Out of all the holes within the Tigers organization, the biggest may be their farm system.
Keith Law of ESPN ranked the Tigers’ farm system 25th out of 30 in January while Baseball America ranked them 25th in March.
However, according to Vince Ellis of the Detroit Free Press, Tigers GM Dave Dombrowski thinks the farm system is deep. In fact Dombroski believes the farm system is always producing talent that everyone seems to want.
“Every time we go to make deals like this, we have players that everybody likes,” Dombrowski said before Saturday’s game against the Angels. “And I keep telling people that our system is much deeper.”
So why isn’t the Tigers farm system ranked higher? Dombrowski says that that’s simply because the Tigers don’t talk up their farm system like other teams do.
“I know we get rated lower and that’s fine — it really doesn’t bother me,” Dombrowski said. “We speak less about building our guys up than other organizations do, and I know that’s a very important part, because the reality is who has seen all these players that are making these lists?
“There really is nobody.”
Ellis further writes that Dombrowski also refutes the notion that the organization fails to produce position players. To combat that argument Dombrowski points out catcher Alex Avila and outfielder Brennan Boesch while other players like Curtis Granderson and Matt Joyce were able to bring in other talent.
That’s all fine but the sample size seems to be kind of on the small side.
The Tigers had to constantly parade out Brandon Inge and Ryan Raburn this season because there was simply no one in the organization that was ready to come up and replace them.
You can also look at other areas of the starting lineup as well.
At shortstop, yes they have Jhonny Peralta who’s been very good for them this season. However defense has never been Peralta’s strong suit and you have to assume that his range at the position will continue to regress. So when that happens who do you replace him with.
The same can be said at second base.
Sure Scott Sizemore is lighting it up in Oakland right now but he wasn’t able to cut it in Detroit forcing the Tigers to insert an unreliable Carlos Guillen into the position. Now you can say that Sizemore was good all along but that really doesn’t say much for Dombrowski as a GM when all he got in return for Sizemore was a mediocre to bad David Purcey.
This is also the same GM that said he has 10 major league arms ready to roll. However the only home-grown pitcher currently in on the staff are Justin Verlander, Rick Porcello and Al Albuquerque. The team had to sign Valverde a couple of years ago, sign a setup man in Benoit this past off-season and inset Phil Coke and Brad Penny into the rotation because they didn’t have anyone else to put into those slots.
Now there is nothing wrong with signing players to fill holes. But when your signing players to fill a good majority of your starting lineup your going to run into money problems down the road when that money is needed to be spread out. We can all remember how the team was handcuffed with the Inge, Robertson, Sheffield, Bonderman and Willis contracts.
Unless your the New York Yankees who prints money with the YES Network, filling the majority of your lineup with signed talent and ignoring the needs of your farm system is never good for the organization as a whole.
