Tigers Sign Justin Upton

[Snakebites]

K, time for a brain dump that I'm guessing about 5 people will see over the course of the next couple weeks:

So, with the addition of Justin Upton we now have, I count 7 players: Miguel Cabrera, Justin Verlander, Ian Kinsler, Victor Martinez, Justin Upton, Anibal Sanchez and Jordan Zimmermann making over 15 million dollars apiece this season, including Verlander and Cabrera in the upper 20s.

None of these players are expiring at the end of this season or at the end of next season, most don't expire for quite a bit longer than that.

We also have a lack of quality young players making below what they are worth to balance that out. The only players we have that are truly underpaid are JD Martinez, Jose Iglesius, and Jason McCann, and they won't stay underpaid forever. Either they're gone or our payroll swells even more.

What this amounts to is an absolutely massive payroll that is almost entirely devoted to a small handful of players, none of whom are expiring any time soon, and most of whom are either aging or struggling with injuries, or both, since those tend to go hand in hand a lot.

As much as I think Zimmermann and Upton could help us this year, they won't be enough unless they not only meet expectations but we also get strong years from multiple of our aging core players. The odds of that for next year might be decent, but the situation only gets more dire the farther ahead you look, and the fact that our farm system is still relatively bare despite some recent trades certainly doesn't help matters. As players get older, leave, or become irrelevant for various reasons, reinforcements will not be coming from the farm system to take their place. Its been happening for years now, and part of me was hoping we'd right that ship rather that throwing more money at the situation in the hopes of prolonging the old, decaying model, even if it meant taking a step back this year.

Just for some perspective- we were out of contention last year with Price and Cespedes in place of Zimmermann and Upton. In other words, this year is an absolute disaster if our other players don't bounce back. In fact, it will be worse, because Price and Cespedes were able to be flipped quite easily and even brought in decent returns- our other players won't be with their contracts.

So yeah, concerned....

[gusman]

You gotta consider that we added Norris for price and jv got better as the year went on. Price may have been decent himself but I think he brought down team moral.

Would you feel better if we had a different manager?


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[Snakebites]

You gotta consider that we added Norris for price and jv got better as the year went on. Price may have been decent himself but I think he brought down team moral.

Would you feel better if we had a different manager?


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There's every chance we could be good this year. If enough things go well we could be contenders this year. Its within possibility, though how likely is very difficult to say.

My post was mainly concerns about the longterm implications of all of this money invested in veteran players, and on our lack of farm system depth as a source of inexpensive talent to help offset those issues, though yes, that last paragraph also implies that next year isn't even a given, either.

I'm not really as down on Brad Ausmus as a lot of people are. Last year an awful lot went wrong that wasn't under his control. Not only have their been bad injuries, but I also think having the bullpen personnel he's had to work with so far in his tenure works against him too. Having a bad bullpen makes choices harder and makes their consequences more severe, and that's plagued Ausmus. Nothing makes a manager look bad like a bullpen that can't hold leads.

[gusman]

Can't wait for April 9th