All posts by billfer

Trade Rumors, Winter Meetings

Milton Bradley talks not close

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Jon Heyman writes today that things aren’t very close in a proposed Milton Bradley for Pat Burrell swap between the Rays and the Cubs. This doesn’t have a direct impact on the Tigers, but it is worth watching because there is speculation that the Cubs would want to move Bradley before setting their sights on Curtis Granderson.

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.

Image from SD Dirk on Flickr

Winter Meetings

Tigers courting Bobby Crosby

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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.

Image from ztil301 on Flickr

Site News, Winter Meetings

The Winter Meetings at DTW

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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.
Free Agents, Managing & Strategy, Minors

The week that was

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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.

Continue reading The week that was →

Front Office

The Dombrowski Compendium

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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.

(And he’s not done, plus I’ll have some comments about DD tomorrow)

2010 Season, Roster Management

Arbitration offers for Lyon, Rodney

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The Tigers decided to offer arbitration to relievers Brandon Lyon and Fernando Rodney, but not to take the risk with second baseman Placido Polanco. We didn’t really learn too much by these moves that we weren’t already expecting. If nobody were offered it may have signaled that the Tigers were as poor as everyone speculated. If everyone were offered it would either mean the Tigers weren’t really financially restricted or that Scott Sizemore’s injury wouldn’t allow him to be ready. Instead we’re somewhere in the middle.

The good news with Lyon and Rodney is that the Tigers stand to gain high draft picks if either player is signed by another team. If they accept arbitration the Tigers will have a couple relievers on one year deals for about $5 million apiece. However, Dave Dombrowski doesn’t expect either player to accept but he also didn’t rule out signing either player. With Lyon in particular I could see the team willing to sign him to a 2 year deal.

With Polanco it is one of those tough decisions, but one that is right. Polanco was part of the renaissance of baseball in Detroit and was an easy guy to root for. He played hard, never complained, and was remarkably steady. And while he was probably overrated by many fans for his batting average, he was the guy I felt most comfortable with at the plate in a key situation (yes, I know his career .307 BAISP isn’t appreciably different than his overall .303 BA it is still a pretty good clip and the fact that he’d find a way to put the ball in play made me “feel” better).

But for a change the Tigers actually have a position player prospect poised to take over a position of need in Scott Sizemore. He isn’t being rushed or pushed up for a spark or as an injury replacement. Scouts feel he can hit at the big league level now and his minor league numbers show he can transfer his tools to production.

Now the decision to let Polanco go is different than the decision to offer him arbitration. By not offering him arbitration Polanco will not fetch the team additional draft picks. The lack of a compensation pick also makes Polanco much more attractive to potential suitors. So when he ultimately signs a 2-3 year deal with someone, there will be complaints that the Tigers missed out. The complainers though have to realize that Polanco’s market shrinks with a compensation pick attached and that multi-year offer likely wouldn’t be there.

Links

Links for 2009-11-24

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Roster Management

Tigers add 4 to the roster

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The Tigers have added Scott Sizemore, Ryan Strieby, Brennan Boesch, and Audy Ciriaco to the 40 man roster, protecting them from the Rule 5 draft. The roster was at 42, but with the 6 free agents off the roster, and the addition of these 4 players it is now full at 40.

The additions of Sizemore and Strieby are not the least bit surprising. Strieby was one of the best hitters in the Eastern League last year while he was healthy. He’s seemingly blocked at first base and will see increased work in the outfield, but regardless he is too good of a hitter to let walk.  Sizemore of course is the heir apparent at second base with the likely departure of Placido Polanco.

After those two though there was a larger pool of players on the bubble. The Tigers decided to stick with the toolsy (and hopefully starting to translate to production) Ciriaco and the power of Brennan Boesch. Ciriaco finally started to tie those tools into some production late last year where he got his line drive rate up to the teens from June forward. And despite Boesch’s struggles controlling the plate (127 K’s and 34 BB’s last year) he did slug at a .510 clip. It’s interesting though that as Dave Dombrowski talks about improving plate discipline throughout the organization they protected two players who have the strike out and walk rates that Ciriaco and Boesch do.

Among those left off the roster were a handful of pitchers including Luis Marte, Bryan Villarreal, Scot Drucker, and Brett Jensen. I’m not necessarily surprised by the absence of any one of those pitchers, but that none were protected is a little surprising.

Things are likely to change yet as trade rumors swirl and the Tigers have to decide on a shortstop.

2009 Season, Minors, Roster Management

Minor notes: Protection, Bourquin, and the AFL

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Some minor league news and notes:

40 man roster

We’ve talked here already about the Tigers need to trim the 40 man roster and the need to protect players ahead of the rule 5 draft coming up in December. The 40 man will be set initially tomorrow (things could of course change between now and the actual rule 5 draft due to trades/free agent signings).

With that in mind Tigers 40 man roster candidate Scot Drucker really wants to be on a big league roster next year and is offering to pay the the $50,000 rule 5 draft fee for any team that takes him:

@utbaseball30 Deadline for the 40 man rosters tonight, remember to any team that may want me if Im not protected, Ill cover the 50k in the Rule V draft

Not sure if Drucker would look to recoup the $25K if he were returned to the Tigers.

Ronnie Bourquin

The Tigers 2nd round pick from 2006 is eligible for the rule 5 draft. But his status as a prospect was already in doubt as things haven’t gone the way either he or the Tigers would have liked. He finally started to hit in A ball this year before being pushed to Erie where he struggled. Now he’s been suspended 50 games for testing positive for amphetamines.

AFL Championship Game

The Peoria Javelinas will be playing in the AFL Championship game this Saturday. See AFL strike out leader Robbie Weinhardt and other Tigers on the MLB Network and MLB.tv. The game is at 2:45 ET. By that point OSU should be rolling over Michigan so if you need a diversion, see a couple guys who could be helping the Tigers next year finish up their fall season.

Links

Links for 2009-11-18

7 Comments
2009 Season, Players, Research, Statistics

Playing in the spray – Curtis Granderson

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Curtis Granderson’s 2009 season has received plenty of scrutiny, and this was even before trade rumors crept up. Granderson struggled at times during the season, and had a hard time sustaining success. His .249 batting average was the lowest of his career and it was a drag on his on base percentage and slugging percentage as well. We know batting average is volatile so did Granderson just suffer from some bad luck, or did something else change? Fortunately we have hit location data to help shed some light on these questions.

Granderson’s batting average was dragged down by a .276 batting average on balls in play. That is a number that should typically be in the .320ish range, especially for someone with Granderson’s speed. A shift like that would lead people to think he was largely unlucky. A closer look would show a shift in his balls in play from the harder to field grounders to the easier to field fly balls. Ask fans what they saw and many would say it looked like Granderson got overly concerned with the homers (a new career high) and that he pulled the ball to much. But what would the data say?

Continue reading Playing in the spray – Curtis Granderson →