That's the price the Tigers are paying for having a DH that can't play in the field. You have to have bench players with more versatility. Regardless...Marte isn't good enough to even make the team as a bench player...as Reb said...he's just a replacement level player.
Marte only really plays 3B and/or 1B. Defensively, Romine can play almost anywhere. Aviles shouldn't even be on a MLB roster.
Now, replacement level does not necessarily mean MLB level players. And/or vice versa.
$500,000 represents the zero level of marginal salary a team can commit to a player. Since they’re obliged to pay that money to someone anyway, it doesn’t really matter to whom it’s actually going. Giving a player a job for the minimum means you’ve acquired him for as close to free as you’re ever going to get in baseball, especially as you haven’t expended other resources (other players, generally) to get him. Now, if a player’s willing to sign for free, that’s probably a clue that he’s not very good. In fact, he’s so bad that other teams don’t care if he gets picked up, because there are so many players of that caliber that acquiring one of them has virtually no effect on the size of the talent pool. If another team did care, there’d be some sort of competition to acquire his services, and as a result the team winning control over said player will have had to expend marginal resources to do it. The above gives us a neat little definition for the league’s worst players. We can define a replacement level player as one who costs no marginal resources to acquire. This is the type of player who would fill in for the starter in case of injuries, slumps, alien abductions, etc.
By designating Marte for assignment means they have 10 days to trade him or waive/release him. Odds are another team should claim (ala Hernan Perez), because he offers replacement value and costs nothing. There is hope a team might even offer something negligible in trade.
If DET designated Aviles for assignment, for instance, no team would offer anything for him and certainly no team would ever claim him because they would have to take on his salary. His salary precludes him from being defined as replacement.
Teams generally have a few players on their 40-man roster who fit into the "replacement" level arena. Not all will continue on to be viable MLB players. Some refer these players as "organizational" fodder. Good enough to be AAAA players, but maybe not MLB players.
Moya could be another name used with replacement level. Without something drastically happening, he is destined to be a AAAA player/reserve OFer. If waived, there would be a team that would claim him, as he would cost them nothing and his salary is nothing.
Montreal Robinson and Jeff Ferrell are two players who probably pass through waivers without being claimed. Keep in mind, if a player is on a team's 40-man roster at the time of being designated for assignment, and then waived, a team claiming him has to put him on their 40-man roster. Now, if he makes it through unclaimed (depending on status), he can then sign a minor league contract. So odds are, no team would claim Robinson or Ferrell if they were waived by DET. And both being 25 years old, their time has come a gone. Are they organization fodder/replacement level relievers?
