The Tigers presumably want to bring Brandon Lyon back. Brandon Lyon would like a multi-year deal. I don’t think these things are mutually exclusive, but Lyon has to make a decision tonight on whether or not to accept arbitration.
Lyon will likely receive more than a one year contract from somewhere so it’s little surprise that Lyon is expected to turn down the arbitration offer. Of course one his early suitors, the Philadelphia Phillies are now believed to be out of the running because they deem him too expensive.
The Tigers today announced the signing of southpaw Brad Thomas, and that they traded Clay Rapada to the the Texas Rangers for a player to be named later. Furthermore, they outrighted Zach Simons.
Thomas pitched the last two years in Korea and Dave Dombrowski said in a statement he expects Thomas to contribute out of the bullpen at the big league level. Judging by this video it looks like Thomas has a fastball that sits 90-91mph and a breaking pitch that registers about 80mph.
Checking NPB Tracker it looks like Thomas was drawing interest from the Hansin Tigers. The Tigers have recently increased their presence in the pacific rim and last year it netted them Fu-Te Ni from Taiwan. Ni made the leap the to the big leagues and led the league in stranding runners out of the bullpen.
Rapada was acquired as the PTBNL in the deal that sent Craig Monroe to the Cubs. He never really found a place with the club and I was a little surprised to see him kept on the 40 man roster.
Simons was acquired in exchange for Jason Grilli. He put together a solid second half in 2008 leading to a spot on the 40 man roster. He followed that up with a solid season at Erie with 8.8 K/9 and 3.7 BB/9 leading to a 2.82 ERA in 51 innings. He only allowed 1 homer at Erie.
Analysis
I like the addition of Thomas as a low risk move. I don’t have huge expectations from a 32 year old pitcher with 23 innings of big league experience, but he’ll make the league minimum and if he doesn’t work, he doesn’t work.
Trading Rapada isn’t much of a surprise. His numbers at Toledo were quite good actually, but for some reason Leyland didn’t trust him.
I’m surprised to see Simons outrighted though. He had a solid season and the Tigers are reportedly shopping for bullpen help. I think that there is about to be another move where the Tigers acquire more players than they’re giving up (like a Jackson trade) or they’re planning to shop in the Rule 5 store on Thursday.
UPDATE: 10:01 PM: Things seem to have really slowed down. For Nightengale’s insistence that the Tigers want to move Granderson this week, othersaren’t seeing the same things. Buster Olney on Baseball Tonight said the Tigers asked for Austin Jackson and Phil Hughes from the Yankees for Grandy and from the Cubs they wanted Starlin Castro and 2 pitching prospects. Phil Rogers says the Mariners may be in on Granderson and Ed Price further confirms the Diamondbacks interest in Edwin Jackson. And Dombrowski has a weak denial (my interpretation) that the team is close to any deals.
There is no real news on the Curtis Granderson and Edwin Jackson trade fronts, but here is a roundup of some news and related tweets from this morning.
The Cubs and Yankees have been mentioned as two potential destinations for Granderson. Not coincidentally both have some interest in Mike Cameron and according to Sherman the Cubs like Melky Cabrera. I don’t know what this all means.
Gregg saw improvements in his strikeout rates and walk rates but was undone by the 13 homers he allowed. Opposing hitters took him deep on 15.7% of the fly balls he allowed so there is some reason to believe he’d bounce back from that rate. With 5 teams interested though it doesn’t sound like it would net anyone much of a discount.
Gregg has pitched for the Cubs, Marlins, and Angels and he made $4.2 million in 2009.
A lot of the reliever speculation for the Tigers will probably become clearer after tonight when Fernando Rodney and Brandon Lyon have to make their decisions about accepting arbitration.
For all the talk of the Tigers being broke, the Dodgers might be in a tougher situation. They didn’t offer any of their players arbitration and now they are looking to move players, including relieverGeorge Sherrill.
Matthew Pouilot notes that the Tigers might be a fit for a deal where Sherrill and a prospect head to Detroit in exchange for Edwin Jackson. Pouilot also mentions the Rangers, Rays, and Phillies as potential suitors.
The lefty reliever made $2.75 million last year and in 2010 he enters his last year of arbitration eligibility his last 2 years of arbitration eligibility before becoming a free agent. Sherrill keep his strikeout rate above 9 and he generally keeps his walks a touch over 3 except for 2 outlier years in 2006 and 2008. While his FIP projection is similar to Bobby Seay’s, Sherrill did it as a general reliever and not a LOOGY like Seay did making his numbers more impressive.
The good news for Tigers fans is that according to Jon Paul Morosi a couple of sources say it is unlikely that the Tigers trade Miguel Cabrera this week. Salary relief would of course be nice, but Morosi raises another good point. Trading away a team’s best player likely sends the wrong message to the player you’d like to keep around.
Verlander, who is on the verge of receiving a big raise in salary arbitration, is on track to become a free agent after the 2011 season. If the Tigers trade prominent players such as Granderson and Jackson, they may have a difficult time convincing Verlander to remain in Detroit for the long term.
It’s quite the conundrum for the Tigers. The cash saved by in the future by moving Miguel Cabrera or Curtis Granderson would certainly help with the flexibility to sign Justin Verlander but it would also make the climate less attractive. Verlander will get his money regardless so he’ll be able to look for a favorable situation.
As for what it will take to sign Verlander, we can start by looking at some rumors swirling around Felix Hernandez who like Verlander is 2 years removed from free agency. Ken Rosenthal reports that the two sides are far apart on a long term deal where the starting point was a 4 year $45 million offer.
Hernandez should command more because as good as Verlander has been, King Felix has been better and is 3 years younger. Still, it would take probably $20 million to buy out Verlander’s 2 arbitration years and then $15-18 million per year after that at least.
The Detroit Tigers are certainly one of the more interesting teams heading into the winter meetings. They are a team with a top 5 payroll in a region that is struggling economically. The Tigers also have holes to fill in the bullpen and at shortstop and limited means to address those issues with free agency and a farm system that can’t afford to surrender too many prospects. Dave Dombrowski has made some key players such as Edwin Jackson and Curtis Granderson available on the trade market leading to much speculation about a fire sale. But what really is the Tigers financial situation?
Some in the Tigers blogosphere had suggested that Milton Bradley may be a decent acquisition for the Tigers if it involved a swap of undesirable contracts. Bradley will earn $10 million in 2010 and $11 million in 2011.
Bradley is coming off a year that saw his power drop dramatically as he only mustered a .397 slugging percentage. He hit fewer line drives and more groundballs but managed to maintain a health .378 OBP.
UPDATE: Thanks to Ben and Lee for pointing to this related note from Will Carroll that Mike Cameron is also in the Cubs mix, which if he was signed would likely kill Granderson trade talk as far as the Cubs were concerned.
The Tigers in house shortstop options are currently Ramon Santiago and Brent Dlugach. With the team already starting a rookie at second base in Scott Sizemore, they would probably like a little more of a veteran presence on the other side of the bag- even if it is just to split time with Santiago. One of the options the team is reportedly looking at is former Athletic Bobby Crosby.
Crosby was a rising star at one point when he posted an .802 OPS as a 24 year old. He won the AL Rookie of the Year award. That was in 2005 though and Crosby’s numbers haven’t come close to that mark ever since and his career OPS is .683. Defensively he has been good, but not great posting UZR’s of about 3 in most years.
In 2009 Crosby only played 6 games at shortstop with the bulk of his playing time split between first base and third base. Any value that Crosby has is as a decent fielding shortstop. Putting his anemic bat at the corners makes him a below replacement level player. And that’s if he stays on the field. Crosby has only crossed the 100 game plateau twice in his career.
As a baseball blogger, this week is one of the most exciting of the year. It doesn’t matter how good or bad your team is, news is likely to break and rumors will abound as every team tries to improve. Here at Detroit Tigers Weblog we’ll have the meetings thoroughly covered.
I had intended to attend the meetings in Indianapolis but that didn’t work out. That’s the bad news, the good news is that I had already taken the time off from the day job so I’ll be tethered to the computer, listening to the radio, and watching TV to hopefully catch anything that happens quickly.
Mentioning every rumor isn’t the normal M.O. here at DTW, but this week will be different. So expect more posts than usual, and many will be in shorter form. Of course any moves that take place will be covered in depth as well.
My intention will be to do some live chats, both text and video, throughout the week and that schedule will be forthcoming.
To best follow the goings on here at DTW there are a few options:
If you haven’t already subscribe to the RSS feed. While an email option is available, that only sends out a daily digest. The regular feed is the way to go for quick updates
Follow me on Twitter @billfer. Info will be cross posted there as well and you may actually see things there first via re-tweets. Also, you may want to follow @TweetingTigers which aggregates new content from 20+ Tigers news sources.
Become a fan of Detroit Tigers Weblog on Facebook. Yes, I’ve had a Facebook fan page for the site for quite some time, but haven’t done much with it. But now might be the time to get some value from it.
I’ll also try and keep the payroll spreadsheet up to date as moves are made.
If you’re away from your computer, you can still reach DTW via a myriad of smart phones. If you bring the page up on a mobile device and it isn’t mobile optimized, let me know and we’ll try to get that taken care of.
Things have been very quiet here at DTW lately. While it wasn’t my intention for things to go dark here, when it’s a one person gig sometimes life gets in the way. Fortunately life will be out of the way this coming week so my winter meetings coverage should be pretty robust and very timely. In the mean time I’ll use this post as a way of catching up on everything that got neglected.
I wanted to highlight some work that Kurt Mensching has been doing over at Mack Avenue Tigers this week. If you haven’t visited his sight, he has been doing a VERY deep dive into Dave Dombrowski’s tenure as Tigers general manager. Kurt has looked at all of Dombrowski’s moves to try and capture his philosophies and tendencies to provide a very comprehensive evaluation. Having undertaken a similar exercise a couple years ago for The Hardball Times Annual I know how much work goes into something like this and he’s done an excellent job. Below are links to the various articles in the series and I encourage you to check them out.