Philadelphia have shipped IF Placido Polanco to Detroit in exchange for reliever Ugueth Urbina (above, left) and IF Ramon Martinez.
The emergence of Chase Utely made Polanco expendable, and the acquisition of Urbina should shore up the Phillies’ bullpen to some degree. It should also guarantee at least one comment from Chuck Meehan in the next hour or so, and for that we thank the baseball gods.
Troy Percival is off the disabled list for 4 days, the Tigers are playing nearly .500 ball, the trade deadline is 7 weeks away…perfect time to trade your setup man. Sure, he wasn’t happy with the role – but he also knew he’d be gone soon.
Placido Polanco! That’s all the Tigers could get for the most desirable bullpen arm on the market? Yeah, and he’s also signed for all of this season.
Isn’t this premature? Shouldn’t Detroit have gotten more?! Are they trying to corner the market on former St. Louis 2B’s? Maybe Chone Figgins can take over second everyday in LAA of A? That would put Adam Kennedy on the market.
Gerard- I didnt reply with my usual punctuality as I was in a state of shock that Ed Wade moved Polanco for a primo hired gun for set-up/Wagner back-up *and* a serviceable utulity infielder rather than his perennial BP gas can acquisitions. I was surprised that Dombrowski
would move Urbina for a 4 month player (unless the Tigers are serious about re-upping Polanco this winter) and would have thought the Tigers would have also asked for Ryan Howard to be included in the deal.
I’ve been thinking about that picture of Uncle Floyd and Oogie all day, and thinking about the newspaper photo next to my desk of “Uncle Floyd Vivino special guest at the Union County Arts Center’s 75th anniversary jubilee.” It’s haunting in a way…
Either way, I’m still pissed about this deal from the Tiger’s perspective. If the deal had been Urbina for Gavin Floyd though… I still would have been pissed, but much less so, and the picture would have been just perfect.
Wait a second – did I miss the memos where Placido Polanco became a bad player, and where it makes sense for a .500 team to hold onto a $4M setup guy? Of course, I also missed the memo where the Percival signing made any damn sense at all. That’s what I get for working from home.
Polanco’s not a bad player at all (he’s a career .296 hitter or some such), but he makes almost as much as Urbina, he’s signed until the end of the year, and Urbina is worth more than that in this year’s trade deadline market. Or apparently not if you’re Dave Dombrowski.
So what have the Tigers exactly accomplished?
1. They’re relieved themselves of the headache of taking daily phone calls about Urbina’s price.
2. They’ve eliminated the tough decision making that goes into scouting another team’s minor league prospects.
3. They’ve saved the pro-rated difference in salaries (I think about 2/3 of $400,000) between Urbina and Polanco.
4. They’ve created the possibility that Matt Ginter will get some more innings.
David- Polanco is far from a bad player and will be an asset for Detroit, but it just seemed to me that it would have made more sense for the Tigers if Polanco wasnt in his contract year or they at least
had gotten a prospect thrown in with the package. With Urbina being the best BP arm available and teams sorely needing help (particularly in the wide-open NL East), the Tigers would have a lot of leverage. Also, please take the follwing as message board squawk but there was a posting on the Tigers board saying that Urbina was involved in an altercation with un-named players on the teams flight out to LA this past Sunday. Even if that is a false rumor, Urbina was unhappy with being shunted aside for Percival and this may be a situation where the Tigers just wanted to move him post-haste.
more innings for Matt Ginter means fewer opportunities for him to teach the youth of detroit about archery.