Warthog if you look at what the Tigers have done in recent years they have plenty of financial support to make the signings that they have made in recent years. For starters the Pudge deal was totally in favor of the Tigers. There is a clause specific to his back that if he misses X games they can get out of the contract completely, no buyout, just void it if they choose. It was a VERY club-friendly contract.Warthog wrote:Even though the topic should not be in the football football forum, I feel compelled to reply with my opinion. For the record, I am an Indians fan. But my thoughts about the Tigers have nothing to do with that. As a baseball fan, I just think the Tigers are digging themselves a HUGE hole. They are throwing money around like they are the Yankees, which they surely are not. Yes, the Pudge deal worked good last year, but what happens when his back flares up this season (which it is due to happen) and he plays about 65 games? And Percival's arm isn't what it used to be and they gave him a three year deal. You gonna be happy about that in three years? Pavano has always had the "potential" tag on him. Now in his free agent season he finally delivers something close to what his expectations were. And the Tigers jump in and give him $12 mil a season when no one else is near that amount? I just think they are trying to buy some wins, but that will be a financial disaster very soon.
Pavano has been very good for 2 years now, but I worry about his health. If healthy he's well worth that cash.
But more to what I started with. The Tigers, for as bad as they have been, have NOT been near the bottom in payroll. Detroit is a HUGE baseball city and not a small market team. If they have a winner they can spend in the 90+ million range a season. They gained huge attendance numbers last year, and adding a couple more top notch FAs would continue that trend this season.
More importantly their money is coming off the books. Matt Anderson was making $5 a year, and pitched for Toledo last year, that's gone now. Damion Easley got a buyout of like $18 million, that is now off the books. Higginson is in the last year of his receiving $14 million, next year he's gone. The Tigers are not raising their payroll that greatly when they take on these big names, they are simply replacing super overpaid lousy players, with slightly overpaid good players.
This is definitely not the way to build a franchise, but the Randy Smith era put us in such a hole it'd be 5 years before we could hope to draft our way into contention. Signing these sorts of players can bring us to respectability instantly and bring back some fans, until we can start getting some of our prospects up through the system. These guys won't be winning us any playoff spots, but it makes our team interesting for the forseeable future.
Just look at the payroll numbers. Despite adding Pudge, Guillen, White, Percival, Pavano (?), etc their payroll is not appreciably more than what it was 2 years ago when they lost 119 games. What they are doing now is spending money on decent players rather than wastes of space.
