As I mentioned in my last post, Adrian Beltre is the first guy that I’ve been disappointed in missing. Adding Glaus, Pavano, and Finley would have been a nice boost to the team, but Beltre was the guy I was most excited about.

First of all, for some reason I thought we had a shot at him. Based on all the local specualtion, reports from national media (Gammons, Rosenthal, etc), and my own hopes it seemed plausible. Beltre was looking for a big long term deal, the Tigers had big money to spend (supposedly) and were eager to make a splash. His former team promptly signed an insurance policy (Kent) because they felt he wouldn’t be coming back.

Assuming the Tigers were interested, which is a big assumption, they were only competing with the Mariners’ and the Dodgers. LA was content to let him walk if they thought he got too pricey. That left the Mariners as the main suitor. The same Mariners who finished with 99 losses and 29 games out of first place. The same Mariners’ who play in Safeco which was the worst hitters park in the American League. Ballpark and winning are two of the common reason we hear about players not coming to Detroit. Seattle manages to lose more games, play in a less conducive hitters environment, and they manage to sign two sluggers. If it all comes down to Detroit not being on the west coast, or Detroit being too cold then Detroit is going to be in a world of hurt for a long time.

This leads me to believe that the Tigers weren’t ever in on Beltre. And really, it isn’t the Tigers’ fault that the media may have exagerated their interest. But what I don’t get is why they weren’t interested. Detroit definitely identified third base as an area of need as evidenced by the pursuit of Glaus, Koskie, and Renteria.

It’s the interest in Renteria, and the lack of interest in Beltre that have me most perplexed. Rumors had the Renteria offer at 4 years and $9 million per year. That would mean that Renteria would have been under contract from age 29-32 where players are typically productive but beginning to decline. Also Renteria would have been playing short where you would expect his defense to decline has his range decreases. Beltre with a 5 year contract would have been signed from age 26-30, right during his peak seasons, and a defensive decline playing third at those ages wouldn’t be expected. So over the life of the contract, it seems you’d have better defense on the left side between Beltre and Guillen than Guillen and Renteria.

Offensively, there is reason to be concerned that last year might have been a fluke for Beltre. His slugging percentage of .629 was 154 points higher than his previous season high (.475 in 2002). What seems the most suspicious is that the boost in power came exclusively from home runs. His 48 homers more than doubled any previous season, while his doubles and triples stayed pretty much in line with past performance. Even if last year was a fluke, it isn’t unreasonable for him to continue to improve on his career numbers of 272/334/463 as he moves into his peak seasons. When you compare Beltre’s career numbers to Renteria’s 289/346/400 and take into account that Renteria has most likely played through his peak seasons, Beltre looks better and better. The question then becomes, is Beltre worth another year of risk, and $4 million more per year? I guess that the Tigers decided he wasn’t worth the risk.

In all fairness, I don’t have access to the information that the Tigers do. I think Dombrowski has done a great job so far, and he has a proven track record. I also have no idea what happened as far as what offers were and weren’t made. I can only go by the reports that I read, and I know Dombrowski doesn’t negotiate in the media. I also fully understand setting a limit to what you’ll pay for a player. I love that they walked away from Glaus and Koskie when the price got too high. I don’t want them to sign a player for the sake of signing someone (Derek Lowe). However, I just don’t get the disparity in the perceived interest in Renteria and the lack of interest in Beltre.

Mariner’s sign Beltre, 5 years at $65 million. This is the first time I’ve really been disappointed by missing out on a free agent this year. I’ll have more tomorrow morning.

A recent article by John Lowe indicated that the Tigers payroll will be in the $60-65 million range next year. It also quoted Dave Dombrowski about how a World Series champion has never had a single player make up more than a sixth of the team’s payroll. This was all leading up to make us believe the Tigers wouldn’t be signing a $10 million player. The problem with the article is that if the Tigers’ payroll max is $60-$65 that would mean that the Tigers essentially have no money to sign any free agents (beyond Percival), despite the fact that they’ve had simuultaneous offers on the table that would total at least $25 million (Pavano/Finley/Glaus).

With all this payroll confusion I thought it would be worthwhile to take another look at how the Tigers’ payroll looks for this year. I’ve sketched it out to the best of my ability in the table below using data from Dugout Dollars.

The hard numbers are the $49 million for players currently under contract, and the half a million in option buyouts. For the guys with less than 3 years of service, they can be renewed at a price not less than 80% of what they made last year. I took my best guess at the marginal raises these players would receive. In Munson’s case, I took 80% of his salary from last year. I also had to guess on what the roster composition would actually be. Although, that guessing should have minimal impact because as it stands now, even if I’m wrong on a fringe guy, the replacement salary would be comparable. The one exception would be Munson who could very well be non-tendered.

The area I didn’t venture a guess is the arbitration eligible players. I’m sure that Inge and Pena will be tendered contracts. Pena is represented by Scott Boras, and they haven’t been able to come to an agreement the last two years, with the Tigers just renewing his contract. This year it wouldn’t surprise me if the Tigers again failed to come to an agreement and went to arbitration for a one year deal.

It would stun me if Alex Sanchez was tendered a contract. He is a fast guy with a bad hamstring. He’s a poor fielder with no arm. He’s a .300 hitter, but he finished last year with more caught stealings than walks.

With the $49 million in contracts and buyouts, another $4-$5 million in non-arbitration players, and probably $3 million or so for arbitration eligble players leaves the Tigers with a payroll of approximately of $57 million. According to the $60-65 that leaves the Tigers room to sign maybe one mid level guy. Even if they trade Urbina, they’ll probably be getting comparable salary in return so there won’t be any help there (plus given the market, Urbina at $4 million doesn’t seem so bad). That’s why I don’t believe the cap figure that Lowe published, especially given the offers that the Tigers have made.

One other thing of note is that the Tigers only have 3 players under contract for 2006-Percival, Guillen, and Rodriguez. This should give them quite a bit of flexibility and it also leads me to believe they won’t be afraid to offer a big, long term contract. However, a big chunk of money will be going to Bonderman who will be arbitration eligible in 2006.

UPDATE: I messed up when I first posted this and included Maroth as arbitration eligible, which I’ve since fixed.

Other notes: The Tigers missed on Renteria. I was never a big proponent of that move anyways. I appreciate the thinking by Dombrowski as an alternative to finding a 3rd baseman, I just didn’t like the contract. Now hopefully the Tigers can miss on Derek Lowe also.

Also, December 20th is the deadline for clubs to tender contracts to non-free agents, so we’ll find out real soon if Munson and Sanchez will be with the Tigers next year. There could also be some cheaper alternatives for the Tigers hitting the market at that time.

The Tigers have really tried to be active this offseason. They’ve made competitive offers, if the reports have been true, to a number of guys. But although they’ve competed, they just haven’t come out on top. Sounds a lot like the Lions doesn’t it? However, even with missing on Glaus, Finley, Koskie, and Pavano the team isn’t in a bad position yet. Let’s go player by player and look at what’s been happening.

Carl Pavano
The Tigers really, really wanted Pavano. It sounds like they even offered a 5th year, and comparable money to what Pavano signed for with the Yankees. The thing with Pavano, is that he has been an average pitcher until last year. And his peripheral stats didn’t really improve that much. There is a good chance that last year could have been a fluke. While I would have been excited to see him come to Detroit, it isn’t the end of the world. What becomes more interesting is the fallback plan which brings us to…

Derek Lowe
It sounds like the Tigers are the only team interested in Lowe. What’s troubling is that I can’t figure out why the Tigers are even interested. A two year $10 million dollar contract would be palatable, but he’ll probably get something in the neighborhood of 3/21 that all the other mediocre pitchers are getting. My question is who gets bumped from the rotation and why? Here are the numbers for the Tigers starters (I stuck Ledezma in there because he’s slated to be the 5th guy right now) from last year and Lowe:

Player	        Age	 IP	 ERA	H/9	BB/9	K/9
Maroth	        27	217.3	4.31	10.1	2.4	4.5
Bonderman	        22	184	4.89	8.2	3.6	8.2
Ledezma	        23	41.3	3.92	8.6	2.9	5.0
Johnson	        31	196.7	5.13	10.2	2.8	5.7
Robertson	        27	190.7	5.05	9.8	2.9	6.9
						
Lowe	        31	182.7	5.42	11.0	3.5	5.2

Maybe you could make a case for taking Johnson out, but you only owe him $3 million for one more year. Lowe would come with more years and twice the dollars. I just don’t get it. Now it’s rumored that the Tigers are also interested in…

Odalis Perez
Now here is somebody I would wholeheartedly support, even at the 3/21 contract. These numbers are much more impressive than what Lowe would bring.

Player	Age	IP	ERA	H/9	BB/9	K/9
Perez	27	196.3	3.25	8.3	2.0	5.9

Now Perez’s K rate dropped from his career average of 6.5 last year. Hopefully it is an anomaly and not the beginning of a trend. That being said, Perez would be moving from one pitchers park to another so the number shouldn’t explode for him. Even taking into account facing a DH instead of a pitcher, an ERA around 4.00 is still plausible and an improvement for the Tigers. The tricky thing becomes how many lefthanders do you want in the rotation? Maroth would probably be traded, or Robertson/Ledezma moved to the pen (which would bolster the pen as well).

Unfortunately with Pedro likely to sign with the Mets, Perez will be a target for Boston as well. Boston is also reported to be interested in Clement. Strangely the Tigers don’t seem to have an interest in Clement, and it sounds like he is going to Anaheim.

So those are the top pitching targets, but what about fixing centerfield with…

J.D. Drew
The Tigers seem to be in serious contention for Drew. Playing his first injury free season, Drew put up big numbers for the Braves last year. He hit .304/.436/.569 with 31 home runs. Drew has the bat and glove to play either in center or at the corner outfield positions. This makes for some nice flexiblity and gives Curtis Granderson one more year to develop. The only knock on Drew is that he’s 29 and has only played 135 games in a season 3 times. Four years and forty would be a risk, but much less of a risk than 7 and 90 or whatever Beltran’s price will be.

Now to fix the infield the Tigers had been looking at…

Corey Koskie and Troy Glaus
With Troy Glaus, there is no way the Tigers should have tried to match/beat the 4/45 that Glaus got from Arizona. On the other hand Koskie would have been a nice addition at $6 million per year. While I initially balked at that cost, it seems affordable given where the market is going.

One third baseman that hasn’t signed yet is…

Adrian Beltre
The Dodgers and Mariners seem to be serious suitors for Beltre, and I hope the Tigers are in there as well. With the Dogers, it sounds like they maybe ready to let him go, as evidenced by LA’s signing of Kent and interest in Koskie. It seems like the M’s, Dodgers, and Tigers are the teams really trying to get a third baseman. I wouldn’t be afraid to offer 5/60 to get Beltre. Any player that can put up the numbers he did at 25, and play good defense is worth the risk.

But if the Tigers can’t get a third baseman they could always move Guillen to third to make room for…

Edgar Renteria
I don’t like this. I like the idea of finding an alternative to finding a free agent 3B, but I don’t like Renteria at his price (4/36). While Renteria has won 2 gold gloves, you should never judge a player based on gold gloves. Guillen was a better fielder at short last year than Renteria. If Renteria can hit like he did in 2002-2003 that would be great. However, his numbers last year weren’t overwhelming (.287/.327/.401) and certainly wouldn’t warrant $9 million a year.

UPDATE: Just to further illustrate, Renteria’s VORP last year was 27.3. Brandon Inge’s was 23.3. That’s quite the marginal upgrade for a $36 million commitment. Now Renteria has had better seasons while that was Inge’s best season. However, given the price disparity I just don’t see how this makes sense.

So while some targets are off the board, the Tigers still have a number of options out there to put together a much improved team.

Yeah, I’ve pretty much just been surfing baseball web sites today hoping to see that the Tigers have snagged someone. So far, nothing.

In the meantime, over at the Hardball Times they’ve had a couple guest columnists the last couple days. Yesterday it was Bill James. Today it is rising superstar Brian of Tigerblog fame writing about the history of the Expos. Nice job Brian.

Several of the players the Tigers have expressed interest in have signed, or are on the cusp of signing with other teams.

Jeff Kent signed a two year deal with the Dodgers. Troy Glaus signed a 4 year, $45 million deal with Arizona. And Steve Finley appears ready to sign a two year deal with California.

While I don’t think the Tigers were chasing Kent that hard, all reports indicated that they were agressively pursuing Finley and Glaus. The money Finley is signing for is comparable to what the Tigers reportedly offered. The Glaus contract seems to be on the high side given Glaus’ recent injuries. If Glaus can return to his previous form, and play 3rd base then it seems to be a fair price. However, if his shoulder isn’t fully repaired and he has to play first base. In any case, it would have been nice to add any of these bats to the Tigers’ lineup.

While some of the bigger names are still out there, and the Tigers have been linked with those names (Beltre, Beltran, Pavano) getting those guys will be difficult. It sounds like Pavano is leaning towards Boston or New York. However, the Tigers still have an outside shot at the Belt-boys. If Beltran’s 10 year demand manages to scare enough people off, he may be available late like Pudge was last year. As for Beltre, Frank McCourt’s heavy borrowing may make it difficult to spend like a big market club. When he bought the Dodgers, he financed pretty much all of it. A big chunk of it is a personal $145 million loan from Fox Corp that is due in 2006.

Hopefully the Tigers will still be able to make some headlines during the winter meetings.

With yesterday’s deadline to offer free agents arbitration, the free agent landscape takes an interesting turn. Two of the Tigers’ potential targets, Troy Glaus and Steve Finley were not offered arbitration by their respective clubs. Conversely, 5 other players the Tigers have been linked with were offered arbitration. Derek Lowe, Carl Pavano, Matt Clement, Edgar Renteria, and Adrian Beltre were all offered arbitration by their former clubs.

So why is this arbitration thing significant? If a player has more than 6 years of major league service, and aren’t under a long term contract, they can declare for free agency. The club then has essentially 3 options, sign a player to a contract, offer the player the opportunity for salary arbitration, or decline to offer the player arbitration.

Signing a player to a contract is pretty obvious, they sign a player to a contract and the player is no longer a free agent.

If they offer a player arbitration, the player then has the option to accept or decline the arbitraiton (this year’s deadline for players to make a decision is Dec. 19). In arbitration, both the player and club submit terms for a one year contract, and the case is then schedule to be heard by an arbitrator, who will decide the player’s salary. In the meantime, both sides can continue to negotiate. Often times even after agreeing to arbitration, an agreement is reached prior to the hearing. The advantage for the club of offering arbitration is that depending on how good the player is, if they sign with another team, the original team get compensatory draft picks. The risk is that the player will accept the opportunity for arbitration, and the team could be stuck paying the player more than they wanted to, plus not have any draft picks.

The team’s third option, not offering arbitration, essentially severs the original clubs relationship with the player. They can’t negotiate with the player until May 1 of the following year. Also the former team receives no draft pick compensation when the player sings elsewhere.

For the Tigers, it means some players become a little more attractive and a little more available (Glaus and Finley) because signing them would require no draft pick compensation, and the former teams are no longer in the running to sign them. On the other hand, a couple other targets become harder to sign, and have a higher cost. With Pavano and Beltre, I’m not worried about the loss of picks. However Lowe, who isn’t that attractive a catch anyways, becomes even less desirable.

The Tigers themselves declined to offer arbitration to their two free agents, Al Levine and Esteban Yan. Yan had some value at some times, and a one year deal wouldn’t have been all bad, but it appears that Yan was seeking multiple years. Levine pitched horribly for the bulk of the year, but he was actually adequate at the end. However, the Tigers aren’t really losing anything here.

Brad Radke, another potential target, is now off the market. He signed a two year $18 million (terms are speculated) deal with the Twins. The Twins also offered Corey Koskie arbitration. Twinsgeek is excited about both moves because it looks like the Twins historically tight budget might expand a little bit this year.

As for the Steve Finley rumors of a 2 year , $16 million contract? I’ll delve into that in another post. I’ve written enough here already.

With Carl Pavano’s recent free agent tour stop in Detroit and the rumors and denials of a contract worth $40 million and 4 years I thought I’d take a closer look at what Pavano could bring to the Tigers.

The positives
There are a lot of reasons to be excited about Carl Pavano. Last year is being dubbed as his break out season. He compiled an 18-8 record with a 3.00 ERA. He allowed only 49 walks, 13 of which were intentional, in 222 innings.

Pavano is also an extremely efficient pitcher. In addition to the low walk rate, he ranked 3rd in the NL in pitches per inning pitched with 14.2. This efficiency means that Pavano average start lasted into the 8th inning. That would definitely help from exposing the Tigers bullpen (which will be better this year). Pavano’s pitching style seems to mesh well with Bob Cluck’s philosophy of getting guys out in as few pitches as possible.

Pavano also had a low home run rate of .6 dingers per 9 IP. While his fielding independent pitching ERA gets knocked down to 3.56, it is still impressive. Combined with the fact that he is only 28 and hitting his peak seasons, locking him up for the next 3-4 years might not be a bad idea.

The negatives(?)
These aren’t necessarily negatives, but for the sake of consistency and symmetry this section will be dubbed as negatives. These are just some reasons why Pavano could be a dangerous signing.

The first thing to point to is the strikeout rate. The last 3 seasons Pavano’s k-rate has been 5.6, 5.6, 5.2. It’s far from a Cornejo type rate, however it’s not the type of dominance you would expect from a $10 million a year investment. Pavano’s less than average strikeout rate wasn’t as much of a problem with Florida’s solid defense last year. Florida’s rate of turning balls in play into outs was .7033 as opposed to the Tigers’ .6859. Pavano allowed 694 balls in play, and with the Tigers defense of last year, that would have resulted in an additional 12 hits. That alone isn’t too bad, but Pavano won’t have the benefit of facing pitchers 3 times a game. That means more tough outs (and probably a lower strikeout rate as well).

The other thing to be concerned about is that the Pavano would be switching leagues, which means a lack of familiarity with the hitters. However, the impact should be mitigated because he’ll have a catcher that he’s comfortable with that knows the AL. I know that the impact of a catcher on a pitcher’s performance is still up for debate, but I’m in the camp that a catcher can boost a pitcher.

Conclusion
Even if Pavano doesn’t perform as well as he did last year, he will still be an upgrade to the pitching staff. The thing is whether he’s worth $10 million a year, and there are two ways to look at that. I’m not sure whether his performance will be worth the money. However, given what other players are signing for this offseason, a 3-4 year contract between $30-40 million seems reasonable.

I still like the Matt Clement option, and you could always argue that some comparable players could be had in January for less money. However, the Tigers aren’t looking to be bargain shoppers this year. So as long as the money going to Pavano wouldn’t prevent the Tigers from still going after a big bat, I have to hope that Pavano will end up here.

Prospects
Baseball America published their list of the top 10 Tigers prospects. Curtis Granderson tops this year list.

1. Curtis Granderson, of
2. Kyle Sleeth, rhp
3. Justin Verlander, rhp
4. Joel Zumaya, rhp
5. Humberto Sanchez, rhp
6. Tony Giarratano, ss
7. Jeff Frazier, of
8. Ryan Raburn, 2b
9. Eric Beattie, rhp
10. Eulogio de la Cruz, rhp

Notice that 3 members of the top 10 were drafted last year, and had little (Jeff Frazier 79 AB’s before breaking his hand) or no experience (Verlander, Beattie) at the professional level. Unfortunately this speaks more to the quality of the farm system then the quality of the 2004 draft.

The most notable omission from the list is Chris Shelton. In Pat Caputo’s chat, he cited Shelton’s lack of athleticism and the fact Shelton doesn’t sting the ball as why he didn’t make the top 10. Chris Kline’s review of the top 20 AFL prospects corroborates Caputo’s findings, as Shelton didn’t make the top 20. This despite Shelton out performing everyone on the list in the AFL

With Shelton we get to see the split between performance versus tools analysis of players. Tools wise he grades out pretty average. He’s poor defensively, has a poor arm, is slow, and doesn’t hit for power. However, he does hit, and his performance in the AFL showed that. Now maybe I don’t remember clearly, but Wade Boggs didn’t really sting the ball, or play great defense (27 errors his first full season at 3B, and 20 the next year). However, he managed to put together a pretty nice career .415 OBA. I have no idea how scouts graded Boggs, and I’m working from my memory of his playing days. Maybe scouts loved him, and he was a stud defensively who hit line shots all around the field, but I don’t remember him that way.

Am I saying that Shelton will be the second coming of Wade Boggs? Of course not. I’m just not ready to dismiss him because of how he grades out. I would definitely prefer if he could play some position, but what is wrong with a team developing a designated hitter? Why should the position always seem to go to an aging player with bad knees. If a young guy can hit, then let him hit.

Other Stuff
While a ton of baseball blogs have come and gone in the last couple years, Twins Geek is still going strong. John Bonnes’ site has been around longer than this one, and it’s one of the blogs that I try to emulate here. Well, at the beginning of the season, John got a deal to blog about the Twins for the Star Tribune. John’s final post for the Star-Trib ran last week. In his piece, Bonnes talks about some of the conflict between bloggers and journalists

and why it doesn’t have to be that way…

Between what John has already said, and Aaron Gleeman weighing in on the issue there isn’t really more for me to add. I just wanted to give a shout out to Twinsgeek as it returns to its old home.

There’s a lot to touch on after this weekend, so let’s get right to it…

Jayson Stark’s Grumblings
Jayson Stark’s recent column had quite a bit on the Tigers. According to Jayson’s sources, the Tigers were the only team offering multiple years to Percival.

However, he also has a source from an AL front office that thinks the Tigers are just a couple players away from being contenders.

Stark also quotes Steve Finley’s agent as saying the Tigers have been “Extremely Aggressive” in pursuing Finley.

The 40 Man Roster
The Tigers also finalized their 40 man roster on Friday. The moves included activating Fernando Rodney, Chris Spurling, and Fernando Vina from the 60 day DL. They also added Mark Woodyard from Erie.

Woodyard will be 26 next season, and his highest level to date is AA ball. In a variety of pitching roles with Erie last season the righthander compiled a 6-4 record and 3.42 ERA. His K/9 of 4.84 isn’t particularly impressive, nor was his 3.25 BB/9. His most impressive stat would be the 5 homers in 102IP.

To make room for these additions, Nate Cornejo was activated and outrighted to Toledo. Matt Roney, Don Kelly, and Felix Sanchez were also outrighted to Toledo.

I was surprised to see Roney left unprotected. He’s a year younger than Woodyard, had a better K rate (6.01) last year, and has pitched at the major league level. Now Roney did allow 20 homers for Erie last year, and he didn’t really dominate when he was with the Tigers. However, he seemed like he could potentially provide some bullpen depth.

Felix Sanchez you may remember is the player the Tigers acquired in the Jon Connolly trade last year. Sanchez had 14 unremarkable apperances for Erie last year. Connolly went 9-5 with a 2.40 ERA in High A ball. He also improved his K rate (6.94 from 5.64 the previous season) and his BB rate (1.56 from 2.06 the previous season).

Arizona Hardware
A couple of Tigers fared extremely well inthe Arizona Fall League. Chris Shelton captured MVP honors while leading the league in BA, OBP, SLG, H, and RBI. He was also named to the all prospect team as a catcher, first baseman, and utility player. Curtis Granderson also received all prospect team honors as a centerfielder.

With Redbird Nation and Bambino’s Curse closing up shop in the last few weeks, Jon Weisman of Dodger Thougts takes a look at The Disposable Baseball Blogger. If you’re interested in the state of baseball blogging, it is an excellent read.

I know that over the last few months I’ve been contemplating the future of DTW. I felt bad that I neglected the blog for the last month of the season, and didn’t even weigh in on any of the postseason. A lack of time, and a lack of things to say are what kept me away from the keyboard. Posts about my lack of posting out numbered posts containing analysis or thoughts.

I thought about taking on additional writers to get more consistent and fresher material. In the end though, I wanted the voice of DTW to be mine, and mine only (whatever that means). I decided not to close up shop, because I don’t want to quit before I get the chance to blog during a pennant race. I’ve spent so long writing about bad teams, that I want the chance to cover a good team. Hopefully I’ll get that chance next year.

In the meantime, I’ve got a whole off sesaon to kill. Ideally, we’ll have quite a few Tiger signings or trades to talk about. In case we don’t though, I’m taking requests. If there are any Tiger topics you’d like me to address, let me know. If there is any analysis that you’d like to see done, let me know. I can’t guarantee that I’ll be able to do it, but I’ll give it a shot.