Chip Shots: Tigers Fatten Up With Fielder

Chip Shots
A Sports Blog

Meet the Staff

I'm Chip Ramsey a career broadcaster who has been a sports radio program director in Milwaukee and Nashville. I've covered everything from high school and college sports (including the SEC, Big Ten, MVC and OVC) to Major League Baseball, The NFL and the NHL. I have a few things to say, and when I want to say them, I say them here.

I mostly talk about my teams, which would be the White Sox, Bears, and Blackhawks, but I do talk about other things as well. Thanks for dropping by. I hope you will bookmark this site and visit often!

Chip's broadcast career

Chip Shots: Tigers Fatten Up With Fielder

Tigers Fatten Up With Fielder

A week ago there was word that Tiger DH and perennial Sox killer Victor Martinez blew out his knee and would be out for the entire 2012 season. This gave a faint glimmer of hope to White Sox fans, who understand that it will take a perfect storm for them to compete for and win a division title this year. The perfect storm ended yesterday when it was announced that the Tigers had made a hefty arrangement with slugger Prince Fielder for nine years and $214 million dollars.

Fielder brings more to the table than just a Big Mac and super sized fries. He's the youngest player to ever hit fifty homers and his numbers throughout his career in Milwaukee have been the model of consistency. Short of an Adam Dunn like year of horrors, the addition of Fielder puts the Tigers not just in the conversation to win the division, but in the conversation to make it to the world series. They, along with the Yankees, Red Sox, Rangers and Angels are probably the elite teams in the AL. After that there is a pretty big drop off to the "number two but trying harder" tier which includes Tampa Bay, Toronto and possibly the Indians and White Sox. The "thanks for coming tier" includes such punching bags as Kansas City, Baltimore, Oakland, Seattle and sadly, Minnesota.

By signing the big boy, the Tigers clearly achieved separation on the rest of the division, which in many cases is going backwards not forward. The White Sox enter 2012 trying to comprehend life without Ozzie Guillen, Mark Buehrle and Carlos Quentin, while the Twinkies move forward without Jason Kubel, Michael Cuddyer and Joe Nathan.

The Sox are still hoping that something may change their outlook, which would have to be huge years from Dunn and Rios, continued excellence from Captain Paul Konerko and a healthy and rejuvenated Jake Peavy. But with the Fielder signing, even if all of those elements came together, it still probably wouldn't be enough to knock off Detroit. Of course, a lot of people were saying the same thing when the Sox signed Adam Dunn prior to last season.

The beauty of baseball is that it is played over a 162 game schedule and no one, no matter how smart, no matter how statistically entrenched, no matter how knowledgeable can predict things with total accuracy. I'm going with that for now.