Doug and Gator give their thoughts on ESPN praising the Tigers' offseason moves.
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00:00All right, I mentioned before the break, winners and losers of MLB's offseason.
00:05So still some moves to be made from the big spenders who are on the headlines this season,
00:09the teams that sat back and watched. There's some obvious picks among our choices
00:12for winners and losers. The winners of the offseason. Number one, the LA Dodgers. Number
00:19two, the New York Mets. And number three, that's right, your Detroit Tigers. Listed on ESPN.com
00:27as one of three teams that are the winners of the offseason. And we'll get to the reasons why
00:34in a moment. The losers, the San Diego Padres, the St. Louis Cardinals, and the Atlanta Braves.
00:42Here's what they write about Detroit. The Tigers are on an upswing in almost all phases,
00:47with prospects from the third-ranked farm system continuing to arrive in the majors on the heels
00:53of a well-ahead-of-schedule postseason appearance last season that ended a nine-season playoff dry
00:58spell. Detroit played the market well this winter, landing Gleybor Torres and re-signing Jack
01:03Flaherty for below pre-offseason expectations while losing no one to a true free agent deal.
01:10The Tigers also added Alex Cobb to the rotation and Tommy Canely to the bullpen. There are now
01:16a number of promising young players, many recently graduated from the farm system,
01:20filling most of the other spots on the roster behind the cornerstones
01:24of Tarek Skubal and Riley Green. Detroit's rebuild is looking as if it will be a model
01:30for others to follow. High praise indeed. Gator, what do you make of this?
01:38I'm a little surprised. I was trying to think which category they fall into because I know
01:43some people would have them in the other category. But I also think it's a little too early to do it
01:50yet because some names still haven't been moved around. We don't know if they're going to get
01:54Bregman. We don't know if St. Louis is going to be able to trade Arenado. And I'm sure that's one
01:59of the reasons why they might be on the other list. But I do think the Tigers have improved
02:04themselves. That's for sure. I didn't realize that they improved themselves that much over
02:08the other teams in the league. Obviously, the Dodgers have done what they've done, which is
02:12insane. I don't know. I would have thought some other teams might be on that list. But I'd like
02:19to hear it. I think it makes sense. Adding Flaherty and Cobb to the rotation makes it a
02:24better rotation. And for a team that really relied on a bullpen for the last month and a half of the
02:29season, when they went 29 and 12 for the final stretch there, they were more than half of those
02:37games were bullpen games. So now they've actually bolstered the rotation. That's good. Getting
02:42Glaber Torres to play every day for this team adds to the lineup that desperately needed to
02:46have at least one more bat to the lineup. So I kind of like what they've done. And the prospect
02:51thing is that's still the unknown. Yeah, they're prospects, but they're just prospects. You know,
02:54what's cool about this is it's a it's an independent voice outside of Detroit covers
02:59the entire league saying, Hey, your team slow play the offseason. None of the signings in and
03:06of themselves, I think, garnered a while from Detroit fans. But the collective this this
03:11article says the collective and what they paid for Torres and for Flaherty and to a lesser extent,
03:18Cobb and Canely is actually a pretty good haul. And it sounds like they're getting a ton of credit
03:24for having for having drafted as well as they did. And oddly, a lot of that credit goes to Alavila.
03:31But, you know, we're that team now that is starting to get attention. And I guess if you
03:38just look at this from the outside, I don't get the sense that a whole ton of Detroiters share the
03:42enthusiasm. Like they're excited. But there was no wow signings. Well, I think it's Yeah, not yet.
03:51They're not excited about it yet. I think that once you start to see a couple weeks in the spring
03:54trading and the Bregman thing was standing, it's remembering that they got Canely and how good he
04:02can be for this team. Right. Seeing that once you actually see in the spring training games,
04:08OK, wait a minute, they actually do have a rotation and there aren't really holes in that
04:12rotation. OK, that's solid. And we want to see the difference of of what that everyday lineup looks
04:19like. If Torkelson's out of it, what does it look like that now you've got Colt Keith at first base?
04:25Is he taking a big step forward this year offensively? And Gleyber Torres bringing in a
04:30veteran bat that knows how to play and he's not that old. So you kind of like it.