Here's the deal with Cruz - he brings a big stick but had only hit 30+ HR once prior to his 40 HR season last year. 2013 would have been a second 30+ HR season, except Cruz had that PED suspension that cut his season short. He's a .260 hitter most years, 25 HR, and he's NOT a good defender. Better than Torii Hunter right now, but then again so am I (not really, but Hunter was the WORST regular defender in baseball last year). Nelson "Boomstick" Cruz would have been a big signing for Detroit, but all wrong (aging, bad D, cashing in on his best season ever). Tempting, especially since signing him would assure the Tigers wouldn't have to face Cruz in October in a classic "if you can't beat 'em, join 'em" move.
That leaves Melky Cabrera and Nick Markakis as the 2 next-best FA outfielders on the market. Melky hits for average and isn't a disaster in LF, allowing JD Martinez to move to RF where he belongs. Markakis is strictly RF, although his defense isn't as good as it used to be. The problem with Nick Markakis is he peaked when he was 24. He hasn't hit over 15 HR since 2009, and after being a near-.300 hitter most of his career, he's been a near-.275 hitter the last 2 years. He's 30 yrs old and clearly on the down swing. The Orioles opted not to pick up his $17M option for 2015, so one supposes he's looking for a Nelson Cruz-like deal that averages $12M - $14M/yr. For a while it looked like Markakis might re-sign with Baltimore for less money, but that's looking less likely now. Melky is actually a year younger than Markakis, hits for a better average, and probably comes at a similar price. I'm not crazy about either player on this team for that money, but those are the best FA options right now. Fortunately, there's another possibility.
The Red Sox have reportedly expressed interest in Rick Porcello (who seems to be at the center of every Tigers trade rumor since he joined the team), and in exchange the Tigers would take LF Yoenis Cespedes off their hands and open up LF in Boston for Hanley Ramirez. The Tigers would be selling high on Porcello, and Cespedes has a good middle of the order bat (and would probably be Detroit's best defensive OF pending any Colby Rasmus signing). They would need to add another pitcher, but there is a lot of decent pitching to be had this offseason. Rajai Davis and JD Martinez weren't doing THIS last season:
I would love it if this deal went down. Yoenis Cespedes is basically the same hitter that Nelson Cruz is (.263/.316/.464, 25 HR power), he's got a bit more speed and a lot better defense, and he's 6 years younger and $4M cheaper. He'd be more likely to bat 5th or 6th in the lineup instead of 2nd, meaning the Tigers either bat the Rajai Davis/Gose platoon 2nd, groom Jose Iglesias to bat 2nd (ugh...), or the Davis/Gose platoon leads off and Kinsler bats 2nd. None of these are ideal situations. Probably the RIGHT move would be to bat JD Martinez 2nd and Cruz 5th... If this deal goes down instead of a Markakis/Melky signing, we'll see if Ausmus is flexible enough to shake up that Cabrera-Martinez-Martinez order that KILLED last year.
The word is the Tigers need some bullpen help as well. Dombrowski has basically said he'll tinker with it, but he likes it so far. Yikes. Well, they DO need a lefty, even Dombrowski knows that. The guy I really liked (and everyone else, apparently), Andrew Miller, is basically looking for closer money as a non-closer. So he's basically out. Another guy I liked, Zach Duke, signed with Chicago. There are still guys available, so Detroit isn't locked into re-signing Phil Coke (shudder), but maybe they might maybe kinda wanna make a move, huh?
***
Little personal interlude before getting into the BIG NEWS of the day, which I'm expecting to be announced in 2-3 hours...
Since running the Detroit Marathon a year ago, I've gotten a little out of shape. Not bad, but I didn't run for several months, and then I mixed some running with some lifting and was getting in shape to play against a bunch of guys mainly 10+ years younger than me in a soccer tournament. Then I tore my hamstring. Not bad, but it knocked me out of commission for 6 weeks. I rehabbed, but I wasn't able to get up & run anymore. I just lost the drive, and since the only time of day I can really do that is 5am, I needed more drive to get my butt up.
Anyway, what do you do when this happens? I work best when I have a deadline to shoot for, even a self-imposed one, so I signed up to run a 10k in November. That gave me JUST enough time to get into good enough shape to finish under 60 min (57:40, a 9:17/mi pace). A year ago I could have finished the same 10k roughly 10 minutes faster, but that was when I was in the best shape of my life, running-wise. I felt good afterward, and the 9:17 pace was right in the middle of the 9:00-9:30 I wanted to run.
My mom & youngest sister were running in the Lansing Turkey Trot 5k, and since I finished my 10k as well as I did, I signed up too. Having run a 9:17 pace for my 10k, my goal was to run a 26:00 5k (which is about an 8:30 pace). My sister, a pretty serious runner, wanted to run a time somewhere between 21:00-22:00 (because, you know, she'd been slacking off and was out of shape), and my mom wanted to run something in between 35:00-36:00 (this was her 2nd or 3rd race ever and she's just getting into this running stuff at the age of memephemrrr years old). Well, we blew all those goals out of the water. My sister ran a 20:41 time, mom ran a 34:41, and I ran a 24:40 (7:57 pace!).
That's me, mainly in grey with the bright blue gloves, crossing the line at the 17:46 mark of the video. My sister crosses at the 13:46 point (dressed in a yellow long-sleeve, black tights & earmuffs), and my mom crosses at about 27:48 (wearing a grey long-sleeve & light-blue pants). It was snowing lightly when the race started, but it actually felt a little warmer than the Kona Chocolate Run 10k I had run 2 weeks earlier. With about 4,000 people running, the start was pretty congested. My sister & I found a seam on the left and got by a bunch of walkers and slower runners, my sister quickly leaving me behind & relegating me to "slower runner" status.
The race was going well, but I really had little idea of how I was doing until I hit the 2 mile mark where my wife, daughter, and dad were cheering me on (thanks, by the way!). I was tracking for a finish somewhere in the 25's, so I felt pretty good. Then with about 1/3 of a mile left, I got a surge that I hadn't gotten while running in a long time. A lot of runners are strong finishers, getting an adrenaline rush as they near the finish. I'm no exception, except recently (recently being the last several months) I had just been plodding through the finish at the same pace. When the finish line came into view, I felt that old adrenaline rush kick in. It was pretty nice. We were all pretty happy about our times (to the point we kind of suspected the course wasn't as long as advertised), and it really started our Thanksgiving holiday off well.
***
Ok, now for THE BIG NEWS (this is called "burying the lead"): Brady Hoke is officially fired. Shocking, I know. The Free Press article was obviously written in advance and then the variable details filled in at the last minute, like an aging celebrity's obit.
This season was a dumpster fire, rolling down a hill into an abandoned graveyard filled with stacks of tires and oily rags. The Notre Dame game was the match that lit the fire, signaling the end of Hoke's career at Michigan. Sure, there were things he could have done that might have held off the eventual inferno, but fortunately he didn't do them and this particular agony is over.
Hoke was clearly out of depth from the beginning. After the Rich Rod fiasco Michigan wanted a local guy, a regular, relatable guy. A simple man of the earth, so to speak. They over-corrected. Hoke was too simple, too local & colloquial. He looked like Governor Chris Christie, only less focused. His voice sounded like Winnie the Pooh (more the Sterling Holloway Pooh than any of the subsequent Poohs), only with less precise English. He successfully appealed to the fan base by denigrating OSU and playing up TRADITION. He was successful in virtually nothing else.
Hoke's major flaw was he lacked the Big Picture view. He didn't wear a headset during games because he felt it separated him from having a personal connection with his players. In other words, he preferred to be separated from every other part of being a head coach so he could interact with his players more. This famously led to Hoke not being aware that his QB had sustained a concussion because no one up in the box was in his ear, saying, "Dude, Shane Morris needs to get checked out."
Another sign of Hoke's limited perspective was the Ohio State game last year. The 2013 U of M team should have finished a lot better than 7-6. They lost to Penn State in 4 OTs, they lost to Nebraska by 4, Iowa by 3, and #3 (at the time) OSU by 1. I thought they were going to get absolutely dumped by OSU, but the word was that they were opening up the playbook and pulling out all the stops. If that was "opening up the playbook", Michigan had played almost an entire season with the playbook half-closed. The goal of the season wasn't to win the B1G or get a New Year's Day Bowl game, it was to beat OSU. If Michigan had opened up the playbook in those other games, they probably win at least half of them. They would've had a chance vs. MSU, down by 7 going into the 2nd half (you don't beat the best defense in college football with a vanilla offense). They probably finish the regular season at 10-2 and Hoke (and offensive coordinator Al Borges) gain some job security.
I'm glad he's gone. Michigan needs to target not a "Michigan Man", but a Big Picture guy. A man with a plan. Hoke was supposed to clean the program up. He didn't. A stronger-type guy would be ideal. Really, Harbaugh would be perfect, although I'm not sure he wants to leave the NFL. But mainly, learn from what happened with Rich Rod. Learn from the mistakes of Hoke. And don't hire a guy just because he crosses himself when he evokes the name "Bo Schembechler".
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