According to Jason Beck of MLB.com,

Todd Jones, Bobby Seay, Tim Byrdak, Jason Grilli and Zach Miner are in, according to Leyland, barring something drastic happening. Fernando Rodney is also in if/when he’s healthy.

There are five or six candidates fighting for the final two spots, according to Leyland, depending on Rodney’s status. That list is believed to be Denny Bautista, Yorman Bazardo, Freddy Dolsi, Preston Larrison, Aquilino Lopez and Francisco Cruceta (if he gets here anytime soon).

And that Fernando Rodney being healthy part sounds less and less likely by the day. According to the Detroit News, Jim Leyland does not expect to have Rodney at the start of the season.

I am pretty sure Denny Bautista will make the team. So that leaves one spot left for the rest of the guys. I find Preston Larrison and Freddy Dolsi interesting longshots and the other guys somewhat more likely. Except Cruceta. Who seems like he’ll never make it to camp in time.

Larrison, whose career has been mired in AA and AAA, kept his home run rate down last season in AAA Toledo.  But he didn’t exactly strike out many and walked nearly as many as he struck out. The 25-year-old Dolsi will be trying to make the jump from High-A Lakeland to the majors. He did make a brief stop in AA Erie last season. He had a decent K/BB rate but not as high of strikeouts per nine innings as you’d expect of someone going from the minors to the majors.

Personally, I don’t feel like Lopez really did anything last year in Detroit to make me consider him this season. My best bet for the second reliever to come north (until Rodney is healthy) is probably still Bazardo, unless Cruceta gets here quick and really makes a compelling case.

For the first game this spring, Jim Leyland opened up the Tigers’ run-scoring spigot by playing his regular lineup. And now, coming off a 3.65 ERA season with the San Diego Padres, unfortunate Houston starter Woody Williams is probably going to have nightmares.

He gave up eight runs in three innings of work. True to their nature, the Tigers declined to take a walk while pouring 11 runs on the Astros. (They also added a run each against former Tigers Brian Moehler and Doug Brocail).  Pudge homered twice, Placido Polanco once, Edgar Renteria once. The Tigers rapped 20 hits on 44 at-bats.

Kenny Rogers went five innings on the mound and allowed one run. I’m feeling more confident in his ability to come back and have a good season. I am not yet confident he can stay healthy, but I have higher hopes.  Virgil Vasquez and Tim Byrdak also pitched but nothing much to note there.

Detroit announced its first cuts today. None were really surprises. I thought maybe one or two may stay with the major league team longer, but none of these had a shot at making the Tigers. Via Tigers.com:

• First-year pitching prospect RHP Rick Porcello to Class A Lakeland
• Left-hander Macay McBride and right-hander Armando Galarraga to Triple-A Toledo.
• RHP Jeff Gerbe to minor league camp.
• Catcher Rob Bowen to minor league camp.
• Catcher Dusty Ryan to minor league camp.
• Catcher James Skelton to minor league camp.
• First baseman Jeff Larish to minor league camp. s
• Shortstop Danny Worth to minor league camp.
• OF Matt Joyce to minor league camp.
• OF Wilkin Ramirez to minor league camp.
• OF Clete Thomas to minor league camp.

According to Jason Beck that leaves 46 players in camp.

… and numerous fans in the Grand Rapids area — well, Michigan as a whole probably — disappointed that Porcello will start his professional career at high-A. That’s a pretty big start for a 19-year-old, but he impressed during spring training. He pitched two perfect innings in two of his outings, and allowed a run and some walks his other appearance.

I don’t expect the Tigers will fast-track him per se, because there’s no way to build an arm up to a major league workload but through several years of adding innings in the minors. And without any real need to push him hard, the Tigers shouldn’t.  But I wouldn’t be surprised if he showed up in a Tigers uniform at some point in 2010, even if 2011 is the year I expect to really see him major his first major league impact. He’s still young and has to work on things. Despite everything, we have to keep reminding ourselves of that.

The Tigers played a split-squad game with Ohio and swept both teams.

The highlights:

• Dontrelle Willis got the win in a 5-4 victory over Cincy, but his pitch count came before his inning limit, unfortunately. Willis struggled with control and walked four batters in 2-1/3 innings. He struck out three.
• David Laurila of Baseball Prospectus was at the game and got Willis’ thoughts on a few different topics.
• On the other hand, Jason Grilli pitched a few scoreless innings and Bobby Seay did OK.  Statwise anyway. Make what you wish of spring stats. Grain of salt and all that I recommend, but since it’s baseball and if we’re not actually there, we always want to make more out of everything I guess.
• Anyway, Miguel Cabrera had some hits and feels better about that. I was never really worried but I suppose he wasn’t either.
• 2B Scott Sizemore seems to be making the most of his time around the major league club. But  Carlos Guillen and Pudge Rodriguez each hit their fourth homers of spring.
• (Is spring training over yet? 2.5 more week? oh geez.)
• So the other Tigers also beat the Indians in extra innings.
• Yorman Bazardo started for the Tigers, and other than when he faced Grady Sizemore (2 HR!) I guess he fared well enough: 3 hits, 1 walk in 3 innings. 1 K. Remember he’s trying to make the Tigers bullpen even though they’re starting him in these games
• Denny Bautista continues to have a good spring. He struck out four in two innings and has yet to allow a run.
• In other news, Todd Jones threw on the side. His arm strength (hold the jokes) isn’t up to par, the News article says.  Much as most folks are afraid of Todd Jones, not having Todd Jones is an even more frightening thought. And that’s pretty scary!
• Seriously, the real games can’t begin soon enough from this blogger’s point of view.

Saturday:

• Jeremy Bonderman gave up some runs. He didn’t mind. He felt like he pitched fine. It had to do with his changeup.  The Tigers lost.
• D-Town’s Eric was there and took photos.

Sunday:

• Nate Robertson was awesome, pitching to just 12 players in four innings. (He did allow a hit.) Tigers.com called it “midseason form.” Todd Jones gave up four runs in the ninth. Is that also midseason form? Bilfer suspects fans will let loose the dogs of war.
• On the other hand, Brandon Inge played third base and apparently the LA. Dodgers were scouting the game. They recently lost their third baseman, so there’s a market for Inge. Lynn Henning wrote a rather thoughtful piece on Inge and believes he’ll be traded within a week.
• Eric was in Lakeland and blogged about this game, too.
• Gary Sheffield and Miguel Cabrera are still a bit sore.

I was able to listen to today’s  game against the Braves on MLB.com today, so that was nice. Unfortunately, young outfield prospect Wilkin Ramirez, who was having a nice season, dislocated his shoulder diving for a ball in left field. He was 7-for-16 with two homers this spring but obviously had no shot at the MLB club.

In other news, Kenny Rogers couldn’t make it through three innings after a few 3-2 counts earlier in the game. He allowed a run in the first. Couple that scored in the third came off Ramirez’ injury. So he allowed 3 for the game. Other pitchers struggled too, both Virgil Vasquez and Zach Miner stumbled a bit.

Pudge Rodriguez had a great game at leadoff, hitting two doubles and a home run.  He went 3-for-3. And Brandon Inge played the whole game at third, and hit a homer in the process. He was 1-for-4 with two strikeouts.

At The News, Wojo came out with his list of most important Tigers for the club to have a shot at the World Series. With some columnists, this sort of list could have been a wreck. But I thought Wojo had a pretty good theme guiding him — less emphasis on repeating a typical season from a star player and more emphasis on the player not struggling — and a fairly respectable list to show for it. So I’ll respond with mine.

5. Gary Sheffield — If you look back at last season, you’ll see how important Sheffield was. When he was injured, the Tigers slid from first place to missing the playoffs. It can’t all be put on Sheffield’s then-achey shoulder, but that was one of the reasons. Due to the addition of Miguel Cabrera and Edgar Renteria — and the addition of Jacque Jones doesn’t hurt either — the importance of Sheffield having a successful season isn’t huge. But for the Tigers hitting to make up for any pitching problems, he’s going to have to be healthy and productive in every month of the season. Fortunately, his shoulder seems fine.

4. Dontrelle Willis – Popular to contrary opinion, starting pitching in Detroit has as many questions as relief pitching. For the Tigers to contend, Willis is going to have to be better than he has been the past two years. And, oh yeah, now he’s facing American League hitters. So Willis is the unknown quantity in the Tigers (worrysome?) starting rotation. We know Justin Verlander is a safe bet and Cy Young hopeful. We know Jeremy Bonderman, when healthy, is going to give you a chance to win most days on the mound. With the improved offense, this might be closer to every day he’s on the mound. And we’re pretty sure Nate Robertson is going to bounce back, not as good as 2006 but not as bad as 2006. (Well, I think so anyway.) But that leaves us two people: the newcomer and the old man. If the newcomer can throw strikes and pitch more relaxed, maybe he can get closer to being the guy he was two years ago who was second in Cy Young voting as a 23-year-old. If not, more pressure is put on the bullpen not to blow leads the other four days.

3. Edgar Renteria – It’s not an accident two of the national leaguers are back-to-back on my list. The Tigers went out on a limb, trading young starter Jair Jurrjens (and utilityman Omar Infante) to the Braves for Renteria. The move allowed them to move Carlos Guillen to first base, vastly improving the weakness at that corner while decreasing the defensive mistakes at shortstop and hopefully preserving the career a guy with an expensive contract. But Renteria has to fulfill his part of the bargain. His last stop in the American League, with Boston, didn’t go well at all. And he may be a former gold glover, but the important word is former. How big a step above Guillen is he defensively? We’ll have to see.

2. Kenny Rogers – He’s 63 43. He’s coming off not just one, but two injuries last season that took him out of sizable portions of the season. The Professor started just 11 games last year, which was worrysome, but acceptable, because we had a slew of pitching prospects. With so many trades, that’s no longer the case. If he can’t pitch every five days, then … wait a minute, who is the sixth starter these days? Oh yeah, we don’t really know. But we can make a pretty fair guess it’s going to be a sizeable step down. Rogers doesn’t have to be an All-Star. But he does have to be healthy from April to October because the dropoff quite concerns me.

1. To Be Determined – Is it cheating to only name four players? I was trying to come up with a reliever for the list, as the bullpen is a confusing mess. Well, that’s what I went with. The most important Tiger is somewhere in the bullpen. He might have a familiar name. He might not. But fact is, he has to step up his game and become a reliable setup man, or seventh inning fireman, because with Fernando Rodney’s tendinitis and — a theme is appearing — sore shoulder, and with Joel Zumaya’s freak injuries and — theme! — repaired shoulder, there’s a gaping late-inning hole and we don’t know who is going to step into it.

If anyone.

If not, the Tigers are going to have a great season, but it might not end on the the happy note we — and they — expect.

Oh lookee. Brandon Inge can play catcher after all. This revelation came out the same day as the news backup catcher Vance Wilson won’t be ready to start the season and will take a break from throwing for a few days. Jason Beck of MLB.com quoted Tigers assistant GM Al Avila from an XM broadcast (pause for breath):

Brandon came in actually today and talked to Jim [Leyland]. He felt that he was misquoted in the newspaper, things were taken out of context and he actually came in today and said that he’s willing to catch. …

At this point you can count on Brandon Inge being a Detroit Tiger and he’ll catch when we need him

Well, that settles everything then!

If only. But this day-time drama has got to go away eventually, right?

As for being misquoted, well, let’s see:

Detroit News

“Catching (today) absolutely 100 percent reinforces that third base is my all-time love. That’s not even a question.

“The part I really don’t like about catching, about slipping back into the mold, is that I take pride in running a pitching staff more than anything. And it’s hard for me to separate catching from hitting.

“I get to the plate and I’m still in the mind-set of catching. Hitting is just so back-burner.” (Detroit News, 3/3/08)

Freep:

Kind of a downer feeling. I’m a little frustrated, actually, right now.

“Nothing has changed, but having caught a game reinforces my thoughts. It really makes me realize that I love third base.”

Tigers.com

“Catching right there absolutely reinforces that third-base is my all-time love,” Inge said. “It’s not even a question. If it came down to it, where I was just catching, I’d have to find a way to separate it. I don’t know if I can, because I take too much pride in the catching aspect.”

“I’m a much better hitter this year than I have been in a long time,” he said. “That feeling that I got today was much more of a downer feeling. Don’t get me wrong: The actual catching part of the game [was] fun. It was awesome. But what fires me up is the offensive part. It’s very frustrating to me.

Associated Press:

“Nothing has changed, but having caught a game reinforces my thoughts,” Inge said. “It really makes me realize that I love third base.”

My take

Well OK. He might have a point on being slightly misquoted if those interviews all occurred at the same time. Which I really have no clue if they did or didn’t. But as you can tell if you read through all the quotes, he said basically the same thing. Without putting words into his mouth too much, he might want to claim that’s what one or two of those quotes did to him. Here’s why. Reread the AP version. Inge is basically saying “Hey, I preferred third base.” Maybe the opinion looks worse on paper (and screens) but the basics of it, it doesn’t sound like that powerful a quote. The Detroit News is the only article I could find that includes “100%” which sounds like a stronger dislike. I wonder the reason for the discrepancy.

But in any case, what he said is what he said no matter how long the quote that ran: he didn’t like catching. There’s really no way to claim you were taken out of context or misquoted. Either you liked catching or you didn’t, and he clearly didn’t.

By the way, this slightly misquoting thing seems pretty innocent to me. When there’s a big event I’m covering and I see three or four versions of an interview I was a part of, there really might be four different variations on the wording. Most people have recorders and you say to yourself “How can you get a quote wrong with a recorder playing it back?” Well, it happens when you’re typing quick on deadline, even if it shouldn’t. Even easier if you’re just using a notebook of course. The important part of getting the quote right is being as close as possible, not getting the important words wrong or changing the tone of the quote. You can judge for yourself from our sample above how well they did. I’m a bit suspicious of the “100%” being added to a quote, but without knowing the circumstances surrounding it, I really don’t make much of that.

Anyway, to circle this one up, even with Inge’s ability (and desire?) to play catcher, the Tigers will likely take a separate backup catcher, Beck wrote in his blog. I agree, I think it’s quite likely too. And Dane Sardinha is that guy still. He has a vote of confidence from Dontrelle Wilis.

“He did a great job back there,” Willis said. “For a guy you’re new to, he did a great job handling me back there. For someone to know what your ball is going to do and what you’re good at on some days, he’s very good about recognizing that. He did a great job of recognizing what we wanted to work on.” (Beck’s notebook)

• As I grumble over not getting the Pistons/Celtics on tv up north…
• Justin Verlander went three scoreless innings on the mound to lead the Tigers’ home team over Philly, 6-2. That’s become a theme lately.
• RHP Denny Bautista went two more scoreless innings — five total for the season. I really feel like he’s going to come north with the team.
• Zach Miner got the “save” going two inning against some guys we haven’t heard of. Is he the presumptive setup man if Rodney can’t? That would be strange. But the Freep wondered if he could.
• Brandon Inge played center field fine.
• And he doesn’t hate catching — pinky swear.
• Carlos Guillen homered twice, and Maggs once.
• Pudge led off. Ugh. He went 0-fer. Learn from this 1-for-10 week from leadoff Pudge, JL.
• In Yorman Bazardo’s second appearance of the season, the traveling Tigers took a 4-1 victory over Pittsburgh. Bazardo walked three in two innings, gave up no hits.
• He’s really more of a bullpen candidate, but hasn’t had much work, likely due to his father recently passing away. I think there’s a least’s a puncher’s chance he can go north if F-Rod goes on the disabled list to start the year.
• Of interest, Rick Porcello gave up five baserunners (three hits, two walks) in his second professional appearance in five outs.
• Bobby Seay struck out two.
• Curtis Granderson and Marcus Thames had some extra base hits.