Wednesday, September 06, 2006

Dmitri Young Released

Tom Gage is reporting that the Detroit Tigers released Dmitri Young after the game today. Dave Dombrowski said that the move was "performance related". Billfer is not buying it:

Something else went down. There are lots of guys slumping, and the Tigers DFA’d Spurling earlier in the day to free up a roster spot for Maroth. This had something to do with what transpired in today’s game, or during the rain delay.



I'm not buying it either and I doubt anyone is. I'm sure the media and the internet will be filled with juicy speculation in no time. And I'm confident that we'll hear the angle that Young caused the team's collapse by ruining team chemistry. There might be something to the chemistry angle but my feeling is that if one guy caused a 76-36 team to go 9-19 by his presence, then the team was not very good in the first place.

Although I don't believe the performance related excuse, his performance has not been very good the past month after a hot start coming off substance abuse rehab. This move means that they won't have Young batting third and that he'll be replaced by Marcus Thames who had disappeared from the regular line-up after an excellent first half and a July slump. For the year, Young was batting .254/.298/.414 and Thames is hitting .265/.337/.578. That looks like a good trade off to me.

2 comments:

  1. I agree the Tigers have been lucky. I don't want to see them back into the playoffs though. My hope is that
    the little slumps for Minnesota and Chicago keep the Tigers in the lead long enough until they can turn it around. They were playing over their heads in the first half but I don't think they are as bad as they are showing right now.

    ReplyDelete
  2. all those 1-run and walkoff victories seem to be coming back to earth as 1-run and runner stranded on 2nd/3rd losses.

    ReplyDelete

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