The Tigers are welcoming back Jeremy Bonderman, but they aren’t the only team in the AL Central to be making some significant roster changes. Here’s a brief look at some intra-divisional goings on:

• Fausto Carmona dominated the Tigers earlier this season. The Tigers have the distinction of being one of the few teams he’s dominated. He’s now been sent down to Rookie ball . The guy taking his place on the roster is fairly significant as it is Travis Hafner returning from injury. Hafner doesn’t have much of a breaking ball though so Tomo Ohka will take his place in the rotation for the time being
• The Royals are losing on a regular basis now and are on the brink of 5th place. They hold a narrow half game lead over the Indians and the 2 teams will go head to head this week. That the Indians are hanging in despite having Grady Sizemore, Rafael Betancourt, Asdrubal Cabrera, Anthony Reyes, Scott Lewis, and I think Cory Snyder on the DL. And Jake Westbrook is expected back soon.
• Speaking of the Royals they DFA’d Horacio Ramirez and have brought up Luke Hochevar. Too little too late?
• The White Sox called up Gordan Beckham to try and provide some offense.
• Taking a look at the standings, the Tigers are up 3.5 games over the second place team and 7 over the last team. So things are still tight. And if you look at the Indians, they’ve had to play 36 games against the AL East and only 3 against the AL West. Meanwhile the Tigers are 10 games over .500 against the West and 6 games under against the East.
• The other thing that jumps out is the Twins record on the road. They are 7-18 away from the Metrodome.

Baseball Prospectus has posted the first iterations of the 2009 PECOTA numbers and have forecasted the divisions based on projected playing time and roster construction. Because we care about the Tigers around these parts I jumped immediately to the AL Central:

CLE   84-79
MIN   79-83
DET   78-84
KAN   75-87
CHI   74-88

Wow. So the division is kind of up for grabs. Cleveland has a clear, but not insurmountable, edge (which seems correct intuitively also) and then a giant hodge-podge. As for being down on the division, it could be worse. The AL West is going to the A’s with 82 wins. The AL East has 4 teams at .500 or above, and the rest of the AL has 2.

As an aside, I realize that PECOTA harbors no animus towards specific players and/or teams. It is a sophisticated and yet emotionally devoid mathematical projection system. Neither it nor its creator have agendas.

The individual projections are subscriber only, but I will say that the system thinks Zach Miner will be a better pitcher than Armando Galarraga or Edwin Jackson. (And I don’t think that’s unreasonable)

For those of you looking forward to Justin Verlander and CC Sabathia locking horns (as if they were deer, what a dumb expression that is) on Tuesday night, you might have to settle for Justin Verlander and Jeff Weaver. That’s almost the same thing right? Sabathia has been traded to the Milwaukee Brewers for a passel of prospects including Matt Laporta. He’ll join the team and be successful in the next year or two and the Indians will lock him up through his arbitration years and then they’ll trade him in 2013 at the trade deadline for more prospects.

The Indians continue to transform the club with this coming after the Tribe DFA’d Joe Borowski. The AL Central continues to transform as well with Sabathia joining Johan Santana as southpaw Cy Young winners headed to the senior circuit.

There was quite a bit of news that trickled out today so let’s roll through it.

Prospecting

It was a day of top 100 lists as both Kevin Goldstein (BP) and Keith Law released their lists. It used to be that looking at these lists was really depressing for Tigers fans. And then for a couple years it was really fun. And now, well let’s hope the big club keeps us from thinking about the minors too much.

Rick Porcello rated #11 on the Baseball Prospectus list. Keith Law isn’t as big of a fan, putting him at 22nd. Porcello was the lone Tigers farm hand on each list.

But at least it wasn’t because of the Tigers ineptitude. Former Tigers Cameron Maybin and Gorkys Hernandez appeared on both lists and Goldstein included Jair Jurrjens at number 86.

The injury bug

Injuries have plagued former prospect Tony Giarratano. At one time he was the Tigers top shortstop hope. A knee surgery and labrum surgery likely had sapped his defense – which was his strongest trait. A set back this spring ended his run as a Tiger. Detroit released him today.

It won’t effect the team too much, except for freeing up another roster spot (that’s 3 open spots now). Tony G had been passed by Cale Iorg, Danny Worth, and Mike Hollimon. I feel bad for Giarratano, but the truth is he probably shouldn’t have retained a spot on the roster this long.

D-Town baseball notes that keeping Giarratano cost the team Randor Bierd. T75 North tries to figure out how the middle infield situation might shake out.

Some leg soreness has kept Miguel Cabrera at DH on his Venezuelan team. Although a 10 for 22 playoff series seems to indicate it wasn’t effecting him too adversely. He won’t play in the championship round at the request of the Tigers.

Jones says Twins will be okay

I haven’t commented on the Santana deal yet, mostly because I’m waiting for it to be finalized (which I expect). But that didn’t stop Todd Jones. In his Sporting News column he’s confident that the Twins will be okay. And now he just wants C. C. Sabathia out of the division.

A couple weeks back, on June 26th actually, I wrote that the claim of the AL Central being the toughest division in baseball is probably misguided. Since then the Central has been on a roll.

Through the games on the 19th this is what the Central has done:

	W	L
DET	12	6
CLE	12	8
MIN	11	10
CHI	13	9
KC	10	7

That’s a composite 58 and 40 record, good enough for and .591 winning percentage. And by definition, a good chunk of those wins had to come at the expense of the rest of the AL (if they were just playing each other it would be .500). In fact here’s how the Central fared against the rest of the league by team:

AL West	W	L
Oak	7	1
LAA	3	0
Sea	4	3
Tex	2	2

AL East	W	L
TB	10	1
Bos	6	1
Tor	3	4
Bal	3	5
NYY	1	3

And just to clarify, the AL Central teams beat Tampa 10 out of 11 tries. The bulk of the damage was done against the Devil Rays, the Athletics and the Red Sox.

So maybe the Central wasn’t looking strong earlier because they were beating up on each other? In any case, I think they can reclaim that whole toughest division title for the time being. They now sport the team with the best record in baseball, as well as the current wild card leader. And it’s not a top heavy division with the Twins over .500 and the White Sox and Royals merely being not good instead of awful.

Finally, one last table to look at and that is runs scored and runs allowed per game since June 25th in the Central.

	RS	RA
DET	4.9	4.2
CLE	5.4	5.3
MIN	5.0	3.9
CHI	5.3	5.2
KC	5.6	3.8

The Tigers for all the pub their offense has deservedly received has been the worst offense over this stretch. Mind you that they still averaged a hair under 5 runs per game. And look who is tops on both counts, none other than the Kansas City Royals.

For a stat heavy guy, here is a decidely stat-less look at the season ahead…

The Outlook

I can’t count how many times I’ve read that the Tigers were the beneficiaries of career years that can’t possibly be repeated. While there could be a case made for this on the pitching side (Nate Robertson, possibly Kenny Rogers, and the 5th starter pool) I don’t know exactly who they would be talking about on the offensive side. In fact, I see more room for improvement than decline.

Placido Polanco had a very down year in terms of total production. He still had a decent batting average, but didn’t walk at all and didn’t hit for any power. I expect him to improve. Curtis Granderson is a young player approaching his peak who was productive last year, but I expect him to add more power and a higher batting average as he puts more balls in play. Sean Casey was awful in Detroit last year, and while I don’t expect big production I do expect him to be substantially better than last year.

I expect Craig Monroe, Brandon Inge, Magglio Ordonez, and Ivan Rodriguez to produce similar numbers as last year, so while not improvement I don’t for see a significant drop off either.

The real question is Carlos Guillen. He had an MVP caliber season last year, and has improved his batting average in each of the last 7 seasons. Whether or not he can continue to provide that sort of offense is mostly tied to his injury prone ways. He and Pudge Rodriguez are the linchpins for the team in that they provide considerable value at tough to fill positions. Also, the drop-off from starter to reserve is more pronounced for those 2 than any place else on the team.

And of course the big addition is Gary Sheffield who is fabulous hitter and adds pop to a lineup that doesn’t have too many weak spots.

Now what got the Tigers to the World Series last year was run prevention. The Tigers pitchers and their defense allowed the fewest runs in baseball last year. Their defense alignment remains intact from the beginning of last year, with the exception that Sean Casey will be manning first base instead of Chris Shelton. Don’t underestimate the impact this might have, especially for the right handed starting pitchers.

They were also hoping to return the same rotation, at least until Kenny Rogers went on the disabled list yesterday. This is where the drop-off is likely to occur. Justin Verlander said he isn’t ready yet, and there will be concerns all season about his workload from last year. Nate Robertson was one of the luckier pitchers in baseball last year (in terms of runs allowed, not in terms of wins). It is conceivable that both pitchers could have better walk, strikeout, and homer numbers than last year and still allow more runs. I’m not projecting bad season for them, but I’d say it is more likely that their ERAs are in the low 4′s than the high 3′s.

The Tigers got considerable production from the #5 rotation spot filled by Mike Maroth, Zach Miner, and Wil Ledezma. Replicating that will be tough, although a healthy Mike Maroth is a good bet to contribute 200 innings of league average pitching. Of course in a scenario where Kenny Rogers is on the shelf for an extended period of time, Maroth is no longer the 5th guy. So Rogers absence will have a cascade effect if it is prolonged. Wil Ledezma is the pitcher I’d most like to see step into that role, but that results in a gaping left handed hole in the bullpen.

The one pitcher that I expect to improve will be Jeremy Bonderman. If you look at the peripherals (strike outs/walks/home runs) he was the Tigers best pitcher last year. He once again is trying to refine a change-up that will get him over the hump on those days his fastball and/or slider aren’t working for him.

As for the bullpen, Jamie Walker is the only departure. I’d love to still have him, but Joel Zumaya’s and Fernando Rodney’s success against lefties made it easier to let him go. There is already clamoring for Todd Jones to step out as closer and use one of the set-up men. As a Tigers fan, you should hope that Jones is still closing at the end of the season. If he isn’t that means he’s either been injured or entirely ineffective. I’m not debating who is the better pitcher, just that Jones ability to close out games in the 9th with no one on and no one out frees up Zumaya and Rodney to come into higher pressure situations when a strikeout is required.

As with many teams, the Tigers fortunes will be tied to their ability to stay healthy. The talent is there on both offense and defense to keep the team competitive. But simultaneous injuries to multiple starters, or Guillen, or Rodriguez, or Granderson will probably be too much for the team to overcome.

The Competition

The AL Central is being heavily touted as the toughest division in baseball. I’m not sure if that’s the case, but it probably is the most competitive. I’m not big on writing about other teams, because I just don’t follow them as closely as the Tigers. The result is that when I read other bloggers comment on my team, they come off really uninformed. To try and avoid having the same thing happen, I’m going to keep these pretty short.

Kansas City Royals

The Royals are a big part of the reason that the White Sox, Twins, and Tigers all finished with 90 wins. The Royals were awful last year, but years of suckitude will start to pay off this year with Alex Gordon as the non-Japanese favorite to win the Rookie of the Year. They also look to have a full season of their ace Zach Grienke. Mark Teahen and David DeJesus return as well.

They added Gil Meche in one of the most laughed at contracts of the off season, but he shut down the Tigers last year and has a 3.96 ERA in 63 2/3 career innings against the Tigers.

Chicago White Sox

The White Sox came off their World Series victory, added a big bat to the middle of the lineup (Jim Thome), and hoped to ride their pitching to another post season birth. They got what they wanted from the big bat, plus a career year from Jermaine Dye, but the pitching didn’t do it’s part. Mark Buerhle was poor, Jon Garland got off to a rough start, and Freddy Garcia struggled. That said, they still won 90 games.

They return all their offense plus they’ve added Darrin Erstad to man centerfield instead of Brian Anderson. But the rotation has been retooled. Gone are Freddy Garcia and projected starter Brandon McCarthy. In are youngsters John Danks and Gavin Floyd.

How the new pitchers perform in homer-ville, and whether or not Joe Crede (shudder) and Jermaine Dye can repeat their year will determine how far the White Sox go.

Minnesota Twins

The Twins, the team that everyone writes off each year, and yet they are always in the mix. This year the case for the Twins expected downturn are the absences of Brad Radke and Francisco Liriano. Keep in mind that Radke only threw 162 league average innings last year, which isn’t bad but isn’t great either. And Liriano only was a starter for half a season. The lack of those 2 won’t spell doom for the Twins, but it could be enough to slip them behind a couple othere teams in the division. Especially considering that the replacements are Sidney Ponson and Ramon Ortiz. The Twins fate may be tied to the performance of those 2, and how quickly Matt Garza is inserted should they struggle.

Still, the team does boast the best pitcher in baseball and the most valuable player in the division (Joe Mauer, not Justin Morneau) and little Nick Punto will continue to be a pest. Plus, Rondell White won’t be nearly as awful next year.

Cleveland Indians

If the Royals were a big part of the reason there were 3 90 win teams last year, the Indians did their part as well. A popular pick to win the division last year, a bad bullpen and bad luck kept the Indians at 78 wins. While not as dramatic as the Royals, a team that was 2nd in runs scored and 7th in runs allowed should probably have finished above .500.

They have solid starting pitching, and they return a very potent lineup. Defense and the bullpen would be the only things that could hold the Indians back in 2007.

The Bottom Line

Here’s the part of the preview where I throw out a number for the Tigers wins. Many of the computers and experts peg the Tigers for somewhere between 85 and 90 wins. That’s about the range that I’m working and will go with 89 wins. That should be good enough for first or second place in a division that will beat each other up, and not be able to feast quite as mightily on the Royals and National League Central to pad their win totals.

A couple weeks ago I had broken the AL Central into a couple tiers in an effort to seperate them. I had the Indians and Tigers as the top 2 teams, and the Twins and White Sox as the next 2 teams. It maybe all the computer projections influencing me, but I see the White Sox migrating towards 4th place, and the Twins settling into 3rd. I still don’t see a lot of seperation and expect 4 teams to finish between 80 to 90 wins. Given that, don’t get to worked up about this homer-centric order of finish:
1. Tigers
2. Indians
3. Twins
4. White Sox
5. Royals

The Performances and Accoloades

Some guesses on who will do what…

Team Leaders

Home Runs – Gary Sheffield
RBI – Carlos Guillen
Stolen Bases – Curtis Granderson
Batting Average – Placido Polanco
On base percentage – Gary Sheffield
Slugging Percentage – Marcus Thames

ERA – Jeremy Bonderman
Wins – Nate Robertson
Strike outs – Jeremy Bonderman
Saves – Todd Jones

Who will surprise

Pudge Rodriguez will do surprisingly well in the leadoff role. He’s essentially in a contract year, and I think the chance at leading off will keep him happy.

Who will disappoint

Not sure. Maybe I should have just deleted this heading. I don’t have high expectations for Casey, so I don’t know that he’d disappoint me.

First trip to the DL

Kenny Rogers. Nailed it! But beyond that I’m going to go with Sean Casey or Craig Monroe. Casey because he’s an injury risk, and Monroe because I think that knee problem could require some rest at some point.

First demotion

Bobby Seay. I’m not saying he won’t do okay, just that he was the last one in, and it seems like he could be the first one out.

Major League Debuts

Ryan Raburn (he made his debut in 2004, thanks Jerry), Virgil Vasquez, Kyle Sleeth, and Cameron Maybin. Raburn hit very well this spring and Leyland seemed to like him. He’s not on the 40 man roster so it would require some manipulation to get him there. As for the other 3 I expect that they are brought up in September.

The All Stars

Jeremy Bonderman, Carlos Guillen, and Ivan Rodriguez. None will be elected by the fans as Joe Mauer will get the catcher’s spot. But with Leyland managing he’ll make sure to get his own guys in.

The Award Winners

Brandon Inge cuts down his errors to under 20 and wins a Gold Glove. Pudge picks up another one as well. Jerermy Bonderman finishes in the top 5 in AL Cy Young race with 3 of the top 5 coming from the AL Central.

As we’re entering the final stretch of spring training, the 2007 predictions are starting to come with increasing regularity. Here’s what today revealed.

Simulatin’

The Replacement Level Yankee Weblog ran a series of Diamond Mind Simulations. He ran 1000 seasons using each of PECOTA, Marcel, Chone, Diamond Mind and ZiPS. I summarized how the tigers fared below:

I think it is safe to say that the ZiPS projections look to be the most realistic – kidding of course. The truth of the matter is, and I’ve been thinking this as I read all sorts of projections, all teams in the Central not from Kansas City have a legitimate shot at taking the division.

The composite of all 4 simulations have the Tigers 3rd in the division with 87.4 wins behind Cleveland with 88.3 and Minnesota 89.2. The sims weren’t quite as favorable to the White Sox with a projected 75.9 wins.

Sports Illustrated

A less stat/computer/geeky preview from the folks at SI have the Tigers coming in 2nd in the Central and ranked as the 5th best team in the American League. The scouting report is pretty standard citing the Tigers balance as a strength, and injury & last year’s pitcher workload as concerns.

Cranking Win Shares

While not a prediction system per se, the Baseball Crank takes a look at Established Win Share Levels for the AL Central. EWSL attempts to quantify the talent level on a team by looking at past performance and adjusting for age. The Tigers rank favorably because they are pretty solid top to bottom. The downside is that because of the age of the key players, the age adjustments are most unfavorable.

It’s kind of an American League Centric day. This morning I woke up to be greeted by Baseball Analysts annual Two on Two divisional preview of the Central. The hosts select two bloggers, this time it was Brian from Tigerblog and one of my favorite Twins bloggers (the Twins may have the best group of bloggers in baseball) Seth from Sethspeaks.net. The four couldn’t come up with a consensus, except for the Royals finishing last.

And over at Baseball Prospectus, Kevin Goldstein takes a walk through the minor league systems of each of the five AL Central clubs. On a Tiger note he thinks Brent Clevlen could be an attractive bargaining chip for a midseason trade – especially if Cameron Maybin continues to impress.

Last night Vince Galloro of Exile in Wrigleyville, and I did a chat talking about our respective teams and looking at the upcoming series. The transcript is up on Vince’s site.

It had to end sometime. The Tigers dropped their first game of the season, and their solo hold on first place. Detroit is now tied with Cleveland at 5-1, but I don’t really think anyone is complaining. The roadtrip saw far more positives than negatives.

Kenny Rogers was hit around, and balls seemed to be just out of reach of Tiger defenders instead of being tailor-made double plays that we’d seen in the first 5 games. The defense also committed their first charged error when Carlos Guillen couldn’t cleanly pick a grounder in the hole. Ramon Santiago, filling in for Placido Polanco also appeared to neglect to cover second base for a force out.

And Chris Shelton didn’t continue to do what Chris Shelton does. He was 0 for 4 with 3 strike-outs. His last 5 at-bats have been K-K-K-pop out-K. I guess a .700 batting average is a little too much to expect Big Red to sustain.

So out of all the positives that we witnessed on the road trip, what was the biggest for you? Was it Chris Shelton mashing? The Tigers offense clicking and cranking? An entire trip through the rotation where the starters picked up the wins? The debuts of Joel Zumaya and/or Jordan Tata, or Justin Verlander’s dominant performance?

Other stuff

• John Sickels: Why I like Curtis Granderson
  

  Granderson was an outfielder at the University of Illinois-Chicago. I saw him play college ball and was impressed. He had a smooth swing, good command of the strike zone, and to me at least he looked like he had good tools, decent speed that helped him on the outfield and on the bases. The only tool that didn’t look at least average to me was his throwing arm.

  Granderson hit .483 with nine homers and 17 steals for Illinois-Chicago in ’02, ranking second to Rickie Weeks in the NCAA Division I batting hunt. So we had a guy with an excellent performance track record and good physical tools. I picked him in the second round of my Twins Shadow Draft. In real life, he went to the Tigers in the third round.
  He lasted until the third round because scouts didn’t like his tools. The word was that his speed and athleticism were mediocre, and that he wouldn’t hit for much power with wood. But that’s not what I saw in him. I saw a player with solid tools, a good measure of refinement, and a fine track record. He also had a good work ethic and was intelligent.

• Don’t Count Fields out: A nice profile on former Tiger hitting coach Bruce Fields.

Well I guess it’s finally time that I give up my prediction for the Tigers season. If you’ve been reading the last couple years, you may remember that I did extensive analysis, player-by-player to predict runs scored and runs allowed to arrive at a final win prediction. That was a lot of work so this year I’m winging it.

I expect the Tigers to be better this year. Curtis Granderson receiving at-bats that Nook Logan had last year will improve the offense. A full season of Placido Polanco, even if he regresses, will be a significant upgrade over what Infante was producing at second base. Chris Shelton occupying the at-bats where Carlos Pena was struggling to find .200 will add runs to the offense. Pudge Rodriguez posting an on base percentage North of .300 will improve the offense. There are lots of opportunities for the offense to be better.

On the other side of the slate, I don’t expect significant drop-off in offensive production from anyone. The most significant loss will be probably be Rondell White’s bat. I don’t think that Craig Monroe can produce at White’s level. I think that Magglio Ordonez can at least produce at the level he did last year. I also think that Carlos Guillen can minimally replicate last year. Even accounting for those guys being injured – as they were last year – the offense should be better.

On the pitching side, I expect small improvements. I expect further growth from Jeremy Bonderman. Kenny Rogers should be able to at least reproduce Jason Johnson numbers. With Mike Maroth and Nate Robertson you know what you get. The wildcard is Justin Verlander. He will have his struggles, but at the end of the year will the Tigers get significantly more production out of the 5th starter spot than Wil Ledezma and Sean Douglass gave them last year?

The bullpen is still a question mark, but I’m actually not worried unless Todd Jones injury lingers. I think the bullpen can be adequate and I expect Fernando Rodney to have a big season and it wouldn’t surprise me to see him supplant Jones as the closer. He now has a full season under his belt since his Tommy John surgery, and from what I’ve heard he will be using his slider this year (which he didn’t last year).

It can be argued that the Tigers were actually a 75 to 79 win team last year. For the sake of argument I’m going to start with the Tigers as a 77 win team last year. I’m going to add 3 to 4 wins for the offensive upgrades provided by Granderson, Shelton, and Polanco. I’m also going to add 2 wins that will come from the pitching staff, namely the improvement in the 5th starter spot.

My final Tiger prediction…83-79. I think that will still keep them in 4th place in the AL Central. However, I also don’t see a team in the Central winning more than 90 games. That puts 4 teams within 7 games of each other, so really anything can happen.

What are your predictions for this season? Give me record, where they finish in the division, and a player you expect to breakout or royally collapse.

I’m a pretty big fan of treemaps. I’ve used them here on several occasions to graphically display win shares values. So when I found this tool that treemaps salaries, I just had to share. (hat tip to Catfish Stew) Below is a screenshot of the AL Central.

American League Central,salaries,baseball,treemap

Some Detroit Tiger related links from the last few days that you might have missed:

• Baseball Analysts on the Central: Aaron Gleeman and the Cheat join Rich and Bryan to break down the AL Central. The consensus was that the Tigers are probably the 4th best team in a pretty good division.
  

  Aaron: Right. Detroit doesn’t have any real stars, but I could see them being average or better at every position.

  Bryan: Seems to me the Twins and Tigers will be battling for having the third and fourth offenses in the division, but the Twins strength in pitching puts them way ahead.

  Cheat: I’d rate the Tigers offense ahead of the Twins, but your point still stands. The difference in pitching is too much to overcome.

  Bryan: It seems funny to say that in the AL Central that a good offense and mediocre pitching staff doesn’t have a ton of hope for third. That’s new.

  Aaron: Yeah. This Tigers team could have competed for the division title a couple years ago.

• Love for Craig Monroe: Greg Eno is a big fan of Craig Monroe and would like to see him inked to a long term contract.
  

  So DD better stop fiddling around and keep Monroe in a Tigers uniform for years to come. He has the strength to muscle the ball over Comerica Park’s distant walls in left and left-center field. He doesn’t drop the ball with his glove, and can throw it with some accuracy and zip. He is also another rarity among Tigers players of late: he is not baseball stupid.

  Now I like Greg as a writer, and I like Craig Monroe, but I can’t agree here. Monroe’s production is fairly typical, not extraordinary. He has two more years of arbitration eligibility and there is no need to sign him to a long term deal. I love his work ethic, his attitude, and I have no desire to see him leave. However, he is probably also one of the more replaceable players on the roster.

• Former Tigers, current Nationals: Jason Beck writes about the former Tigers who find themselves with the Washington Nationals. The contingent includes Robert Fick, Damian Jackson, Mike DiFelice, Andrew Good, George Lombard and Brandon Harper.
• A Rockies fan bashes Detroit: Bad Altitude, a member of the Baseball Toaster family has been preparing Hastily Assembled Previews for various teams. He’s not big on Detroit to say the least:
  

  It’s almost besides the point to try and predict a record or finish for the Tigers in 2006, because for teams with no chance of contending records are looked to for signs of progress. If the Rockies win 75 games this year, that’ll be a nice little accomplishment and pats on the back will be due all ’round. If Detroit wins 75 games in ’06, or 84, or 64, who cares, because it’ll be the exact same story in 2007. And the year after that…and the year after that…. They’re duking it out with Baltimore for the coveted title of Worst Organization in MLB (Kansas City is disqualified as they haven’t been actively trying to field a major league team for some time now). I kind of wish they were in our division.

  Now the author qualified it as a hastily assembled preview, and if I tried to put quicly put together several hundred words about a team outside of the Central I would struggle. Still, I’m not impressed with the work here. He criticizes the Tigers for overspending on Rogers (which they probably did), for sticking with the mainstays in the rotation (Bonderman, Robertson, Maroth), and for rushing Verlander and Zumaya. I’m really not sure who he invisions pitching in Detroit. They can’t use their highly touted prospects, they can’t use the average, cheap, homegrown players they have, and they can’t sign free agents.

  Dombrowski and the Tigers are certainly open to criticism. The Rogers, Jones, and Ordonez contracts all fall in the category of excessive no matter what your criteria is. However, at least in the case of Rogers and Jones the length of the contracts don’t seem to prohibit anything else (spending, player promotions/development). If you want to call them the worst organization in baseball for the totality of the last 12 years that is fine, and difficult to argue. To base it on the last 2 seasons just doesn’t make sense.

• BA’s Top 50 Okay, so you probably didn’t miss this one. In case you hadn’t heard, 3 Tigers made the top 50. Justin Verlander checked in at 8, followed by Cameron Maybin at 31, and Joel Zumaya at 35. I happen to think that Zumaya is probably ranked a little low, but at the same time I don’t know enough about other teams prospects to really complain to much. In any case, 3 players in the Top 50 is probably pretty good for one of the worst organizations in baseball.