Kevin Gorman

third base or left field, that they still have kind of a bit of a hole in that spot, whether they're going to start the season with Trujillo at short or third, or whether they're going to start the season with Jake Mangum playing left field.

I think that's the hole in this lineup, and there's also one in the starting rotation.

Well, I think the Tigers probably have their fingers crossed that they can work out a deal prior to that.

They've missed that deadline already.

So if they're going to arbitration, I would think that they would try to work out a long term contract.

I believe that they may have reached the breaking point there.

I get the impression that the Tigers are going to be more willing to trade Scooble.

Yeah, that's a huge gap.

And that can be viewed very much from Scooble's camp as a guy who was just named MLB Network's number one pitcher right now ahead of Skeens.

And I think Skeens would tell you the same.

I think Skeens has a ton of respect for Scooble and what he's done, given that he's a left-handed pitcher, that he had back-to-back games in the playoffs last year with 13 and 14 strikeouts, something Skeens has not done yet in his career.

But it certainly has the ability to do and potential to do this season.

So I think that you could see Scooble, even if he wins the arbitration, that could give the Tigers some incentive to trade him.

And I would think that they'd prefer to trade him at the deadline, depending on whether they're going to be a playoff contender or not.

But there's a possibility that perhaps they trade him before the season and somebody goes in and says, OK, we know what we have to pay him this year.

And we know that perhaps instead of paying him 32 million, if he wins his arbitration case, that that's kind of sets the standard for this is his market.

This is what he's going to be able to command.

And this is what we should be able to look at in a long term deal.

It really depends a lot on the situation.

on the agents, whether they want a long-term deal or whether they want to deal with multiple op-outs.