto and batting leadoff, for a mere 104 wRC+. He is still a much better hitter than Revere is but I cannot fault John Gibbons for trying to be creative and moving him down in the lineup in hopes of lighting a spark in his bat. Kudos for him for opening a door for Kevin Barker to gloat.
Today's lineup vs Detroit (1:07pm start), presented by @MajesticOnField pic.twitter.com/ouKpgx3jvM
— Toronto Blue Jays (@BlueJays) August 30, 2015
Yes, we know "hot streaks" aren't real and everyone should expect Revere to hit at his real talent level going forward, but perhaps getting out of the leadoff spot helps Tulo psychologically and he turns that into hits. The optimization of this current lineup has been discussed over and over but I do like Gibby experimenting to see if switching up the order could help the Jays score more than 15 runs today. Lineup optimization really doesn't change expected runs that much anyway; with a lineup like this Justin Smoak could leadoff and Josh Donaldson could bat ninth and they'd still be the best offense in the league.
Courtesy of LaTroy Hawkins, the Blue Jays will be wearing these Canada baseball jerseys today to celebrate, uh, baseball in Canada...