Jim Leyland was quoted yesterday talking about how this deal and the players they acquired were like a presents under the tree. Well, now that we can open up the presents, it’s time to play with them. The common refrain is that the Tigers should play Miguel Cabrera at third base and move Brandon Inge. It’s pretty clear that Cabrera is better than Inge and I’m not going to try and dissuade you from thinking that way. But as both Rob Neyer and Lee Panas have pointed out, the chasm in defensive ability between the two makes the upgrade not as dramatic as it appears at first blush. Are the Tigers better served putting Cabrera in left field?
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Tigerfest sells out and some other trade.
There is an unprecedented buzz around the Tigers right now. I know it by looking at my server logs, but a much less obscure measure is the fact that Tigerfest sold out in 24 hours. I was astounded when it sold out last year, and was prepared to move quickly. But I didn’t move quick enough and now I’m left out in the cold. Or considering it’s at Comerica Park maybe I’ll be left out in the warm?
Oh yeah, there was another trade yesterday. I knew about it, was aware of it, but it really didn’t seem to fit anywhere last night. The Tigers swapped relievers with the Rockies and shipped out Jose Capellan for Denny Bautista. Matt took one for the Tigers blogosphere and broke it down. Then again, it’s not like the Tigers minor league blogger has anything else to do right now.
Take 75 North | MVN – Most Valuable Network » Blog Archive » Tigers trade Capellan for Bautista -
The New Tigers speak
Now that the deal is official, people have permission to speak freely. And the new Tigers sound pretty excited to be heading North.
Matt Sosnick, the agent for Dontrelle Willis, indicated that Willis is “incredibly excited” and that while the 2 sides hadn’t talked about a contract yet “He’s [Willis] hoping to stay in Detroit for as long as The Tigers will have him. He’s good friends with Jacque Jones, and is a big Pistons fan.”
Sosnick and Dontrelle were also both on WXYT earlier today and their interviews are available for download.
Miguel Cabrera and Willis were both on a conference call this evening as well. Some notes:
- When asked about his struggles last year, Willis indicated he was a little banged up. But towards the end of the year he felt better and got his command back. He’s been working on his throwing program and thinks his arm strength is there.
- Cabrera mentioned that he hasn’t had discussions about what position he’ll play, but he’s willing to do anything and he can’t wait to get out there.
- Cabrera also said he’s already quite familiar with all of his fellow infielders and he is good friends with Carlos Guillen. The two live nearby in Venezuela.
- Willis couldn’t believe that he and Cabrera were traded together, but thinks that it will help both of them.
- Dontrelle said that he worked well with Pudge in 2003 and he’s excited to work with him again.
- As for the cold weather, both just said “baseball is baseball” and that it didn’t matter to them.
And for more Dontrelle, he’s now blogging at Yardbarker.
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Chris Shelton era ends
Chris Shelton is now a Texas Ranger. The Tigers continued their active winter by dealing Shelton, who was DFA’d last week, for centerfielder Freddy Guzman. Guzman is a burner who led the PCL with 56 stolen bases last year. He’s about to turn 27 and he’s only amassed 37 big league games in his career, so take that for what it’s worth. He hits for no power, but has some on base skills with a .360 OBP on a .278 batting average in his minor league career.
As for Big Red, here’s hoping the change of scenery will benefit him. If he can recapture that opposite field power, he should do quite well with the Arlington jet stream pushing balls out to right.
Guzman is on the 40 man roster, but the Tigers have some wiggle room following “The Trade” because they had freed up 2 spots.
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The 6 runs per game lineup
A couple weeks ago D-Town Baseball took the Bill James projections for 2008 and crammed them into the Baseball Musings lineup optimizer. Well, now that the Tigers lineup is drool-worthy I figured it would be worth updating.
One of popular iteration of the lineup is:
- Granderson
- Polanco
- Cabrera
- Ordonez
- Sheffield
- Guillen
- Renteria
- Rodriguez
- Jones
Such a lineup would yield 5.831 runs per game. Tantalizing.
Even the worst ordering of players (Pudge leading off) would produce 5.601 runs per game. The best lineup you ask? That would be 5.970 runs per game. As for the configuration – and I know this would never happen – is:
- Sheffield
- Cabrera
- Polanco
- Granderson
- Ordonez
- Jones
- Guillen
- Rodriguez
- Renteria
Regardless it’s a substantial upgrade from what Eric had found earlier where the lineups ranged from 5.224 to 5.578 runs per game.
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The Cabrera- Willis Trade – early returns
What’s being said about the trade of trades…
Baseball Prospectus | UnfilteredFour is the number of relatively cheap arbitration-eligible seasons that the Tigers are picking up between Cabrera and Willis. Half of the league is willing to bend over backward — perhaps giving up a package analogous to what the Tigers just gave up — for one season of Johan Santana. Although Willis is not the pitcher than Santana is by a long shot, he’s an excellent buy-low guy who was mostly victimized by some poor defense and some poor luck in Miami last year, and an extremely viable #2/#3 starter. And Cabrera might well be the equal of Santana in terms of 2008 value. In terms of overall value, the Tigers are getting perhaps three times as much incoming value as the Red Sox might get for one year of Santana.
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It’s an incredible trade and it puts them in position to win the Central and possibly win the World Series with the talent in Detroit. It reminds me of a conversation that Mario Impemba and I had with Dave Dombrowski before last season and he said that you need to have top 5 talent at each position to compete for a championship and the Tigers have that now.
As difficult as it is to see Miller and Maybin go, it is not too often you get a chance to acquire an elite hitter like Cabrera. Badenhop DeLaCruz and Trahern are also decent prospects but in a trade of this magnitude they are almost throw ins. The Tigers signaled in their earlier trade of top prospects Gorkys Hernadez and Jair Jurrjens for Edgar Renteria that they were going for it all in 2008 and this deal confirms it emphatically
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Holy Freakin Crap
The Tigers have pulled off a franchise altering trade today sending former first round picks Cameron Maybin and Andrew Miller, along with Mike Rabelo and 3 minor league pitchers to the Florida Marlins for Miguel Cabrera and Dontrelle Willis.
When Dave Dombrowski decides to go for it, boy does he go for it. Like in 1997 when he loaded up for a run at the World Series, Dombrowski has quickly put together what has to be considered the best line up in all of baseball. To do it they had to give up 2 of the blue-est of blue chippers. Normally I frown on such a move, but rarely do you get in return a 24 year old with 138 career home runs and a 313/388/542 line in 2700 at-bats either. The Tigers had to have emptied their farm system, but this isn’t for a player on the wrong side of 30. This is someone who has yet to enter his peak. The Tigers have to sign him to a long term deal for this to work, but I can’t imagine they make this trade without some sort of frame work in place.
As for Dontrelle Willis, his 5+ ERA in a pitchers park in the NL is certainly disconcerting. But the Tigers were giving up a player that was likely to be in their rotation next year, and they had to fill that spot and there are certainly worse ways to do it than with Willis.
The Tigers gave up some seriously talented players, but if you’re going to do it, do it the way the Tigers did and get a couple guys in their mid 20’s in return. Cameron Maybin and Andrew Miller are tremendous prospects, but Cabrera is a rare, rare player and for the Tigers to acquire him is a major coup.
As for the other 3 pitchers, Jon Paul Morosi is reporting that they are Burke Badenhop, Dallas Trahern, and Eulogio De La Cruz. Trahern is the prize of this group. He’s a heavy groundball pitcher who was set to pitch for AAA Toledo this year, and was a decent bet to reach the majors in 2008. De La Cruz we saw last year, and he has the potential and stuff to strike out a ton of guys, but he’s still searching for consistency.
The Tigers still have Rick Porcello, who couldn’t be traded yet, and is now the clear top prospect in the system. I’m also pleasantly surprised the Tigers didn’t have to move Jeff Larish, Mike Hollimon, and especially James Skelton.
As for what happens next, the Tigers just have to sign Cabrera long term. They also have some of their own players to move. Cabrera is thought of as a third baseman, but he could play left as well. I don’t know where he’ll play for Detroit and it depends on who they can get for Brandon Inge probably. I know that the Tigers just traded for Jacque Jones, but I don’t think they are married to him.
I applaud Dombrowski and the Tigers for pulling this off. The Tigers have the pieces in place to be a very very special team this year and I can’t wait for spring training. I’ll have more on the trade over the next couple of days.
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Rogers, Rumors, and the Winter Meetings
The Winter Meetings kicked off today. My fellow bloggers have already commented on how it will be a fairly quiet meetings for the Tigers. That’s what happens when you fill your biggest needs within a couple weeks of the end of the season.
Still, I don’t think the Tigers are done this offseason. While I don’t expect big moves from Detroit during the Winter Meetings, there is still work to be done. The Tigers still have a number of players to tender contracts to. There are currently only 16 members of the team who are signed, and likely to be on the 25 man roster. At least two of those players could be in for a substantial payday.
Curtis Granderson is entering his last year of indentured servitude. The Tigers could sign him for half a million and be done with it. However, it wouldn’t surprise me to see a 5 year deal which would buy him out of his arbitration years and first year of free agency. That would gain the team cost certainty through 2012 which also coincide with the years where he figures to be in his prime.
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links for 2007-12-03
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The Tigers had a remarkably consistent offense – statistically speaking.
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Tigers signed catcher Raynolds Guzman from the Dominican and catcher Luis Sanz and right-handers Josue Carreno and Bruce Rondon will also be taking the field in 2008 in the VSL
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TigsTown’s Mark Andersen and I are on the same page in terms of the the Tigers strengthened defense.
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MiLB.com Top Prospect list
The Tigers placed 2 players on the MiLB.com top prospect list. Cameron Maybin ranks 3rd overall behind Jay Bruce and Evan Longoria. Rick Porcello debuts at 14 which is impressive to say the least.
There are still a couple of prospect lists that still to come. John Sickels list should be coming in the next week or so, and Baseball America is still a ways away. Once they are all in (Tigstown and Baseball Prospectus have already completed their Tigers lists) I’ll aggregate the results into a consensus top 10 list.
As a side note, Gorkys Hernandez who is now with the Braves, just missed the list and checked in at 53. As for the rest of the AL Central, the Royals had 2 players on the list. But the Indians, White Sox and Twins combined to have 2 players in the top 50.
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Tigerfest 2008
The Tigers have sent information to [edit:]some[/edit] season ticket holders about this winter’s version of Tigerfest. It will be on January 12th and once again it will be hosted at Comerica Park. Of course the nice thing about holding it at an outdoor venue is that you don’t have to worry about the ice sculptures melting – for like 6 weeks.
I am a little surprised that they’ll be doing it at Comerica again, because reports from last year were that despite portable heaters the venue was still cold as well as very congested. I’ll give the organization the benefit of the doubt though and will trust that they’ll take what they learned last year to try and alleviate those problems.
No word yet on when tickets will go on sale to the general public, but it did sell out last year so I’ll let you know when I hear something.
UPDATE: Info on tickets:
Tickets for the 14th annual winter baseball event, presented by StubHub! will go on sale on Tuesday, December 4 at 10 a.m. Tickets can be purchased online at www.tigers.com/tigerfest or by calling 866-66-TIGER (84437). The cost of admission will be $12 for adults and $6 for kids 14-and-under. Children three and under are admitted for free.
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Tigers sign Kenny Rogers and Francisco Cruceta
The Tigers shored up their starting rotation and bullpen by signing Kenny Rogers and Fancisco Cruceta. Both pitchers were signed to one year deals. I don’t have terms yet of either deal.
Rogers we know about, but Cruceta appears to be signed largely on his performance in the Dominican Republic. It sounds similar to last year’s trade for Yorman Bazardo who was impressing in the winter leagues.
Cruceta, 26, spent the 2007 season with Triple A Oklahoma in the Texas Rangers organization. In 25 outings (five starts), he compiled a 3-0 record, 3.02 ERA (65.2IP/22ER) and 70 strikeouts. Cruceta has appeared in 13 games with Cibao in the Dominican Winter League, posting a 1-1 record, 1.08 ERA (16.2IP/2ER) and 25 strikeouts. He is fourth in the league with 25 strikeouts.
“Cruceta has pitched very well this winter in the Dominican Republic,” Dombrowski said. “He is a quality prospect and we expect him to compete for a spot in our bullpen in 2008.”
Cruceta has compiled a 63-49 record and 3.77 ERA (943.2IP/395ER) in 214 appearances (145 starts) during his career at the minor league level. He briefly saw action at the major league level with the Cleveland Indians in 2004 and Seattle Mariners in 2006.
It certainly doesn’t hurt to take a flyer on the guy, and maybe the Tigers have latched on to some cheap talent.
To make room Chris Shelton and Timo Perez were DFA’d. Neither was a surprise as neither were likely to make the Tigers roster next year. Chris Shelton was out of options and was destined to be moved anyways. You often hear of meteoric rises, but meteors are subject to gravitational forces and come crashing to earth as well. That was the Shelton meteor ride.
I’ll have more later
Conference Call Notes
- Kenny’s negotiation process: There was never a lot of change in his position. He wanted to make sure that he represented what was done best for himself and his family. The change in representation had more to do with Rogers intent to stay in Detroit than anything to do with Boras. He was trying to simplify the process so he could communicate directly with the team. If Rogers had decided to become a free agent in the true sense, Boras would still be his agent.
- There are performance incentives in the contract.
- Going to the winter meetings they will still look at opportunities to get better, but they are comfortable with the roster and they don’t see any “gaping” needs.
- Cruceta throws in the mid 90’s and the Tigers look at him as some who can help the team.
- The team is aware of Cruceta’s suspension but the team is confident that Cruceta learned from the experience and that Cruceta can help the team.
- The Tigers were never close to signing any other starting pitchers while the Rogers negotiations were on-going.