The Doug Fister Trade Abomination

Posted on by admin by

Miguel+Cabrera+Doug+Fister+ALCS+Detroit+Tigers+2PA_RU_9QcZx

By Jeff Moss
DetroitSportsRag@GMail.com
December 3, 2013

After the Prince Fielder/Ian Kinsler trade was consummated,  I sent out a Tweet which stated that until Dave Dombrowski actually made a bad trade, you almost have to give the guy the benefit of the doubt on any potential deal.

Well, you don’t often hear this from me … but I was wrong.  DEAD WRONG.

It took less than two weeks for me to have to eat those words because this Doug Fister debacle makes absolutely no sense on just about any level.

And don’t make my word for it.  NOBODY understands the deal from the Tigers’ perspective.  Not Keith Law.  Rob Neyer can’t figure it out.  Dave Cameron from Fangraphs.com? Perplexed.

Or Jonah Keri.

Actually, there is ONE dolt who thinks Dombrowski got the better end of this trade with Mike Rizzo …..

Lynn Henning.

Your witness, Mr. Dombrowski.

I can’t possibly imagine what Baseball’s Cary Grant™ (The Only Person Who Likes This Deal From the Tigers’ Perspective) was thinking when he pulled the trigger on dealing one of the top 25 starters in all of baseball for Italian Ramon Santiago, a situational lefty reliever (seriously, go look at Ian Kroll’s splits, they’d make Phil Coke puke) and a “project” lefty starter who isn’t one of the Top 100 prospects in all of baseball.

What fucking rock has Dombrowski been under since the Fielder trade?  Does he not understand the absolute premium teams have put on lousy starting pitching this offseason?

Did he go on a Caribbean cruise with no cell phone service when ….

The Twins signed RICKY NOLASCO to a four-year, $49 million deal and then turned around and gave PHIL HUGHES $24 million over three seasons?

Oakland handed the resurrected corpse of SCOTT KAZMIR a two-year contract for $11 million per?

Or what about these recent deadline deals ….

For a HALF OF A SEASON, the Texas Rangers sent Mike Olt, CJ Edwards and Justin Grimm to the Cubs for Matt Garza.

Hell, the Tigers figured they were only renting Anibal Sanchez for THREE MONTHS and yet DD gave up Jacob Turner (their best pitching prospect … by far), Rob Brantly and Brian Flynn to the Flying Fish.

Dombrowski had a stockpile of the most-coveted asset by all MLB teams and he dealt one of them for Washington’s hot garbage.

Fuck, when Kansas City wanted to acquire someone with Fister’s pedigree, they gave up one of the Top 3 prospects in the ENTIRE GAME for James Shields.  And you can look at any advanced metric you want, there isn’t a discernible difference between Fister and Shields over the last three seasons.

In exchange for two years of “Big Game James” the Rays received the 2013 Rookie of the Year.  The Tigers haul for Fister? The bargain discount table at Big Lots after Black Friday.

So let’s take a look at what Dombrowski received in exchange for a pitcher who was in the Top 10 in WAR in the AL over the last three seasons.  Mind you, a GROUNDBALL hurler who had … a Cigar Store Indian (Jhonny Peralta) at short, Miguel Cabrera at third and the worst-fielding first baseman in all of baseball (Prince Fielder) at the other corner.

Steve Lombardozzi, Jr.  A Quad-A backup who in 755 plate appearances has put up a .297 OBP and an anemic .338 slugging percentage.  Because it would appear Dombrowski wants as many ethnic versions of Don Kelly as is humanly possible.

Ian Krol.  Whose claim to fame so far in his short career is making a homophobic blast on Twitter that got him suspended by the Oakland A’s.

“ASU is a bunch of fake a** f***, get on one knee a **** **, I’m better than you’ll ever be…

I guess I could tolerate Krol’s Alec Baldwin moment if he weren’t a situational lefty who had an opponent’s OPS of .957 in 2013 for the Nationals.

And then there is the centerpiece of the trade (Robbie Ray), who most likely won’t contribute to the Tigers in 2014.  Because, who needs immediate help on a team that has gone to the ALCS three times in a row with no jewelry to speak of?

Although not everyone agrees with that last sentiment.

BZSjx6-IgAAIxQz.jpg-large

He actually WEARS that ring? And brags about it? Does it bring back fond memories of Gene Lamont getting Prince Fielder thrown out by a furlong in Game 2 of the 2012 World Series?

Anyway, this is Law’s scouting report of the lefty fireballer from his ESPN Insider blog.

Ray is the prospect, a potential back-end starter who shows four pitches but has nothing plus, although there’s some upside here if the Tigers can get him to lengthen his stride. His sharpest pitch is his spike curveball, but like most pitches of that type it usually ends up out of the zone, and his changeup is fringy enough that he’s had trouble finishing off right-handed hitters. He’s a project, a guy with some value but who could use some mechanical adjustments.

Yep, the Tigers just traded away one of the best starters in baseball for Neifi Perez Moltisanti, Homophobic Phil Coke and Poor Man’s Andrew Miller.

But it gets worse.  WAY WORSE.  It would appear that Dombrowski didn’t even perform his due diligence when shopping Fister.  Read this post by Law and try not to puke out of your nose:

I’ve spoken to numerous team executives who were shocked at the return for Fister and wish they had been given the opportunity to offer more or to try to assemble a multi-team deal that would give the Tigers the specific pieces they wanted. One contending team’s GM, known to be looking for another starter, told me he hadn’t talked to the Tigers about Fister in weeks. Another exec with a contender indicated something similar.

The demand for starting pitching is so strong and the supply is so weak that giving one as good as Fister away just to clear space for a 60-inning, 39-year-old reliever leaves the Tigers clearly worse off in the end.

So not only did Dombrowski deal Fister to one of the stronger teams in all of baseball, it appears he did so without even attempting to create a bidding war.   WHAT THE FUCK IS HAPPENING HERE?!!!!?!?!?!?!?!?

And then Dombrowski had the gall to tell the media during his Monday evening conference call (I hope it didn’t disrupt Chris Iott’s dinner plans) that fans never like trading the known for the unknown.

Hey, Divot-Chin, we aren’t dolts.  We have access to Fangraphs and Baseball Prospectus and other tools to evaluate these trades.  We know exactly what you gave up and what you received in return.

And please, please, PLEASE stop this narrative that’s being spewed out by Dombrowski’s willing accomplices in the Detroit media like Matthew B. (Aggressive) Mowery.  This trade is NOTHING like the Austin Jackson/Max Scherzer/Coke/Daniel Schlereth for Edwin Jackson/Curtis Granderson move.

This revisionist history that all Tigers fans universally hated that deal is bullshit.  I LOVED it at the time.  Most people who cared more about the product on the field more than they did Granderson’s philanthropic work were excited as well.

Scherzer had ALREADY pitched one season in the big leagues.  He was a top prospect (and not a project) and had already shown the ability to strike out more than one batter per inning in the NL.

And Jackson was considered the top positional prospect in the Yankees organization.  While Granderson was coming off a season in which he had an embarrassingly low OPS of .484 versus left-handed pitching.

STOP COMPARING THAT TRADE TO THIS ONE!!!!!!

The other narrative the Dombrowski apologists are trotting out is that this will free DD up to make a big free-agent signing.  Yeah, well so would have trading Fister for his actual value and not this junk.

I had no issue with dealing Fister because of the Tigers surplus in the starting rotation.  Hell, if they would have received some combination of Denard Span, A.J. Cole, Anthony Rendon or Drew Storen then I would have been fine with it.

But he didn’t.  He got raped by Rizzo so I don’t want to hear about the balance of this offseason rectifying this horrid trade.  I don’t give a fuck if Dombrowski goes out and signs Shin-Soo Choo, Joe Nathan and trades Austin Jackson and Nick Castellanos for Mike Trout, IT DOESN’T CHANGE THE FACT THAT HE GOT RIPPED OFF HERE.

Like I said on Twitter last night, if you trade your 70″ Sony HDTV for three 19″ black and white sets and the next day go to Best Buy and purchase a 15″ Macbook Pro, it doesn’t make the initial swap of one LCD for three out-of-use TVs any better.

Look, the only positive thing to come out of this trade is the Tigers beat writers got scooped AGAIN on a big story.

First, Matt Dery’s producer (Tom Mazawey) broke the story that Jim Leyland was retiring.

Then, some nobody with less than 500 Twitter followers scooped the eunuchs on the Brad Ausmus hiring.

This time? A kid in HIGH SCHOOL broke the story that Fister had been traded to the nation’s capital.  I am not fucking with you.  The young man’s name is Chris Cotillo, and he was first to the source on this blockbuster.  And what did young Cotillo do after beating Mowery, Iott, Henning, Tom Gage, George Sipple, Tony Paul and John Lowe to the news?

I shit you not.  That’s an actual Tweet.

And while Doogie Howser Rosenthal was scooping the Detroit sports media, this is what Henning was Tweeting out:

To quote Maxwell Smart, Lynn ….

Poor Lynn Henning hasn’t had a good week.  First, he “broke” the news that the Tigers were on the verge of signing closer Brian Wilson.  Of course, the “Beard” is staying in Los Angeles.

Then he wildly speculated about the Fister trade and was totally wrong.  “The Deacon” finally doubled down on his stupidity by defending this horrid trade to his last breath.  I mean, you’d think with all of the water this imbecile has carried for Dombrowski, Dave would give him ONE SCOOP.

Gunga Din himself was less loyal than Henning.

ERA of 3.67.  FIP of 3.26.  xFIP of 3.42.  WAR of 4.6.  Yeah, not the same guy.

And the lunatic also had the nerve to say this trade wasn’t a salary dump when it clearly was a huge consideration.  It is quite evident at this point that Dombrowski is working with a set budget and it wouldn’t be surprising if that number was set by Chris Ilitch and not Mike.

The money the Tigers just saved on Fister went to Nathan and it doesn’t take a forensic accountant to figure that one out.

I just hope Henning finally gets something right.  He was the first person to suggest that Dombrowski might get consideration for the commissioner’s job when Bud Selig finally exits stage left.

In the last week that speculation has increased, with ESPN’s Buster Olney lending legitimacy to the possibility.

Well, if Dombrowski is going to misjudge the free-agent market like he did with Jhonny Peralta — by not offering the All-Star shortstop a qualifying offer — and make trades like the Fister deal, I will gladly eat crow if Dombrowski replaces the Used Car Salesman from Milwaukee.

But considering Lynn’s batting average is the exact same as Justin Verlander’s, I am not holding out any hope that DD will be replaced by an Ivy League-educated, sabermetic geek executive in the near future.

Prince Fielder, Omar Infante, Jhonny Peralta, Joaquin Benoit, Jose Veras and Doug Fister for Ian Kinsler, Joe Nathan, a situational lefty, Guido Adam Everett  and a potential starter in 2016.

Brad Ausmus had better start memorizing the Kaddish.