Tigers to look internally to replace Jose Iglesias

Even without the most attractive options available, sometimes a team just has to roll the dice and hope for the best.

That seems to be the case with Dave Dombrowski and the Detroit Tigers. Coming off of the news that phenom shortstop Jose Iglesias will definitely start the season on the disabled list, and the range of injury time being from until the All-Star break to the entire season, many immediately pointed towards free agent shortstop Stephen Drew as the best fit for the Tigers. Drew is known to be looking for a multi-year deal, though and would likely command a high dollar price. With that in mind, general manager Dave Dombrowski says that he will primarily look to what he already has to plug the shortstop gap.

Currently, the internal candidates don’t look entirely attractive on the surface. There’s Steve Lombardozzi, acquired from the Nationals in the trade for Doug Fister. Lombardozzi has the most major league experience of the three candidates, having two full seasons under his belt with the Nationals. He is, however, very limited at the shortstop position in terms of experience, having played only two games there. He has most of his games as a second baseman, with just over 100 games at the position.

There is prospect Hernan Perez, who, like Lombardozzi, is primarily a second baseman, but Perez only has 33 games of Major League experience. Finally, there’s Danny Worth, who has 115 games of Major League experience spread over four seasons. While he has seen the most time of the three at shortstop, he’s only played 27 games at the position.

The Tigers could be okay with any of these three for a short period of time, but over the course of a full season, it would appear they need a much stronger solution. It would not be terribly surprising to see the team pull of a deal with Stephen Drew, much in the same way the team signed Prince Fielder to his demands when Victor Martinez went down with an injury two years ago.