Outside the Box

ESPN.com - Major League Baseball - Cedeno goes to Tigers in six-player deal

Going into the offseason our priority was to improve our pitching staff," Astros general manager Gerry Hunsicker said. "We feel we took significant strides to do that with this trade. Brad Ausmus helped us win two divisions in Houston. Reacquiring him adds to our pitching immediately. He is one of the best catchers in baseball."

You might think that picking up some good pitchers would be the best way to help your pitching staff, but the Astros managed to do it with just a catcher. There is little evidence that Ausmus has much if any impact on the staff he is managing. In 1999, the Astros went from second to third in team ERA, and the Tigers dropped from 10th to 12th in ERA. I don't see Ausmus being the prime mover in that regard. Doug Brocail has been a pretty good pitcher the last four years, but he is essentially a spot reliever, while Nelson Cruz is an OK pitcher, but nothing to get all that excited over.

For this they gave up a probable top five (in the league) center fielder and a probable top five catcher (at least offensively) both on the correct side of 30 and relatively cheap.

I don't see the risk for the Tigers and a team dealing vets for youngsters should have to assume some risk. Randy Smith oscillates between brilliant and not so brilliant, so I tend to believe he is largely taking a random walk approach to management. This move is brilliant and really helps their team out. This will give them a much longer sequence offense and all it cost them was a little bullpen depth. I'd do that every day and twice on Sunday.

The only risk here is that it causes them to fritter away some of their catching talent. Catcher is the one position the Tigers have young talent: Fick, Munson, Cardona, Inge, and now Meluskey all have some sort of question mark, but all have value and need to be utilized in some way.