He has signed guys either right away after trading or off career years after their prime too many times in the past 3 years

You really went out on a limb with this one.

“Placido Polanco puts together a solid season and makes it very tough on the Tigers to decide on resigning him”

Per recent history, he’ll get too many dollars for too many years and we’ll all hate him by 2011.

On another point, Josh Anderson’s fatal flaw thus far as a major-leaguer is an absolute inability to draw a walk, and a depressing penchant for striking out. His .364 OBP is awful for a guy who hits .315, and he has no power. You don’t bench stars like Guillen, Granderson or Ordonez in order to start him regularly. But he’s young and could develop an eye for major-league pitches.

I hear what you’re saying. Coulda, woulda, shoulda… Our future might look bright, but how would our present look without Cabrera? Who would have played SS last year? Where would you put all those developing arms? And were they really bad moves at the time?

Miller should become a pretty good major-leaguer, but he’s not there yet, and it’s possible Maybin becomes a monster, but I think the rule of thumb is that you never lose a trade where you land a young guy with a career OPS+ of 140 — a number skewed lower by his rookie season when he hit for an OPS+ of a mere 109. Oh, and last year was BELOW average for him. Oh, and he flashes a nice glove at first (league-average fielder despite learning the position last year). If Willis had been OK — even a .500 pitcher — nobody would have second thoughts here.

No use rehashing the Sheff/Renteria trades. They both seemed promising, and Sheff looked like a monster pre-injury.

And I don’t think the cupboard is quite so bare in the minors. Lots of strong players under 30 on this team, including the whole starting rotation (plus Bonderman and maybe just maybe Willis)

Yea Stephen is a negative nancy and doesn’t post nearly as much as he used to, although we agree on several things.

The one thing I’d say is that just using 2008, makes it a crazy small sample size.

To be honest if all is true from what I’ve heard about Josh Anderson the prudent/winning move would be to have him start in LF or possibly CF (shifting Grandy over to left) and have Guillen DH daily. Thankfully Leyland is using that setup today.

Yea I’m not a big fan of Marcus, but I’d favor him over Sheffield any day. This is just from my limited memory but I remember several times he hitting a bomb in a close game where the rest of the team struggled.

Carlos in season openers…

1999 (Seattle) 2B
2000 (Seattle) 3B
2001 (Seattle) SS
2008 (Detroit) 1B

I have no idea if that’s any kind of record, gotta think others have done it.

Give him long enough, he’ll be the Shane Halter of opening day!

For interest, Steve above is often driven crazy by Inge, and who can blame him for that. But what drives him crazy? when ” he wiffes on three straight with men on second and third.” I always start out thinking along the lines of “yeah tell me about it,” then I look up the stats. Oops:

DET Best Runners on 2nd-3rd
2008 PA RBI AB/RBI K
Cabrera: 14 12 1.17 2
Inge: 12 9 1.33 2
Guillen 10 7 1.43 1
Ordonez 12 7 1.71 1
Team: 143 68 2.10 34

Then Steve finishes with this about Thames: “Thames will get a goodly amount of AB’s this year. It seems like we have a good enough team batting around him to live with the all or nothing execution. I seriously like the team attitude displayed by Marcus. Lets get him his AB’s and see where we end up. Good guy…… its his time to shine.” Sounds good. The funny thing about this though is Thames is actually THAT GUY. You know, the one he was calling “Inge,” that whiffs with runners on 2nd and 3rd:

DET Worst Runners on 2nd-3rd:
2008 PA RBI AB/RBI K
Thames 10 0 —- 6
Sheffield 11 0 —- 3

Strange how perceptions work, no? And Steve doesn’t even appear to be particularly anti-Inge (this is in no way any kind of criticism of Steve’s post…I’m not fighting, I’m interested). And Steve was actually right in being driven crazy by the idea, if not the player: the Tigers were well below AL avg in success with runners on 2-3, and well above avg in strikeouts:

Runners -23 AB/RBI AB/K
AL Avg 1.86 6.09
DET Avg 2.10 4.21

In other words if DET had been merely avg instead of 68 RBI and 34 K they would
have had 77 RBI and 23K. It’s not really a lot of difference if you average it over a season; on the other hand there are several other categories with similar results and they DO start adding up to something significant.

1) Traded for Sheff
2) Traded for Rentaria
3) Traded for Cabby/Dtrain

Maybin and Jair and possibly Claggett look like they could do well these next few years + who knows what will happen with Miller or Gorkys or Badenhop etc.

I wrote that gigantoid right after finishing a 3hr test marathon, guess you could say I was in an inspired mood … Don’t even get me started on Cobb, his defense would be a tad longer

And although I don’t mind defending guys I either like/ think are good/undervalued or guys I look up to… A lot of the Inge debate has been overplayed on this website and on the airwaves. A lot of what I said today is just reiterated stuff from previous years and previous “fights” just like what Rings/others say to discredit him.

I’m a lot more optimistic. They have the makings of a fine rotation for years to come, I think. Their oldest starter is Galarraga, 27. Behind him is a solid young player in Edwin Jackson. Verlander is better than his 2008 stats show, Bonderman can be dominant when healthy, and much is expected from Porcello. If either Willis or Robertson re-emerges as a legitimate starter, they will be in a very good position in 2010.

The Cabrera signing was a very good sign for the TIgers — throwing the big money at a YOUNG established player. Much better than the Sheffield/Renteria plan: Throw money at OLD formerly good players.

The Tigers also think they have All-Star potential in the minors in the form of Cale Iorg and Wilken Ramierez, and Wil Rhymes may yet with the 2nd base job next year (unless they keep Polanco). Perry shows a lot of potential, and Zumaya is still young and could return to form…

All I’m saying is, I don’t believe this team is nearly as bad as their 2008 record, and I think they’ve added by subtraction in shedding Sheffield, Pudge and Renteria. People forget that Rogers started very strong in ’08 before tanking, and Jones didn’t have many save opportunities. Oh, and Jacque Jones will get 0 at-bats for the 2009 Tigers. Meanwhile neither Jason Grilli nor Kyle Farnsworth will throw a pitch in a Detroit uniform.

I predict 90 wins.

Just so you know, I hate agreeing with you after one of your 2-page posts

Thanks for clearing up my initial assumption re: Billfer hating Inge.