Monthly Archives: October 2007

Minors

News in a minor key

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A little bit of this and that on the guys who might be the next great Tigers…

International Signings

Baseball America lists all of the international free agent signings. The Tigers inked eight players from the Dominican Republic and Venezuela. All of the players are 16. Who know, maybe one or more can be helping the 2014 Detroit Tigers.

Dominican Republic: RHP Yinio Calderon, 16; RHP Emmanuel Del Orbe, 16; SS Domingo Gonzalez, 16; RHP Carlos Melo, 16
Venezuela: OF Avisail Garcia, 16; IF Oscar Gomez, 16; 3B Francisco Martinez, 16; SS Hernan Perez, 16
BaseballAmerica.com: Prospects: Full List Of 2007 International Signings

Mike Hollimon

Mike Hollimon is a hard guy to peg as a prospect. He’s always been old for his league, but he’s always hit well. And this year he skipped hi A ball and succeeded at AA. Now he’s hitting well in the Arizona Fall League. And now, he’s been featured by Jon Paul Morosi. Without having full developed a Tigers top 10 prospect list, I know that Hollimon would rank somewhere in the 6-9 range for me. He’ll also be one of the players to watch during the spring to see if he can play his way onto the roster.
QUICK TURN: Tigers’ infield prospect Hollimon gets back on track

Arizona Fall League

Today’s Freep also had a feature the AFL in general. If you haven’t been keeping up with the daily updates from Take I-75 North, the Tigers haven’t had overwhelming results. Hollimon has been solid, and the good news from Cameron Maybin is that he’s only fanned 5 times in 31 at-bats. Larish has had the toughest go at only 3 for 25 with no extra base hits.

STAR SEARCH: Looking for the Tigers’ next hero? Check out the Arizona Fall League

Links

links for 2007-10-18

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Front Office, Minors, Trade Rumors

What are they talking about?

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Leyland and Dombrowski
Dave Dombrowski, Jim Leyland, and Chuck Hernandez took in some instructional league action today. Everybody is in Lakeland this week for organizational meetings so they could have been discussing anything.

Maybe they were talking about the way that the ball explodes out of Rick Porcello’s hand, or maybe the kid’s follow through.

Perhaps they were discussing how much David Eckstein would be worth if he left the St. Louis Cardinals. Would 2 years and $14 or $15 million be too much for a player with declining skills?

It could be they were thinking bigger and deciding if it is worth dealing with everything besides the money it would take to get Alex Rodriguez signed. That negotiation certainly wouldn’t be a picnic (thanks MetsBlog.com!). Would you want to deal with this?

‘All these things have to be part of the deal or there’s not a deal,’ including an office at the stadium for his marketing person, a luxury box where he could host people, and after the game people come down to the clubhouse and get things signed. That he had become so big he can’t fly commercially, so he’s going to need charter airfare. That he wanted to meet with ownership and go through the scouting reports in the organization, since he’s making a long-term commitment, of who is coming up in the farm system to know there’s a bright future to play with around him. He wanted to have a tent in spring training to sell A-Rod apparel. He wanted to know what the team marketing plan was going to be around him as he joined the team. I think that’s about everything.

Or maybe they were just talking about Cameron Maybin’s 2 homer night in the Arizona Fall League.

Really, it could be anything.

Links

links for 2007-10-14

15 Comments
Free Agents, Pitching, Players

Newsflash: Rivera is better than Jones

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Drew Sharp had a blurb in today’s Free Press in which he argued that “making a one-year commitment to Todd Jones for 2008 is still a better financial and competitive investment than giving Mariano Rivera three years at nearly $40 million.”

It isn’t that assertion that bothers me. One could make an argument that an affordable 1 year deal to provide some depth while your closer in waiting matures is more fiscally responsible than sinking big money into a position that can be filled for less. I’m not going to get into that discussion right now.

But as part of his reasoning Sharp asserted:

Rivera is a future Hall of Famer, but he’s 38 and living more off previous reputation than any current intimidation factor.

There isn’t much distinguishing him — right now — from Jones from a production standpoint.

This is just wrong. Sharp offers no proof of this preposterous assertion, he just leaves it to the reader to believe him. In case you don’t want to take Drew Sharp at face value, here are their 2007 stats, I’ll let you figure out which pitcher is which.

Stat	PitA	PitB
IP	71.1	61.1
H	68	64
HR	4	3
BB	12	23
SO	74	33
R	25	29
FIP	2.61	3.88

Jones probably gets too much grief for what he isn’t. But to assert they are the same player from “a production standpoint” is just, umm, pick your adjective.

Todd Jones Stats and Graphs – Detroit Tigers | FanGraphs
Mariano Rivera Stats and Graphs – New York Yankees | FanGraphs
DREW SHARP: Todd Jones a better signing than Mariano Rivera

2008 Season

The Tigers offseason according to Baseball Prospectus

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Nate Silver at Baseball Prospectus is going division by division looking at what teams will and should do with their offseasons.  The first division he did is the American League Central.

I won’t post everything because it is premium content, but I will do a synopsis and encourage you to become a subscriber.

In essence Silver classified the Tigers as a weak buy.  He also indicated that Dave Dombrowski will have one of the tougher offseasons coming up saying:

This team looks to me like an 85-86 win team if it just treads water,
and any team in that position that’s drawing three million fans or more per season is usually going to be a net acquirer of talent. The problem is that there aren’t that many ready-made free agent solutions at the positions where the Tigers need them, so some creativity is going to be required. When all is said and done, I think the Tigers will look at the Indians, Red Sox and Yankees, decide that they have to improve to catch up to that group, and make some or another kind of move.

Some names he indicates as targets include Eric Gagne, and then a Kerry Wood type pitcher and a Paul Byrd type pitcher.

Baseball Prospectus | Articles | Lies, Damned Lies: Offseason Plans, AL Central

Links

links for 2007-10-11

5 Comments
Roster Management

Tigers done with Campusano

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The Tigers sent rule five selection Edward Campusano back to the Chicago Cubs. Campusano cleared waivers and will be assigned to Des Moines.

Campusano was acquired by Milwaukee who then traded him to the Tigers. He had a shot to make the team as a lefty reliever before he found himself on Dr. James Andrews operating table.

Campusano was on the 60 day DL te whole season so for the club to retain him a spot on the 40 man roster would need to be cleared.

Taking Campusano wasn’t a bad move, but retaining him for a full season meant that the Tigers paid him the league minimum plus some medical bills.