Let Young walk. Use VMart as DH. Keep Dirks in left. Use Garcia/Castellanos in right. Berry is only good to steal bases, and he can't steal first base. Avila/Laird is marginal at catcher. Neither is a consistent hitter, but both are good catchers. Peralta is a slow, but consistent fielder, and a very inconsistent hitter. Infante is pretty much the same. Maybe a tad better. When we have Young, Peralta, Avila, Boesch/Garcia, Berry, Infante all in a row, we're going to be very, very inconsistent during the bottom half of the lineup. No real "grinders" there. Fielder actually hit fairly well in the Series, but hit a lot of "at'em" liners. His hitting stroke leads to many balls hit in the shortstop/ left center area, and teams play him there. Our pitching is basically OK. Let Valverde walk, and we have enough selection for starters and relief. Maybe use Rondon if he's ready. Would like to see Lamont and McLendon go, but not likely as long as Leyland is around. We should have a strong team next year!!
Timely poll right here...you get to vote on the future of Young, Sanchez, Peralta, Valverde, Dotel, Laird, and Leyland. My personal vote was the same as 5 of the 7 fan favorite votes. How does yours compare? Fan polls: Which Tigers free agents do you want to see return? | Detroit Tigers | Detroit Free Press | freep.com
Final WS Miscellaneous stats Tigers ~ 6 runs /20 hits /1 error Giants ~ 16/32/1 Tigers W/S batting .159 Tigers individual BA Young .357 Infante ..333 Jackson .231 Cabrera .231 Avila .143 Dirts .111 Fielder .071 Peralta .067 Laird .000 Berry .000 Tigers struck out 36 times....6 by Ajax, and four each by Cabrera, Infante and ARod, Fielder.....not to be out done, the Giants struck out 43 times including 4 players topping 5 or more. No stolen bases for the Tigers during the series Pitching.....Scherzer, Coke and Sanchez all struck out 8 batters Porcello, Doctel and Benoit only Tigers with 0.00 ERA. Finished post season with a winning record of 7-6, but needed 11 wins to spray the champaign three times..
Yes, I did. He may not be the best, but he's better than most. Do you want Acta, Yost, or Ventura? Guillen, Valentine, etc.,etc. There are few certainties in life. The known is often better than the wished-for dream. P.S. Francona already has a job.
Players never say anything bad about Leyland. I like the comraderie and professionalism of the team and I think that the manager is a big part of that. 2 WS appearances since the Pistons last made it to the Finals. Tough to criticize that. Looking at those stats, that is a lot of hits for very few runs. Giants got out of some jams nicely.
Well, Patches is back. Doesn't bother me as much since Francona was not available. Still, I'm disappointed. Patches is about as inspirational as a door knob.
This article sums up the contract situation pretty well without going crazy on details: Detroit Tigers' core is strong but roster will change in 2013 | The Detroit News | detroitnews.com Summary: Gone: Boesch Raburn Valverde Young Inge (we will only owe him $500K next year, down from $5.5M) Getting raises through arbitration: Jackson Scherzer Fister Avila Getting a raise through an option exercise by the Tigers: Peralta (who may become a trading chip next year b/c he can also play 3rd base... Det may try to get a SS with better speed/ range). Basically, the savings and the raises will be close to canceling each other out. The article assumes that we will not have Sanchez next year b/c his FA price just went through the roof. Smyly should become the 4th man in the rotation. This bums me out, but it seems like reality. I like Smyly's action, but Sanchez was a cool customer and it would have been really cool to see this current 4-man rotation with Smyly as the 5th. Porcello probably stays on as a cheap "innings eater". Agree completely. Expected to resign for reasonable amount- Laird Fielder- through 2017 Cabrera- 2015 Verlander- 2014 Martinez- 2014 Benoit- 2013 Peralta- extension through '14? Scherzer- 2014 (with arb again after '13) Dotel- 2015 (arb every year) Santiago- 2013 Coke- 2014 (arb each year) Laird- extension through '14? Kelly/ Avila/ Fister/ Jackson- all through 2015 with arbs. I'm hazing on the arbitration rules, but am assuming that it means that their salaries are basically adjusted each year to a "fair" value and that we can cut them if we don't like it before the season to get out of it. I don't really care beyond that since this isn't a salary cap situation and we have a rich owner. So, pay through the nose for Sanchez or not? Trade Victor Martinez for some really good players instead? Like a starting pitcher, a speedy SS, and/or a closer? The pros are that Victor is injury prone and we could round out the team better. The con is that it would be really awesome to see Cabrera/Fielder/Martinez terrorize pitchers.
We don't have Yankee money and I don't care to spend Yankee money. Maybe Illich does. If Young stays in the division he'll come back to terrorize ! * TaS, baseball has a "fair" market value, inflation promoted ? Oxymoron
Delmon Young had less innings on the field than Don Kelly and Verlander. About the same as Worth. And there is a reason for that. His fielding percentage ranked him 16th on the team (for players who actually played meaningful innings and excluding pitchers). That doesn't even factor in his range, which is extremely poor. Batting average- 7th On base %- 11th Walks- 9th Strike outs- 2nd Ground into double plays- 2nd Stolen bases- zero All of that factored in to give him the 3rd worst WAR on the team (only ahead of Boesch and Raburn). I think that he had the 5th worst WAR in the entire MLB for qualified players too. He was a decent HR hitter and he came through better than most in the post season, but he was also the 5th highest salary on the team and might cost more next year. I don't mind him as a DH, but next year, we clearly have a better DH. And VMart won't be playing in the field ever, unless we make it to the WS again.
Tigers' next SS (after Peralta)? Whitecaps infielder picks up Gold Glove as best in all minor league baseball | MLive.com Best fielding SS in the 120 team minor league system and one of the better hitters. Another Venezualean. (I couldn't believe there were 9 of them in the WS) Some of the other promising players: They are saying Garcia might spend some more time in the minors next year, which I think would be too cautious after watching him for over a month in the big league. Maybe some of these guys get called up next year.
I felt that Tigers sort of backed in to the WS. They got lucky to win the division with Chicago just totally tanking in the end and the rest of the team being really bad. Then they were facing very young and inexperienced Oakland team and the Yankees forgot to show up. They avoided playing Texas and Anaheim. However, as soon as they ran into a good team everything just burst at the seams. I am really pissed off that they are bringing back Leyland and the hitting coach. They need someone who can light a fire under those players' butts. They showed no emotions throughout the series. Leyland can't make up the lineup card and he's horrible managing pitchers in the games. As far as hitting goes, during the season, outside of Jackson and Cabrera everyone hit below their career levels. Dirks is not really in this picture as this was really only his first full year. And only Young showed up consistently in the playoffs. The team has no plate discipline swinging at the balls in the dirt and laying off pitches down the middle. Team also needs more speed on the bases, can't rely on the homers to win every time. Need to walk more as well.
Mikhail, I disagree. :-) Leyland is a good manager of pitchers. Jackson had a career year batting, and I hope he repeats. Fielder had the highest batting average of his career. I hope they both repeat, but they very well may not. In 2011 Peralta, Avila, Boesch, Raburn, all had career years. Didn't work out that way in 2013. Cleveland switched Peralta to third base because he was so weak at shortstop. Then they traded him to Detroit for a bag of balls. He hit well in 2011, but returned to normal this year. Same for Avila. All those guys plus Laird, Young, Kelly, Berry, Santiago, etc. are marginal big league starters. Back-ups, maybe. But you can't count on any of them in the clutch. Figure on .240 from any of them.
Nick Castellanos could easily be up in the D next summer. With Cabrera playing a decent 3B, the Tiger brass finally realized they needed to convert Nick to an outfielder. They even went as far as sending Al Kaline down to provide him some tutalege. All reports indicate that he was a quick learner. With VMart at DH and Castellanos added to the corner outfield mix, it makes absolutely no sense to re-sign Delmon.
I feel that the team has underachieved under Leyland. He tends to overmanage the team yanking pitchers too early or leaving them in too long. Also important are multiple significant 2nd half collapses, completely destroyed in 2 World Series, messed up lineups that change hourly, favoritism to players that do not perform, blown division titles. Remember Pistons before they brought in Larry Brown and Red Wings before Scotty Bowman. Tigers need someone else who can take them to the next level, and Leyland so far hasn't shown anything that gives me any confidence in the team's performance.
He's a little frustrating sometimes with his stubborness loyalty, but that is part of the reason of why the players like him so much. At least we know that he can get us to the WS. Maybe the players will just have to take over next time they get there.
