I for one would love to see him stay in Detroit if he can become comfortable with his new situation.

It could be that after Leyland gets an up close view of Cabrera's current lack of defensive skills at 3rd base for a few dozen games that Leyland will do the smart thing and put Cabrera in left field and put Inge back at 3rd.

Brandon Inge's giving spirit connects with local fans

Tigers: Inge trade tricky

Inge only has his self to blame for losing his job. He needs to just accept his role on this team. It is Inge that wants to be traded. As long as the Tigers are willing to pay him why leave? It is dumb. At some point an injury is going to happen and he will get playing time.

After all he's been through here, you'd think that he'd wait it out a year and see if he could get a ring. He'll contribute.

In my opinion, he should be starting this year at 3rd base. With all of the hitting we have in the lineup it seems to me that we benefit more by keeping his defense at 3rd rather than Cabrera, who is an absolutely terrible fielding 3rd basemen.

Put Cabrera in left and forget Jacque Jones. The question is do we want Inge or Jones starting because Cabrera can play 3rd or left.

I would much rather have Inge starting than Jones, because playing Cabrera at 3rd base and Jones in left instead of Inge at 3rd and Cabrera in left will in my opinion cost us more runs and more games.

Isn't Jones a lefty bat? Seems like we would have too many righty bats in there with Binge in there as well. It would be cool if Brandon could be a D3B, Designated third basemen, and not bat.

If you go and check his splits last year he actually hit better against lefties.

Secondly in my opinion this who lefty righty thing is way overblown when you have a team that is going to average 6 runs a game.

Most baseball fans are like most basketball fans, probably the same people in a number of cases, in that they way underestimate the value of excellent defense.

It seems to me that the main advantage of the Tigers having Jones is that he can play a better center field than any of our other guys that will make the 25 man roster, except for Grandy. Jones also hits left handed pitching pretty good. So I can see him playing in center field for us against left handed starters, which Grandy so far in his career has not had much success with.

Jones will also allow us to rest Grandy and still be able to put a decent fielder in center field on those occasions.

However, my guess is that most likely, Leyland will play Thames in left and Raburn in center against lefties.

History has shown that it is almost alway pitching and defense that get you into October and the World Series title and not hitting.

There have been exceptions, but that is just what they are.

Last year we didn't make the playoffs because our pitching stunk, not because we weren't scoring runs.

How many balls get hit to 3rd base per game? What is the difference in the fielding % for Cabrera and Inge?

It would be an interesting calculation to see if the worse fielding is made up for with the higher offensive contributions.

I'm willing to tolerate a couple of Cabrera errors at 3B in place of watching Inge strikeout another 150 times.

Sounds good now, but it will be not be just a couple of more errors and it will be a heck of a lot more balls not gotten to that become hits, probably something like 1 to 2 a game on the average.

I would rather see Inge at 3rd than Jones in left but you will probably get your wish.

Pitchers who strike out Inge, which there are a lot of, get over confident in their abilities and as a result wind up grooving one or more for Grandy. LOL