its harder to find outstanding pitching than it is to find a slugger

What you’re really arguing back to me is for a higher payroll.

Under your scenario, the Tigers sign Verlander to an extended deal. Let’s say to 15 a year during the meat of his contract. (If they can do better than that, by all means, I want to keep Verlander too, you know). Combined with Cabrera, they now have anywhere from $35 to $37M tied up each season in just two players. As we’ve seen already, just having these two players is a guarantee of nothing. You have two bonafide stars, but that is not the same as creating a winning team.

Now under the Tigers’ apparently adjustments to a payroll closer to $100M, you have to populate the rest of your roseter with a payroll of around $65 million. (And remember, they’re also paying people on the 40 man roster. Jacob Turner, for instance, receives at least 800K in the minors.) The goal should obviously be, at the minimum, a playoff spot.

So working under those conditions, how do you do that? By having a lot of low-cost, talented contributing players. And how do you do that? By drafting, international signings or trading for them. And I’m going to say, you do a good job getting the right ones by having an outta-sight scouting department with more hits than misses.

So whether or not you trade Verlander, you are going to need strong scouting to compete without the higher payroll. (Actually, scouting is equally important with the higher payroll because of roster spot scarcity, but having money means you can pay for your mistakes earlier.)

On your first point, I am apt to agree with you that a starting pitcher can have a big impact. In fact, Verlander had the highest wins above replacement on the Tigers team in 2009, so that’s pretty valuable. But we have two circumstances at work.

The obvious one is that Verlander had his best career in the pros in 2009. He is young and quite talented, but expecting that incredible season yearly is probably asking too much. In the long run, I would expect him to contribute as much to the team as a top batter, but not greatly more.

The second is that of team depth. If you place a large bet on one or two players (in this case Cabrera and Verlander) and it turns out poorly (because of injury, an off year, etc) it is harder to make up for it if you do not have a lot of team depth. And the very act of placing the bet keeps you from being able to acquire that depth (unless you have consistently scouted and stocked your minor leagues with players who can step in.)

Just like investing, you can put all your money into one stock that could fly or crash, but you’re better off diversifying and building a better, safer portfolio.

So I guess, there you have it. My philosophy for building a team is not to pay premiums a few superstars, but to try to be strong across the board and have depth for when the unpredictable occurs. If you’ve done it right, you’ll get your stars without having to pay full price for them.

over all seems to be healthier and pitch better.

Sorry, I’m not buying it. If DD can’t sign Verlander to a reasonable deal (Greinke got 4 years, 38mm, so even giving Verlander more money would put him right around 4 years 40-60mm- I’d prefer 5 years at around 60 though) and we have to shell out 100 MILLION dollars for his contract, I say deal him. I’d rather have prospects and 100 million over 5 or 6 years than Verlander for 5, especially considering how good this organization is at developing pitchers.

gut instincts are better than numbers.

Those players weren’t prospects- they were junk.

In general, I am in favor of trading prospects for professionals when your team has a chance to bring home some hardware.

I also did not like the prospects returned for trading Granderson. (too many lefty relievers for my tastes).

However, each deal has to be judged on its own. The goal isn’t to acquire “prospects” so much as it should be to acquire young, cost-controlled talent, and to bring enough of it into the organization to give you the most options when scenarios occur.