Should the Tigers pursue Zack Greinke?

On Thursday, we learned that the Tigers were not one of the teams Kansas City ace and former Cy Young Award winner Zack Greinke could block a trade to. This kicked off speculation by MLive.com's Steve Kornacki whether Detroit had enough trade chips in the farm system to make such a deal happen.

According to a source familiar with Kansas City’s approach, the club is looking for a blue-chip pitching prospect capable of joining its rotation by 2012 and help up the middle.

Detroit is a player because left-handed pitcher Andy Oliver definitely fits that bill, and right-hander Jacob Turner could be ready by 2012. The Tigers also have three solid middle-infield prospects in Will Rhymes, Scott Sizemore and Danny Worth.

I don't think it will happen. I'm not certain the Tigers are really ready to give up their top pitching prospects all over again, especially since this time in Turner they've got a prospect with fewer flaws than Andrew Miller, Eugolio de la Cruz and Humberto Sanchez had when they were moved.

I'll admit to you, I can dream with the best of them, and I would really enjoy seeing a rotation that included Justin Verlander, Max Scherzer, RIck Porcello and Zack Greinke in it. Some fans who only use traditional stats may be a bit turned off by Greinke. After all, he doesn't even have a winning record, right? But pitching wins is a team stat, and Greinke has the misfortune of being an ace pitcher on a bottom-dwelling organization. He's suffered from below-average fielding behind him yearly during his career. He makes up for that by being a strikeout machine, although that dipped from 25% of plate appearances to merely 20% in 2009. You really can't just look at the most recent year when evaluating baseball players. Greinke's FIP the past three years was 3.34, 2.33 and 3.56. But I can't believe I'm actually arguing Greinke is good. That should be obvious.

Turner and Oliver just hope to have his career. Turner has a much better shot at it. With potential plus pitches across the board, a ceiling of "ace" and the likelihood he'll be written into the top two lines of a team's rotation, he's really everything you want in a prospect and he'll be under club control for six seasons. If potential turns the actual, he's going to be the kind of player any organization would like to own. Oliver has more flaws, needs more polish and projects to the middle of a rotation at best. Still, there's value in that and he could provide a boost to the Tigers when he arrives as a fixture in the rotation.

Getting back to the point, it would be a lot of fun to have Greinke in a Tigers uniform but it's not going to happen.

What's your take on the possibility?