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I think most Tiger fans at this point have given up on Dontrelle Willis as a pitcher. I know it’s tough to accept that the Tigers are going to pay him to: a) pitch in the minors, b) not pitch at all, c) pitch poorly in the majors or d) pitch for somebody else. I think when some people realize this they start to wonder what the Tigers could do with him, and for some reason a common “outside the box” idea is to turn him into an outfielder.
This is the idea I wish people would give up. Simply put, it’s idiotic. No, maybe that’s a little too harsh. It’s not idiotic. It’s just poorly thought out. He’s in the final year of his contract with the Tigers. That means if the Tigers were to turn him into an outfielder, they would be taking the spot of one of their minor league outfielders to train him to become a free agent. Stunting the development of a young player to take a long shot on an experiment that would likely pay off for somebody else - if anybody at all - is not the way to build a winning franchise.
Somebody making this argument might say that sure, it’s too late for the Tigers to do it now. They should have done it a year or two ago. When exactly would that have been? Certainly not 2008. Willis was coming to the Tigers in a huge trade and expected to be the third or fourth starter on a World Series team. He had struggled the year before, but the company line was he pitched fine once he was healthy. That was why the Tigers gave him his current big contract. They didn’t want him coming over in his final year of arbitration, figuring things out and then jumping ship for free agency.
Clearly, it wasn’t happening at the beginning of 2008. What about as the season went on, though? Please. He went down with an injury in his second start and didn’t start a game again until June. Sure, he got bombed in his first two starts back but this was a guy who had won Rookie of the Year and was a runner-up to the Cy Young just three years before. I’m sure he and everybody else figured this was something he could work through.
After trying to work things out down in the minors, he came back for a few outings in September. Things didn’t go well in those three starts, but in his last start of the season he earned a win while giving up three runs in five innings and change. When you’re a pitcher with Willis’s pedigree, that’s an embarrassing season to be sure. I don’t think it’s necessarily cause for blowing up your career as a pitcher, though.
Maybe you disagree. Maybe this, you think, is the offseason where the Tigers should have leaned on him to hang up the funky windup and see how well he could track down a fly ball. Think about that. If you’re paying a guy $10 million in the coming season and $12 million the season after that, which gamble do you take?
Do you take the gamble that he returns to being the pitcher that made you sign him to that deal in the first place? Or do you take the gamble that he can become a big league outfielder over the next two seasons? Which gamble do you think has a better chance of paying you back?
If you’re still saying making him an outfielder, let’s explore that. First, you have to convince him to do it. Dontrelle’s a great guy, right? He’d do whatever it took to help the team. Sure he’d give up pitching after getting to 68 wins by the time he was 26. I don’t mean to be a jerk about this, but athletes are notoriously stubborn about their abilities and expecting Willis to do this puts the idea on shaky ground immediately.
Let’s assume he would have, though. Even the biggest supporter of this idea would have to agree Willis would have needed to start in the minor leagues to make this conversion. He hadn’t played outfield in a game situation since high school, and I’m just assuming he did so there since he had a good arm, could hit and was left-handed. Again, this means you make a spot on one of your full season squads so Willis can be paid $22 million in a situation where the best you can reasonably expect is that he’d earn a spot as a fourth outfielder.
Because when this decision was made, you had Curtis Granderson as your center fielder of the future. That meant not only was Willis going to have to crack the majors as an outfielder, he was going to have to do it as a corner outfielder. American League left fielders hit .267/.338/.442 in 2009 and right fielders hit .278/.353/.451 according to Baseball Prospectus.
I don’t care how good a hitter you think Willis can be. The likelihood of him being that good after one season of at bats in the minors is incredibly remote. Look at how hard it’s been for the Tigers’ actual outfield prospects to crack the major league roster. Ryan Raburn had to show he could hit Triple A pitching for almost three years before he got his shot. Clete Thomas is in danger of starting 2010 in the minors this season and go ask Wilkin Ramirez or Casper Wells how easy it is to get regular at bats in Detroit.
The more you think about the reality of the situation of Willis and the Tigers, the more the idea falls apart. Obviously, it comes from people seeing what the Cardinals did with Rick Ankiel. That’s another flaw in the plan. The Cardinals were able to do it with Rick Ankiel because Ankiel was still a relatively cheap player when he was making the transition. He didn’t cost them much as he climbed through the minors as a hitter and they even had him on the cheap once he reemerged in the majors as an outfielder. The Tigers would have been paying Willis $10 million to chase balls in Lakeland and crossing their fingers that he could get 200 or 300 at bats as a bat off the bench making $12 million this season.
Like I said, it’s an idea that needs to be put to bed. If the Tigers release Willis and somebody else can convince him to take a shot as an outfielder on the Tigers’ dime (120 million dimes, actually) I salute everybody involved. It was never going to happen in Detroit, though, and it never would have been a good idea. Now let’s talk about converting Joel Zumaya back into a starter.
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