The Tigers inked shortstop Ramon Santiago to a one year, $825,000 deal that means the Tigers will avoid arbitration. Santiago is a slick fielder with good range and it looks like he’ll share time with Adam Everett, who the Tigers signed earlier this week. Everett has been deemed the starter, but it wouldn’t surprise me if Santiago gets his share of starts if he shows he can do what he did last year with the bat (.282 average and four homers in 124 at bats).
The non-tender deadline is tonight and Jason Beck reports that the Tigers might not have any this year. If there is one, it’ll probably be Aquilino Lopez. Like Beck talks about in the column, what’s just as important is who’s a non-tender from other teams (with Takashi Saito being one player who could hit the market).
For one last tidbit, Jon Paul Morosi runs down Wil Rhymes fantastic season in the Arizona Fall League this year. It still wasn’t good enough to get him on the top ten prospect list though.
***UPDATE***
The non-tender list is out, and the Tigers have none so they must have made an offer to everyone, including Aquilino Lopez. There are some interesting names on there, including Dodgers closer Takashi Saito as well as a slew of starters like Denny Bautista, Chuck James, Tim Redding and Chris Capuano. Also making the list was former Tiger Wil Ledezma. The Rays gave up on Jonny Gomes and the Rockies, who dealt for him just a couple of years, failed to offer a deal to Willie Taveras.
***ANOTHER UPDATE***
Now it looks like Lopez wasn’t offered a deal after all.