The Detroit Tigers are certainly one of the more interesting teams heading into the winter meetings. They are a team with a top 5 payroll in a region that is struggling economically. The Tigers also have holes to fill in the bullpen and at shortstop and limited means to address those issues with free agency and a farm system that can’t afford to surrender too many prospects. Dave Dombrowski has made some key players such as Edwin Jackson and Curtis Granderson available on the trade market leading to much speculation about a fire sale. But what really is the Tigers financial situation?
Category Archives: Winter Meetings
Milton Bradley talks not close
Jon Heyman writes today that things aren’t very close in a proposed Milton Bradley for Pat Burrell swap between the Rays and the Cubs. This doesn’t have a direct impact on the Tigers, but it is worth watching because there is speculation that the Cubs would want to move Bradley before setting their sights on Curtis Granderson.
Some in the Tigers blogosphere had suggested that Milton Bradley may be a decent acquisition for the Tigers if it involved a swap of undesirable contracts. Bradley will earn $10 million in 2010 and $11 million in 2011.
Bradley is coming off a year that saw his power drop dramatically as he only mustered a .397 slugging percentage. He hit fewer line drives and more groundballs but managed to maintain a health .378 OBP.
UPDATE: Thanks to Ben and Lee for pointing to this related note from Will Carroll that Mike Cameron is also in the Cubs mix, which if he was signed would likely kill Granderson trade talk as far as the Cubs were concerned.
Image from SD Dirk on Flickr
Tigers courting Bobby Crosby
The Tigers in house shortstop options are currently Ramon Santiago and Brent Dlugach. With the team already starting a rookie at second base in Scott Sizemore, they would probably like a little more of a veteran presence on the other side of the bag- even if it is just to split time with Santiago. One of the options the team is reportedly looking at is former Athletic Bobby Crosby.
Crosby was a rising star at one point when he posted an .802 OPS as a 24 year old. He won the AL Rookie of the Year award. That was in 2005 though and Crosby’s numbers haven’t come close to that mark ever since and his career OPS is .683. Defensively he has been good, but not great posting UZR’s of about 3 in most years.
In 2009 Crosby only played 6 games at shortstop with the bulk of his playing time split between first base and third base. Any value that Crosby has is as a decent fielding shortstop. Putting his anemic bat at the corners makes him a below replacement level player. And that’s if he stays on the field. Crosby has only crossed the 100 game plateau twice in his career.
Image from ztil301 on Flickr
The Winter Meetings at DTW
As a baseball blogger, this week is one of the most exciting of the year. It doesn’t matter how good or bad your team is, news is likely to break and rumors will abound as every team tries to improve. Here at Detroit Tigers Weblog we’ll have the meetings thoroughly covered.
I had intended to attend the meetings in Indianapolis but that didn’t work out. That’s the bad news, the good news is that I had already taken the time off from the day job so I’ll be tethered to the computer, listening to the radio, and watching TV to hopefully catch anything that happens quickly.
Mentioning every rumor isn’t the normal M.O. here at DTW, but this week will be different. So expect more posts than usual, and many will be in shorter form. Of course any moves that take place will be covered in depth as well.
My intention will be to do some live chats, both text and video, throughout the week and that schedule will be forthcoming.
To best follow the goings on here at DTW there are a few options:
- If you haven’t already subscribe to the RSS feed. While an email option is available, that only sends out a daily digest. The regular feed is the way to go for quick updates
- Follow me on Twitter @billfer. Info will be cross posted there as well and you may actually see things there first via re-tweets. Also, you may want to follow @TweetingTigers which aggregates new content from 20+ Tigers news sources.
- Become a fan of Detroit Tigers Weblog on Facebook. Yes, I’ve had a Facebook fan page for the site for quite some time, but haven’t done much with it. But now might be the time to get some value from it.
- I’ll also try and keep the payroll spreadsheet up to date as moves are made.
- If you’re away from your computer, you can still reach DTW via a myriad of smart phones. If you bring the page up on a mobile device and it isn’t mobile optimized, let me know and we’ll try to get that taken care of.