Detroit Tigers Clips Sunday, February 21, 2016
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Detroit Tigers Clips Sunday, February 21, 2016 Detroit Free Press Seidel: To excel behind plate, McCann puts kale on it (Seidel) New Tiger Zimmermann calls himself workhorse, not star (Fenech) Notes: Extension in hand, RF Martinez wants to play ball (Fenech) Tigers lefty Boyd slides repertoire, impresses Ausmus (Fenech) The Detroit News Tigers’ J.D. Martinez: New deal ‘fair for both sides’ (McCosky) Henning: Greene will surprise, and other bold Tiger forecasts (Henning) Kensing makes pitch to Tigers in arduous comeback bid (McCosky) MLive.com Roster battle: Bryan Holaday has uphill battle to win job as Detroit Tigers backup catcher (Iott) Detroit Tigers notes: J.D. Martinez reports to camp, says he signed 'fair deal' in offseason (Iott) Watch Jordan Zimmermann, Michael Fulmer take mound for first time since start of workouts (Iott) Watch Detroit Tigers catchers have some fun during pop-up relay drill (Iott) MLB.com McCann to take on more scouting info (Beck) Camp notes: J.D. glad negotiations done (Beck) Zimmermann may hold key to Tigers' success (Bauman) Associated Press Still room to improve for Tigers' J.D. Martinez (Trister) ESPN.com With extension in the books, J.D. Martinez headed back to work (Strang) Daily Transactions 1 Seidel: To excel behind plate, McCann puts kale on it February 21, 2016 By Jeff Seidel/ Detroit Free Press LAKELAND, Fla. – On one of the back fields at Tiger Town, James McCann started batting practice. He crushed a ball that sailed over the right-centerfield fence and disappeared into the construction area at Joker Marchant Stadium. Then, he crushed another. And another. They were all opposite-field blasts, the kind you see when Miguel Cabrera or J.D.Martinez take batting practice. “You can learn a lot from those guys,” McCann said. The truth is, McCann’s offense was a pleasant surprise for the Tigers last season after he hit .264 in 114 games — the longest season of his life. He hit seven home runs, a number manager Brad Ausmus could see increasing significantly. “I don’t know if it will happen this year,” Ausmus said, “and I hate to put a number on it. I don’t know if he will get there, but I think he will be a guy who hits 15 to 20 homers at some point in his career.” Having said that, Ausmus is quick to point out something more important, something he has stressed almost daily: “His impact is going to be much bigger on the defensive side of the ball.” McCann is in an interesting situation. He is entering his first season as the unquestioned, full-time starting catcher. He is the budding leader of this team, a team-first, no-nonsense field general. It takes years for a catcher to grasp the nuances of playing in the major leagues: making a scouting report, blocking balls, framing pitches, throwing out runners, handling pitchers and calling a game. “Nothing can replace experience for a catcher, especially when it comes to game calling,” said Ausmus, a former catcher. “Last year, playing as much as he ended up playing, I think is probably an enormous asset for him. But he’s still learning. Experience is huge in baseball and enormous for a catcher.” When does a catcher figure it all out? Ah, there’s the cruel irony. “Usually, (a catcher) has enough experience to really excel defensively and as a game-caller right around the time his physical skills start to erode,” Ausmus said. Which is why McCann has changed his diet. He already is thinking about the future, trying to get as healthy as possible so that he can have a long, successful career. Think a couple of decades. Not a couple of years. Secret ingredient During the off-season, McCann studied the habits of superstars who have had lengthy careers. Guys like Tom Brady and Kobe Bryant and Torii Hunter. “What do they do differently from other guys?” McCann said. “They take care of their bodies.” So McCann spent the off-season eating less meat and potatoes and more vegetables, chicken and fish. Suddenly, he ventured into the land of kale. “I would have never known that I would like kale,” he said. “Kale turned out pretty good. ... You put a little bit of olive oil on it and broil it in the oven, and you are good to go.” He doesn’t want to be in his best shape in March; he wants to be in his best shape in August and September. He came to camp weighing 225 pounds — 10 fewer than last year — and his goal is to maintain that weight instead of letting the long season eat away at his body like it did last season. “Every aspect of my game I want to improve,” he said. “The thing is, at the end of the day, I want to win, and I want to win a World Series. We definitely made the moves and have the guys to do it. That means I need to improve on every aspect of my game, from receiving to throwing to blocking. Every little thing I can do to help the team win, that’s what I’m going to do.” In the middle of last season, Ausmus gave McCann the responsibility to make his own game plans. “He’s not just reading scouting reports,” Ausmus said. “He’s looking at numbers and putting together his own scouting report on each individual hitter.” Ausmus takes the same information and does his own scouting report to have in the dugout. But he lets McCann do it on his own. 2 “The biggest thing that I took from last year was how to use all of the information that is available and put together a scouting report that is useable,” McCann said. “You can’t go into a game and think, ‘OK, 0-2, this guy hits this or doesn’t hit this. You have to be able to take the information and categorize it.” It is all part of the plan, the education of James McCann, every aspect of the game, from his offense to his defense. All the way to his diet. 3 New Tiger Zimmermann calls himself workhorse, not star February 21, 2016 By Anthony Fenech/ Detroit Free Press LAKELAND, Fla. – Mark Brost was at a Dairy Queen in central Wisconsin recently, some 25 miles from the small town of Auburndale, when the owner, a man he didn’t know from Adam, had a question. It was a question he has been asked time and time again, and when he put in the ice cream cake order for his Auburndale junior high school basketball team, the man said: “Do you know Jordan Zimmermann?” Brost has known Zimmermann since his early years. He taught him in elementary school. Coached him in high school. Played catch with him this winter. And after he told him, yes, he did know Jordan Zimmermann, the man gave a response Brost has heard time and time again. “He said, ‘Yeah, I heard he’s really good with that town,’ ” Brost said. “People in the area, I don’t know how many times I’ve heard people from other towns say, ‘God, I hear he’s really good for the community. I hear he really helps the communities out.’ ” This year, for the first time in Zimmermann’s seven-year professional career, he will join a new community. He is the Tigers’ $110-million man, signed to a five-year contract this off-season. But behind the big contract, the one Zimmermann never dreamt he would sign, lies the small-town personality of a quiet kid who has ridden his right arm into the upper echelon of major league pitchers, the same arm that Brost noticed one recess in the fifth grade. Quiet and competitive Jordan Zimmermann is, by admission and observation, a soft-spoken guy. “I tend to be quiet in the beginning around people I don’t know,” the 29-year-old said last week, sitting at a picnic table outside of the clubhouse at Joker Marchant Stadium. “I just kind of feel out the situation at first.” And during his first few days in Tiger Town, the unassuming Zimmermann was the one player people didn’t know. Autograph-seeking fans asked who that was when he walked by. Reporters couldn’t pick him out in a crowd. A parking lot attendant wondered, “Was that the guy they signed?” Brost saw that personality his freshman year of high school. “He was one of the quietest kids I’ve ever been around,” he said. College coach Tim Bloom saw it his freshman year at Wisconsin-Stevens Point. “I never really saw him show a whole lot of emotion,” he said. But that emotion is inside of him, they would find out, even if the words didn’t ring loud. It was Zimmermann’s competitive nature that stood out, on the football field and basketball court and baseball diamond, even as he struggled to stand out for big colleges and big league teams along the way. “I think it’s easy to mistake quiet athletes for those that don’t care,” Bloom said. “He has a tremendous competitive fire inside of him, and he’s one of the toughest young men that I’ve ever coached. He’s not going to seek out attention or try to draw people to him based upon his words. He’s going to let his play on the field do the talking for him.” But coming out of high school in central Wisconsin, where the travel baseball scene had yet to bloom and scouts were scarce, Zimmermann’s play didn’t speak loudly enough.