Our dear friend Jon Paul Morosi is going to need a few of rest when he finishes up with all the phone calls, texts, tweets and stories he's filing for FoxSports.com. I can barely keep up with him. So here's the new one.
Detroit is "in active trade talks" with the Seattle Mariners over a starting pitcher, believed to be Doug Fister, and possibly a middle reliever. Which would explain why the Mariners have been scouting the Tigers' lower minor league levels so much. Morosi followed up his tweet by saying it wouldn't take Jacob Turner. Which is good because that wouldn't happen anyway.
Fister is under club control for a couple of years and would make a fine back-of-the-rotation pitcher. I wrote more about him a few days ago. I'll just quote from me.
Fister is a super-sized righty, a 6-foot-8 27-year-old for the Seattle Mariners. He's sporting a 3.30 ERA this year and career ERA of 3.81. He doesn't strike out a lot of batters -- 5.44 K/9 or 14.6% K/PA. He doesn't walk many either, 2.0 BB/9 or 5.4% BB/PA. His strand rate is about normal. He is more of a ground ball pitcher, with 45% GB and 35% FB this year. His peripherals translate to both xFIP and SIERA of just under 4.00, so that's pretty good. He throws a fastball that averages the upper 80s, and his secondary pitches this year are all valued at average to slightly above.
I guess I could get behind this kind of move. As always, depends on the cost, but you could do a lot worse.