The older I get, the more I realize that nobody really knows anything in this game. We can prognosticate, and we can guess, and for the most part, this sport is just about who guesses the highest percentage of the time correctly. Some moves that were lauded at the time turned out to be disastrous, and others that were criticized turned out to be undeniable wins. I’m not going to sit here and act like this is a move that’s dead on arrival, but it’s certainly not a move that will inspire a ton of faith in this front office. You have had them linked to names like Michael King and Ranger Suarez, and now this news drops that Detroit just signed some random guy from the KBO. It just fits with how this organization operates.
As for the pitcher, I don’t even know what to say. It’s Drew Anderson. I just did a 3-minute video about the guy, and that’s probably three more minutes than anyone has spent talking about him in the last four years. He hasn’t pitched in Major League Baseball since 2021. When he did pitch in Major League Baseball, he wasn’t particularly successful. I’m not going to hold that against him, necessarily. We’ve seen a lot of guys go to Japan or go to Korea and have a lot of success and come back and be legitimately solid starters.
Like with any offseason, I don’t like to take one move and act as if it’s the determining factor between a pass and a fail. I need to look at the bigger picture. We’re still not quite to the winter meetings, and we may look at Drew Anderson as the fifth of five moves that the Tigers make in free agency. Given his strong arm and good velocity with his fastball, it does appear like there’s a fair amount of upside, but if this ends up being what the Tigers consider to bolster their rotation, I think a lot of fans will be rightfully upset. It’s another project, and, like all the projects Scott Harris has taken on, I’m going to have to wait until I decide how I feel about it, but it’s definitely not a needle mover.