Larry Brown Sports

The Detroit Tigers were anxious to get Victor Martinez back into their lineup this season after the slugger missed all of 2012 with a torn ACL. Martinez has played in six games for the Tigers this season, but he may already need to miss some game action.

This time, Martinez’s injury has nothing to do with his knee. Instead, he has been listed as day-to-day after cutting his finger on a bat rack. According to MLive.com’s James Schmehl, Martinez caught his thumb on a metal bolt on the team’s bat rack and suffered a cut that required eight stitches.

Accidents happen. Hopefully Martinez won’t have to miss much time, as it’s been a frustrating past year for him with injuries. Hey, at least the 34-year-old didn’t hurt himself in a fit of rage. We saw players miss time last year because they punched stuff not once, not twice, but three times. That’s the type of stuff that can be avoided. From the sound of it, Martinez just needs to be more careful around jagged stuff.

Compared to the National League All-Star team, the fans did a poor job voting on the American League team. Most of the reasonable complaints regarding snubs are from the AL team. We already gave you the All-Star Game snubs from the National League.

Here are the American League All-Star team snubs:

Jhonny Peralta over Derek Jeter at SS

This is a no-brainer. The fans vomited on themselves with this one, probably because a) Jeter is so popular and b) most of them don’t know who Peralta is. Asdrubal Cabrera made the team as the backup shortstop and he should be starting. Peralta should be the backup.

Paul Konerko over Michael Young as 1B/INF

Paul Konerko being left off the team is the biggest snub of MLB. He has a .954 OPS which is fourth-best in the entire AL. It’s a joke that he’s not on the team and it’s criminal that Ron Washington stuck him in the fan vote. Instead of carrying three catchers, Washington should have put Konerko on the team over either Martin or Wieters. At the least, he should be there over Young who is good but can’t mash the way Konerko can.

Read The Rest of the Story…

The Detroit Tigers are said to be close to signing free agent catcher Victor Martinez to a four-year $50 million deal.  Martinez, 32 in December, is coming off a .302/.351/.493 season for the Red Sox where he hit 20 home runs and drove in 79 runs, hitting in the middle of the Sox lineup.  He will  step in as the Tigers every day catcher for at least the first two years of the deal and perhaps shift to a Jorge Posada-like DH/catcher time share as he gets into the latter part of the deal.

This is a good signing for the Tigers, despite the long-term commitment, because they believe they have a two or three-year window of opportunity to win now, led by a core consisting of Miguel Cabrera and Justin Verlander.   Martinez has earned rave reviews throughout his career for his leadership and work ethic in Cleveland and Boston and will be a great addition to their club house.

Read The Rest of the Story…