Morning Tracks: Nate’s Farewell, Notes on Oliver, Turner, and Kelly

Now almost 24 hours since the trade that sent Nate Robertson to the Marlins, the Tigersphere is still all a flutter. After giving it some more thought, my reaction hasn’t changed much. I understand the deal, I don’t necessarily love it, but I can see that it was probably the best deal the Tigers could make. Moving Robertson allows him to be a starter elsewhere, he wouldn’t have been happy in the bullpen, which is what would have happened had he stayed in Detroit.

Just so you know, last week’s poll about which of the pitchers would make the staff turned up the following results: With 545 votes cast, only 11% of you correctly predicted that Robertson would be the odd man out and both Dontrelle Willis and Eddie Bonine would make the team. Sadly, I was not in that 11%.

Let’s take a look at what’s happening around the Tigersphere, shall we?

Al Beaton of Bless You Boys has a very good recap of yesterday’s reactions. Thanks for the link, Al.

At the News, Tom Gage talks with Nate as he was leaving Lakeland. This is an excellent piece and makes me wonder once again why Lynn Henning gets so much more attention than Gage.

Joel Sherman of the New York Post has some thoughts about the upcoming season, Among them, Sherman says not to be surprised if Jacob Turner performs so well that he moves up to the top of the MLB prospect lists this year.

In other prospect news, TigsTown‘s Mark Anderson thinks Andy Oliver will likely begin the season with AA Erie, an aggressive start for last year’s second round pick.

Looking for more information of LH Jay Voss, you know, they guy coming back in the Robertson deal? Voss apparently had his delivery overhauled during his first two pro seasons, but took to the new style quite well last year. He was ranked as the Marlins’ 23rd best prospect in 2009 after a strong season working at High-A and AA. John Herold of Marlin Maniac gives us more.

"He was converted into relief full time and saw his peripherals improve with his ERA dropping drastically. In 49.2 innings between Jupiter and Jacksonville, he put up an ERA of just 2.72. His FIP was a similar 2.96, with peripherals of 8.33 K/9, 3.26 BB/9, and 0.36 HR/9. He also gets GBs at a very high rate. For his career, he has given up a FB 27.6% of the time, and last year it was just a tiny 22.8%. The Marlins sent him to the AFL this past offseason, and it looked like he could be fast tracked as the lefty to complement Meyer in the pen. Having a prototypical RP Fastball/Slider repertoire, he’s likely going to lean more towards being a LOOGy."

More from TigsTown‘s Anderson, he’s hearing that Don Kelly will almost certainly be the last guy to make the Tigers this year, calling it the worst kept secret in a while.

But that decision may not come today, says Gage in the same article linked above. Jim Leyland will definitely make the call before the team boards a plane for Milwaukee tomorrow.

And finally, you need to head over to DNR to check out what Rogo had to say about the departure of his blog’s namesake. Check that, you need to head over there to read what he has to say about everything. Rogo took a short break recently but he is back and should be a frequent stop for you on your path to Tiger-related wisdom, and humor of course.