Sunday, March 26, 2006

Carlos Pena Released

After three years of expectation, flashes of greatness and much frustration, The Detroit Tigers released Carlos Pena this morning. This means they only have to pay 45 days of his 2.8 million dollar salay.

This comes to no big surprise but I can understand if they felt his role would have been too small to justify his salary . I think they could have used his left-handed bat in a semi-platoon role as he hits right-handers better than most on the team. However, with three first basemen on the roster, it would have been difficult to work such an arrangement even if Young plays elsewhere occasionally. He was not tradeable with his big salary but now that he has been released, he will likely be picked up by another team pretty quickly.

Pena was one of my favorite Tigers partly because he grew up in Haverhill, Massachusetts and attended Northeastern University in Boston. There are not a lot of Massachusetts players who make the majors and I enjoyed watching one play for my favorite team. A fresh start with a new team, perhaps in a platoon role, might be good for him. I wish him well.

3 comments:

  1. Carlos Pena, have a seat next to Joey Harrington and Darko Milicic on the crazy train out of Detroit!

    Pena might forever have that "potential" tag draped around his neck like an albatross.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I wanted them to keep Pena because they don't have a lot of left-handed power and I expect Young to see a lot of DL time this year. Ideally, I would have liked to see them dump Young and go with a platoon of Pena/Thames. I didn't expect them to dump Young's salary though.

    ReplyDelete
  3. The Pena dump was a bit of a surprise, but that's Jim Leyland wanting to put his stamp on the team. Pena could start in Houston or SF, so he'll likely be picked up soon.

    ReplyDelete

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