<<Detroit Tigers third baseman Brandon Inge had surgery to repair patellar tendinitis in both knees Tuesday, and while club officials say he will be ready for spring training, the better question may be whether he will be in a Tigers uniform when he does step back on the field

The Tigers have holes up and down their roster; pitching, both the starting rotation and in the bullpen, offense is an issue, as is the middle infield where it's expected the Tigers part ways with veteran Placido Polanco in favor of Scott Sizemore.

Inge might be able to bring back enough in trade to fill more than one of the weaknesses above, making him an attractive trade target this winer.

But Inge is under contract through 2010 at a reasonable salary of $6.6 million, and it'd be difficult for the Tigers to find a viable replacement without doubling or tripling the payroll commitment at the position.>>

Are they suggesting we could trade Inge Surgeries and all?

I didn't think they speculated on trades for teams that didn't involve Boston or New York...

I'm a bit surprised that they did, but obviously, their lack of resource investment in this story is showing as we all know nobody would want 1 year of Brandon Inge...

What I found funny is that they suggested we'd need to give somewhere from 13.2 Million - 19.8 Million to get a viable replacement.

I guess they are operating on the parameters of production we've received from Dontrelle, Nate, Jeremy, Magglio and Guillen as their benchmark....and not the fact that we could probably get away with playing Raburn, or (GULP) Guillen there instead.

Being that Inge makes only slightly more than what Pedro Feliz makes, whom the Phillies have to decide upon and option exercising on, if they would be interested.

Inge seems like the kind of Blue Collar guy that would fit in in Philly.

One man's opinion. I have come to believe that the Tigers and Brandon Inge are like a zebra mussell and a rock (for you nautically inclined). They stick together and survive although neither provides any discernable benefit to the other.

Not to start another of our many discussions on Mr. Inge...but he is what he is, a whale of a nice guy, a hard worker, but a very overrated baseball player. I just don't see him going anywhere.

A lot of teams love to have pop at third base, and might be sufficiently impressed by Inge's home run power and defensive ability to overlook (stupidly) his overall offensive deficiencies.

Among Major League third basemen with at least 300 plate appearances this season, Inge was 23rd in OPS. A lot of the 22 guys above him don't make anywhere near 13 million dollars a year, much less 20.

I am glad to read Inge's surgery went well. Now the hard part begins for Brandon.... staying off his feet for many weeks.

Obey your doctor's orders Brandon. Follow Doc's rehab rules to the tee.

That is what I thought was funny about the article...

That the author thought that we'd have to pay double or triple what Brandon makes to get the same kind of production.

It took me a while to pick my jaw up from the floor after reading it.

If Brandon is truly that valuable...

then let the suitors line up and they can have him for one season before he becomes a FA.

I'd gladly take Adrian Beltre's 3B defensive prowess and weak hitting at 3B as a replacement to Inge for I bet 5M or less per season as opposed to Brandon's 6.8M.

From a production standpoint I'd consider both players a "push", and if we net a prospect or 2, or fill a hole in the roster somewhere, for the "value of Brandon Inge" and saved almost a couple of million in the process...

...sorry to all you Inge lovers...but I'm in.

That being said, I was surprised, and pleased with what Brandon did before his knees started to hurt and stubbornly wouldn't come out of the lineup and consequently hurt the team more than he helped it.

"That being said, I was surprised, and pleased with what Brandon did before his knees started to hurt and stubbornly wouldn't come out of the lineup and consequently hurt the team more than he helped it."

Respectfully, he didn't write his own name in the lineup. Some of the blame has to go to the guy who did write it there. My personal feeling is that Leyland should have said, "Look, your name's not going in the lineup for 15 days regardless of whether you think you should go on the DL or not. As far as I'm concerned, for the good of this team you're on the DL. Rest up and we'll see what happens."

I'm with Roar on this one. The manager decides who plays. I have no idea what if any discussions about the issue went on between Inge and the management, but irrespective of whether he wanted to be in the lineup, it wasn't his decision.

The Tigers were in a pennant race, and they presumably they thought that Inge gave them a better chance to win than anyone else they could put in his position. They may have been wrong--as the people who run the Tigers are pretty consistently--but that's not Inge's fault.

Absolutely! Would Everett have been given the same deference? Didn't they sit Dontrelle when it became obviouse that he was hurting the team? What made Inge irreplacable? He has got some Mojo over JL/Tigers.

Jesus christmas, Dombrowski tried everything he could think of to trade Inge a couple seasons back---after some initial interest, the teams all said, " No farking way". And that was BEFORE Inge hit .205 in 2008 and before he hit .186 for the 2nd half of 2009...

Any chance there might've been for the Tigers to pick up half of Inge's salary for the final year on his contract for another team flew out the window once Inge's knees were sliced and diced--he's done as a mlb player except for a final year of torturing the Tigers. He's old and he'll be out of shape after 4 months of sitting around waiting for those knees to heel.

DD has a massive bottle of champagne that he'll uncork once Inge is no longer a playing part of the Tigers organization.

I will join him.

There will be some distraught Inge lovers after next season, I am thinking...