Bloomquist at Leadoff? Good call, Gibby!

This blog post references an earlier post I made at Orange & Black Baseball regarding Kirk Gibson's brilliant plan to bat the terminally scrappy Willie Bloomquist at leadoff.

A week ago, I poked fun at Kirk Gibson for putting the poor man's David Eckstein, none other than Willie Bloomquist, leadoff in the opening day batting order. Not only has Gibby looked like a pure genius, he has validated my complete lack of prognostication skills.

What has Bloomquist done in the mere five games he's led off?

• Batting .348, OBP of .400.
  
• Hit safely in every game
• Stolen a base in all but one game
• He has 5 stolen bases. The other four teams in the NL West have stolen 8 bases.
  
• Hit his first ever home run to lead off a game
• Knocked at least one runner home in three of five games
• Struck out only twice
• Put up an OPS of .922

This was the year that I decided I'd win my NCAA March Madness pool by sticking with favorites and picking #1 and #2 seeds to make the Final Four, so Willie should thank me for writing my last piece about him. These results were bound to follow.

Late note: The stats were accurate as of my original posting on Orange & Black Baseball. Tonight, all Scrappy did was go 2-for-5 with two runs scored and another RBI in a 13-2 rout of the defending NL Central champs. Long story short, his stats just got even better. Ahem.