Despite surge, Infante staying put in lineup

TORONTO -- Omar Infante had hits in seven consecutive at-bats before striking out in his second at-bat on Tuesday. He hadn't been retired on a ball put in play since his second at-bat on Sunday in Tampa Bay and entered Wednesday's game against the Blue Jays on the kind of tear that marks his style of hitting.

"He's really making a good pass at the ball right now," manager Jim Leyland said. "He's not over-swinging. He's not under-swinging. He's not trying to do too much. He's seeing the ball good right now. That's obviously pretty big for us."

That said, Leyland still wants to see Infante doing that where he is in the lineup. He does not want to move him up in the batting order at this point.

"You always talk about, 'Well, hitting good like that, why don't you move him up?'" Leyland said. "Well, if you remember, we're supposed to be pretty good up top, obviously, and we always talked last year that we didn't get enough from the bottom of our lineup. So you want to keep somebody down there that's swinging good, that can generate some runs from the bottom of the lineup.

"It all sounds good, moving somebody up, but it's not necessarily the right thing to do. We want to stretch our lineup out. We think we're pretty good with [Austin] Jackson and [Torii] Hunter and [Miguel] Cabrera and [Prince] Fielder, the first four guys. We think that's pretty good."