Quote:
Originally Posted by Prison Bitch
Where the f*** are they getting all this $ for big names? Their team revenues weren't all that much higher than ours were. I guess they have a bunch of min-wage guys in their pen + bench, but still they have some serious money committed to few guys
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Mike Illitch is incredibly rich and doesn't care about breaking even.
What surprises me most is that I really thought the Tigers were going away from the stars and scrubs approach and were going to try to balance things out a little bit more. Apparently not.
They WILL have Daniel Norris in their rotation next year, who will be a league minimum guy. But Verlander, Sanchez, and now Zimmermann will be paid somewhere around $70 million combined. Throw in the bad contract of Victor Martinez and the big (deserved) contract of Miguel Cabrera, and they've got 5 guys making about $115 million.
They'll be league min at 3B and SS, where Castellanos and Iglesias hold things down. Maybin and Gose aren't THAT expensive, and JD Martinez hits arbitration for the first time. Ian Kinsler is set to make $14 million.
This means they'll go cheap at C, I guess, and probably not do much in the pen other than pay K-Rod.
Looks to me like a team that is very similar to the ones the Tigers have fielded for several years... lot of star/elite talent, but a weak pen and not much depth. If one of those studs gets hurt (Miggy) or just isn't very good anymore (Verlander, Victor Martinez), it falls apart.