Side note : Todd Jones

As if this offseason won't be anything other than mostly side notes:

I once bought tickets to a Tiger game online. I've done this for several teams but the Tigers are the only ones that signed me up for some sort of newsletter. Normally I'd get off of it, but it's my junk email address so the effort it would take to get off of it seems more than the effort needed to delete these emails when they come in. I know that's not true, but I don't see myself getting over this imaginary hump anytime soon.

The fact that I receive these occasional updates has actually given me some minor affinity for the Tigers, like they want to be my friend really badly. Poor kids. It also helps that one of the few non-National baseball blogs I check with any regularity is a Tigers Blog, Roar of the Tigers. I'm a sucker for drawings, especially ones with a sense of humor. You had me at Detriot Tigers Passover. Anyway...

I recently got an email and happened to actually read it before deleting it. It was about a Detroit Tigers Fantasy camp. One of the players that would be there would be the Tigers' all-time save leader Todd Jones. That sounded strange. It couldn't be right that their all-time saves leader was Todd Jones, could it? Nope, he totally is and it isn't even close. Over seven (non-consecutive) years of closing for the Tigers. If anyone tells you closers are a special breed point to this guy. He was really only good for one year (and that was with the Marlins) and yet the guy is 14th all-time in saves. 14th all-time! Roberto Hernandez is 12th? Doug Jones is 20th? I don't even remember that guy. I thought he was Todd Jones.

Another odd thing is that in one year, despite never really being that good, he got Cy Young vote(s). Pedro ran away with the Cy Young that year, but Todd Jones, with a WAR* of 1.5 got votes. It was basically the least important season to get a Cy Young vote since the strike. The Tigers didn't win their division. They didn't even finish with a winning record. Yet because he led the league in saves, he got some votes. What I can't figure though, is why then Derek Lowe, who was much better and tied him for the lead in saves, didn't get any votes. I can see why Sasaki (#3) didn't get votes - he was going to be the ROY. I can see why Rivera (#4) didn't get votes - he had much better years. I guess Lowe just didn't have the support of that rogue voter or two like Jones did.

Looking at all this, I still can't decide whether it is bad that I dismissed Todd Jones, top 20 all-time save leader, Cy Young vote getter, All-Star. Eh, whatever. You're still taking Willie Hernandez for your all-time Tigers fantasy team.

*WAR, for those of you unfamiliar is an attempt to get one overall stat to judge a player by, like factoring in everything. Stands for Wins Above Replacement. We could go into it more but it was not important to the point I'm trying to make. Maybe some other day.