Tigers manager Jim Leyland was out in the public in his fancy duds on a January night, so you know what that means. A new catcher in the family. Wednesday was the Mud Hens' Fandemonium in Toledo!
Friend of the blog and Toledo Blade reporter John Wagner was on hand, as Jim Leyland reacted to the loss of Victor Martinez to a torn ACL injury, and discussed what the Tigers might be able to do about finding a player to fill Martinez's spot on the roster and more
Leyland agreed with Dombrowski's comment about the loss coming as a "sock to the gut," and extended the metaphor a bit.
(If) you want to stay in the fight, you take a punch. We can take a punch.
MLB.com's Jason Beck was also on hand, and has many good quotes on his blog and in his story.
There are a lot of names out there. I'll say that. How good they produce anymore, I don't know. And I always ultimately leave that up to Dave. We've already had some discussions, I won't say who they are, of some guys internally. We've had some discussions about some guys outside the organization. ... I imagine there are a lot of agents that called Dave Dombrowski yesterday. All of a sudden there were a lot of guys that wanted to play in Detroit.
Leyland said that even he has heard from an agent trying to sell his player, though he passed the name onto GM Dave Dombrowski because it's above his pay grade.
Leyland also noted that filling the DH role specifically might not be the Tigers' plan.
Before Fandemonium, Leyland spoke with the MLB Radio Network, who asked him about the possibility of signing Johnny Damon.
"Johnny Damon obviously is a very professional guy. We did not sign him back last year. Our experience was very good with Johnny. He probably didn't produce quite as much as we thought he would. He was in and out in Tampa last year. Had some big big hits at the end of games to win games and everything. He's a veteran guy. Is he a prototype DH? I'm not sure about that. But certainly he can contribute to a club, and I'm sure that his name is going to come up."