Category Archives: Roster Management

2007 Season, Injuries, Roster Management, Trades

Comings and goings: C-Mo a Cub, Miner a Hen

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The Tigers shipped Craig Monroe and some cash to the Chicago Cubs for a player to be named later. Later being before October 15th, and the player likely to be a pitcher on the 40 man roster according to Jason Beck.

With less than a million left on Monroe’s deal, I’m a little surprised that the Tigers had to send cash when what they are getting back is probably someone they don’t look to retain. My guess, is that the Tigers worked with Monroe and other clubs to find a team that Monroe wanted to go to and then made a deal work. It’s nothing the organization had to do, but it is a nice gesture to a player who was a big part of this team over the last few years. It’s the kind of thing that could pay dividends down the road. I also wonder if Trammell was an influence in the deal.

Also, as expected Zach Miner was optioned to Toledo to make room for Andrew Miller. From a roster management standpoint the move makes sense because Miner already is in an option year and can be recalled on September 1st. So you don’t lose anybody. From a performance standpoint, maybe it would have been wise to lose somebody though. I did notice that Jason Grilli wasn’t used in this series at home. I wonder if Leyland is looking to protect him, or if it was just the situations (Wednesday would have been the only game it would have made sense to use him – if you know what I mean).

Beck’s Blog: Craig Monroe to the Cubs
Miner optioned to Toledo – MLive.com: Detroit Tigers

2007 Season, Roster Management

Cameron Maybin promoted

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WXYT is citing a report from the Asheville Citizen Times that Cameron Maybin will join the Tigers tonight.

There is no word yet on corresponding roster moves for either the 25 man or 40 man roster. It did appear that Marcus Thames tweaked his hamstring last night and Craig Monroe has had the flu. I don’t know if it is simply a matter of them being shorthanded in the short term or if possibly a trade was made involving Craig Monroe who most likely cleared waivers.

UPDATE: it sounds like the Tigers inquired a couple days ago whether he was ‘ready’ making it sound this may be less likely to be a response to something that happened last night.

I have lots of thoughts on this but I’m on my blackberry so those will have to wait.

UPDATE & Comments: Now that I’m back from the zoo, and not doing this on a blackberry, a little more info. As was posted in the comments, this was one of a series of moves. Craig Monroe has been designated for assignment, thus freeing up a spot on both the 40 man and 25 man rosters. The Tigers have ten days to try and work out a trade, or release him. I would be shocked if he hadn’t been placed on waivers at the beginning of the month, so that process is probably complete. The other shuffle was Omar Infante being optioned out in favor of Ramon Santiago.

Maybin

First the outfielders. I’m both excited and nervous to see Maybin make his debut. The limited results from Erie are certainly encouraging, as were the results when he came back from the disabled list. Prior to his shoulder injury he hadn’t been hitting for a ton of power in Lakeland and I wonder if that stemmed from a back injury suffered earlier in the year. He came out of the gate strong, missed a little bit of time, and then came back and went in a homer drought. I wonder if the time off to recuperate the shoulder also helped with his back? I don’t really know, just a possible theory.

He’s essentially jumping all the way from Hi A to the pro’s considering his time in Erie was so brief, and that is a quick progression no matter who you are. With that comes some risk, and in Maybin’s case the biggest cause for concern would be his strikeout rate as he fanned once every 3.5 at-bats in Lakeland.

Still I’m excited to see him play and I do think he can help the club. I have some of the same concerns I had with Miller being rushed, but to a much lesser extent. I believe that Maybin will be asked to do a lot less than Andrew Miller. I anticipate he’ll get some platoon starts against lefties and will be used a late inning defensive replacement. The latter is a role I think he can fill with no problem. The former will be putting him in a situation that should help him have success. And as a position player, I don’t have the same concerns about fatigue and workload that I did with Miller.

Monroe

There was a reason that Craig Monroe received a one year deal after a 27 homer season and a post season that saw him set the team record for homers. It was because Cameron Maybin was waiting in the wings and Monroe was holding the spot in the meantime (Marcus Thames proved that he could have served the same function at 1/10th the cost, but that’s another issue). Monroe floundered all year and never showed in sign of breaking out of a season long funk. He’s never been strong from a batting average or on base perspective and the power that he did possess seems to have vanished. He was capable defensively, but that’s about it.

I’ve always rooted for Monroe because he seemed like a guy that worked hard, liked being a Tiger, and quite frankly was a nice guy to the fans. Those aren’t the types of things that mean you should keep your job though. With Monroe having lost his starting position to Thames, and not being a particularly enticing pinch hitting option given his struggles, there just wasn’t a lot of ways that Monroe could contribute to the club at this point. Meanwhile Craig’s confidence which is already probably shaken takes another huge hit as he ponders “I must be worse than Jason Grilli.”

Infante & Santiago

I totally get that Carlos Guillen is a huge issue at shortstop. The errors have been a problem all season long, but with Guillen’s knees aching, the decent range he had earlier in the season has become reminiscent of a statuesque Shane Halter. I was perfectly comfortable with Omar Infante backing up Guillen, and when he reached base 4 times the other night in Cleveland and made a nice play deep in the hole I thought that Jim Leyland might have thought so too. But Leyland just doesn’t trust Infante in that capacity, and Ramon Santiago is the superior defender.

Against lefties I’d imagine that Santiago starts at short and Carlos Guillen plays first. You’re improving the left side defense, but you are inserting a black hole into the lineup. Granted, it’s a much more inexpensive black hole than Jack Wilson will provide so in some respects that’s good.

As for Infante, he’ll be back when the rosters expand in September. Ryan Raburn is now filling Infante’s former role and it would be hard to send his bat to the minors given how he’s been swinging. And with Tony Giarratano on the disabled list, Infante could still be placed on the playoff roster if need be.

Contracts, Players, Roster Management

Tigers ink Rick Porcello, irritate Selig

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Well there’s some happy news at least as the Tigers have agreed to terms with Rick Porcello. Porcello of course is the Tigers first round draft choice, who despite being the top high school pitcher in the draft, slid to the Tigers at 27 due to those “signability issues” that Tigers fans have become so fond of.

Porcello is now the Tigers number 2 prospect, right behind Cameron Maybin.

The deal appears to be for something north of $7 million and Baseball America reports that it is a Major League contract. This is significant, more significant than the money, because it means that Porcello is placed on the 40 man roster immediately. And with that comes an option year this season. But I believe due to his age at time of signing, he’ll get a 4th option year meaning that the Tigers won’t have to put him on the big league roster until 2011.

As for the money I’ve seen $7.3 and $7.7 reported but either way it is a record for a high school player and it is way above the “suggested” slotting system that MLB has in place. And of course it is a ton of money for a high school kid who is still a long ways from the bigs, but it’s an even longer ways until free agency (6 years of big league service time). So if he gets up and has any measure of success he becomes a bargain compared to replacing that production on the open market.

Porcello’s stuff includes a mid 90’s fastball and both a slow curve and sharp slider. He also commands a change up.

We’ll see if the Tigers announce the signing of 5th round pick Casey Crosby who has reportedly been in the fold for quite some time. But again because the Tigers were going over slot, they were waiting until closer to the deadline to announce. Cale Iorg and Dominic De La Osa are the other remaining Tiger top 10 picks who are unsigned.

2007 Season, Pitching, Roster Management

Jair Jurrjens to start

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The Tigers will reach down to Erie for their Wednesday night starter. They’ve tabbed Jair Jurrjens to take on the Indians. Jurrjens has been on quite the roll allowing just 2 earned runs in his last 3 starts. He’s fanned 24 over that 23 inning span.

The safe roster move would have been to go with Virgil Vasquez. With Jurrjens coming up a spot will need to be cleared on the 40 man roster, but Kyle Sleeth could be let go without much hassle. The only other issue is that if the Tigers send Jurrjens back down to the minors, they will burn an option year.

Nonetheless I’m excited to see what Jurrjens can do.

Jurrjens to start Wednesday in Cleveland – Detroit Tigers Insider – MLive.com

2007 Season, Roster Management

The roster shuffle

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It became apparent last night that the Tigers would need a fresh arm in the bullpen. And by leaving McBride out to languish, it was also pretty clear the Tigers had no use for him for the next few nights. Plus they became disenchanted with Tata, at least for the time being after last night’s debacle. So they’ve called up Eulogio De La Cruz and Aquilino Lopez.

Now what is screwy is that De La Cruz is up only for tonight and he’ll be replaced by Yorman Bazardo – who has been doing okay in the Toledo rotation – after the game. But Bazardo isn’t coming up to fill Tata’s spot in the rotation, he’s coming to help in the bullpen.

So why bring up De La Cruz for one day and ensure he can’t come back for 10 more? I don’t know. I’d guess it is a rest issue with Bazardo. And why Lopez over Jose Capellan? I don’t know that either. And who will fill in the rotation? I also don’t know but I’d guess it would have to be Virgil Vasquez.

The only upside is that the team is now down to 2 lefty specialists which should give Leyland a little more flexibility.

(Thanks to Kathy for the heads up)

Tata, McBride sent out, Lopez, De La Cruz, Bazardo called up – Detroit Tigers Insider – MLive.com

2007 Season, Roster Management

Neifi era ends, and Miner is back

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Two roster-ish type notes. First, Neifi Perez was suspended 80 games for another positive test of a banned stimulant. You think this is what Leyland meant when he said that Perez “brought a lot of energy” to the team. Let’s hope he kept it to himself.

Also, Zach Miner has returned from his bereavement leave and Jose Capellan was optioned out to make room for him. Capellan has had a tender elbow, so he didn’t really contribute much in the last week.

Timely that Zach is back because the Tigers will be without Chad Durbin who is with his wife and new baby.

2007 Season, Injuries, Roster Management

Jose Capellan optioned out

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The Tigers optioned Jose Capellan to Toledo to make room for Virgil Vasquez to start tonight. Capellan was one of the 3 pitchers in the Tigers pen who actually has options. Apparently that takes precedence over performance because Jason Grilli would otherwise be the odd man out.

Tim Byrdak has joined the team and will be added to the roster after tonight’s game when Vasquez is optioned back to Toledo. Byrdak was awesome early on for the Tigers, but was awful in his last 3 appearances with 7 runs on 9 hits and 2 homers in those 4 innings of work. Hopefully that was the result of injury and not general ineffectiveness.

Capellan sent down, Byrdak returns from rehab – Detroit Tigers Insider – MLive.com

2007 Season, Roster Management

Mike Hessman up, Timo Perez out

The Tigers today called up infielder Mike Hessman and optioned out Timo Perez. This probably means the following:

  1. Craig Monroe’s back feels fine
  2. The Tigers don’t want to rely on Carlos Guillen as the back-up first baseman, especially until Placido Polanco is 100%
  3. I don’t have to finish writing a post about how Timo Perez provides no platoon advantage over Ryan Raburn because Perez isn’t as good against righties as Raburn is and that Jim Leyland will probably rely on him way too much because he’s a veteran National League player that has some sort of track record (regardless of the track record).

The Official Site of The Detroit Tigers: News: Detroit Tigers News

BTW- thanks for the emails and notes left in the comments. I was just away from a connection this afternoon.

2007 Season, Injuries, Roster Management

5 million down the drain and other adversity

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One of the more impressive aspects of the Tigers leading the AL Central and being a half game off an MLB leading pace is that they have had to battle injuries. However, the Tigers may have actually been lucky in this regard, sort of.

Taking a look at the Tigers team stats one will see that the team has used 36 different players already this year. But if you look at the split of position players and pitchers, the split is quite remarkable. The Tigers have used only 14 different position players this year, and one of those is Ryan Raburn who was just called up to take Neifi Perez’s spot after the suspension. So the Tigers have stuck with the same 13 non-pitchers all season.

Now it’s not quite as clean as that though. Vance Wilson was slated to be the back-up catcher, but hasn’t spent a day on the active roster. Plus the Tigers have sustained nagging injuries to both Carlos Guillen and Brandon Inge (and it looks like Placido Polanco now as well). Neither required a DL stint but kept them both out of the lineup for a week.

So with only 1 position player sub, that means there have been 10 supplements to the 12 man pitching staff. Of the 12 pitchers on the opening day roster, 7 of them have spent time on the DL. And of the 7 that stayed healthy, 2 of them were traded (Maroth and Ledezma). And a 3rd one, Bobby Seay, was an injury replacement to begin with. So Justin Verlander, Chad Durbin, Todd Jones, Bobby Seay and Jason Grilli are the only members of the opening day pitching staff who have been on the active roster the whole season.

As a point of reference, the Tigers used 19 pitchers all of last year.

Meanwhile, Fernando Rodney has had 2 stints and even injury replacements Zach Miner and Tim Byrdak have found themselves DL’d.

All told the Tigers have amassed 364 days on the disabled list – so far. This doesn’t include another 4 to 6 weeks for Joel Zumaya or the rest of the season for Vance Wilson. It also doesn’t include the season long injuries to Tony Giarratano or Edward Campusano. While they are both DL’d, that is more a matter of roster management than having to find replacements. The wages paid out to those on the DL is approximately $5.5 million so far. The bulk of that is the $3.6 million portion of Kenny Rogers salary that kind of went to waste.

But injuries to the pitchers are only part of the problem. The other part has been overwhelming ineffectiveness over the first 3 months of the season. Jose Mesa was jettisoned after being really bad consistently. Now the Tigers are paying him to pitch for the Phillies, which is still better than paying him to pitch for the Tigers.

Aquilino Lopez, Eulogio De La Cruz, and Yorman Bazardo have all been given a shot. Acquisitions Jose Capellan and Macay McBride are trying to establish roots in what has been a very transient population thus far.

So the Tigers have had to get creative. They’ve looked to trades as well as the minors to try and help the bullpen. But the lucky part is that pitching is the area that the Tigers had the depth to be able to sustain some issues. The fact that the position players have remained intact is the bigger part of the team’s success so far. And that the one that needed to be replaced was truly the 25th man on the roster seems particularly fortuitous.

2007 Season, Injuries, Pitching, Roster Management

Pitching news – rotation set for Atlanta

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Rod and Mario kept talking about Jim Leyland mentioning that changes were a-comin’ with the pitching staff. I’m sure that much of that has to do with injuries – or recovery from injuries – but a fraction has to do with performance.

We know that Kenny Rogers is back on Friday night. We now know that Andrew Miller will pitch on Sunday night in Atlanta. But beyond that we don’t know much. Either Chad Durbin or Mike Maroth will pitch the beginning of the homestand.

We also know that Zach Miner and Nate Robertson will be donning Erie Seawolves uniforms for rehab. Miner will pitch an inning tonight and make a couple of appearances. Nate Robertson will start on Thursday.

We also know that a spot a spot on the 25 man roster will need to be made for Kenny Rogers and that could be any reliever that’s not Todd Jones or Fernando Rodney or it could be Mike Maroth if he is traded. Rogers is on the 60 day DL, and will need to be “added” to the 40 man roster. But there is a spot available with Jose Mesa’s departure plus Vance Wilson could be moved to the 60 as well.