The roster activity is going to start coming fast and furious as the Tigers trim down the guys in major league camp to get the players going north with the Tigers ready for the regular season. We saw evidence of this over the last few days as the Tigers sent down not only a number of players, but some guys viewed as having at least an outside shot at the 25-man roster.

On Thursday, we saw Armando Galarraga, Jacob Turner and Jay Sborz optioned down to the minors with Galarraga and Sborz going to Toledo and Turner to the Whitecaps. On Friday, Brennan Boesch, Casper Wells and Ryan Strieby were all optioned to Toledo and Audy Ciriaco went to Erie. Then yesterday, Alfredo Figaro was optioned to Toledo while Cody Satterwhite, Andrew Oliver, Gustavo Nunez, Kory Casto and Mike Rabelo were all re-assigned to minor league camp.

Let’s get the terminology out of the way first. The players on the 40-man roster get assigned to specific teams while the non-roster invites (those not on the 40-man) only need to be re-assigned without having a team assigned. With that question out of the way, let’s talk about the moves we’ve seen. We’ll go chronological.

I think we’re far enough into spring training to start talking about some of the roster decisions that still need to be made. I think it’s still too early on the pitchers, since the starters are only up to about four innings and the relievers’ samples are just too small. The position players, however, are starting to accumulate some at bats and get in some innings out on the field.

Let’s look at the position players who are believed to be locks for the roster:

C Gerald Laird
1b Miguel Cabrera
2b Scott Sizemore
3b Brandon Inge
SS Adam Everett
LF Johnny Damon
CF Austin Jackson
RF Magglio Ordonez
DH Carlos Guillen 
UT Ryan Raburn
UT Ramon Santiago

Daniel Fields moves positions

It was reported near the 2009 draft that it would take seven figures and a promise to let Daniel Fields try his hand at shortstop to sign him away from Michigan. Mark me down as somebody who’d be curious to find out whether that report was accurate. If it was, I’d love to know what convinced him moving to center field was necessary.

We’ve come to the time of year where there are going to be some cuts from the major league portion of spring training. We’ve also come to the time of year where certain players are not only going to leave the major league squad, but the organization as a whole. We've seen a little of both situations over the past few days.

Cut

Eric Roof and John Murrian were sent down to the minor league portion of camp on Tuesday. This is no surprise, as neither was competing for a big league spot. They were simply guys who put on the gear to accommodate all the pitchers in the early days of spring training.

Released

On Wednesday, Mike Hollimon was released. This was the kind of cut where the guy doesn’t come back. I was kind of bummed by this news. I always liked Hollimon and it seems not so long ago we were seeing Hollimon get a cup of coffee with the Tigers. After lighting up Double A pitchers in 2007, I wondered if there was a chance he could overshoot expectations and push for a second base job in the majors.

A utility role was always more likely, but injuries have dogged him the last couple years. As a result, he was simply passed on the depth chart by younger, healthier players with more upside. He now finds himself as a 27-year old who hasn’t played a full season since 2007 and needs to show he can avoid future injuries and has put the previous ones behind him.

Retired

Today, three players may have saved the Tigers a tough call to the front office when the final roster decisions were made at the end of the spring. Jonah Nickerson, Jeff Gerbe and Adrian Casanova each retired.

Nickerson received a rude introduction to the Double A level last year after pushing his way through West Michigan and Lakeland the prior two years. He seemed to have to work to figure out how to get hitters out at both of those levels, but finished with good numbers at each of them. I suspect his honest assessment of his 2009 season revealed even if he figured out Double A hitters, it probably just wasn’t going to happen at the higher levels.

Jeff Gerbe looked like he had a little promise as a ground ball pitcher who got a taste of Double A in just his second season of pro ball. That was 2007 and even that season shoulder problems dogged him, costing him over a month of time. In 2008, he had more shoulder issues and underwent surgery to try to fix it. That cost him that whole season and when he tried to pitch for Oneonta in 2009, he had major control problems. After five outings, a back problem sidelined him for the rest of the season. The injuries left him throwing just 15 innings in the past two years, and I’d imagine the shoulder problems had cut into the effectiveness of his sinking fastball.

Adrian Casanova probably hasn’t had big league dreams in quite a while. Drafted in the 40th round in 2006, he’s always been more of a backup and fill-in catcher and that was illustrated by his being shuffled around to all four full season squads in 2008. His 165 at bats in Lakeland and Erie last year were a career high, and I’m sure his role was very clear to him. He’ll turn 27 this season, and I’d imagine he decided he needed to move on from being a backup catcher in the minors.

Farewell

I’m sure it will never reach them, but I certainly wish each of the four players who won’t be back in Tiger uniforms the best. Here at Take 75 North, we pay a little more attention to their efforts and hope they realize they didn’t go unnoticed.

This will be my last day of attempting to become the king of all media. However, I'd just like to point out you can go here to find links to my spot on WTKA 1050's Big Show (March 9, Parts 6 and 7, about 15 minutes in all). I wasn't overly thrilled with hearing my own voice and all the "uh"s and "y'know"s but we really did cover a wide variety of topics.

I also wanted to let you know my debate about who will win the AL Central will be up here tomorrow morning, if all goes according to plan. Please allow these two bits to hold you over until I can get back to talking about what's going on in spring training and move on to looking at the Tigers' best pitching prospects. (Four more caterories: lefty and righty starters and relievers)

I hope at least a couple readers were able to catch me on WTKA 1050 out of Ann Arbor today. I was on a little after 5:00, but I think it lasted about fifteen minutes and I thought it went pretty well. One problem I continually have when I do these radio spots is I find myself introducing ideas - new even to me - that deserve to be teased out into a full post with supporting data and research.

For example, I'll be talking and before I know it I'm saying something that feels right but probably needs my usual one or two thousand word posts to be properly explored. Today it was the idea that going into the season with a couple rookies in the starting lineup and a lot of unknowns is exciting. Sure people are nervous about Jackson and Sizemore and a lot of other things, but that uncertainty goes both ways. They could fall on their faces, but they could also break out. That big upside wasn't really a possibility with Polanco and even with Granderson, all we could hope for was him approaching his 2007 season.

I fear I may have sounded a little kooky trying to make my point on the radio, but I truly believe that. The Tigers probably aren't even the best team in the worst division in baseball, but they have a fighting chance and they could be dangerous if they make the postseason. That's just as exciting to me as being the front runner. Heading into the season as a front runner really only leaves one outcome being considered a success. Even if you are the best team, that's going to end as a disappointment more times than not. For me, imagining what will have happened for the Tigers to be successful this season is the best part of being a fan.

All this shiny happy ranting brings me to the reason for the title of this post. Bloguin, the network hosting my website, has been running a series called the Great Bloguin Baseball Debate. You may have noticed the logo on the right side of the site designating me as a participant. In my "debate", I'm going against the writer of the Twins' site, Twinstarget.com. We're each stating our case for why the team we follow will win the Central Division, and I kind of enjoyed writing from what I see as the underdog's role.

I'm not sure when it will be up, but I will be sure to let you know when it is. If you're interested in seeing the debates that have already taken place, you can find them here. It should be some good reading while you have some down time at work. Not that I condone that sort of thing.

I just wanted to let anybody who might be interested I'm supposed to be on WTKA 1050 tomorrow around 5:00 pm. I'm supposed to be talking about Scott Sizemore and the Tigers' youngsters, but the conversation could always spill over into other things. So, if you find yourself in their listening area on the way home from work, give it a listen.

If you do tune in and I'm not on there, there was probably a breaking sports story or they found a better known guest. You know, like anybody else. I'll try to post the audio if I get it afterward and can figure out how to put it on the site.

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.

We finally come to right field as we close up the position prospects. It's not the strongest of the Tigers' outfield spots, to say the least, but it will provide some interesting prospects to watch as Tiger fans wonder who might step into the position should Magglio Ordonez's contract ever stop adding option years. Ages are as of 4/1/10.

Brennan Boesch, Erie
24, 6’6”, 210, Bats: Left

PA: 571
AVG: .275
OBP: .318
SLG: .510
XBH%: 42.1
BB%: 5.8
K%: 22.2
wOBA: .367

Boesch opened himself up to some locker room teasing by getting a shiner from a wind blown flyball in the first game of the spring. If he can unleash some of that big time power that led to his hitting 61 extra base hits last season - including 28 homers - he may be remembered for something else before spring breaks.

What he’s unlikely to shake by the time the teams head north, though, are what seem like his struggles with pitch recognition and plate discipline. He struck out 127 times last season, which as you can see above was almost four times more than the number of walks he drew. The strikeouts are going to suppress his batting average and the lack of walks is going to keep his on-base percentage down around .300 even when he hits .275. That batting average, by the way, was his highest mark since his pro debut in Oneonta back in 2006.

Boesch is clearly a good athlete who can match that power with enough speed to get him seven triples and 11 stolen bases in 13 tries. I will just need to see him either work out or work around what are reported to be huge holes in his swing to believe he can do it.

Avisail Garcia, West Michigan (Lakeland, 3 G not shown in stats below)
18, 6’3”, 190, Bats: Right

PA: 315
AVG: .264
OBP: .289
SLG: .324
XBH%: 17.7
BB%: 2.5
K%: 22.2
wOBA: .279

Garcia’s numbers last season with West Michigan were pretty awful. I’m a numbers guy when it comes to prospects and I’m not going to say they weren’t. The number that has him rated as the Tigers’ second best right field prospect, though, is 17. That’s what he was when he broke into the Whitecaps’ lineup and that speaks to both his talent level and what the Tigers think of him as a player.

That allows me to overlook the ridiculous strikeout-to-walk ratio and the fact that he made ten errors as an outfielder. This kid is big, tore up the VSL when he was 16, going on 17, and made his domestic debut in a full season league. That makes me very interested to see what he’s going to do in a second go-around in the Midwest League.

Kody Kaiser, Lakeland
24, 5’8”, 180, Bats: Both

PA: 193
AVG: .267
OBP: .363
SLG: .461
XBH%: 40.9
BB%: 11.9
K%: 28.5
wOBA: .383

Kaiser has probably been described as a spark plug or something similar a lot in his career. I’d love to see him play because the stats paint a picture of a guy who just tears around the field. He hits for good power, especially when you consider his size. He’s either fast or a very good baserunner, since he has stolen 54 bases in about the equivalent of two seasons as a pro. The problem is the last thing that puts that image in my head is the fact that he strikes out almost a quarter of the time he comes to the plate.

So you see good power, good speed and a ton of strikeouts and you immediately think he’s just a good athlete who can fight his way through being clueless about the strike zone. That’s another interesting thing about him. He’s drawn walks in over ten percent of his career plate appearances. When you think about it, it’s kind of a shame a player who must be exciting to watch run the bases walks to first or the dugout so much of the time.

In the end, as exciting as I assume Kaiser is to watch as a player, it’s hard to get excited about his chances as a prospect. His listed age is as of 4/1, like always, but that’s deceptive because he turns 25 five days later. A shoulder injury put him out for the season last year in June and now he’s a guy who’s sitting at an advanced age without having proven he can make the tough jump to Double A.

Position Summary: I’m not too crazy about what the Tigers’ minors are offering in right field. Mark Anderson pointing out that Steven Moya will probably move over there in 2010 helps the excitement level for the position.

Still, I’m skeptical of Boesch’s ability to overcome his plate discipline. While Garcia is intriguing, he’s also very clearly a long ways off from a major league roster. I think there’s a big dropoff in potential from Garcia to Kaiser and after Kaiser, well, I didn’t do an honorable mention if that tells you anything. Maybe I’m being too pessimistic. Maybe Alexis Espinoza or Chao-Ting Tang surprise me. I’m just going to need to see a good season from each before they’ll show up in this type of article.

Casey Fien was plucked from the waiver wire by the Boston Red Sox. Some people probably view other members of the Tigers' 40-man roster as more expendable than Fien, but I'm not terribly concerned about this loss. The main reason is I seriously doubt Fien would have cracked the Opening Day roster for the Tigers. The Tigers appear to have too many other relievers in front of him on the depth chart. In fact, I'm not certain a couple relievers who aren't on the 40-man yet aren't better relievers than Fien right now. The one who comes to mind first when I say that is Robbie Weinhardt.

Now, it might make you a little nervous to know a very smart and well run club like the Red Sox were the team to take Fien. I say, "Meh". He's a right-handed reliever with good control and command. Perhaps they think his skill set is well suited to Fenway Park and an outfield that should be able to run down a lot of fly balls now that they've added Mike Cameron. Or maybe they plan to hold on to him long through March and hope he slips through waivers when the wire is flooded with activity later in the spring. Whatever Boston's reasoning, it doesn't change the fact that this isn't a big deal to Detroit.