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.

Permalink | Posted in 2006 Tigers | 2 Comments »

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…..

Permalink | Posted in 2006 Tigers | 4 Comments »

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.

Permalink | Posted in 2006 Tigers | 5 Comments »

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.

Permalink | Posted in 2006 Tigers | 11 Comments »

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.

Permalink | Posted in 2006 Tigers | 6 Comments »

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.

Permalink | Posted in 2006 Tigers | 3 Comments »