So the Tigers have made an offer to Johnny Damon. Maybe, anyway. But there seems to be a lot of smoke on Twitter today, and where there's smoke, there's ... low-hanging fruit for blog posts.
Ken Rosenthal reports Tigers owner Mike Ilitch authorized an offer of $14 million over two years. That actually sounds exactly what I would expect Ilitch to do. He likes his star players, and Damon is a star player. He likes interfering with whatever plan Tigers GM Dave Dombrowski put together, and paying Damon $7 million (exact contract depending) to play in Detroit next season would seem to mess with the expected lower budget and youth movement. If it were true, anyway.
Rosenthal wrote:
If Damon agrees to a deal with the Tigers, it will mark the third time in recent years that Boras has coaxed a multi-year offer from Detroit when it appeared that the market had dried up for a star player. Similar scenarios unfolded with Rodriguez in 2004 and Ordonez in 2005.
A two-year, $14 million deal would match what the Yankees dangled to Damon as they were attempting to sign his potential replacement in the No. 2 spot, free-agent first baseman Nick Johnson.
TigsTown.com's Mark Anderson tweets the Tigers have a one-year offer on the table and a two-year offer remains an "absolute possibility." (For what it's worth, Anderson also wrote it would be no surprise if the Tigers signed Damon tomorrow.)
Earlier today, Newsday's Ken Davidoff tweeted the Tigers offered about $500k more than the Braves did. Atlanta's offer was said to be $2 million now, $2 million deferred.
So that's where we stand as of 4 p.m. or so on Thursday. Updates will follow on this post as necessary!