Irksome!

For those of you out of state and/or who don't give a crap about Tiger's baseball, I'll tell you that this was a disappointing season, well a disappointing END of season. The Tigers (stupidly) traded away veteran, All Star catcher Pudge Rodriguez on the trade deadline in July to the Yankees and acquired a (crappy) relief pitcher, Kyle Farnsworth. This trade was bad (idiotic) enough, but after their season has ended I read this:


C[atcher] Dusty Ryan has shown enough that Detroit feels he could at least open the 2009 season on the major league roster, but the Tigers prefer to have a veteran to at least split time with the rookie. “Do I think we could get by (with Ryan)?” Leyland said. “Probably. Would it be the best thing? Probably not.”


They need a veteran catcher? Damn straight they need a veteran catcher, after they (moronically) traded away the best catcher in the league. But, hey, Pudge is with the Yankees now, so we couldn't get him back anyway, right?

Wrong. The Yankees won't be renewing Pudge's contract, which means he's up for grabs. But will the Tigers bring back our beloved Pudge? Heck no. Dave Dombrowski has done some fantastic things for the Tigers (including bringing Pudge here in the first place to anchor the struggling team in 2004) and some pretty dumb ones (most notably trading Pudge, but also the acquiring of Gary Sheffield, 2006, and Edgar Renteria, 2007). But even though we need a catcher, and one of the best catchers in the league (I don't care if he's 36) is available, this match up seems unlikely to occur. I suppose it would be a little embarrassing to bring back a player who was so recently traded away, but heck, the fans don't care. We just want our Pudge back!!!