This really shouldn’t come as a surprise, but the Tigers exercised Jamie Walker’s $1.25 million option for 2006. This move was pretty much a no-brainer as Walker is an above average LOOGY at an affordable price. According to Baseball Prospectus, Walker saved 3 runs above average in 2005. While 2005 was probably Walker’s weakest of his 3 with the Tigers, he is still a solid option in the bullpen. This should be good news for the Walker family as they moved to the metro Detroit area this year.
Category Archives: Contracts
Analyzing the contracts of Detroit Tigers players.
Tigers Sign Carlos….Pena
The Tigers signed a Scott Boras client named Carlos today. They agreed to a one year deal with Pena. I don’t have the terms yet, but I’ll update when I do. This means that the Tigers have inked their 3 arbitration eligible players (Inge and Sanchez were the others) to one year deals.
UPDATE The contract is 2.575 million with a 25k bonus for 625 plate apperances.
Pena showed some life after the All Star break last year hitting 250/362/513. While he struck out a whole bunch, he did improve his plate awareness garnering a walk every 8 plate appearances. Offensively last year he was an about average first baseman, so $2.6 million shouldn’t be too bad heading into his age 27 season.
UPDATE 2 With the signings of Martinez, Pena, and Wilson the Tigers have 15 players under contract for next year. I couldn’t find Wilson’s contract, but he made $720,000 last year. The Tigers payroll for the 15 players under contract is $56 million. The other 10 players who will be on the big league roster (barring trades of course) are all “renewable.” The total cost of those 10 will be about $4 million (give or take a half million). That puts the payroll for the big league roster right at $60 million as it currently stands.
Tigers sign Percival
Well it didn’t take long for the Tigers to get the ball rolling. One of their biggest areas of need was the bullpen, and even if you think Troy Percival is on the downside of his career and the Tigers paid too much, their bullpen is better for it. Of course the downside is that the Tigers now have $10 million invested in two guys in the bullpen. The common thought is that Urbina will be dealt, however I could see the Tigers keeping him and moving him to the set up role. Also, given Percival’s health concerns, and the kidnapping situation in Venezuela it might not be bad to keep both around.
As for Percival, he became expendable with the emergence of Francisco Rodriguez who is better and cheaper for the Angels. The main reason to not like this deal for the Tigers is that Percival’s strikeout rate has plummeted the last 3 years. In 2002 it was 10.9, and then 8.8 in ’03, and it fell to 6.0 last year. The other big knock is that he was diagnosed with a degenerative hip in 2003.
Now that we’ve gotten the two big negatives out of the way, here comes the positive. Even with his drastically reduced K-rate last year, he was still better than any pitcher the Tigers had in their bullpen. According to Baseball Prospectus’ runs prevented, Percival prevented 7.1 more runs than an average pitcher. Last year Jamie Walker prevented 6.7, and the next closest was Esteban Yan at 3.4. Al Levine (.3) and Urbina (.7) were the only other Tiger relievers with postive RP’s. Now 7.1 RP probably doesn’t justify $12 million over two year, but it improves the bullpen.
Because nearly half of the Tigers’ games are against division foes, it’s worth looking at Percival’s performance against the Central. Here are his numbers over the last 3 years.
Opponent ERA G IP H R ER HR BB SO AVG vs. CHW 5.68 7 6.1 9 4 4 1 2 10 0.321 vs. CLE 1.29 7 7 5 4 1 2 3 7 0.192 vs. KAN 0.84 11 10.2 5 1 1 0 4 11 0.143 vs. MIN 0.00 9 8.1 7 2 0 0 6 9 0.226
While he’s struggled against the White Sox, he’s fared quite well agsint the other 3 divisional opponents. Combine this with the fact that the Indians were also in the market for a closer, and it looks like Percival might be a good idea.
Other reasons I like this are because Dombrowski managed to cut Percival’s free agent tour short. Instead of the Tigers being a last resort for guys, Detroit has actually become a place to consider. While the Tigers may have overpaid based on Percival’s performance, I’m not so sure they overpaid compared to what the market will yield. That’s also a difference from last year.
The other reason I’m kind of excited about this signing, is that I think it might signal that Illitch is ready to win now. The Tigers’ aren’t looking for value, they are looking to get better. While I’m not crazy about signing Jeff Kent and displacing Infante to the left side of the infield it would bolster the offense. With the Kent discussions and the Percival signing it seems like the Illitch is looking to win in the next two years as opposed to building a team for the future. This could be like the summer that the Wings acquired Hasek, Hull, and Robitaille. This could be what Illitch promised Pudge last year. This could be the year the Tigers stop thinking like a small market team and the payroll surpasses $80 million. I know I’m making a large jump based on one meeting and one signing, but this could be the year the Tigers make the leap.
Done Deal
According to WDFN and WXYT the Tigers have reached a verbal agreement with Ivan Rodriguez on a 4 year $40 million dollar deal. It is expected the formal announcement will come on Monday.