I remember thinking that maybe it was a bit too much to spend, but it did help to show the Tiger fans and other players that they were serious about improving after their awful 2003. Unlike some other teams who sign free agents in order to appear competitive -- I'm looking at you Pittsburgh -- the Tigers went the rest of the way with it, continuing to develop quality minor leaguers, scan the waiver wire and add useful free agent parts. I was mostly upset about the Magglio signing solely because no one knew how his knee would hold up, but the Tigers took a huge gamble and came out successful because of it.

i thought the Pudge signing was brilliant, but the Magglio signing was moronic. i've never understood why pudge is undervalued, as if hof catchers fall off trees.

I remember lots of negative reaction to both signings -- especially Magglio, who was perceived as a huge risk because of his injury history. The conventional wisdom was that the best free agents didn't even consider Detroit, forcing the Tigers to overpay for free-agent question marks. Both signings have turned out to be positives, but they were not perceived as such at the time.

By the way, what did Dombrowski see in Pudge Rodriguez that nobody else saw? As he left the Rangers, Pudge was seen as a selfish player and a defensive liability (good thrower, but poor at calling a game and working with pitchers), likely entering the decline phase of his career because he had caught a lot of games. In the 2002 offseason, he attracted very little interest on the free-agent market.

Dombrowski brought him in to the Marlins for their 2003 championship, and then brought him to Detroit. Both teams had extremely successful young pitching staffs. Rodriguez has to get some credit for both accomplishments. At the very least, the teams were unaffected by his perceived shortcomings as a handler of pitchers.

$15M per year for Ordonez is still too much, but when you are the pre-2006 Tigers you really have to over pay to get decent players. If the Tigers had not offered $15M per year for Ordonez they would not have gotten a $10M per year right fielder who could clinch a league championship with a walk-off, three-run home run.

I wanted to go back and see my reaction back in March when I wrote the Tigers team preview, and it sort of echoes the above sentiments from my first comment:

"Was Ordonez overpaid? Yes. Was the contract too long? Yes. Was taking a risk on a player with injury problems a bad move? No. Ordonez is capable of hitting, although not at the levels of yesteryear, and he certainly presents an injury problem with his knee condition. He can provide above average production though, and his signing helped to show the Tigers front office was serious about putting a productive team on the field. I don't usually agree with that sort of move, but bringing the fan base back should be high on the list of things to do after your team almost sets the all-time single season loss record, and the Ordonez moves, as well as the ones that preceeded it, certainly seem to have succeeded in doing that."