To be honest, I really don’t like to speculate on offseasons. Especially offseasons of previously aggressive teams, with so many quality players remaining on the market. I just recently heard about a significant trade that came within a hair of happening between two hopeful contenders, and no one ever caught wind of it as a rumor. There’s a whole lot that goes on as an industry secret, so I really don’t know what teams are up to. But, forced to speculate, I’d say the Tigers seem just about finished. I don’t think that’s a team that’s going to make another splash, and the roster looks more or less like a finished product.

And so, for the Tigers, it’s been an interesting and uncharacteristic sort of offseason. The Tigers, unquestionably, are in position to contend, and to contend for the World Series. Teams like that, you usually see add players and add payroll. But for Detroit it was more an offseason of acting on fiscal responsibility. The biggest name involved in their offseason is Prince Fielder, and he was sent away. They waved goodbye to a pair of quality free-agent middle infielders. They dealt a good starter to D.C. for a young and underwhelming package. Overall, the Tigers saved some money and set themselves up better for the future. It was odd timing, but there’s an angle that might help explain the thought process. At least, it’s an angle that recognizes what the Tigers still are.

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Joaquin Benoit got a two-year, $15.5 mmillion deal to pitch for the Padres this week. The signing didn’t make many waves — after all, Benoit has been a very good reliever the last three years. But three years ago, Benoit’s three-year deal seemed like a head-scratcher. Are there any multi-year reliever signings going on right now that we might look back on as favorably as Benoit’s with the Tigers? Are there any past relievers, future closers still on the market? Who’s the next Joaquin Benoit?

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According to Ben Nicholson-Smith of Sportsnet, the Tigers have agreed to terms on a two year contract with Rajai Davis. Davis will give the Tigers a little outfield depth and form a nifty little platoon with Andy Dirks in left field. Davis isn’t a great hitter, but he’s historically done well against left-handers, and should be a nice complement to the underrated Dirks.

The Tigers aren’t really signing Rajai Davis for his bat, though. They’re signing him for his legs, because those are the reasons he’s still employed in Major League Baseball. They’re the reason he’s valuable.

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Since Monday night, the Tigers have gone to considerable lengths to remake a pitching staff that ranked among the game’s best in 2013. On Monday, it was the confounding trade that sent Doug Fister to Washington for some stocking stuffers; on Tuesday, reports surfaced that they’d signed closer Joe Nathan to a two-year deal, after reportedly being rebuffed by Brian Wilson.

Dave went over the Fister deal already, so we won’t rehash it here, except to point out that it’s quite likely that Drew Smyly will shift from the bullpen to the rotation to replace Fister. At the moment, that means the Detroit bullpen, a source of so much concern last year, has added Nathan via free agency and Ian Krol in the Fister trade, while subtracting Smyly and free agents Joaquin Benoit and Jose Veras. They now have a closer, but do they have a better bullpen? Read the rest of this entry »

The Tigers have six good starting pitchers, if you believe that Drew Smyly should be able to transition back to starting after a successful pitstop in the bullpen. Steamer projects all five of their current starters for at least +3 WAR next year, and it’s not at all crazy to think that Smyly will be a +2 to +3 WAR pitcher as a starter, given his track record and stuff. The desire to move Smyly back into the rotation meant that had someone to go. For the last few months, the rumored trade candidates have been Rick Porcello and Max Scherzer.

Those guys can officially unpack their bags, however, as the Nationals have solved the Tigers pitching problem by relieving them of Doug Fister instead. And they did it at a shockingly low price, considering that Fister is one of the game’s most underrated pitchers. But let’s deal with what they gave up first.

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The Rangers traded Ian Kinsler for Prince Fielder. You know this already. I’ve already written a post about this trade, in fact, detailing why I love this deal for the Tigers. If baseball trading were a zero sum game, this would mean that I hate this move for the Rangers, since a big win would have to be offset by a big loss on the other side. But baseball trades are not a zero sum game. There are mutually beneficial trades. The Rangers are now hoping this is one of those deals where both sides get better.

The Rangers had to move a middle infielder. They couldn’t go into 2014 with Jurickson Profar as a super utility guy behind Elvis Andrus and Ian Kinsler again. They had three starting middle infielders, and Kinsler wasn’t interested in becoming a starting first baseman, so shifting him over to make room for Profar probably wasn’t an option. Someone had to go.

So, in that sense, this deal is not quite as straight forward as it is from the Tigers perspective. Detroit turned a +3 WAR player into a +3 WAR player and saved a bunch of money in the process. For the Rangers, though, the context is the reason the deal got done, and simply comparing the value of the player going out with the value of the player coming in doesn’t work. This deal was made because of the other players on the roster, the ones not getting traded. So let’s try and sort this all out.

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(I decided to break this deal down in two separate posts, because there are too many angles to fit it all into one. Texas fans, we’ll talk about this deal from the Rangers perspective in a separate article.)

The Detroit Tigers were a very good baseball team, but with Omar Infante heading for free agency and too much money committed to other players to keep him around, they had a hole at second base. They also had too many designated hitters, with Victor Martinez’s presence forcing both Prince Fielder and Miguel Cabrera to play the field even when they really couldn’t. With Cabrera’s body breaking down in September, it became pretty clear that something had to give, and an obvious solution was moving one of their DHs could open up some money for them to fill their second base hole.

Instead of making a series of smaller transactions that accomplished that goal, the Tigers instead just found a way to directly exchange Prince Fielder for Ian Kinsler, filling their hole at second base, freeing up their DH logjam, and saving enough money to potentially keep the rest of their core in tact. This is a pretty fantastic start to the off-season for Dave Dombrowski.

Before we get too much further into the commentary, let’s break down the specifics of what swapping Prince Fielder for Ian Kinsler actually works out to.

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This evening, Jon Heyman broke the story that the Detroit Tigers are on the verge of sending Prince Fielder to the Texas Rangers for Ian Kinsler. We don’t have all of the details yet, so there could be more to it, but at the very least, it is a very, very interesting trade. Dave Cameron will have more on this later, but let’s take a brief look now, shall we?

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The 2013 season was a banner season for players going on the disabled list. The DL was utilized 2,538 times, which was 17 more than the previous 2008 high. In all, players spent 29,504 days on the DL which is 363 days more than in 2007. Today, I take a quick look at the 2013 DL data and how it compares to previous seasons.

To get the DL data, I used MLB’s Transaction data. After wasting too many hours going through the data by hand, I have the completed dataset available for public consumption.  Enjoy it, along with the DL data from previous seasons. Finally, please let me know of any discrepancies so I can make any corrections.

With the data, it is time to create some graphs. As stated previously, the 2013 season set all-time marks in days lost and stints. Graphically, here is how the data has trended since 2002:

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When the American League Cy Young Award winner is announced on Wednesday night, Detroit’s Max Scherzer is almost certainly going to defeat Yu Darvish of the Rangers and Seattle’s Hisashi Iwakuma, potentially by a lot. Look at those wins! Twenty one of them, against only three losses! There’s absolutely no question that some percentage of the voters are going to simply see “21-3 for a playoff team” and cast their ballot without a second thought. It’s sad, even infuriating, but it’s true. Even though pitcher wins don’t matter, even though we’ve made progress from things like peak-level Johan Santana losing out to Bartolo Colon in 2005 because the Twins weren’t very good that year, in this context: yeah, they still do.

That fact of life has caused a nearly unlimited amount of aggravation among many of us, but it can also obscure this very important truth: just because Scherzer had the best record and we hate that many voters will focus on that, it doesn’t automatically mean that he’s not actually the best pitcher in the American League. He might be, or he might not be — there’s plenty of candidates — but nor is his likely victory going to be some sort of travesty. Read the rest of this entry »