Who’da figured that the 119 loss Tigers could generate this much local interest in the offseason. Granted, most of the buzz is surrounding the guy they haven’t gotten yet, but believe it or not people give a damn about this team. Attendance at Tigerfest was 11,235 which is pretty incredible considering they failed to draw that many to 14 of their home games last year.

Also surreal is the amount of support that Brandon Inge and his .198 career average has garnered. It all started when Brandon said he was as good defensively as Pudge. Inge received a lot of flack for this, which is to be expected. However, I’ll devote a couple sentences defending him. First, I’m happy to see a player speak his mind. I’m sure it was an uncomfortable situation, and Inge didn’t go looking for reporters to talk about this. Second, he may have a point. He actually threw out runner at a .364 rate last year compared to Pudge’s .333 and that was withh an extremely young and inexperienced staff holding runners on. Also, he had half as many passed balls as Pudge while catching three-quarters as many innings. Third, is that Inge has grown up with this pitching staff and knows the staffs capabilities as well as anyone, so I don’t think Pudge would have an advantage calling pitches and handling pitchers. Fourth, I don’t see anything wrong with a player that has confidence in his abilities, and notice he didn’t try to defend his offensive performance. Now what hurts Inge is that Pudge has 10 more Gold Gloves than Inge does, so his credibility in making those statements isn’t all that great. Since then, his teammates and coaches have been very vocal in support of Inge. (Just to be clear, I’m not implying that Inge is better than Pudge, or that Pudge wouldn’t be a significant upgrade. I just wanted to illuminate the fact that his comments weren’t as crazy as they first appeared. )

Meanwhile, on the Pudge front Boras and his client submitted a counterproposal on Friday, and the rumor is the contract length is still 4 years with the disparity being money.

Unfortunately there’s not any more to report on this situation.

Comerica Changes
I’ve been informed, from a reliable source in the organization that the Tigers do in fact plan to move the bull pens to the left field wasteland and fill in the current right field bullpen area with seats. The plan is to have this completed before the All-Star game. I wasn’t at Tigerfest, so I don’t know if this was talked about there as well, but I haven’t seen it published anywhere. I also don’t know any other details about how things will be layed out exactly, or more detail on the timeline.

So it has been widely reported that the Tigers have made Ivan Rodriguez a very generous offer of 4 years for $40 million and the response has been a resounding silence. Up until Wednesday, I thought this was purely a ploy by Scott Boras, but then with Pudge coming to Detroit for the physical I acutally started to believe the deal might happen. Now, without any response for the I-Rod camp I’m reverting back to ploy concept, especially considering there hasn’t been another team interested. Sure, Boras has talked about a mystery team, but nobody can figure out who this team is. Whether or not you like the Peter Gammons’s, Jayson Stark’s, Ken Rosenthals they are pretty well connected in the sport and nobody has published a hint of another team.

So what does this mean for the Tigers? Could they have done anything differently to seal this deal? I actually think the Tigers played this as well as they could have. Yes, 4 years is too long, and $40 million is too much money, but the Tigers are in a position where they need to play by a different set of rules. All they have to offer is money because they can’t sell players on a good situation. As long as 2-3 years from now we don’t start hearing how the Tigers can’t sign players because so much is invested in Rodriguez it should be okay. I like that they didn’t make a play until the market was completely dry for Pudge. I also like the fact that they tried to keep this fairly quiet, but not totally silent. The Tigers also get additional points for the timing of this “negotiation” that occured the same week that season tickets went on sale hoping to further generate buzz, which it did.

Now the other question is who is the anonymous source that released the terms of the contract? The obvious answer would be Boras to increase the bidding. However, could it be that the Tigers made the offer on Thursday, and when Pudge didn’t accept it by Friday night they leaked it to scare off other bidders (if there are other bidders)? Nobody else is going to offer those years or dollars. Sure, it might make the Tigers look bad to be spurned even though they offered the best contract, but before last week was there anybody that actually thought Pudge would sign here?

The next question is how long do the Tigers leave the offer out there?

Other Stuff
-Over on Tigerscentral there is a pretty good discussion about the impact of Pudge signing.

Sorry about the lack of posting, the flu has been making it’s way through my household (despite the whole family getting shots). I like the Guillen trade. They got something for nothing essentially. True, the Tigers lost their best bunter but I think they will survive. Now it looks like Pudge might be a real possibility. If the Tigers were to add I-Rod they would have a respectable lineup-especially if Munson and Pena can continue to develop.

CF Sanchez
2b Vina
DH Young
C Rodriguez
3B Munson
1B Pena
LF White
RF Higginson
SS Guillen

True it’s not murderer’s row, but it would be a marked improvement over a lineup full of number 7 hitters. I’m pretty sure we wouldn’t see anymore innings where 3 consecutive batters bunt.

Of course this isn’t news anymore, but with the holidays and all I didn’t get a chance to write about this pick up. It’s not a bad move, but nothing to get overly excited about it either, pretty much the same way I feel about Vina and White. I share Brian’s concerns about the fact he is 30 and hasn’t had a 200 inning season yet. In 32 starts last year he only made it out of the 7th inning 7 times. This isn’t necessarily a horrible thing in general, but the Tiger brass are targeting him for the top of the rotation and you expect your number one or two guy to be able to eat some innings. But the fact of the matter is, anybody that is going to sign with the Tigers at this point is going to have a major drawback or two.

Hope everyone enjoyed the holiday season, and Tigerfest is just a couple weeks away.