Leyland Shuffles The Entire Lineup In 13-6 Loss

Jim Leyland prepared for an overnight guest, but instead the whole neighborhood dropped in.

The Detroit manager was worried about losing his designated hitter Friday, so he stuck his DH, Victor Martinez, in the game at catcher and shifted his catcher, Alex Avila, to third base for the first time in his major league career.

That took his regular third baseman (at least until Brandon Inge comes back) Don Kelly out of the game and left Leyland without the second-place hitter in his batting order.

Leyland mulled things over and decided as long he was going to use someone not familiar with what he likes from his No. 2 hitter he'd just move everybody up one notch in the batting order.

"I don't really have a second hitter -- an ideal second hitter -- so maybe get (Brennan) Boesch and Miguel (Cabrera) both up there in the first," he said. "I wouldn't do it in our league. I won't do it when we're back to our place, but over here I thought it made sense."

So after fireproofing his house, Leyland watched Colorado drop a bomb on it.

The Rockies scored six times in the second inning after the Tigers could get just one run out of a bases-loaded, one-out situation in the first.

"There were two keys," Leyland said of Colorado's 13-6 plastering of Detroit. "(Rick) Porcello just had a bad night. The first inning was critical for us.

"We had an opportunity right away to really get something on the board and we came away with one. That turned out to be disastrous for us."

Avila made an error in his third base debut but that was the least of their problems, as far as Leyland was concerned.

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