Megatrade: Tigers Nab Willis, Cabrera
Detroit heads to $120m payroll with eight-player trade with Marlins.
Dec. 5, 2007 — -- As word of a staggering eight-player trade reverberated around the walls and halls and dancing fountains of Opryland on Tuesday, it was hard to make your brain comprehend this absolutely true fact:
The Florida Marlins won the World Series more recently -- in fact, much more recently -- than the Detroit Tigers.
But here we are, just four years after Dontrelle Willis, Miguel Cabrera and the Marlins unleashed a champagne waterfall inside the visitors clubhouse in Yankee Stadium. And any minute now, there won't be a single teal-clad human being left who can reminisce about one pitch of that World Series.
They'll all be gone. Every one of them. At least they will be as soon as the Marlins get around to announcing that they've traded Willis and Cabrera to Detroit for a six-player package headed by stud prospects Cameron Maybin and Andrew Miller.
Amazing.
The Tigers? They're now an official baseball superpower.
They're headed for a $120 million-plus payroll. They have a lineup deeper than the Grand Canyon. And they can run five starting pitchers out there who have each worked 200-plus innings in at least one of the past two seasons.
"I'll tell you what," Red Sox manager Terry Francona said. "There are a lot of American League pitchers getting real nervous -- and we're one of them."
But the Marlins? They're about as unrecognizable as any team in America -- maybe even more unrecognizable than the Pawtucket Red Sox.
"What's their payroll going to be?" one baseball man wondered Tuesday night. "Six million bucks? Eight million?"
Hey, excellent guesses. As best we can tell, their highest-paid player next season is going to be closer Kevin Gregg. He made $575,000 this season (less than the Yankees paid A-Rod every four days). And he's actually arbitration-eligible.
Or it might be Miller, even though he's only 22 years old, was pitching for the UNC Tar Heels as recently as two years ago and owns exactly 74 1/3 innings of big league experience.
Miller signed a major league contract out of college, so he's scheduled to make $1.325 million if he's in the big leagues next season, which will practically be Johan Santana money compared to the rest of that roster.
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