Brandon Inge / PRESSWIRE

Brandon Inge was released by the Tigers and is poised to join the Oakland Athletics. For a while, it looked as if Inge would spend his entire major-league career with the Tigers. At the moment, before he plays a game with another team, you might be surprised to find out where he ranks among players who played for only the Tigers.

Let’s start with career homers. A lot o you can probably guess right off the top of your head that among players who played for only the Tigers, Al Kaline ranks #1 in homers with 399. Next up is Lou Whitaker at 244, followed by Bill Freehan at 200. Then come three closely clustered guys: Bobby Higginson (187), Alan Trammell (185), and Charlie Gehringer (184). Inge is next at #7 with 140 homers.

The RBI looks like this: #1 Kaline 1583, #2 Gehringer 1427, #3 Whitaker 1084, #4 Trammell 1003, #5 Freehan 758, #6 Higginson 709, #7 Inge 589.

Inge also had great flexibility. He played more than 300 games at both catcher and 3B for the Tigers. Only one other player had as many as 80 games at each of those 2 positions, and that was Marty Castillo with 120 games at 3B and 80 at C.

In fact, since 1901, only 3 players in all of baseball have played at least 300 games at both C and 3B, and they are Inge, Joe Torre, and B.J. Surhoff.

And how about this…since 1901, the only guys to play at least 10 games at C, 3B, LF, and CF:

The interesting part is the last column…franchises played for. These other guys were largely utility types who caught on with different teams and stuck around for a while. Not Inge…he brought flexibility to the Tigers and stayed there for 12 years.