OT: Prince Fielder dealt to Texas for Ian Kinsler
November 21st, 2013 at 4:57 PM ^
To say Kinsler is declining or "ALWAYS" injured are both gross overstatements. He's played in 92% of a possible 486 games over the past 3 seasons, take away scheduled days off and that's only a handful of games missed due to injury. He was just an All-Star in 2012 and should have been last year, must have been banged up at the time (not seriously), because his numbers were on par with Kipnis and better than Zobrist. He hit .277 which is the 3rd best of his 8 year career (.286 in 120 game Rookie year, .319 in 121 game 3rd year). His 72 RBI were on par with his 2011 and 2012 seasons in 20 fewer games. The 85 Runs were a dip, but that will happen when you lose Josh Hamilton and then Nelson Cruz for a good portion of the season. He's also a great defensive 2B. I think he'll be less likely to get injured in Detroit because he won't need to be as aggressive on the base paths, unless Ausmus is the polar opposite of Leyland. Prince had the terrible contract, made us worse defensively AND wound up making us worse offensively. Kinsler can match his .279 avg and 25 HRs easily.
November 22nd, 2013 at 7:11 AM ^
Fielder is due $168M over the next seven years, and Kinsler $62M over the next five. With the Tigers sending $30M cash, they are freeing up $76M over the next seven years. The $30M is payable at the back end, but that's still where most of the savings are. Right now they are saving maybe $8M a year for the first several years.
I'm sure we're not done, but we are signifigantly weaker at this point. Peralta and Fielder are big losses and Kinsler is about equal to Infante. The financial windfall and our position are overrated right now. As it stands, we have two bats to replace and don't give me the crap about defense making up for it.