Jeff Frazier ... welcome to the big leagues

Since Glenn Ezell unexpectedly retired in the middle of the draft in June (he says he didn’t quit), there have been 96 moves (reassignments, free agent signings, or releases). If you add in the draft related moves there are close to 150. Add in another 20 or so that are related to major league promotions. That’s a tremendous amount of movement during the season in just over a month’s time.

Larish being DFA’ed bugs me a bit. True that he looked totally over matched at the plate in the recent series. But here is a player that has hit and hit for power at every level he has played at, and he supplements a good batting average with another 100 point in his OBP by drawing the BB about 10 per cent of the time. He has a plate discipline that most of our prospects are lacking. At every level he has played, it takes him time to get going. It can NOT be said that he was given an opportunity in the major leagues. I’d have called him up ahead of Sizemore, and I’d have used him at third ahead of Peralta.

Things are being shaken up, and they need to be. There are vacancies all over the diamond after this year, and not one, by my count, prospect is ready to fill the vacancies other than maybe Boesch.

This Tigers team was built with no depth. There is a ton of money and talent at the top, but especially with the position players, there isn’t a solid core of role players and regular MLB talent, nor is there a farm system capable of providing endless replacements.

This isn’t a knock on Dombrowski. He built as he could, focusing on pitching talent because that comes at a higher premium, and is not as hit-and-miss. Developing position player is a crapshoot, so we haven’t played; he built the team with established guys. He signed free agents, and traded some of those guys and spare parts for established B+ guys. If Brennan Boesch doesn’t Shelton-out, he’s the first MLB regular position player the Tigers’ farm system has produced since Granderson (not counting Maybin, who’s still not MLB ready despite an Encarnacion-ish bag of tools).

This is a fine way to build a ballclub, but comes with a caveat: when a few prize horses break down, the thing can’t move.

This series against Tampa Bay wasn’t about Tigers playing badly. We’ve seen plenty of those kinds of series to know them when we see them. This is about talent. How do we know? Because they starting intentionally walking Miguel Cabrera, knowing the likelihood of a bat after him doing any damage is rather slim. Because Will Rhymes is batting 2nd. What is Will Rhymes?

Will Rhymes is the Nick Sheridan of Tiger baseball. You like him, sure. You may even point out that he’s not the worse player. But he is clearly less talented than every other Major League ballplayer. If he’s the guy you’re stuck batting before the No. 1 RBI-producing machine in the American League, then, well, your team is not good.

The Zumaya injury was horrible. It made the Tigers go from a B+ team to a B, which in the AL Central is the difference between contending and spending September knowing where .500 is. Take Magglio and Inge and Guillen out of that lineup and plug in replacement players, and now the Tigers are a decidedly A- pitching team and D+ hitting team. Voila: your best hitter’s OBP skyrockets with IBBs, and a progression of 4-2 losses makes .500 start looking pretty damn good.

There’s no “throwing in the towel” in this. Simply put, we are fielding a team now that can pitch like 2006 but hits like 2003. If you think we’re really going to just make it through this spell, you’ve got too much faith in a misplaced ‘h’ in the name Jhonny.

HUUUUUGE difference for Jeff. Frazier is not on the 40 man roster, so someone has to be taken off. If not Larish, then who?

I tend to side with the Tigers on most of these moves. This isn’t the first time Larish has gotten been up with the big club, and the Tigers have seen enough to be apparently convinced he’s a 4A player. At 27 years old, the days of Larish being a prospect have passed.

As Kurt, said, DD is trying to catch lightning in a bottle..much as they did with Boesch. But I’m not expecting much from Frazier either.

This!

They finally got tired of waiting for him to come around. Wilkin and Larish have been huge wastes of talent so far.

Rotoworld is wrong about him being optioned. If he wasn’t then someone else has to come off the roster.
But Jason is incorrect about him being out of options. His contract was purchased in 2008. He was optioned in 2008 and 2009. This would be his third option year, but he hasn’t been optioned yet.

Rotoworld reports that Larish was optioned.
Mlive.com reports generically that he’s been “sent back to Toledo”.
  The Tiger website says, in the transaction list, that he has been DFA’ed.
Jason Beck also says that he has been DFA’ed. Jason also says he’s out of options.
Eddie Bajek shows that he’s not out of options.
The transaction blog shows his contract was purchased in 2008, and he was optioned in 2008 and 2008.

Here’s Tigerdog’s verdict
Larish has been designated for assignment, but he is not out of options.
Rotoworld is wrong, Mlive is wrong, and Jason Beck is also mistaken.
Eddie Bajek is correct (on detroittigersthoughts.com) and Lynn Henning is correct.

Solved.

He confirms that Larish has an option left. He hasn’t corrected his blog yet.

Hey Jeff!