Dombrowski in the D Unlike Randy Smith, Dombrowski seems to have a pulse and actually pay attention to baseball.
Dave Dombrowski was a successful GM before taking the Tigers job. He won a World Series with the Marlins with a rent-a-team and a rent-a-coach in Leyland and this is in large part why this dynamic duo has been reunited in Detroit.
I still kind of want to repeatedly punch Dave in the face/groin for the 2003 season. I put almost all of the blame on him and this was the first year that I started getting partial season tix for the Tigers. That 2003 team was bad. I honestly think the Erie Sea wolves might take them in a best of 5 series. Brandon Inge was our catcher that year and Dombrowski publicly stated before the season that he would be thrilled if Brandon Inge could hit over .200 for the season. As a fan, you know your season is going to be shit when your front office would be happy with a .200 hitter. Inge at that time was basically a single A ballplayer starting at one of the most pressure-filled positions on the entire team. Although, Inge surpassed Dombrowski's goals and hit an awe-inspiring .203 and inspired our Tigers to win a earth-shattering 43 games that year, he effectively rattled the fuck out of Maroth and Bonderman. These two combined to lose 40 games between them. It had been something like 20 years since the last pitcher lost 20 games in a season. This vomit-inducing display of talent was also to be led by first year manager Alan Trammell. It really isn't much of a wonder why we were one inning from being the worst team in the history of baseball.
Alright, enough of the 2003 season. That season sucked, and I’m making myself physically ill by thinking about it. But it might have been somewhat necessary. This team has been rebuilding since 1993 (our last winning season) and it probably was best to tear everything apart instead of making minor changes.
For the first time since I’ve been a conscious living person, the Tigers are developing a farm system. We have some real talent down there for once, and it looks like a decade of top ten draft picks one or two might actually see the field. Most notably, our future in pitching looks bright. With Justin Verlander and Joel Zumaya possibly being part of the rotation this year. Probably the Tigers biggest surprise last year was Chris Shelton. Chris “moneybags” Shelton was a player the Tigers basically acquired for free. We were able to claim him from the Pittsburgh buttpirates in the Rule 5 Draft.
The Tigers have been on the super-fantastic side of two one-sided trades under Dombrowski. We traded a perennial minor leaguer (Ramon Santiago) for a legit all-star SS in Carlos Guillen. We also recently re-signed Santiago a couple of days ago, and he has been designated as team bat-boy of the Lakeland Tigers. The other trade of course was Placido Polanco for Ugie Urbina. Now Urbina, he is a wild motherfucker. He’s currently being held in a Venezuelan Jail for the attempted murder of 5 workers. Urbina attacked these workers with a machete and tied them up and poured gasoline on them and was moments away from becoming a serial killer before he was arrested. Urbina earlier in the 2005 season also got in a fist-fight with essentially the entire Tiger team on an airplane. Ugie decided to get liquored up and and ultimate fight everyone on the team. This ended badly for Ugie as he was reportedly punched “repeatedly in the face” by Brandon Inge. In Polanco, we got a defensively above average fielder who also has an offensively above average skull. He hit .338 last year in 86 games and was given the prestigious Detroit Tigers MVP award. So, to sum that trade up, we traded a guy who might be jailed for the rest of his life for possibly one of best 2B’s in all of baseball.
The Kyle Farnsworth trade sucked though. That was stupid. There is no way that Romon Colon could body slam Royals like Farnsworth could.
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