Tiger Geist

No other way to explain it.. hats off to Kansas City and Cleveland in how they are fixing their bullpen.

As I just mentioned, KC signed Kyle Farnsworth.  I have no idea what role he will play (setup man?), but i like most hitters’ chances against him.

While I’m concerned about Detroit’s lack of a closer, I don’t think signing K-Rod or Kerry Wood would be a smart decision.  Kerry Wood is switching leagues (I’m always skeptical about the NL to AL move), and has a bad injury history.  How bad?  Tony Paul has a nice writeup about it in today’s Detroit News.  Until last year, Wood had SIX STRAIGHT seasons with right shoulder issues.  In those seasons, he missed an average of 59 games / year.  Thats someone you want to invest $10 mil / year on?  Especially for a small(er) market team like Cleveland?

At ~$13 mil / year, K-Rod seems like a bargain.  Except the Angels sure seemed to allow him to throw every possible inning over the last few years.  Its like they knew they weren’t going to re-sign him anyway, so they had no concerns about blowing out his arm.  I’ll be amazed if he doesn’t end up on the DL at least once / year during his Mets stint.

Honestly, maybe Double D shouldn’t get so much slack for drafting college relievers last year.  The market seems to over-value closers so much that its cost prohibitive to sign (or trade for) an established closer — even ones with gigantic red flags in terms of their injury history (JJ Putz, Wood).  Getting what might be an average starting pitcher (Edwin Jackson) for a fourth outfielder (Matt Joyce) seems like a steal compared to what Detroit would have to give up to get Putz alone.

Its December 19th, and now I’m going to re-evaluate the trade that sent Pudge to the Yankees for Kyle Farnsworth and a pile of dog poop in late July.

Reactions were kind of mixed on the trade;  I think its safe to say that both teams were underwhelmed by the results.  Farnsworth was rock solid, if you were batting against him;  there were rumors that some of the Yankee pitching staff refused to pitch to Pudge.  At the time Detroit thought it had a shot at the playoffs, instead they finished the season on the ass-end of the division.  Not doing the trade probably wouldn’t have changed much for either team in terms of wins and losses.

We started to hear rumors of growing unrest in the locker room, so maybe in the long run Pudge had to go.  On the flip side, many felt Detroit should keep Pudge so they could offer arbitration, gathering some draft pick(s) in return.  Looking at the current market structure, the Tigers probably wouldn’t have offered arbitration (Pudge likely would have taken it) anyway.  The backstop of Laird / Misty May-Treanor’s husband comes at cost of about half of what Pudge would have made in arbitration, with arguably better defense… and I bet Laird out-hits Pudge in 2009.

So what did we learn from the trade? If it kept the team together and didn’t upset the nucleus in the club-house for ’09, Pudge probably had to be moved.  Its obvious that Detroit traded for the wrong person, getting basically nothing in return.  Hindsight is 20/20;  the beauty is that Farnsworth signed in Kansas City, so maybe Detroit will get its revenge soon enough.