As a long time Tiger fan I spent many a night listening to the Tigers on the radio while growing up. Those of you who read my interview with Ernie Harwell, know my affection for the old time Tiger broadcasters. That other broadcaster who was with Ernie Harwell for so long was Paul Carey, and wouldn’t it be great to see him in the Hall of Fame as well? Throughout the month of November you can vote for broadcasters to be placed on the final ballot for the 2006 Ford C Frick award. I’d love to see Carey get in and I encourage all long time Tiger fans to go vote for Paul.

AJ Burnett
This falls under the category of not surprising, but the Tigers have contacted Burnett’s agent, Darek Braunecker. At least according to this article some interest may have waned with the September shenanigans, but the Tigers are listed alongside the Rangers, Mariners, and Blue Jays as teams who are still interested. Of course any agent worth his salt would keep as many teams in play for as long as possible. As for my thoughts on Burnett, I’ll get into that in a seperate post (basically I’m still doing my research).

2006 Projections

Last week Tiger Tales posted the projections from the Bill James book (aff link). Today, commenter Walewander (awesome name) pointed out that Baseball Think Factory has posted their ZiPS projections. I won’t copy their work here, but I will recommend you check out the projections for Shelton, Pudge, Verlander, and Zumaya. Shelton looks very promising, and Pudge projects to decent production. ZiPS thinks Verlander will be a stud. Zumaya on the other hand looks to struggle like a first time starter – but that wouldn’t be bad production given his age. Take the projections for what they are – educated guesses (albeit with some pretty good math behind them).

BA’s Top 20
Jim Callis posted his top 20 long term prospects. Justin Verlander was the lone Tiger rating number 11, which is probably fair. The nice thing is that you could make a legitimate argument that a second Tiger prospect could have been included. Things are looking up in the minors.

Earlier in the week, DIBS announced Placido Polanco as its choice of Tiger of the Year (as well as pitcher and breakout player). We seem to be in pretty much complete agreement with the Detroit Chapter of the Baseball Writers of America as they announced Polanco yesterday. (I want to thank my DIBS brethern for so enthusiastically embracing DIBS.)

Other awards that were announced include the AL Gold Gloves and the Tigers were shut-out. Pudge Rodriguez picked-up a gold glove he didn’t deserve last year, but he was unfairly shut-out this year. Rodriguez shut down the opponents running game. He threw out over half the attempted base stealers (to be fair I think some of Maroth’s pick-offs were included in there), and that’s not the most impressive part. Of catchers with over 1000 innings caught, only Joe Mauer had fewer attempts. Runners didn’t even try against Rodriguez. Jason Varitke, the winner, threw out only 24% of stolen base attempts. Pudge had 4 passed balls to Varitek’s 7, and 4 errors to Varitek’s 8. This isn’t even really close.

Other Tiger related news

• Former Tiger stud prospect Torey Lovullo was named manager of Cleveland Indians AAA affiliate Buffalo. This gets a little more relevant when I mention that former Tiger hitting coach Bruce Fields will be taking on the same role for Buffalo
• Alan Trammell, who made Paul Depodesta’s short list for the Dodgers job was informed he is no longer in the running for the Tampa Bay job. And with Depodesta out, his status for LA remains to be seen.
• The Tigers completed the John Macdonald trade from earlier this season by sending cash considerations to Toronto. I know everyone is relieved to finally have this settled.

Site News
I’ve done some more tweaking on the site, but I don’t think it is too noticeable. I’ve shrunk the logo slightly, as well as my picture and the fonts in the sidebar. I’ve also added Chitika eMiniMalls as another revenue source. I point all this out because in case something isn’t working that means I recently broke it and I’d appreciate if you let me know.

I’ve got a ton of stuff to write about, it’s just finding the time. However, next week I plan a post combing through the roster in preparation for the hot stove season. Also, I’m still working on wrapping up the 2005 season (I’m intentionally spacing this out – it’s a long offseason) taking a look at the pitching staff from a DIPS perspective.

At the end of the season, eleven web sites that write about the Detroi Tigers voted on a Tiger player of the year, pitcher of the year, and breakout player. Today, DIBS (Detroit Independent Baseball Scribes) announced the winners. Placido Polanco took home player of the year honors, Jeremy Bonderman won pitcher of the year, and Chris Shelton was the breakout player.

As for my ballot, I agreed completely. For player of the year, I gave consideration to Bonderman, Polanco, Shelton, and Craig Monroe. Monroe was the only one to spend the whole season with the team, but I chose to go with Polanco. Polanco’s OPS of 847 ranked among the team leaders, and he did it while playing flawless defense at an important position. Throw in the fact that by all appearances he was the consumate teammate, the decision was easy.

Among pitching candidates, had Kyle Farnsworth not been traded he probably would have had my vote. Bonderman’s second half slide made him an average pitcher for the year. However, given his age and experience his season was still impressive.

As for the breakout player, there was little question that Chris Shelton should win. In fact, he received the first place vote on all 11 ballots. While Curtis Granderson was very impressive whlie he was in Detroit, Shelton did it longer. In any case, both players were bright spots in what turned out to be a disappointing season.

So that’s my ballot, but what about these 11 websites and DIBS? The idea was spawned by myself, Ryan Sosin, and Brian Borawski last season. There are a ton of great internet sites covering sports – specifically the Tigers – that are flying under the radar. The intention of DIBS is to help improve and promote those sites. As a member of the Tiger blogging community, one of the great things is that the various sites aren’t competitive. We don’t snipe at each other, and we do our best to promote each other. If one of our sites gains exposure, we all benefit. And that’s really what DIBS is all about. We want to generate great content, and we want to get that content in front of as big an audience as possible.