Carlos Guillen is back and Josh Anderson has been disignated for assignment. I expected this move, but not with this sequence.
Another move will be required when Eddie Bonine gets activated tonight. Most likely a reliever goes down, perhaps Freddy Dolsi who hasn’t pitched for awhile. Then either Bonine will go to the pen or another reliever is recalled, possibly Zach Simons.
I was going to just ammend the original post, but enough time has passed, and I ‘ve read plenty, and I have a number of thoughts about this, so we’ll start a new post.
When the Tigers acquired Josh Anderson on Monday I thought it was a very strong possibility that Marcus Thames career as a Tiger was over. I was apprehensive about that given the injury threat that Gary Sheffield and Carlos Guillen provided, another big bat on the bench would be nice insurance. As Jason Beck points out, the Tigers were also worried about injury. And the team decided that Thames was a safer bet to make it through the season than Sheffield.
And if the Tigers were going to keep Sheffield over Thames, they had better be sure they could get a good season’s worth of production out of him. Because it wasn’t just an Opening Day decision, but a longer-term decision. If Sheffield got hurt in late April, there would be no Thames to which to turn, unlike years past.
I still think a healthy Sheffield is a better hitter than Thames (the Tigers are giving up OBP skills), and I’d venture the Tigers may even admit as much. But they also probably didn’t like the odds that Sheffield could stay healthy.
Continue reading Some more Sheffield stuff
Aside from trying to handicap the Tigers starting rotation battle, the other story of interest was figuring out the last 2 spots on the bench. That picture is a little clearer today with the news the Tigers have traded for Josh Anderson. In exchange they send Rudy Darrow to the Braves.
Anderson (who when I first heard of the trade I got confused with Brian Anderson AND Josh Fields), hits left handed and runs pretty fast (42 steals last year on 49 attempts), and he has hit a little at the minor league level. He’s kind of like this year’s version of Freddy Guzman except that Dave Dombrowski has said he’s made the team (Anderson is out of options). At 26 Anderson isn’t a prospect but could prove useful coming off the bench.
However, the Tigers still have a plethora of outfielders in the mix. Ryan Raburn is likely traded or using his last option. Brent Clevlen? He’s out of options and it looks like he’ll be removed from the 40 man roster. Marcus Thames? His future is also a little cloudy. Jeff Larish? Not sure where he’ll end up either. Clete Thomas, who offers the most similar skill set, gets to develop a little more in the minors.
As for Darrow, he was set to begin this year pitching out of the bullpen for Erie (8.2 K/9,2.5 K/BB between Erie and Lakeland in 2008) . Darrow has an unusual delivery and could prove to be a useful bullpen arm at some point, but it’s a fair price and one I don’t envision the Tigers regretting greatly in the future.
This isn’t a move I really dislike at the moment, but one I really don’t understand a lot either. Man, I’m ready for the roster to just be set and be done with spring training.
