Danny Knobler reported yesterday that the Tigers were close on a deal with Carlos Guillen. Now, John Lowe is saying the announcement could come today.

Both reporters are indicating the deal will be three years and in the neighborhood of $4-5 million a season. My guess is that there will be incentives tied to Guillen’s ability to stay health as well.

The money and length of the contract definitely sound fair. The best part of this deal is that the Tigers were able to sign the best hitting shortstop in baseball, without having to overpay for a change. A newcomer has actually liked playing for the Tigers, and wants to stay here.

Now the big question is will this remain a great signing three years from now, or is this another Damion Easley contract? Again, I think it depends on Guillen’s health. Guillen is in his prime year right now (generally age 27-29. However, because his performance this year has so far exceeded his career performance, the chances of him putting up another year this good are probably slim. That doesn’t mean that he can’t still be a great player in the future.

His OPS+ (which is OPS normalized for the league where an average player is 100) the last three years were 88, 98, and 102 so he has shown steady improvement. Moving similarly were his runs created per 27 outs (essentially how many runs would a team of 9 Carlos Guillen’s score in a game) over the last three years: 4.03, 4.45, 4.83.

Also working in his factor, is that he has escaped the Mariner’s medical staff, which has been criticized for failing to diagnose Guillen’s tuberculosis.

In conclucsion, this is a great signing for Detroit. They get the guy they want for 3 more years, without having to overpay to keep him. And even if Guillen can’t repeat his performance from this year, he can still slip quite a bit and be a big contributor to this team.

Bullpen notes: As many of you probably saw, Franklyn German has joined the team and replaced Steve Colyer. German was pitching great at Toledo and earned the promotion. Colyer was pitching pretty poorly and earned the demotion. But was he the most deserving?

Colyer has been bad, no quesiton about it. Baseball Prospectus has him ranked as the 5th worst reliever in all of baseball based on adjusted runs prevented. However Colyer has shown some times when can be pretty good.

Al Levine on the other hand is the 6th worst reliever in all of baseball. He’s just ahead of Colyer with -11.6 to -11.9 adjusted runs prevented. However, Levine hasn’t really shown any times when he’s decent. Colyer’s K/9 is 8.3 while Levine’s is 4.5 and they have identical WHIPs at 1.85.

I’m not so much questioning why Colyer was sent down, but why Levine wasn’t sent down as well.