Published: Sunday, January 30, 2011, 8:42 AM

HUGH BERNREUTER

Armando Galarraga was not perfect, although some may argue. He was a mediocre to poor starter, a fifth-starter inning eater. Still, I was surprised because it seems the Tigers are putting a lot of faith in two big question marks in their rotation: Phil Coke and Brad Penny. Galarraga was a nice security blanket for when Coke and Penny go down with injuries. Hopefully, Dave Dombrowski has a Plan B when injuries wreak havoc on the rotation.

PAUL NEUMEYER

Something’s up on this one. Either Dombrowski really likes Penny and thinks he’s make a comeback, or he has someone in the farm system lurking who could emerge this year should the original plan go awry. Still, I was somewhat surprised that the Tigers gave up on Galarraga like they did. And I’ll bet Jim Joyce is happy Armando will pitch in the National League.

ADAM BOUTON

I was a little surprised, especially after the Tigers signed him right before demoting him. I thought that Galarraga would get one more shot to reclaim his rookie year glory (13-7, 3.73 ERA), after all the ups and downs of 2010 — the near perfect game, back-and-forth from the minors to the Tigers and being very ill for a stretch. But it didn’t seem like Detroit was willing to give him one more chance. He would have been a nice security blanket in case injury-prone Penny went down with an injury or the Phil Coke experiment didn’t work out in the rotation.

DETROIT — Brad Penny insists he’s healthy again.

The Detroit Tigers are more than willing to give him a chance to prove it.

Penny agreed to a one-year deal with Detroit earlier this month, joining a starting rotation the Tigers hope will lead them to the AL Central title. Penny made only nine starts with St. Louis a season ago before being sidelined with a back injury, but the right-hander says he was preparing to return before the Cardinals fell short of the postseason.

“I was throwing at the end of the year in case we made the playoffs,” he said on a conference call with reporters recently.

St. Louis didn’t make the playoffs, and Penny left to join the Tigers, a team he expects will contend for a division championship. Penny won the World Series in 2003 as a member of the Florida Marlins, whose staff included Josh Beckett, Carl Pavano and Dontrelle Willis. Detroit’s group this year could be similarly effective, with Penny joining Justin Verlander, Max Scherzer and Rick Porcello.

Detroit’s rotation also includes Phil Coke, a left-hander being moved from the bullpen. The 32-year-old Penny is joining four other starters who will be between 22 and 28 on opening day, but Penny will be expected to contribute to a playoff chase and not simply mentor youngsters.

“He’s definitely an established big leaguer,” catcher Alex Avila said. “He’s got great stuff, and potentially our rotation, right now, could be one of the best in the American League. The main part is keeping the guys healthy and consistent.”

That’s been a problem for Penny. He won 16 games in back-to-back seasons with the Los Angeles Dodgers in 2006-07, but he’s struggled to regain that form. Penny was bothered by shoulder problems in 2008, and he was ineffective in a brief stint in the American League with Boston in 2009, going 7-8 with a 5.61 ERA.

“I was behind in the count,” Penny said. “If you’re behind in the count in the American League East, you’re in trouble.”

The Red Sox ended up releasing him in the middle of the season, but he caught on with the Giants and pitched well for them down the stretch.

Penny joined the Cardinals last season, and with the help of pitching coach Dave Duncan, he went 3-4 with a 3.23 ERA before going on the disabled list in May.

The injury turned out to be more serious than initially thought, and Penny didn’t pitch again.

“I’ve never had a lat injury or anything like that,” Penny said. “I was frustrated. I didn’t know what was going on.”

Although the Tigers only made a one-year commitment to Penny, they’re confident enough in his health that they’ve already traded starter Armando Galarraga.

Penny began his career with Florida in 2000, when Dave Dombrowski was an executive for the Marlins. Dombrowski is now Detroit’s general manager.

Penny is also looking forward to being reunited with one of his former catchers. Detroit signed Victor Martinez in the offseason, and he’s expected to be a designated hitter while also sharing catching duties with Avila.

Martinez and Penny overlapped briefly as teammates with the Red Sox.

“What a great teammate,” Penny said. “You guys are going to be really impressed with him as a person, not only as a player.”

Penny has pitched in the postseason twice before, but not since 2006 with the Dodgers. He’s eager to return for another shot at a championship.

“I won one in ’03,” he said. “That’s what I want to get back to. That’s something they can never take away.”

Copyright 2011 by The Associated Press

DETROIT (AP)—Brad Penny(notes) insists he’s healthy again and ready to help the Detroit Tigers compete for a division title.

The Tigers signed Penny to a one-year deal earlier this month. They’re confident enough in his durability that they traded Armando Galarraga(notes) almost immediately after Penny arrived to join the starting rotation. Penny pitched well for St. Louis last season before going on the disabled list in late May with a back injury. Although it was believed at the time to be a minor injury, he didn’t pitch again.

Penny says he was throwing toward the end of the season, trying to prepare himself in case the Cardinals made the playoffs. They didn’t, and now he’s with the Tigers.

DETROIT (AP)—Brad Penny(notes) insists he’s healthy again and ready to help the Detroit Tigers compete for a division title.

The Tigers signed Penny to a one-year deal earlier this month. They’re confident enough in his durability that they traded Armando Galarraga(notes) almost immediately after Penny arrived to join the starting rotation. Penny pitched well for St. Louis last season before going on the disabled list in late May with a back injury. Although it was believed at the time to be a minor injury, he didn’t pitch again.

Penny says he was throwing toward the end of the season, trying to prepare himself in case the Cardinals made the playoffs. They didn’t, and now he’s with the Tigers.

The Detroit Tigers are retiring the great baseball manager Sparky Anderson’s number 11 this season. “It’s a wonderful gesture,” Detroit Free Press columnist Michael Rosenberg wrote. “I just wish Sparky could see it.”

Anderson won three World Series — one managing the Tigers, two with the Cincinnati Reds — and passed away this past November. Rosenberg said, “Retiring his number now is the baseball version of waiting until a relative dies to say thank you.”

That’s because it comes sixteen years after Anderson left the Tigers in a bitter feud with owner Mike Ilitch. Yet as Sparky once said, “I’ve got my faults, but living in the past is not one of them. There’s no future in it.”

I wish I could say the same, let bygones be bygones and the rest, but when it comes to two other baseball devotees, the Presidents Bush, it’s tough. Father and especially son left behind a heap of wreckage.

I hear some of you say forget it, time to move on. Maybe, but theirs is not a legacy that simply fades in the distance and leaves us in peace. What they did continues to impact our lives in deleterious ways, notably when it comes to the full speed, head-on collision of partisan politics with American justice.

Just this week, the US Office of Special Counsel (OSC) released a long overdue, 118-page report concluding that George Jr.’s White House used government agencies for Republican pep rallies and sent officials off on electioneering trips using taxpayer money, especially in the lead-up to the 2006 midterm elections. These are violations of the Hatch Act, which prohibits federal employees from engaging in partisan political activities in the workplace and forbids the use of tax revenues for political purposes.

According to the OSC’s findings the abuses were “a systemic misuse of federal resources.” As the website Talking Points Memo reported, “The Office of Political Affairs (OPA) in Bush’s White House, overseen by Karl Rove, dispatched cabinet officials to campaign for Republican candidates on the federal dime and forced federal political appointees to attend political meetings during work time.”

One memo, at the US Department of Health and Human Services, read, “This meeting is mandatory. It will essentially be the same large meeting that we had last year about this time. So, please clear your schedule, put your pom-poms on, and let’s go!!!”

There won’t be any punishment for the cheerleaders — unless you count Democrats taking back the House and Senate in 2006, despite Rove and the GOP pulling out all the stops with their White House boiler room operation. No request has been made asking the Justice Department to file charges; Rove and any other miscreants fled the scene of the crime before Inauguration Day 2009 and can no longer be prosecuted. The Obama White House, however, has moved its Office of Political Affairs to Democratic National Committee HQ and the presidential re-election effort to Chicago. What could possibly go wrong in Chicago?

Attempting to rectify another Bush injustice this week, the Obama administration named two new commissioners to the US Commission on Civil Rights, which currently has an imbalance of four Republicans (two claim to be “independents”) to three Democrats (one commissioner’s reappointment by House Speaker Boehner will even things up — it’s a little complicated). Talking Points Memo: “The Bush administration stacked the commission with conservatives by having two of the commissioners switch their affiliation from Republican to independent. The move, said the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, was legal. But it was also, as former Commission Chairman Gerald Reynolds (a Republican appointee) acknowledged, intended to ‘game’ the system. The scheme unfolded in 2004, and the panel has since focused on racism against white people and claimed that measures intended to aid minority groups are discriminatory.”

Meanwhile, the Bush family’s Supreme Court appointees — along with that mossback relic of the Reagan era, Antonin Scalia — habitually thumb their noses at the very notion of an independent and impartial judiciary. Last week, the citizen’s lobby Common Cause formally requested that the Justice Department investigate whether Justices Scalia and Clarence Thomas (Bush Sr.’s notorious appointee) should have been disqualified from hearing the Citizens United case, last year’s landmark ruling that lifted restrictions on corporate political contributions, allowing huge amounts of secret cash to pour into our elections.

In a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder, Common Cause President and CEO Bob Edgar wrote, “It appears both justices have participated in political strategy sessions, perhaps while the case was pending, with corporate leaders whose political aims were advanced by the decision. With respect to Justice Thomas, there may also be an undisclosed financial conflict of interest due to his wife’s role as CEO of Liberty Central, a 501(c)(4) organization that stood to benefit from the decision and played an active role in the 2010 elections.”

Justice Thomas dismissed his failure to report his wife’s income — not only from the right wing Liberty Central but also the conservative Heritage Foundation — as a “misunderstanding of the filing instructions.” As for those “political strategy sessions,” Thomas and Scalia attended secretive, invitation-only desert retreats, fundraisers held by billionaire Charles Koch, who, with his brother David, owns the energy giant Koch Industries, the second largest private company in the United States, and bankrolls the right wing, including elements of the Tea Party movement.

At those sessions, discussions may have been held about Citizens United while the case was under consideration; certainly, many of those in attendance have taken full advantage of the ruling and poured millions into the campaigns of conservative candidates — Common Cause reports that Koch Industries’ political action committee spent $2.6 million on last year’s elections, in addition to tens of millions contributed by Americans for Prosperity, the right wing group founded by the two brothers. (The 2011 Koch retreat takes place this weekend; thousands plan to gather in nearby Rancho Mirage, California, to protest.)

This isn’t the first time Justices Scalia and Thomas have hobnobbed with corporate bigwigs and right wing muck-a-mucks. Scalia is a regular headliner at the right-wing Federalist Society. In 2009, Thomas was featured at the Heritage Foundation’s annual fundraiser and in 2008 delivered the Wriston Lecture at the conservative Manhattan Institute, an event that costs $5,000 to $25,000 to attend. Conservative court colleague and George W. Bush appointee Samuel Alito has also given the Wriston Lecture and attended fundraisers for The American Spectator magazine and the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, the wonderful folks who gave us ACORN hoaxster James O’Keefe.

(Thanks for this information to the progressive ThinkProgress website. And yes, I know liberal Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg has allowed the NOW Legal Defense and Education Fund to name a lectureship after her; that’s an issue, too.)

“The Supreme Court is the guardian of its own integrity,” The Boston Globe editorialized on Thursday. “That means staying above politics and maintaining an air of dispassionate consideration of constitutional issues. The court is not an elected body, and shouldn’t function like one. This is especially important because, unlike with an elected body, there are few external constraints on the justices: They set their own rules, and the need for comity on the court largely prevents them from policing each other. Their shared commitment to maintaining judicial decorum is all that binds them.”

No one is above the law, it’s said, but Justices Scalia, Thomas and Alito certainly behave like they are. None of them attended Tuesday’s State of the Union address — not the first time that’s happened, but still symbolically disrespectful. Sadly, unlike baseball legend Sparky Anderson’s, their numbers are unlikely to be retired any time soon.

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Michael Winship was senior writer for Bill Moyers Journal on PBS and is president of the Writers Guild of America, East.

 

Giving a setup reliever a three-year, $16.5 million contract is a risk the Detroit Tigers would rather not take.

“Ideally, you prefer to give shorter-length contracts,” general manager Dave Dombrowski said. “We know that, everybody else knows that.”

Joaquin Benoit got big money for a set-up man, but the Tigers have no regrets about the contract. (AP photo)

But Dombrowski has not a hint of buyer’s remorse after signing Joaquin Benoit to such a contract, even though the 33-year-old righthander is not far removed from rotator cuff surgery that cost him the entire 2009 season.

The Tigers went into the offseason with more than $60 million coming off their payroll and a need for an eighth-inning pitcher. Phil Coke is moving from the bullpen to the rotation and, because of injuries, they no longer could count on Joel Zumaya to be the man. And Benoit, after all, was the premier setup man in the majors last season. In 63 outings covering 60 1/3 innings, he allowed only nine earned runs while striking out 75 batters.

“We clearly had identified him as the top guy on our list,” Dombrowski said. “We were really aggressive in trying to pursue him.”

If the Tigers hadn’t made Benoit one of the first free agents to sign last November, Dombrowski says another team would have.

“I know of two organizations that had offered three-year deals at dollars very similar to ours,” Dombrowski said. “If we were going to sign him, that’s what it was going to cost.”

Last year, the Tigers lost relievers Brandon Lyon and Fernando Rodney when they left for multiyear contracts.

“When we looked at Benoit, he had the type of year that would indicate he would be in that same type of price range,” Dombrowski said. “That really was our thought process.”