A marriage of convenience?

Did any of you catch this? (I found it through Buster Olney's ESPN blog.) Apparently, the Tigers weren't Todd Jones's first choice, either.

From Sunday's Atlanta Journal-Constitution (scroll to the bottom):

Braves officials weren't amused by the comments of veteran reliever Todd Jones after he signed a two-year, $11 million contract with Detroit on Wednesday. The Marietta native, who writes a column for The Birmingham News, told the paper he wanted to close for Atlanta, but the Braves offered only a one-year, $2.5 million contract.

"I did everything in my power to be available [to the Braves]," said Jones, 37, who had an improbable resurgence last season with Florida, recording 40 saves and a career-best 2.10 ERA. "I wanted to come home for a severe discount and they didn't even want to hear it."

It's okay, Todd. We're still happy to have you back in Detroit.

Winter wonderland in Dallas? Bah, humbug in Detroit?

Please tell me Kenny Rogers isn't the only free agent starting pitcher the Detroit Tigers are going to sign. Please tell me they're not opting for Rogers over guys like Matt Morris and Kevin Millwood, and that there's still a spot open in the rotation for one of them.

The Tigers also signed their former closer, Todd Jones. Like Out of Bounds, the Sports Dude, and the Detroit Tigers Weblog, I like this move. It's not as Whoo-Hoo! Exciting! as signing B.J. Ryan, Billy Wagner, Kyle Farnsworth, or Tom Gordon may have been, but I think those guys received bat$#!+ crazy contracts that blew the market for free agent relievers out of control. Want some evidence of that? Jones reportedly signed a two-year deal worth $11 million.

Though I think the price tag was a bit high, the Tigers needed someone dependable to pitch in the ninth inning - not just to save games, but also to buy time while they figure out whether Fernando Rodney is capable of being the future closer. Based on past impressions, Jones also seems like the sort of guy who would be willing to tutor Rodney toward eventually assuming that role. Maybe he'd even agree to step aside for the good of the team if Rodney was ready to take over.

And if they were paying $10 million a year for a closer, that would never happen. He'd still be pitching - even if he stunk like soft European cheese.

But the hot stove league is making me sweat. Baseball's winter meetings have been busy, with teams making all sorts of deals and signings. And the activity is getting even more frenzied. The Red Sox traded Edgar Renteria to Atlanta, just a year after signing him. The Rangers traded Alfonso Soriano to the Nationals for Brad Wilkinson and Terrmel Sledge. The Blue Jays added Lyle Overbay (whose swing is made for Comerica Park) to their offseason shopping cart, joining A.J. Burnett and the aforementioned Ryan.

Did Javier Vasquez turn down a trade to Detroit? If the price was Curtis Granderson and Joel Zumaya, Vasquez probably did the Tigers a favor. Yet Dave Dombrowski says such a deal was never in the works. The Mets say the Tigers were asking for too much in return for Pudge Rodriguez, which strikes me as curious. Is this an indication that they don't really want to deal him? Are they hoping his attitude will improve under a new manager? Me, I would've settled for that big apple that pops up after a Mets home run. That thing is cool. But maybe that's why I'm not the Tigers' GM.

And am I being a total Tigers slappy for looking at the deals the Red Sox and Mets made with the Marlins for Josh Beckett and Carlos Delgado, respectively, and thinking that Detroit could've made similar offers? Should I wipe the stripes off my glasses?

But maybe I shouldn't panic. Beyond Boxscores came up with a shopping list more loaded and more ambitious than my Amazon wish list, and there are still plenty of items left among the 20 choices. (Brian also wonderfully explains the two-sided coin that is offseason Tigers fandom in this post.)

Can we get at least one of them, Dave? Another general manager is getting all the heat in this town right now. Maybe you've heard about that? So you might be lurking under the radar a bit. But you don't want it to get to that point, do you? Dave?

10 days later

Ultimately, firing Alan Trammell was the right move for the Detroit Tigers. I know that. Only someone who grew up totally idolizing the man, wears a Tram jersey four days a week, and still has posters of the man taped all over his bedroom (or den) walls would completely deny that a change had to be made.

I certainly acknowledge that the Tigers' abysmal record can't be entirely blamed on Trammell. Due to injuries, he never had his best lineup together for more than a handful of games. Having players like Carlos Guillen, Rondell White, Magglio Ordonez, and Troy Percival healthy for a full season likely would've pushed the Tigers closer to a .500 record.

(Photo by Steve Perez/ The Detroit News)

But losing control of the team after Kyle Farnsworth was traded to Atlanta was Trammell's biggest failing as manager. The players interpreted the deal as giving up on the season, an excuse which consumed the team and overwhelmed Trammell's management skills. Pudge Rodriguez became a petulant diva and set his own rules for himself, which was best displayed by his "vacation" to Colombia during his four-game suspension in August.

Once you let your employees walk all over you, you just can't be an effective boss. In college football, the worst thing that can happen to a program is for the NCAA to cite it for "lack of institutional control." That's exactly what happened with the Tigers; Trammell lost control of his team.

But though I generally agree with the move, there are few things still rattling around in my brain that I need to dump out.

♦ When Trammell was originally hired, I was happy to see him back in a Tigers uniform. Really, who wasn't? Yet I felt an underlying sadness, because it seemed rather obvious how this was all going to end. Tram was eventually going to be fired, an indignity one of the Tigers' greatest players didn't deserve. Unless he proved to be a managerial genius, the second coming of Tony LaRussa, a first-time manager guiding a youthful, inexperienced team looked like a potentially toxic combination. And with everyone learning on the job, the 2003 Detroit Tigers were almost historically bad. At times, it seemed like Tram was learning his craft and getting a handle on the job. But eventually, his inexperience just couldn't overcome the many screaming failures this team was burdened with. The inevitably sad ending came to pass.

♦ To me, the most troubling aspect of Trammell's firing and Jim Leyland's hiring is the total traveshamockery of a charade General Manager Dave Dombrowski perpetrated when he crammed two quickie interviews with Juan Samuel and Bruce Fields (whom I'd argue could've been named manager instead of Trammell) in the hours before Leyland arrived in Detroit. Major League Baseball, in the interests of equal opportunity, prefers its teams to open up its interviewing process and give minority candidates an opportunity to pursue managerial positions.

Of course, I agree with this policy, in principle. But in practice, it doesn't seem to work. Especially when teams subvert the policy by squeezing in a couple of token interviews before hiring the guy they wanted all along. It was almost comical when Dombrowski admitted that he interviewed Samuel immediately after firing Trammell. He may as well have been holding up a sign that said "Loophole, people!" Dombrowski will say that he had to act fast, before another team courted Leyland, and his actions certainly support that. How fortunate that he had Samuel and Fields on hand to bail him out.

♦ The Detroit News' Tigers beat writer, Tom Gage, astutely pointed out how tiresome this whole hire-and-fire process has become for owner Mike Ilitch. "This time he looked ... bored," Gage wrote. And I'm sure he was. Along with having to fire a man who a generation of Tigers fans idolized, Ilitch had to face the embarrassment of admitting yet another failure and making yet another managerial change. (I also think he had to face the embarrassment of going out in public with that hairpiece. Are you looking at that picture? Damn. How can a rich guy have such bad hair?)

He even tried to pull the ol' Red Wings card (Hey, remember how many Stanley Cups we've won?) by comparing Jim Leyland's hiring to the Wings' hiring of Scotty Bowman.

Let's see, how can I say this most succinctly? No. Let me elaborate. No, no, no. No, no. Bowman has nine Stanley Cup championships. Jim Leyland has five winning seasons. That's not to diminish Leyland's accomplishments. He won a World Series title in 1997 and is easily the best manager the Tigers have had since Sparky Anderson. The Tigers aren't going to lose games because the manager sat the wrong guy or made an incorrect decision within a game. And he has the gravitas to stand up to Pudge when he's acting like a spoiled rich girl who has to drive a Honda instead of a Lexus. But Leyland is not Scotty Bowman. I know that's not exactly what Ilitch said, but he did try to draw the comparison to make himself look better, and needs to be called out on it.

♦ A guy who's been in Detroit for a grand total of four years (Dombrowski) was allowed to dismiss a Tigers legend, one of only three men who played in this town for 20 years. If you grew up in the late-70s or early-80s, Trammell was probably the best Tigers player you ever watched. Getting fired by a relative outsider - when it comes to the Detroit Tigers - just doesn't seem fair.

It's never boring in Detroit

It's been a tough fall for Detroit sports fans so far. The Tigers sputtered toward the finish, and then just flat-lined. Now, it looks like the Lions could be following their lead. And who knows what the Red Wings will look like in this new, post-strike/rules-changed National Hockey League? The championship days are likely making a pit stop. Thankfully, we still have the Pistons.

But here's something I love about the Detroit sports scene (and missed so much during my two years in Iowa): Two of the four major teams may stink like skunk roadkill, but it is never boring around here. Look at this past week.

On Sunday, the Tigers' season came to a merciful end. The very next day, the Tigers' front office fired manager Alan Trammell and his coaching staff. And as General Manager Dave Dombrowski was explaining his decision to the press, revealing that he'd already interviewed two candidates for the job (who, conveniently for the Tigers, both happened to be minorities), former Pirates and Marlins manager Jim Leyland was in a car, on his way to town - ostensibly to replace Trammell. By Tuesday evening, it was a done deal: Leyland was in as manager. It took longer for me to have a post-root canal bottle of whiskey shipped to my friend Mis Hooz in New York.

(Photo by Steve Perez/ The Detroit News)

On Sunday, the Lions lost to Tampa Bay, 17-13, after a touchdown was (wrongly) taken away by the referees. The next day, sports talk radio was on fire, ripping the Lions' wide receivers for dropping balls and lazily running pass patterns. Inexplicably, one of those receivers, Charles "Half Baked" Rogers, who'd been on a milk carton so far this season, complained to the Free Press' Drew Sharp about his increasingly diminished role. Later in the day, everyone who said "What the hell is Rogers smoking?" got a surprising answer to their question. ESPN reported that Cheech Rogers was being suspended by the NFL for violating its substance abuse policy.

And once all the smoke from the teams that suck cleared, the good things in the Detroit sports scene returned. On Tuesday, the Pistons reported for training camp, eager to win back the NBA title they lost back in June. And last night, after a year-long absence, The Red Wings - who made their own coaching change in the offseason - took their first step in re-introducing professional hockey to fans by stomping the St. Louis Blues, 5-1.

How many other cities have a week like that? Our baseball team might not be in the playoffs, and our pro football team has a losing record, but they're keeping things interesting. And this coming Saturday, we'll get to watch two good college football programs take the field. I love it here.

I took my sweet, lazy time addressing the issues of this past week, unlike several great Detroit sports blogs that stepped up right away to comment on what's been going on. You probably read these already, but I can't just pretend no one else has written about these stories - and really well, to boot. If they weren't so good at what they do, I wouldn't have spent the last couple of days wondering whether to bother jumping onto the pile.

♦ The Detroit Tigers Weblog not only thoroughly covers all sides of both the Trammell firing and Leyland hiring, but takes a look at the team on the field, and analyzes perhaps the most disappointing aspect of this past season: the Tigers' limp, ineffective bats.

♦ Greg Eno provides angles on Trammell and Leyland too, while also pointing out the silly shell game losing teams play when they change coaches, at Out of Bounds.

♦ Brian at Beyond Boxscores made me pound my desk in admiration, by addressing something that really bothered me about the Trammell firing - the token minority interviews - before I could do it. (But I'll try to do it later, anyway.)

♦ Bless You Boys points out how important a role public relations has played in the managerial game of musical chairs that the Tigers are playing.