More on why the Tigers are pondering some big trades
If the Tigers were fundamentally looking to lop payroll this autumn they would be concentrating, in order, on dumping the following players:
Miguel Cabrera, Magglio Ordonez, Carlos Guillen, Dontrelle Willis, Nate Robertson, Jeremy Bonderman.
They're the big-money players on the Tigers' roster. And while Cabrera's market value is still high despite his season-end drinking incidents, he won't be dealt. And the rest of the cast can't be given away.
So, to expand on a column written Friday, scratch dollars as being the primary reason for Curtis Granderson and Edwin Jackson being available for trade.
It's more about putting a new wave of talented, same-aged players on the field beginning in 2011, when new blood arrives from the minors to mesh with prospects the Tigers figure to get from any deals involving Granderson and Jackson, or others.
It's about having Justin Verlander and Rick Porcello as the cornerstones for a starting rotation that will by then have Casey Crosby and others on hand.
Payroll is a factor in the current discussions to this extent: Jackson will be expensive in two years when he hits free agency. Better to trade him now when the Tigers can get top value for him as opposed to waiting and losing, either when he signs elsewhere or when his trade stock will have depreciated.
Payroll is a factor, as well, in this sense: After the current phalanx of horrifically expensive talent has departed following 2010 and 2011 (Ordonez, Guillen, Robertson, Willis, and perhaps Bonderman), the Tigers payroll will be down to fighting weight.
There will be flexibility to add the seasoned veteran who can make a difference.
It will be a better-managed team and payroll with sensibly priced talent that can contend.
But you probably don't get there as completely, or as rapidly, in the next couple of years if you don't trade Granderson and Jackson now.
And that's the main reason why two talented players are on the block.
Thoughts on Guillen, Raburn ...
Carlos Guillen wants to play left field regularly for the Tigers in 2010. The Tigers want to upgrade their outfield defense in 2010.
And you thought divorce court was where people had irreconcilable differences.
Someone (as in me) thought the Tigers had correctly decided Guillen would be more of a fulltime designated hitter in 2010 and that the more fleet, if occasionally awkward, Ryan Raburn would be the more likely choice for regular shifts in left field.
Jim Leyland, the Tigers manager, has instead soothed Guillen by nominating him for daily duty as the team's left-fielder in 2010.
And I'll believe it when I see it.
What the manager is doing is strategic and respectful to a 34-year-old core player who has been kicked from pillar to outfield post during the past two years. He was a shortstop, then a first baseman, then a third baseman, and now he's supposedly the team's regular left-fielder.
Guillen is right on one issue: If his knees were so bad that the Tigers had to move him out of his natural shortstop role after the 2007 season, it doesn't make a lot of sense to say those same knees aren't an issue on the third largest tract of land in the state of Michigan, apart from the Upper and Lower Peninsulas: Comerica Park's outfield.
So, the Tigers are being diplomatic. They are saying to Guillen, who will make $13 million in 2010 and another $13 million in 2011: Show us your stuff, cowboy. Play left field as if it's your soul mate. Love it. Relish it. Flourish at it.
And make doggone sure you field it properly while you're hitting somewhere closer to the .300 mark and not the .242 you swatted in 2009.
I'm not sure that can happen. It's not Guillen's fault -- it's nature at work -- but he lacks the speed and range to get to fly balls hit along the left-field line and in foul territory. Unless third baseman Brandon Inge, in his inimitable way, somehow tracks them down, they tend to fall safely to the earth, foul, or they drop for hits.
And that can suddenly turn an inning into a four-out frame. The Tigers can't afford those, not in 2010, when they could be just as starved for runs as they were in 2009.
I suspect what will happen is this: Guillen will begin the 2010 season as Leyland's left-fielder. He will probably be there on Opening Day. But keeping Raburn properly engaged as a fourth outfielder will be difficult, and likely not wise. Raburn can hit and will get better in 2010.
The Tigers will need him in the lineup -- particularly as they see Guillen having ongoing difficulties tracking down catchable fly balls.
Raburn wasn't on many Gold Glove lists during a 2009 season when he proved beyond doubt that he was still learning a new position. But he will be better in 2010, much better. In fact, he was better, defensively, during the 2008 campaign, his first real season playing the outfield.
He simply needs to calm down and play more regularly, with left field being the greater area of need for Leyland's team.
The next Tigers manager
Since much of the Tigers fan base was on Jim Leyland's case during much, if not all of 2009, I thought it might be fun to consider his successor.
Just don't expect him to show up soon. Leyland is under contract through 2011, as he should be, at least in my view, and no one is knocking him out of the manager's office just yet.
But if I were handicapping the next Tigers managerial field, I'd place Tom Brookens at 2 to 1 odds to succeed Leyland.
Brookens has done a nice job at Double A Erie after debuting deftly at the Tigers' low Class A stops at West Michigan and Oneonta. He has a Tigers pedigree, of course, from his days as a player in Detroit. And he is universally liked, which doesn't hurt a man's chances.
I don't see any other heavy contenders. I thought for a long time that Matt Walbeck, who was managing at Erie before Brookens got there, would be next-in-line behind Leyland. But when Walbeck left for a coaching job at Texas (he was fired at the end of the 2008 season) he lost his place with the Tigers.
That enabled Brookens to move into the Erie job, where he appears for now to be waiting in the wings.
Leyland will be in Detroit for a while, so there's no sense in speculating just yet.
But if you want to project a couple of years in advance, Tom Brookens is your best bet in October of 2009 to become the next Tigers manager.
How will the Tigers pump up their offense in 2010?
Even before the Tigers get busy with roster additions and deletions for 2010, it's fair to ask how a team that needs more muscle in its batting order figures to add it.
How do you make your existing corps of hitters better?
Essentially, you hope they have better seasons than they did in 2009, which apart from Ryan Raburn featured not a single hitter who had what you could call a career year.
One thought is that the Tigers should get more offense out of catcher. Gerald Laird will likely be more of a platoon starter with Alex Avila, which figures to add punch from both sides.
Avila is a left-hand hitter who can crush a baseball, while Laird is a better hitter than he showed in 2009. Playing fewer games should make his bat more potent.
Curtis Granderson is definitely a better hitter than he displayed in 2009, his 30 home runs considered. He can -- and must -- hit left-handers. And he can -- and must -- hit closer to .300. His 2009 season was baffling and fairly indefensible.
Miguel Cabrera can do better than .324. He can do better than 34 home runs and 103 RBIs. He needs to take care of his personal challenges and move closer to the Triple Crown-grade hitter he should be in 2010.
Some people high in the Tigers organization believe Magglio Ordonez during September was the brand of hitter he will be in 2010, even at 36 years of age. They are convinced he'll be closer to the 2006-08 Ordonez. If he is, the Tigers pick up a big bat that will make a difference for the brunt of the season.
Carlos Guillen should have a bounce-back year, as long as he is healthy, which will remain an issue until Guillen shows differently.
Brandon Inge had what could have been a stunning season -- until his bad knees wrecked his second half. And yet he hit 27 home runs and had 84 RBIs. Inge will turn 33 next May but could, and probably should, best his 2009 numbers if his knees are cooperating.
It's a safe bet that Dave Dombrowski, the Tigers president and general manager, will add a bat or two during the off-season. The new hitters will presumably provide what Aubrey Huff didn't contribute down the stretch in 2009.
What matters, however, isn't who the Tigers add as much as what happens with the existing lineup. There are too many good hitters who had bad years in 2009 to think 2010 will be a repeat. The reasonable forecast is that most of those hitters will rebound, or top their 2009 efforts.
How that Tigers-Marlins trade is perceived in Florida ...
Just got off the phone with a colleague in Miami who covers the Marlins. He reminded me of what I pretty much knew:
The Marlins fans still believe they got killed on the December, 2007, trade that made Miguel Cabrera and Dontrelle Willis property of the Tigers and brought six Tigers prospects to the Marlins.
You can understand the sentiment, even when Willis' disintegration and Cabrera's bad closeout to the 2009 season are considered.
Andrew Miller, the left-hand blue-chip prospect, remains "awful" to use my colleague's word. Cameron Maybin, the outfield thoroughbred, still struggles with holes in his swing and game.
Burke Badenhop is a journeyman right-hander who would be considered "replacement level" to use the popular label. Mike Rabelo is long gone. Dallas Trahern is in the minors and not doing anything remarkable. Ditto for Eulogio De La Cruz, who is now with the San Diego Padres. He has three brief stints in the big leagues, with a combined earned-run average of 11.80.
It explains why the Marlins fans look at Cabrera's numbers and still-intact superstar status and figure they got robbed.
That remains to be seen. Miller remains a top prospect. And there will come a day, probably, when Maybin turns into a talented everyday outfielder.
But for now, as Tigers fans lament Willis' troubles and Cabrera's all-too-frequent drinking incidents, the Marlins camp would love to have that trade back.
What managing can -- and can't -- do
It's interesting to note the Minnesota Twins' current playoff steak: 0-9, dating back to their last three post-season appearances.
And I thought Ron Gardenhire was a good manager!
Well, he is a good manager. He is also limited by what his team can, and can't, do, which is why the Twins are 0-9 spanning three playoff runs and why at one point in 2009 they were 12 games below .500.
Managers can't bat, or pitch, or field. They can prepare players who bat, or pitch, or field, or run.
But, ultimately, it's up to the players to get it done. The same people who figure Jim Leyland's team "collapsed" and that he was "out-managed" down the stretch by Gardenhire and others aren't, in my view, looking at the realities of why teams win or lose.Dugout decisions can always be second-guessed, although I'm still waiting on my first rational e-mail from a Leyland critic after the team has won a particular game.
Managers end up being second-guessed, and their decisions end up branding them as geniuses or buffoons, based on how the team plays.
Which is why Gardenhire was no better or no worse as a manager during the Twins' first-half slide than he was when they caught fire down the stretch.
It had to do instead with how his pitchers pitched. And how his hitters hit. And how the organization was able to patch up when key pitchers and players were lost to injury.
Of course, according to this logic it doesn't matter who manages a team. It's all on the players. You can put any halfway intelligent fan at the helm and do at least what Leyland or Gardenhire did in 2009.
No. That's the other half of the coin that too many people don't understand or want to acknowledge.
You still must be a capable captain. Your players must respect you. You must know how to lead. You must be an authority figure. You must understand the intricacies of baseball, all of which, by the way, apply to Leyland, or Gardenhire, or Ozzie Guillen of the White Sox.
They know how to manage. In fact, they're experts. But they don't, by themselves, any of them, win or lose a division -- at least not in my experience, no matter how much you want to second-guess a particular decision in a particular game.
What the people who want Leyland fired fail to offer is (a) a certifiably more capable replacement manager than the guy who currently runs the Tigers or (b)certifiable reasons for why their replacement manager would have done all the right things that they say Leyland failed to do, and how this man would have avoided critical second-guesses down the stretch.
In my view, they're kidding themselves -- and you -- if they argue otherwise. They would have had similar grievances, likewise, with a manager whose team was never much more than a team destined to finish the 2009 season 10 or so games above .500.
That's why some of us picked the Tigers to finish in that vicinity at the start of 2009.
And, by the way, it wasn't because of the manager.
Jim, it wasn't "just gossip"
Jim Leyland has to realize that the Miguel Cabrera weekend incident was no more "gossip" than last week's David Letterman extortion flap.
That police report, which is available for the Tigers manager at the Birmingham police department, is not gossip. Nor was the 911 call from Cabrera's home.
The manager owes the Tigers baseball community an explanation for why, and in what condition, Cabrera was in Saturday's lineup after he had blown a .26 blood-alcohol level that morning at Birmingham police headquarters.
Leyland knew what had happened. Dave Dombrowski, the Tigers general manager and Leyland's boss, picked up Cabrera at the police station. Everyone in the Tigers clubhouse who needed to know Saturday, and a few who didn't, understood what had gone down when a long night of drinking and a spousal spat became a police intervention.
The Tigers have a not-so-honorable way of dealing with things they don't want to talk about:
They don't talk about it. That's "internal business"? That's a "private matter"?
It isn't a private matter that almost 9 million people came to the ballpark during the past three seasons to see Cabrera and others play baseball. Those same people deserve more information than has so far been forthcoming about Cabrera's competitive worthiness Saturday night.
The Tigers want it both ways here: They want the fans to be good, obedient customers, who buy tickets and shut down their interest in incidents and events when they're inconvenient for the club. And they want the media to be good drones who cover the games, print the news only after they've released it, and don't ask any uncomfortable questions in the interim.
I don't find it to be a responsible area of operations. I'm sure it's regarded as necessary business principle in the lips-sealed executive offices, but the community has its heart, soul, and wallets invested in this club, and has for 100-plus years.
The people deserve better responses than they got Tuesday when one of the most serious incidents in recent Tigers history was dismissed as "gossip."
Ask the police officer who showed up at Cabrera's home Saturday morning if what he saw was the product of someone's imagination. It, unfortunately, was all too real, and nearly too tragic.
Batting order issues with Jim Leyland
Most of the time, I have no serious quibbles with Jim Leyland's moves as Tigers manager. You can second-guess anything. And, in the complex world of baseball, a critic can miss a lot of reasons for making moves that you didn't fully consider until they're explained afterward.
I register my complaints based upon strategy that I didn't agree with from the get-go. And strategy I continue to disagree with after a manager has explained himself.
And batting Aubrey Huff ahead of Carlos Guillen is a personal grievance that's as unswerving as any complaint I've filed against the Tigers manager in 2009.
I asked Leyland about the decision after Tuesday's Tigers give-away, a 3-2, 10-inning defeat that should have, and could have, been avoided had the Tigers simply gotten a couple of respectable sacrifice flies or ground-outs, to say nothing of base hits, with men in scoring position.
But what made me wonder about Leyland's strategy was when Huff, who hasn't hit much at all since he arrived last month from Baltimore, came to bat ahead of Guillen in the first and third innings with runners waiting to score and to advance.
He grounded out the first time. Then, in the third inning with runners at the corners and none out, he hit a high chopper that ended up as a put-out at the plate on Clete Thomas.
Carlos Guillen's game was nothing to crow about. He was 0-for-3. But in the fifth spot, rather than Huff being there, the Tigers are a better team with Guillen at the plate and would have been Tuesday.
Leyland's answer to the Huff-Guillen question after Tuesday's game was that Guillen has been doing a good job in the sixth spot and feels comfortable there.
It's an explanation as bewildering as the idea that Huff would ever be a better choice to bat in the middle of the lineup ahead of Guillen. Leyland has explained, often, that batting orders can be over-rated (and they can) and that good hitters will produce as long as they're used at sensible spots in the lineup.
Absolutely, you can make that case with Guillen batting sixth -- unless Huff is your No. 5 hitter. And then it breaks down. Huff has killed the Tigers for the past week batting fifth. He hasn't driven the ball. He hasn't been getting on base. He has been a deflated inning waiting to happen.
Guillen needed to be batting earlier in the order Tuesday, certainly earlier than Huff.
I didn't buy the manager's thoughts afterward. Not for any of the reasons cited.
I think it was a mistake begging to cost the Tigers. And, in this view, it cost them dearly Tuesday.
Inge's critics have a serious argument
No one hits a nerve in Detroit's sports galaxy quite like Brandon Inge.
The critics are noisy. His defenders are loud.
In this corner, it's a toss-up as to who's right, and who's wrong. The problem with the latter group, which I identify as those voting on those fan polls on FSN's telecasts, is this:
Inge can go 0-for-4 with nothing but strikeouts, commit a glaring error, and still finish runner-up to Curtis Granderson as the day's top Tigers player.This, I suspect, is one of the reasons the anti-Inge camp goes nuts. They see him get cheered even as they're booing him. They're frustrated to the point of fury.
I understand. I understand it further when Inge is batting .228 with 163 strikeouts.
Here's what I don't yet know, and here's what determines everything as to the depth of prosecution, or defense, to which Inge is entitled:
How much are his sore knees to blame for his woeful second-half hitting?
If they are minimally involved in his strikeouts and tumbling batting average, the Tigers have a permanent problem with Inge's offense that make his superb fielding less of an overall gain for his team.
If they do factor in his lousy hitting -- and it's difficult to believe they don't -- then fans owe him 2010 to show that his first-half adjustments and progress will continue once his legs are operative.
No question, he has been hurting -- and playing. And there is little doubt, even after making a couple of bad errors in this weekend's White Sox series, that his defense has been integral to a team hanging onto first place.
But that hole in the batting order is tough to overcome, as the Tigers proved during a couple of bad losses to the White Sox. And that hole in the lineup could yet be costly heading into the final week's final games with a playoff spot hanging in the balance.
Inge needs to play better than flawless defense this week. And he might want to consider getting a bit hit or two, no matter how much the pain has been grinding at him. This is the big leagues. And hitting still counts.
A lot.
Rodney's tortured ways ...
I understand when people go nuts over Fernando Rodney. He is a better pitcher -- or, rather, has better pitches -- than the guy who constantly puts his Tigers team through emotional trauma when he threatens to blow ninth-inning leads.
But the key word there is "threatens." He still manages to get the job done, which is more than coincidental when he has 35 saves on the season.
Tigers fans aren't easily assuaged by those 35 saves. They want a 1-2-3 closer who mows down hitters the way Joe Nathan does at Minnesota.
But those pitchers are tough to find.
The Tigers have a couple of guys who potentially can do the Nathan, Mariano Rivera thing, in the presence of Ryan Perry and Joel Zumaya, either of whom might -- might -- get Rodney's job next season when Rodney likely will be pitching elsewhere because of his free agency.
But remember a couple of things: closing is difficult, much more so than any other relief role. It is a punishing emotional and physical task. It requires special people, which makes Rodney's case so interesting.
He is not a prototypical closer, for sure. You can see that his personal psychology is not quite conventional for a closer's role. He over-throws on occasion, which gets him into holes, and is often a bad bet when the Tigers have more than a one-run lead.
In those situations, he tends to give up runs, which suggests his mental approach is different depending upon the circumstance.
But what saves him is the quality of his two pitches: high-90s fastball, and an elite change-up. And those pitches are why he will be able to sign a two-year deal for a significant sum of cash during the coming off-season.
I wouldn't be surprised if a team signs him as a probable set-up man, because that's where Rodney tends to pitch more comfortablly and effectively.
But you cannot argue with his numbers. He has saved the Tigers in 35 games this season, and blown only one save situation. For all the crises he can generate, he tends to finish the job, all because of his superb pitches.
That's why he'll cash in this off-season. And why the Tigers will absolutely miss him in 2010.
