photo by Alexandra Simon (AKA me)

Surely you’ve all heard the news by now. On the off chance you live under a rock, however: Victor Martinez suffers knee injury, likely out for 2012

Semi-relatedly, a potential VMart replacement target in Carlos Peña just signed with the Tampa Bay Rays, according to MLB Trade Rumors.

Dombrowski has time, resources, and options, and it seems like he’s going to explore all those options before making a decision. Some fans hammer him for being too deliberate and thorough, but at this point in his tenure, I think it’s safe to trust he’ll make the decision that’s best for the team in the short- and long-term.

As you may have heard, Ryan Perry was traded to the Washington Nationals for Collin Balester last night.

This move doesn’t really improve the team, although Balester has some starting experience and can probably fill the long relief role Perry struggled in at times. Also, Perry has options left, while Balester doesn’t.

I admit I’m a little torn on this one. Obviously, the addition of Octavio Dotel made Perry the odd man out but part of me thought maybe the Tigers would hang on to him. I do kinda think they gave up on Perry a little too soon. He, as was mentioned before, still has options left, will turn 25 in February, and has shown potential. He’s never lived up to the tag that was placed on him when they drafted him—closer of the future—but he’s been very good at times. Though his overall numbers don’t show it, he was one of the Tigers’ best relievers down the stretch in 2010. Yes, they were, for the most part, out of it by then, but someone needed to pitch those innings. He did, and he was very effective.

That being said, there’s no denying Perry took a major step back last season. I do think some of it was due to inconsistent playing time (late in the season, even as Perry was racking up scoreless outings, Leyland used him sparingly; the longest Perry went without pitching seems to be a week). He also missed some time due to illness/”injury” (an infected eye and, later, a scratched cornea from rubbing the eye) and also had a couple stints in Toledo. Nothing seemed to go right for him this season, and one of the Tigers beat writers noted that Dombrowski spoke with Perry’s agent on Monday, and the agent expressed Perry’s frustration at how the season went for him.

As for Balester, it seems that he’s a failed starter who was finally converted to long-relief when he was unable to crack the Nationals’ deep rotation. He was drafted out of high school, when the organization was the Montréal Expos, and has been working up the ranks ever since. It’s worth noting that Balester was much better in relief than he was as a starter. I’ve seen comparisons to ex-Tiger Zach Miner thrown out in re. Balester, and his potential role on the team.

So, one chapter ends and another one begins. Best wishes to Ryan (and Vanessa) in Washington. And welcome to Detroit, Collin Balester. You’ll fit right in with that wacky mustache.

Collin Balester has a Twitter. Find him at BallyStar40. His mustache also has a Twitter of its own at StacheOBally.

(Sorry, Laird fans.)

Yes, José Bautista.

No, I don’t think pitchers are undeserving of MVP consideration. As long as the rules state pitchers should be considered for MVP, I am fine with a pitcher winning the award. I do think he was the best pitcher in the AL, and I think he was a worthy MVP candidate, but Bautista would have gotten my vote if I had one. If you put a gun to my head and a ballot in my hand, I probably would have gone Bautista, Ellsbury, Cabrera, Verlander.

I don’t really feel like getting into the whys right now, since it’s 3 am, but this is pretty good.

I will leave you with this:

(Any hate mail will be posted and its writers will be publicly shamed for all to see.)

This also has little to do with baseball.

These are all circa 2003.

Here are a few of my favorite bad screenplay ideas:

I Think Matthew Perry Already Did This One

A divorced shortstop joins a gay baseball team and tried to lead them to the championship. A gay friend had referred him to the gay team’s straight manager when their regular gay shortstop gets hurt. The straight shortstop has to pretend he’s really gay, and conceal his attraction to the team’s female head trainer. Only the manager and his friend know the truth about his sexuality.

Hockey Melodrama

Daniel Vachon grows up worshipping the legendary Montréal Canadiens goalie, David St. Germaine. Daniel thinks St. Germaine can do no wrong. He winds up being traded from his team (Anaheim) to Montréal to be St. Germaine’s backup. He thinks his dream has come true.

Turns out St. Germaine is a drunk who verbally and physically assaults his wife and teenage daughter, and neglects his infant son.

Daniel’s wife Melanie is unhappy in Montréal, and they begin to have marital problems. Daniel ignores the fact his marriage is crumbling by pouring himself 100% into hockey, and his “friendship” with his mentor. He starts to fall into the same lifestyle as his idol.

St. Germaine’s wife, Vanessa, befriends Melanie. Vanessa has an ulterior motive to befriending Melanie though.

Melanie starts an affair with one of Daniel’s teammates. Then Daniel and Melanie’s young son starts acting out in school, and becoming a nuisance.

Vanessa uses the knowledge of Melanie’s affair to her advantage, and manipulates her.

Daniel slowly grows to resent the St. Germaines and his own wife.

Then Daniel’s son gets in trouble at school for hitting another child.

Rochelle, the St. Germaines’ teenage daughter, runs away with a boy from her high school. St. Germaine leaves the team to deal with her disappearance, which makes Daniel the starter.

Melanie makes plans to go back to California with their son. Daniel attempts to reconnect with her and Christian, their son.

Meanwhile, St. Germaine’s family life continues to disintegrate. Vanessa tries to seduce Daniel and use Melanie’s affair against her. Daniel refuses to believe her.

Tensions grow between St. Germaine and Daniel (maybe I should change their names so they’re not so similar and I can stop referring to him as St. Germaine). They fight during practice.

Rochelle comes home after a week or so at a friend’s house.

St. Germaine has a meltdown and pulls a gun on Daniel at a dinner between their two families.

Daniel tries to calm him down and then St. Germaine turns the gun on himself before turning it on Vanessa.

Turns out David Jr. is Daniel’s son from a one-night stand he had with Vanessa, when he was on a road trip with his old team. St. Germaine found out and rallied to bring Daniel to Montréal to be his backup and ruin his life.

Daniel and St. Germaine wrestle over the gun. It goes off and someone is shot.

Epilogue:

Picks up a few months later. St. Germaine was arrested and is in jail. He and Vanessa are in the process of getting divorced. Rochelle is thinking of getting emancipated from her parents.

Daniel is now Montréal’s starter. He and Melanie are still rebuilding their relationship and are expecting another child. Christian is starting to adjust.

The Canadiens bring up a young goalie to back up Daniel. He idolizes him and Daniel worries about their relationship and whether or not his protégé is obsessed. Does the cycle start over again? Or is Daniel just paranoid?

Girl in the MLB Story

This is before I learned MLB has a ban against women playing affiliated baseball. >:(

A female college pitcher named Drew is signed by the struggling Tigers as a marketing gimmick and assigned to their minor league team. She turns out to be better than they expected, though, and surprisingly rises through the minor league system.

She encounters bias, hatred, and jealousy from some of her minor league teammates, who think they’re being passed over in favor of her. She proves she belongs on the team, though, and eventually gets called up to pitch for the Tigers after one of the starters gets hurt.

She encounters resistance from one of the team’s veterans, a journeyman named Doug Schiavone who thinks she’s undeserving of her promotion.

Schiavone confronts her in the lockerroom after one of the games, and one of her new teammates comes to her defense. Schiavone gets released.

Drew struggles her first few games and the media lambastes the team. The fans are upset and confused. The opposing teams think she’s a joke.

She starts pitching better, though, and people slowly begin to get on her side.

Some opponents are surprised that she isn’t afraid to brush guys back. She gets charged a few times.

The Tigers have a good season and make the playoffs for the first time in years. She is called on to pitch from the bullpen.

Ed.: I actually had a side character in this hot mess named Bill Assenmacher. No lie.

Golden Boy

Jacob Weller is the star shortstop for the LA Dodgers, and the current face of Major League Baseball. What will they do when they learn their stud player isn’t as ‘normal’ as he seems? What lengths will Jake go to preserve his image and ensure his secret never gets out? Murder?

Ed.: Honestly, I know this sounds like another “gay player in the MLB” story, but actually he was, like, a serial killer or something. lol. I realized that would be hard to conceal if people died every time his team was in town, so I abandoned the idea. :P

Soylent Green Ha Ha

A prison decides to solve its overcrowding problems in a very unique way—turning its inmates into food.

Ed.: Um, yeah.

So, yeah.

The Braves want outfielders for Prado and/or Jurrjens, so hay Tigers, just give them Dirks and Raburn! Git ‘r done, Dumbrowski!!

Or, hay the As want middle infielders so just trade them Danny Worth, Will Rhymes, and Don Kelly for Gio Gonzalez right nao!

No. Stop it.

You can’t get some other team to take your organizational filler for their good players like this is MLB the Show and you turned on the “force trades” setting. Offer Billy Beane a package of Worth, Rhymes, and Kelly for Gio Gonzalez and he’ll promptly hang up, but not before laughing his ass off at you.

And, yeah, trading for Headley of San Diego or Prado of Atlanta would be nice, but let’s be realistic. Atlanta doesn’t need starting pitching, which we have an abundance of. They want outfielders. I can’t see the Tigers and Braves making a trade for Prado, unless the Tigers got a third team involved.

As for San Diego, they want a starting pitcher and a corner infielder, but probably not a third baseman because Jedd Gyorko exists (h/t @garretkc). So Castellanos is likely out. But what other corner infield prospects do the Tigers have? Aaron Westlake is a first baseman, but they wouldn’t be able to trade him yet as he was taken in the 2011 draft. And I highly doubt Ryan Strieby is just oozing with trade value right now. Don’t mention Scott Thorman. Don’t even.

Also, please just stop with the Jair Jurrjens stuff. He was traded by the Tigers because of injury concerns in the first place, which haven’t exactly gone away in the ensuing years. He hasn’t been consistently healthy, like, ever. Plus, the Braves will probably ask for Boesch, or . . . I don’t even know if the Tigers have any other attractive OF trade candidates (don’t you dare say Raburn or Dirks). Anyway, Jurrjens isn’t worth a Boesch, imo.

Also, don’t forget the Tigers did give up a lot in the Fister trade. They don’t have a lot to work with right now, trades-wise. A Casper Wells (plus other pieces) might land you Prado. But hey, we don’t have a Casper Wells in the trade bait cabinet anymore!

They might be best served to look elsewhere for second base or third base help, via free agency.

This was a great, closely played series, despite a few seemingly lopsided scores. The Tigers gave everything they had, and while it wasn’t enough, I can’t be ashamed of or angry with their effort. I’m left especially encouraged about the state of our starting four (Verlander, Fister, Scherzer and Porcello) and our future. There’s a lot to be excited about if you’re a Tigers fan, rather than not.

I’m very satisfied with this season, and it only makes me even more excited about 2012 and what we can do.

The 2005 season was pretty much a wash for Ordoñez and the Tigers, as he missed significant time due to a sports hernia. Ordoñez had only 46 at bats total in the first half of the 2005 season. Predictably, the Tigers struggled and limped to the finish line, unable to improve on their 2004 season.

2006 was different though. Ordoñez was finally healthy, and so were the Tigers. He showed glimpses of his younger self, belting 24 homeruns and driving in 104. The Tigers were the best team in baseball for much of the season and made the playoffs that year, despite a six-game losing streak to end the season.

We all know what happened next.

Ordoñez helped give the Tigers legitimacy after nearly a decade and a half of embarrassment and failure. His walk-off homerun in Game Four of the ALCS might have done more for the city of Detroit than any of us could have imagined. It gave us hope—if the Tigers can rise from the ashes, maybe the city of Detroit can, too—and lifted a team and its city.

You wouldn’t find much of an argument amongst Tigers fans these days if you said Ordoñez was washed up, or headed for retirement. He had a difficult, injury ridden season—two of them in a row, in fact—along with a 2009 season that was tough both professionally and personally. Ordoñez even contemplated retirement before discussing his options with his family and deciding against it. It seems like he made the right decision, as he was hitting .294 and improved his OPS by 87 points in the second half. (Granted, a .678 OPS is nothing to shake a stick at, but it is still a vast improvement over the .591 he put up in the first half on a balky ankle with absolutely no power.)

Unfortunately, his season—and maybe even his career—might be done. If this truly is the end of the line for Ordoñez in Detroit, thanks for everything. I wish you nothing but the best wherever you end up, whether it’s retirement or another organization.

Thank you, Maggs.

We’ll always have 2006.

(Disclaimer: A lot of this is recounted from memory (minus the stats) so I might be off on some of my recollections. Apologies.)

Dancing Days from rockthescherzer on Vimeo.

One of these days, I’ll get over iMovie. Until then, you must all suffer my vidding skilz.