Tiger Geist

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.