Victor Martinez may miss the entire 2012 season with a torn ACL. The ACL, for those that don’t know, is the main ligament that stabilizes the knee when making lateral movements. This, obviously, is a huge blow for the Detroit Tigers! I always hate hearing about these types of injuries before spring training even starts; it puts a big damper on both the regular season and fantasy baseball. In fantasy rankings, V-Mart was arguably the best catcher last year.
This is going to be the 33 year old Martinez’s second year on a 4 year, $50 million dollar deal. The Tigers have to be greatly disappointed that he hurt himself while working out. In today’s age the athletes in all sports really never take any time off. They do some sort of regiment all year round, but it’s always sad to hear of a player over doing it and severely hurting themselves. The very best scenarios, with or without the surgery, are his returning in 6-7 months time. Ouch!
The Tigers signed Martinez knowing how solid a hitter he is and they realize that someone needs to bat behind their big gun Miguel Cabrera and protect him. In 2010, without Martinez batting behind him, Cabrera led the AL in intentional walks with 32. In 2011 that number dropped to 22 with V-Mart behind him. And it’s not just those numbers alone, with a real solid RBI man behind Cabrera he just isn’t pitched around as much. Now the Tigers have to figure out how to do this without Martinez for one year.
Martinez, when on the field, has always been a great hitter and RBI man. He does get hurt A LOT, especially when catching. But Martinez is often able to play through some of his injuries and still produce, just like last year. When he signed, Martinez was expected to play a third of the games behind the plate, backup Cabrera at first when needed and play the rest of the time at DH. But he battled various issues all season, a severe groin pull that landed him on the DL and he never totally recovered from during the season. He also tweaked a knee the second half of the season and finally badly pulled a ribcage muscle in the playoffs. But, Martinez was still able to play most of the season, and while the groin issues hurt his power some, he produced a great season.
Victor Martinez 2011 season:
145 GP, 76 R, 40 2B, 12 HR, 103 RBI, .330 Avg, .380 OBP, .470 SLG
The good news is that the Tigers handily won their division last year by a whopping 15 game margin. Thanks mostly to the Minnesota Twins and the Chicago White Sox having very disappointing seasons, it became a cakewalk the second half of the season for the Tigers. This season the Tigers are still the favorite to win the AL Central division, even with Martinez out. But the Twins could always finally get healthy (hello Joe Mauer and Justin Morneau), the White Sox could have a rebound year (hello Adam Dunn and Alex Rios) and the Kansas City Royals could always take that next step (they have some great young talent). Finally, the Cleveland Indians pitching could come together and surprise (Fausto Carmona, Ubaldo Jimenez, Justin Masterson and Josh Tomlin).
Throw in the fact that you have to expect Justin Verlander, the American league MVP, to come back to Earth a bit and the division suddenly seems to be a lot tighter. The Tigers still have some decent options to explore though. Smartly, one of the few moves the Tigers already made this off-season was signing another catcher, Gerald Laird. With Alex Avila having a breakout season last year, he was really overworked the second half of the season when Martinez was only able to DH with his injuries. The Tigers didn’t want that to happen again and, I think, they also realize V-Mart should not be anything but an emergency catcher going forward.
Victor Martinez was one of the few left-handers in their lineup (he is a switch hitter), so my 2-cents would be for them to get a short one year deal with a replacement left-handed batting DH. The available free agent list is actually still pretty decent; Johnny Damon, Hideki Matsui and Carlos Pena are all solid. Even lighter options like Casey Kotchman could work, where you can actually improve the Tigers’ defense by playing him at first and DH’ing Cabrera. Prince Fielder is NOT an option, in my opinion, since Martinez still has two expensive years remaining after this one on his contract.
Another option is getting another true outfielder and instead DH’ing Delmon Young who isn’t exactly what you would call a great defensive player. This brings up the idea of the Tigers going after a Cuban outfielder (there will soon be two of them as free agents). There are also several cheap left-handed outfielders available: Rick Ankiel, JD Drew, Willie Harris, Raul Ibenez, Corey Patterson and even Juan Pierre.
What does this mean fantasy baseball-wise? Well every other decent option at catcher just became that much more valuable. Catcher is always a “scarce” position in fantasy baseball to begin with. Losing Martinez and the retirement of Jorge Posada makes it that much scarcer! Players like Mike Napoli, Carlos Santana, Matt Weiters, Joe Mauer and Brian McCann all have to move up in your personal rankings.
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