While doing my Sunday morning cruise through various newspaper websites, I tripped over this little pebble in Tracy Ringolsby's column from Friday's Rocky Mountain News. The bulk of the column focused on the players (and contracts) that San Francisco Giants' GM Brian Sabean will likely spend most of August trying to push onto other teams, as he did with Matt Morris. Sabean would have a fine month if Ray Durham, Dave Roberts, Randy Winn, and Omar Vizquel each found himself in a new uniform.
Also mentioned were several players throughout baseball that he expected to clear waivers and move to other teams, like Kyle Farnsworth, Bob Wickman, Mike Piazza, and Jack Wilson.
Ringolsby then mentioned three tidbits that he picked up in the trade deadline chatter, one of which was this:
That's the first time I'd seen Omar Vizquel's name come up in any sort of connection with the Detroit Tigers. (Although the gentlemen at Motown Sports brought him up this week.) Prior to that, as you know, the noise was about Jack Wilson and Clint Barmes.
But Vizquel's contract runs out after this season, and feels like he has at least one more year in him. So could The 40-Year-Old Shortstop end up in a Tigers uniform either this season or next? His 2007 numbers with San Francisco are .257/.311/.317, while batting in the second or eighth spots in the Giants' lineup. More importantly, he's made only six errors (#4 in range factor, #1 in zone rating) at shortstop.
And wouldn't that be an amusing coincidence, considering that Vizquel's failed physical with the Mariners back in 2003 killed a deal that would've sent Carlos Guillen to Cleveland? Three weeks later, Seattle shipped Guillen to Detroit, in maybe the most important deal that Dave Dombrowski has made for the Tigers.
So maybe bringing Vizquel over to Detroit would be Dombrowski's way of saying thanks.