Torii Hunter

I've been wanting to write about Torii Hunter for awhile, but I kept putting it off until people had forgotten about his signing and my thoughts would bear little weight.  But since we are getting closer to spring training, I feel the time is right to fully explore the Tigers' thinking.  Here we go...

The Detroit Tigers of 2012 were, using various methodologies, somewhere between the best and 8th best team in the American League.  That is an enormous discrepancy, of which you can thank the endless rounds of playoffs and the overemphasis on divisional play.  They had three main stars - MVP Miguel Cabrera, former MVP Justin Verlander, and $200 million man Prince Fielder.  There were some lower-tier stars - Alex Avila, Austin Jackson, and Max Scherzer, to name a few - but the Tigers pretty much went with their big guns.  If the three-headed monster was performing well, then the team dominated.  If they were subdued, the team would suffer.  The gap became even more pronounced when big money DH Victor Martinez missed the entire season with a gruesome knee injury.  As such, beyond the triumvirate and aforementioned lesser stars, there was a black hole in the lineup, made up of flashes in the pan and veterans who had outperformed their career norms and were due for a down year.  This overreliance on the stars and has-beens/never-weres made it difficult for the team to maintain any run of consistent success.  It was not until the last few weeks of the regular season that they were finally able to put together a solid run, and even so they only beat the White Sox by 3 games.  After getting swept in the World Series, the powers that be in the organization took some time to evaluate the problems and tried to plug some holes, bringing us to Mr. Torii Hunter.

One of the issues the Tigers had to overcome was a lineup populated by Delmon Young, Brennan Boesch, Ryan Raburn/Ramon Santiago/Omar Infante, Jhonny Peralta, and a down year from former All-Star starter Avila.  It was, as evidenced by the dogfight with the White Sox, problematic to have so many out machines on the roster.  In 2013, a healthy Victor Martinez will replace the departed Young, but Dave Dombrowski and Mike Ilitch decided to fill the rightfield hole with Hunter.  Hunter spent the last five seasons with the Angels and was a pretty consistent 20 HR/90 RBI guy who played in 150 games and hit .270/.350.  This past year, however, at the age of 36, he had, by raw offensive numbers, his best year - .313/.365, both about 30 points above his career averages.  What does this mean?

The Tigers were also horrible defensively.  If this were 2003, they would have solved part of that problem by signing Hunter, an 8-time Gold Glove winner.  But he'll be 37 at the start of the season, with creaky knees and the inevitable downward aging curve ready to strike with full force.  His walk rate declined 40% (65 to 38), while his luck increased well above his typical year.  How can he be expected to maintain that lucky pace on balls in play?  A player's batting eye typically doesn't wear down (though his other batsmanship skills erode fairly quickly as he ages), so it's troubling to see his already low walk rate fall.

Let's look at the facts.  He's 37, an age that, in the PED testing era, is dangerous territory.  Very few ballplayers maintain their health and skill at that age (Alex Rodriguez, for example).  He outperformed his previous high in batting average by 14 points, so he's due for a down year (or at least some level of regression toward the mean).  He is no longer an elite defender, as he has moved from center field to right because of his diminished range.  He also had the pleasure of hitting behind Mike Trout, so his RBI numbers were inflated.  Toss in the fact that he only played in 140 games (2nd fewest since 2005), and it becomes a higher risk than initially perceived.  He's due to make $26 million over the next two years.  Perhaps that money could have been spent better elsewhere...

Hunter was a special player in his day.  It was awesome to see him running into walls and play center field with abandon.  But those days have passed.  An already aging team (Martinez, coming back from surgery and expected to carry a huge offensive load, is 34) has gotten older.  Since the rest of the division did not get much stronger, Hunter's deficiencies (and the whole lineup, actually) may be masked during the regular season as the Tigers run away with things.  But the playoffs - a random mishmash anyway - may prove even more problematic.