Kansas City Royals’ loss, a gain for Detroit Tigers – MLB News
Kansas City Royals made on the biggest moves in their history when they traded four minor league prospects to Tampa Bay Rays for starting pitchers James Shields and Wade Davis late on Sunday. In some ways, it was a season defining moment for the Royals who
are now considered as one of the favourites to win the American League Central Division alongside the Detroit Tigers.
The four prospects traded to the Rays included Royals’ most promising minor league players; outfielder Wil Myers, who hit 37 home runs and 100 plus RBI’s in Double A and Triple A league last season.
While Shields filled Kansas City’s need for a No.1 starter, the Tigers filled the No.2 catcher vacancy after the signed free agent Brayan Pena to a one year contract. Without a shadow of a doubt, Tigers’ everyday catcher Alex Avila is an extremely talented
hitter but he has a history of missing a large number of games with injuries.
As the Tigers are desperate to win the World Series title, they want to reduce the risk to as minimum as possible and signed Pena as a backup to Avila. The position had been temporarily filled by rookie Bryan Holaday who has been spend back to the Triple
A Toledo and Gerald Laird who signed with Atlanta Braves as a free agent as soon as the season ended.
"As a switch-hitter, he will serve as a solid complement to Alex Avila as our backup catcher for the 2013 season," Tigers general manager Dave Dombrowski said in a statement.
"You want to improve all the time -- you want to be as good as you can at any position all the time," Dombrowski said last week.
“The Royals removed Peña from their 40-man protected list last month, and he opted for free agency instead of staying in the K.C. farm system,” said John Lowe of freep.com.
Pena is an extremely experienced professional, having started 179 games with the Atlanta Braves and Kansas City Royals. He is also a decent hitter with a .248 career average with 14 home runs. It will be interesting to see if he can post imposing numbers
in 2012 to help the Tigers end their 28 years World Series drought.
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