
illustration by Samara Pearlstein
Dave Dombrowski has said that he wants to keep Justin Verlander clutched to his stripe-shirted bosom for as long as is humanly possible. This is despite the fact that Verlander is up for arbitration again in just a couple of seasons, and we all know how much Mr. D hates that whole process.
I know this ought to be a “file it under O for Obvious” sort of thing, but this is an offseason where practically every cat has been rumored to be bloody, dripping trade chum, we have been told that payroll must be panic-slashed or Comerica is going to implode where it sits, not even Paws is safe, etc. Given that, it’s nice to hear that some small degree of sanity, at least, still has a toehold at the top.
It will be interesting to see if Mr. Dombrowski manages to tart up a contract with Verlander this winter to avoid that next round of arb. He’s got a good track record so far, but it might turn out to be unavoidable this time. If so, he just might have to break out his most clashy, eye-rendingly color-combo’d striped shirt to express his sadness.

In other news, DIBS (Detroit Independent Baseball Scribes) is back! To celebrate its return we have reinstated the DIBS awards for this season. You are going to see this on every other Tigers blog ever, but just in case, here were the winners:
DIBS 2009 Season Awards, oooooooooh shiny
top position player: Miguel ‘the Puma’ Cabrera
top pitcher: Justincredible Verlander
breakout player of the year: Frederick Alfred Porcello the III (FredFred)
comeback player of the year: Justin Verlander again
I was going to tell you who I voted for in each category, but I totally forgot. Awesome, right? Anyways, these are pretty self-explanatory, although I wish that someone other than Verlander had won for Comeback Player of the Year, because we should spread the love around, you know? Man, I really can’t remember who I voted for in that one. It was probably someone like Bobby Seay or Ryan Raburn.
Curious as to who had a say in this? Your 2009 DIBS members are:
Bob Biscigliano, Detroit4lyfe
Brian Borawski, TigerBlog
John Brunn, TigerGeist
Ian Casselberry, Bless You Boys
Jennifer Cosey, Old English D
Austin Drake, Detroit Tigers Den
Greg Eno, Where have you gone, Johnny Grubb?
Bill Ferris, Detroit Tigers Weblog
Patrick Hayes, It’s Just Sports
J. Ellet Lambie, Eye of the Tigers
Mike McClary, the Daily Fungo
Kurt Mensching, Mack Avenue Tigers
Lee Panas, Tiger Tales
John Parent, Tiger Tracks
Mike Rogers, Fire Jim Leyland
Scott Rogowski, DesigNate Robertson
Eric Saelzler, Tigers Amateur Analysis
Jamie Samuelsen, Jamie Samuelsen’s blog
James Schmehl and Scott Warheit, the Cutoff Man
Blake VandeBunte, the Spot Starters
Matt Wallace, Take 75 North
and me, of course.
Damn, y’all. We need some more exciting blog names in this here blogosphere. I think DesigNate Robertson is the only truly creative one in the bunch, and don’t even get me started on the worst offenders, you cats know who you are. Stern glare, etc.
In additional exciting news, if nothing much happens in actual Tigers news, I will be putting up a contest with FABULOUS PRIZES sometime this week, so keep an eye peeled and a whisker wary for that!