Author Archive

Record – 65-71, Finished Fifth Place in the American League
Pythagorean Record – 71-65

Starters

Hitters (BA/OBP/SLG)

C – Deacon McGuire (.250/.306/.306)
1b – Charlie Carr (.281/.296/.374)
2b – Heinie Smith (.223/.271/.283)
3b – Joe Yeager (.256/.303/.323)
SS – Sport McAllister (.260/.297/.306)
LF – Billy Lush (.274/.379/.390)
CF – Jimmy Barrett (.315/.407/.391)
RF – Sam Crawford (.335/.366/.489)

Team Leaders

Homeruns – Sam Crawford (4)
Batting Average – Sam Crawford (.335)
OPS – Sam Crawford (.855)
Best Fielder – Charlie Carr (15 Fielding Runs Above Average)

Pitchers (IP/W/ERA)

SP – George Mullin (320.7/19/2.25)
SP – Bill Donovan (307/17/2.29)
SP – Frank Kitson (257.7/15/2.58)
SP – Rube Kisinger (118.7/7/2.96)

Team Leaders

Wins – George Mullin (19)
ERA – George Mullin (2.25)
Strikeouts – Bill Donovan (187)

The Tigers took a step forward in 1903, and they did it through turnover. Only Deacon McGuire returned to shore up the Tigers starting infield and only George Mullin, who emerged as the Tigers’ ace in 1903, returned to the rotation. By far the biggest acquisition of the year was Sam Crawford. Crawford had already established himself as a bonafide star with some solid seasons for the Cincinnati Reds and Crawford came over to Detroit when the American League and National League unified. The Tigers signed him first, so they got the gold. Whether he was stolen from the Reds is open to debate but Crawford would go on to have a Hall of Fame career and he’d be a lynchpin for the 1907 through 1909 AL Pennant teams.

The 1903 Tigers were also a pretty unlucky team. They outscored their opponents 567 runs to 539, yet ended up with a losing record. Even if they’d have finished with their Pythagorean Record of 71-65, that still would have put them in the second division in the American League.

Crawford was their bonafide star, and along with Jimmy Barrett and Billy Lush, the Tigers sported an outfield where the lowest OPS+ was 134. Crawford finished second in hitting for the second straight season, losing the batting title to Nap Lajoie by only nine points. Crawford would finish runner up in the batting race four times through out his career while never winning the batting title. He did lead the league in triples in 1903 with 25 and his major league record of 309 career triples still stands. His 158 OPS+ was good for second in the league, again finishing second to Lajoie.

Jimmy Barrett was the best hitter on a bad team in 1902, and in 1903, he’s a close second to Crawford. His .315 batting average was good for fourth best in the American League (his only career top ten finish) and his .407 OBP, 74 walks and 243 times on base all led the league. Barrett reminds me a little of Bobby Higginson. He had some great seasons, but never had a team around him. By the time the Tigers won their first pennant in 1907, Barrett was at the end of his career in Boston.

On the pitching side, George Mullin established himself as the team’s ace in only his second season on the mound. Mullin’s 19 wins was the eighth best mark in the AL and his 2.25 ERA was sixth best. Oddly, he led the league in saves with two and his 320.7 innings were the fifth best total. On the negative side, he led the league in walks allowed with 106, the first of four consecutive seasons that he’d be on top of the AL.

Bill Donovan also had a solid season in his first season with the Tigers. After finishing with 25 wins in 1901 for the Brooklyn Superbas, Donovan was second in the league in strikeouts with 187 and he led the league with 34 complete games in 1903.

As a team, the Tigers showed some promise after being a bottom feeder in 1902. The team sported an OBP of .312 which led the American League and they were second in hitting with a .268 batting average. The Tigers were fifth in runs scored (567) but near the bottom in homeruns (seventh with 12). The team’s pitching staff had the third best ERA in the league (2.75) but gave up more walks then any other team (336).

The Tigers won their first four games of the season in 1903, but by early May they had dropped back to .500 (6-6). On May 30, after getting swept in a doubleheader by the St. Louis Browns, the Tigers slipped below .500 and hovered around that mark for most of the next couple of months. They were above the breakeven mark as late as September 11, 1903, but their 4-0 start were the most games above .500 they’d reach all season. In an odd scheduling quirk, the Tigers played five straight doubleheaders from September 6 through the 14 (with days off in between), then another one four days later on the 18th. In all, the Tigers played eight doubleheaders in the month of September.

I’m going to be moving Tigerblog from Movable Type over to WordPress over the next few weekends. So if there’s some times where you can’t get to the site, just bear with me while this gets done.

Catchy title. Vince Gennero has been putting out an excellent series of articles on player value at the Hardball Times. Tuesday’s column deals with teams who are close to making the playoffs, yet need that final piece to put them over the top.

One of his examples talks about how Brandon Inge would be more valuable to an 85 win Yankees team then Alex Rodriguez would be to a 65 win Tiger team because of the increased chances of the Yanks making the playoffs.

Also, you can check my already outdated Business of Baseball report. I went to bed thinking the council was done only to find out this morning that they got back together an hour after the real meeting ended and agreed on a lease. Guess I’ll have something to write about next week.

Jason Beck, the MLB.com’s Tigers beat writer, wrote a nice column on Carlos Guillen and Placido Polanco. His point is pretty valid in that the duo is one of the best in the American League as long as they’re on the field together.

Beck makes the point that the two players were actually the double play combo for a grand total of 21 games last year. If the Tigers are going to have any chance of improving in 2006, they’ll need Polanco and Guillen healthy.

The Tigers signed outfielder Craig Monroe to a one year, $2.8 million deal. This was the Tigers’ sole remaining arbitration case so unless they sign a free agent, we pretty much know what they’re payroll is going to be next year (which I’ll look up and find for you).

Monroe’s one of those guys that I kind of wish we’d trade. He does well enough to ensure himself a starting outfield spot even though I think a guy like Curtis Granderson would be better out there if given a chance. And while Monroe did put up some solid traditional stats (20 homeruns, 89 RBIs), he has a career .313 OBP and his WHIP actually declined by over 50 points from 2004. So with that, I wouldn’t have minded the Tigers getting what they could for him before he has the one off year that causes his value to fall off of a cliff.

Since we have him though, hopefully he’s for real and we can expect 20-25 homeruns and 80-90 RBIs every year.

I finished The Detroit Tigers Reader this weekend, and was really impressed. It’s gotten to the point to where anything Tom Stanton puts out, I’ll pick up and read. Although he didn’t write this one, he edited it. It’s a collection of news stories about, you guessed it, the Tigers. The stories cover the Tigers 100+ year history and range from a glowing story on Ty Cobb to a more recent column on when Pudge came into town.

One of my favorites was an early Joe Falls article on Norm Cash. There’s a solid story on Kirk Gibson, along with Al Kaline’s and Ernie Harwell’s Hall of Fame acceptance speeches. There’s detailed stories on Micky Lolich, George Kell and Hal Newhouser, amongst others.

For Tigers’ fans, this is a much read. Each story is reasonable in size, ranging from two to ten pages so it’s a nice book to pick up and read when you only have a short period of time. I read the story in chunks and it gives you a nice flavor for each of the eras.

Also, John Sickels’ shipped the latest installment of his 2006 Baseball Prospect Book. I made a point to pick up the older editions, and the books are just fantastic. I’ve never purchased Baseball America’s Prospect Book, so I really have no basis of comparison, but you get a detailed analysis on a ton of prospects. Good stuff, and well worth the price.

Record – 52-83, Finished Seventh Place in the American League
Pythagorean Record – 58-77

Starters

Hitters (BA/OBP/SLG)

C – Deacon McGuire (.227/.300/.323)
1b – Pop Dillon (.206/.255/.255)
2b – Kid Gleason (.247/.292/.297)
3b – Doc Casey (.273/.338/.352)
SS – Kid Elberfeld (.260/.348/.326)
LF – Dick Harley (.281/.345/.344)
CF – Jimmy Barrett (.303/.397/.387)
RF – Ducky Holmes (.257/.319/.337)

Team Leaders

Homeruns – Jimmy Barrett (4)
Batting Average – Jimmy Barrett (.303)
OPS – Jimmy Barrett (.784)
Best Fielder – Ducky Holmes, Jimmy Barrett (10 Fielding Runs Above Average)

Pitchers (IP/W/ERA)

SP – Win Mercer (281.7/15/3.04)
SP – George Mullin (260/13/3.67)
SP – Roscoe Miller (148.7/6/3.69)
SP – Ed Siever (188.3/8/1.91)
SP – Joe Yeager (140/6/4.82)

Team Leaders

Wins – Win Mercer (15)
ERA – Ed Siever (1.91)
Strikeouts – George Mullin (78)

Poor hitting and poor pitching doesn’t make a great combination. The 1902 Tigers took a step back from their inaugural season and would be in the lower half of the American League until Ty Cobb showed up in 1905. The Tigers had a bad team in 1902. They finished 3 1/2 games ahead of the last place Batlimore Orioles but their offense would have put the 2003 Tigers on a pedestal.

The Tigers finished dead last in the American League in batting average, slugging, OBP and runs. They were seventh (second to last) in homeruns. The only statistical category of any significance that the Tigers finished in the top half was walks, and they just made the cut at fourth place. Pitching wasn’t much better. They finished last in strikeouts, sixth in ERA and fifth in runs allowed. All five of their regular starters finished the season with a losing record, including Ed Siever, who led the league with a 1.91 ERA.

Oddly, the Tigers got off to a solid start in 1902. After winning six of seven, the Tigers started the season with a 6-2 record and by the end of May, they were still above .500 at 16-14. They slipped under .500 by mid-June and then the team had a stretch in July where they a 4-16 run put them out of contention. In Auguest they dropped even further when they lost eleven in a row at one point (they played three doubleheaders on three consecutive days against the Philadelphia A’s and lost all six games) and then went on to seven of their next nine after that. Another 10 game losing steak in September gave them a chance to finish dead last, but they won four of their last five games to lock up the seventh place spot.

Jimmy Barrett was the only Tiger hitter to finish with an OPS+ above 100. Only one other player, Dick Harley, had an OPS+ of at least 90. Barrett finished fourth in the league in OBP (.397) and he finished third in walks (74).

The workhorse of the rotation was Win Mercer, who had played for the Senators the year before. 1902 was Mercer’s final major league season and he led the team in wins (15) and innings pitched (281 2/3). Unfortunately he also led the team in losses (18). His Adjusted ERA+ of 120 was tenth in the league.

Ed Siever finished the season 8-11 despite have a league leading ERA of 1.91. He was fourth in the league in WHIP (1.051) and his adjusted ERA+ of 191 led the league. In January of 1903, Siever was sold to the St. Louis Browns.

The Tigers .385 winning percentage was a record low that would stand for 50 years. In 1952, the Tigers went 50-104. That record would then stand until 2003, when the Tigers winning percentage was .265.

Jeff Mathews is a guy I’ve been talking to via email quite a bit. He caught wind of the 1935 Tigers diary, and we’ve been debating the 1934 season and who “really” had a better team that year (although the concrete evidence is on his side). Jeff’s decided to start a St. Louis Cardinals blog named the Gas House Gang, and he’ll be doing a 1926 Cardinals diary this year to commemorate the first World Series win in Cardinals history. Be sure the check him out at http://www.stlouiscardsblog.com.

The Tigers made some progress in solidifying their team today by agreeing to terms with three of the four players that filed for arbitration. Jeremy Bonderman will make $2.3 million next year in a one year deal. I was on the fence as to whether Bonderman should get a longer term deal or not, and it looks like Dave Dombrowski is being prudent and waiting one more year to see if Bonderman is worth the huge payout or not.

Chris Spurling will make $725,000. He’ll never overpower anyone (26 strikeouts in 70 2/3 innings) but he was pretty effective against both righties and lefties. The most interesting thing about Spurling is his home/road split. He seems to really take advantage of Comerica park to the tune of a 1.03 WHIP, .197 batting average against and a 1.66 ERA. On the road, those numbers balloon to a 1.26 WHIP, .264 batting average against and a 5.51 ERA.

Carlos Pena earned himself a paycheck by having a strong August and September after being sent down to AAA. He’ll make $2.8 million, but in a lot of ways, he’s the odd man out. Dmitri Young, for better or worse, will probably get the nod as the DH leaving Pena and Shelton to split time. Shelton earned the job with a strong season (not just a month and a half) so this will probably be one of the more interesting position battles this spring.

Craig Monroe is the guy who hasn’t signed yet. He put up solid numbers, but he’s pretty replaceable so I think the Tigers are going to be stuck paying him more then they’d like whether he ends up in arbitration or not.

Everyone’s favorite obnoxious Yankees’ fan has moved. You can now find Baseball’s Savior at

http://www.baseballsavior.com

It’s looking like Bruce Sutter’s election into the Hall of Fame could be the most controversial since former Tiger George Kell’s induction in 1983. I think the whole Goose Gossage/Bruce Sutter thing has been beaten to death, including by myself, so lets go off on a tangent with this comparison.

(Sorry, I played with the spacing but couldn’t quite get this to work).

            Player 1   Player 2

Games            545        661

IP            1,242      1,042.3

Runs             438        370

ER              391        328

BB              535        309

SO             1,036        861

ERA            2.83       2.83

RSAA             136        123

HR              110         77

H/9            7.54       7.59

BR/9           11.50     10.37 

SO/9            7.51       7.43

BB/9            3.88       2.67

SO/BB            1.94      2.79

Wins             87         68

Losses          76         71

Neutral W        105         86 

Neutral L       58         53

PRAR             531        507

DERA           3.42       3.52

Saves           125        300

Okay, that’s a lot of numbers. What’s interesting is both players have idential ERA’s. Pitcher number 1 threw more innings but gave up about one more walk per inning then player two. Player one gave up more homeruns but both had very good rates per nine innings (player 1 0.797 vs player 2 0.665). All in all, if you look at both the raw numbers and the rate numbers, these players are pretty similar.

The big difference is in saves. Player 2 played in a era when saves were the thing, while Player 1 started his career in the mid-60s when the save didn’t yet exist. But it’s worth noting that while Player 1 only racked up 125 saves, he held the single season save record (38) for ten years until Dan Quisenberry broke it in 1983 with 45. Player 2 then tied Quisenberry’s record until it was broken a year later by Dave Righetti.

Player 1 is also credited with having the best relief season in the history of baseball. This is documented in both The Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract and Baseball Prospectus 2006. A year after that historic season, Player 1 won a record (that still stands) 17 games in relief. Player 2 has the 16th and 19th best relief seasons according to Baseball Prospectus 2006.

Player 2 is easy because his numbers have been thrown around so much of late. Player 1 is John Hiller who in his first year on the ballot for the Hall of Fame in 1986, received 11 votes or 2.59% and never showed up on the ballot again.

So while I’m not surprised Sutter got in, it’s make you wonder what these voters are thinking. The good news is, it bodes well for Bert Blyleven. It took Sutter nine years to break through the 50% mark and three years later he’s in. So I’m hoping we’ll be praising the BWAA at this time in 2008 for finally voting Blyleven in.

And John Hiller is one of my favorite Tigers and is a great case study because he was one of the last great relief pitchers in the era before the save became popular. Back in 2003, I took a look at John Hiller’s 1973 season along with a little editorial on my thoughts on the save. This was one of my first posts when I started the site and it’s interesting (for me, probablly not for you) going back and looking at how my writing has changed since then.

These are both pretty good signings. Mike Maroth has proved that a pitcher won’t break down after losing 20 games like he did in 2003 and while he took a small step back in 2005 after a pretty solid 2004 season, Maroth is one of those back of the rotation guys that each team needs. He’s left handed and he has a nice delivery by keeping the ball behind his head as long as he can to hide the pitch. I liken him to a left handed Milt Wilcox. He’ll probably never be an ace, but he’ll give you some solid innings and if you put a good team behind him (like Wilcox had in 1984), he could win upwards of 17-18 games in a season.

I look at Brandon Inge’s season a couple of ways. While he hit sixteen homeruns, he’s a light hitter for a thirdbaseman. On the other hand, if you would have told me in 2002 that Inge would be playing 160 games in a season and drawing over 60 walks, I would have never believed it. Inge followed up a breakout season in 2004 with a decent campaign in 2005. Where he really showed off was with his glove. He ended the season with 30 fielding runs above replacement (14 above average) at third base and while many point to his 23 errors, Inge is a gold glove third baseman in the making.

Plus it’s always nice to see the homegrown guys stick around. Maroth signed for 2 years, $5.25 million. Inge signed a one year deal for $3 million. That’s money well spent in my opinion.

I’ve heard 2 years, $5.25 million. Like the Mantei signing and Sutter’s election into the Hall of Fame, I’ll touch on this hopefully tonight. Been recovering from the flu and this is my first day back to work, so bear with me…..

This is a pretty low risk deal. Matei was the closer for the Diamondbacks before he hit the DL pretty continuously. He’s a hard thrower, but he’s had a rough past couple of years.

I’ll comment more on this and Bruce Sutter getting in the Hall later tonight.

The Hall of Fame voting results are announced this Tuesday. Once again, I’m fully expected to be disappointed over any gains Alan Trammell or Jack Morris might have made. Players need to be on 75% of the ballots and last year, Tram received 16.9% and Morris received 33.3%. This year, there’s really nobody new to the ballot that I see getting in, although I think Will Clark will get a decent showing. Things are wide open for the players who were on the short end last year.

Bruce Sutter received the most votes of those who didn’t get in at 66.7%. I think he’s got a solid chance at making it this year although personally, I’d like to see Rich Gossage get in before Sutter. Gossage pitched 800 more innings and had almost twice as many strikeouts even if you take out Gossage’s 1976 season when he failed to make it as a starter. And their ERAs aren’t that far off. Gossage pitched 22 years, and in some ways (similar to Bert Blyleven) this might be hurting him. His last ten seasons were nothing special but he had some truly historic seasons. In Baseball Prospectus 2005, there was a section on Win Expectancy and there were lists of the top 20 best relief seasons. Gossage shows up at number 10 and number 18, while Sutter shows up at 16 and 19.

So Gossage pitched longer and when you compare their two best seasons, Gossage comes out on top. So while I think Sutter is a solid candidate, I don’t see how he’s “that” much better then Gossage to warrant almost 60 more votes.

Next on the list is Jim Rice at 59.5%. The knock on Rice is he didn’t hit any of the big milestones. He fell short of 400 homeruns (383) and 1,500 RBIs (1,451). He also missed out on a .300 career batting average (his is .298). But from 1978 through 1985, he had some truly outstanding seasons. Throw in an MVP which the voters seem to like and six top ten finishes and you have a guy that at least warrants consideration.

There’s one problem. You have a guy near the bottom of last year’s ballot who has similar numbers and only garnered 10.5% of the vote. Dale Murphy has more homeruns (398) and more MVPs (2). He wasn’t as good of a hitter (.265) but he got on base at almost the same clip as Rice (.346 for Murphy, .352 for Rice). Their OPS are also very similar and only about 300 at bats seperate the two.

Even more confusing is you have a guy who hit more homeruns and drove in more runs then either Rice or Murphy in Andre Dawson who only garnered 52.3%. The big knock on Dawson is his career .323 OBP but Dawson wasn’t a hacker either (he struck out more then 100 times on four occassions).

Then we come to the biggest quandry on the ballot, Bert Blyleven. Rich Lederer has pretty much made it personal in his lobbying for Blyleven and I can’t really blame him. He got 40.9% of the vote last year and it’s a downright travesty because Blyleven deserves to be in there. His biggest knock is his great seasons came early, he never won a Cy Young and he gave up a bunch of homeruns. Also, he fell just short of 300 wins, mostly because he played for some bad teams. Heck, he only made two All-Star games. But he’s fifth in strikeouts with 3,701.

So until Blyleven gets in, I really can’t justify Morris getting the nod. Trammell should be getting enshrined this year, but he’ll be lucky to be on 25% of the ballots. For more on Tram, check out Detroit Tigers Weblog as Bilfer’s been tracking his chances.

In the end, I think Bruce Sutter and Rich Gossage will both get in this year. I think Jim Rice will fall short as will Andre Dawson. And Bert Blyleven will once again be denied, but I think for the first time he’ll top 50%.

The National Baseball Hall of Fame website has all of the ballots and voting. It’s interesting to see some of the guys near the bottom who actually got votes. Terry Steinbach and Tony Phillips each showed up on one ballot. Tom Candiotti and Jeff Montgomery each got two. I’m kind of curious to see the complete ballots of those the people who voted for anyone one of those four to see who they might have left off.

After the 2004 season, I had planned on doing some studies on Norm Cash’s 1961 season. Norm Cash hit a career high 41 homeruns in 1961, but that wasn’t the odd thing. He was the last Tiger to win the batting title with a .361 batting average. His next best career high was only .283 and his career batting average ended up being .271. With a good eye (1,043 career walks vs. 1,091 career strikeouts), Cash nearly matched his eventual career OBP of .374 that season.

I never got around to it. And while I had it on my list of things to do, it’s taken a back burner to some other things. Fortunately, I got bailed out as Steve Treder at the Hardball Times wrote a nice essay on Norm Cash’s 1961 season. Be sure to check it out.

It’s been a pretty good year. It was my first full year as a dad and while the transition involved with my wife going back to work was difficult, we’re managing. It’s also nice seeing my name in print. While I’ve helped out with legal columns that got me a mention in some obscure legal publication, I’ve also gotten my name in Business Week. But none of that compares to being able to go to Borders and seeing a book where you’re listed in the table of contents.

It’s also been a good year for the site. Following up on the 1984 Tigers diary, we took a look further back in the past at the 1935 Tigers. It’s hard for me to say which one was more fun. When I did the 1984 diary, I was able to relive the memories, but there was also something very cool when I took a look at one of the greatest teams in the history of the franchise. They had Hall of Famers out the wazoo, and a few more guys who were borderline and didn’t get in. And while the current day Tigers falters, there’s some hope that they’ll finally be able to get over the hump and put together a winning season.

In addition, it was fun doing a few joint ventures with other Tigers bloggers. DIBS will be a fun project going forward and I’m looking forward to be a part of this community.

In 2006, I’m going to take a break from at least doing a Tiger diary. I’m going to write a 1976 Reds diary for Reds Cutting Edge, but I’ve also had some correspondence with some other sites who are interested in doing diaries as well and I plan on assisting them. You’ll see a 1986 Mets diary at the Tom Seaver Fan Club. Probably one of the more ambitious projects will be the Black Sox Blog going back 100 years to document the White Sox first World Series win in 1906. In addition, I’ve been talking to a guy who hasn’t even started his blog yet, and he wants to do a 1926 St. Louis Cardinals diary (also their first World Series ever).

So with the popularity of the diaries and also with some of the other things that these sites are doing, I’m going to start a loose affiliation between all of these sites. Baseball Historians (the domain currently points to Tigerblog, but it’ll have it’s own stuff soon enough) is going to be a central repository for all of the historical writings from these various sites and it’ll also be a spot were the group gets together and discusses baseball’s past. This is probably my most ambitious project to date so I’m hoping to make it all work. The current plan is to have the site go live some time in 2007 (sounds like a long time) but hopefully it’ll be sooner rather then later.

So with that, I hope you’re as excited (or at least interested) as I am. Thanks for sticking with me this year.

Have a safe and happy New Year.

First, Rondell White signs with the Twins and now Jason Johnson signs with the Indians. I’m always leery of former players sticking in the division because that’s when they come back to haunt the Tigers. We’ll probably see Jason Johnson three or four times in 2006.

Jason Johnson is a solid pickup for the Indians. It doesn’t look like they’re going to re-up for Kevin Millwood so they needed someone to fill a spot in the rotation and that’s exactly what Johnson can do for a team. When I talked about Kenny Rogers improving the team, a lot of readers came to Johnson’s defense and said he was just as good as Rogers was last season. And while financial terms weren’t available, Johnson will come for a much cheaper price.

Johnson had an odd year last year. His first and second halves look almost identical. WHIP’s are close (1.31 first half vs. 1.39 second half) and his batting average against is pretty close as well (.281 vs. .291). So while both were down, they weren’t down that much to account for such a spike in his ERA (3.87 vs. 5.34). His season peeked on June 18 when he threw eight solid innings to improve to 5-5 with a 3.07 ERA. After that, he went 3-8 and his ERA ballooned to 4.54.

He’s never struck out a ton of guys, but he’s shown that the “lack of durability” tag he’s had is long gone. He also didn’t walk many batters last year. He’s thrown three straight seasons with at least 32 starts, and his innings pitched have gone up every year with 2005 being a career high 210. Jason Johnson is diabetic and last year he was allowed to wear an insulin pump during starts so this probably has a lot to do with the increase in his innings. It’s also a testament to a man with an apparant disability overcoming the odds to become an effective major league pitcher.

So I’ll be rooting for Jason Johnson unless he’s throwing against the Tigers. He was left for dead after a very rough spring in 2005, but he opened up a ton of eyes after he accepted the loss of the opening day start and got off to a nice first half. Now he’ll get a chance to play for one of the solid up and coming teams in the league.

I wish everyone a safe and happy holiday.

I would have preferred White move out of the division, but I think the Twins made an interesting move. They were in need of a bat to fill the DH spot, and we all know Rondell can hit. Now we’re going to have to see him 20+ times, and I just have a feeling he’ll come back to haunt the Tigers.

It’s a pretty incentive laden deal, but no matter what happens, he’ll walk away with $3.25 million. At the end of the day, it he meets all of his incentive clauses, he’ll have a two year deal worth $8.25 million.

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