Craig Paquette ended his career with the Tigers in 2003. He
had started his career with the Oakland A’s in 1993 as a third baseman.
He hit .219 and struck out a lot. His walk to K ratio was always fairly
poor. His first year he had 14 walks and 108 K’s. It never really
got that much better. For his career he was 120 BB’s and 620 K’s.
He bounced from the A’s to the Kansas City Royals, to the New York Mets and
finally the St. Louis Cardinals where he was in 2001. His career
batting average was .239 and his career OBP was .274. He was also always
an average to below average fielder. But in 2001 at the age of 32 he
had a career year. He had his second highest batting average of his
career at .282, (his highest was .287 two years before at St. Louis.) He had
his second highest RBI’s of his career. He dropped his BB to K ratio
from 1 to 5 to 1 to 4 and he finished above the league average in fielding at
third for the first time by a large margin (league avg. was .950 and he fielded
.965.). It was clearly his best all-around year. He was a
free agent and had made $1.5M for the season with the Cards. The
Tigers signed him as a free agent for $2.125M the first year with an addition
$.5 added the next season. He promptly hit .194 with the Tigers in
2002 and his fielding plummeted to .936, well below the league average.
In 2003 his batting average dropped to .152 in 11 games and he was released by
the end of April.
Jimmy Barrett was an outfielder with Detroit starting in 1899 when
Detroit was part of the Western League. He had come out of the New
England mill leagues as he was born in Massachusetts. He was sold to
Cincinnati in the NL during that first year in Detroit of 1899. Before
the 1901 season started he jumped back to Detroit which was now part of the
AL. He was a strong outfielder playing center for the Tigers and
leading the league in assists for outfielders for three years and in the top 3
every year he played in Detroit. He also led the league the entire
league in walks twice while with Detroit and finished in the top 5 every year
with Detroit. In 1904 he set and interesting record that stood until
expansion in 1961. The record was number of games played in a
season. MLB played only 154 games in a season prior to
1961. However, without lights games were called when it became too
dark to play. The Tigers had 10 ties when the games had been called
on account of darkness. But the ties still
counted. However, 8 of the 10 had to be replayed for the standings. So
Jimmy played in 162 games in a 154 game season. In April of 1905
Jimmy suffered a knee injury. It was the wrong time for that to
happen. He rushed back before healing properly and never quite
regained his full abilities. In the meantime, the Tigers called up a
young 18 year old named Tyrus Raymond Cobb and gave him a chance in
center. Young Ty Cobb managed very well in the majors and would be
the Tigers starting centerfielder for the next 20 years. In 1906
Jimmy was no longer needed in Detroit and he was sold back to Cincy. He
stayed there for about 2 weeks before they returned him to the Tigers. He
would play two more seasons with the Boston Americans in 1907 and was there
again in 1908 when they changed their name to the Red Sox. He stuck
around in the minors and was a player manager for the Milwaukee Brewers of the
American Association as late as 1911. In his five years with Detroit
of the AL, he hit .292 with a OBP of .379. He led the league in OBP in
1903 with a .407 due to his leading the league in walks which he also did in
1903. Jimmy died in Detroit in 1921 at the age of 46. Ty Cobb was
still playing centerfield for the Tigers when he died. He is buried
in Mount Olivet Cemetery.
Frank Brill was born during the Civil War in 1864. He
started his professional and major league career in 1884 as a 20 year old
pitcher with the Wolverines of the NL. He went 2-10 for the Detroit team
that year. Before you think he stunk, bear in mind the team stunk.
They finished in 8th place of a 8 team league with a 24-84
record or a .250 winning percentage. The league champions were the
Providence Grays who were 84-28. The Wolverines were 56 games back.
Frank did win the fewest games of the five man staff but he did not have the
worst winning percentage. That went to Stump Wiedman who was 4-21.
The ace of the staff and the old man of the staff was 25 year old Dupee Shaw
who was 9-18. Frank did not come back to Detroit in 1885. His major
league career was over. He did go on to play a couple more seasons in the
minors with Scranton in 1886, Wilkes-Barre in 1887 and also New Haven in
1887. In those years he had a combined 6-3 record. Frank died in
1944, during WWII.
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