The worst-kept secret in the world, Chance Ruffin was announced Wednesday as the player-to-be-named-later in the trade-deadline deal with Seattle for Doug Fister and David Pauley.

Of course, the Tigers also gave up a pair of rookies, OF Casper Wells and LHP Charlie Furbush, as well as minor-league 3B Francisco Martinez. Wells, in particular, has been hot since the July 30 trade, hitting .341 with five home runs and 12 RBI in 12 games, matching or exceeding his 64-game totals with the Tigers in both categories. Furbush is 2-1 in three starts with the Mariners, but has a 4.76 ERA and a WHIP of 1.294.

Ruffin — considered a potential closer down the road — had a two-appearance cup of coffee with the Tigers in late July, posting a 4.91 ERA in 3.2 innings. He was the second of two supplemental-round picks in last year's draft, and could not be named in a trade until he'd been in baseball for one full year. Tuesday was the anniversary of his signing.

When you consider the two players — minor league pitchers Cole Nelson and Lester Oliveros — given up for Delmon Young in Monday's waiver-trade with Minnesota, and the two Class A players — LHP Antonio Cruz and C Julio Rodriguez — sent to Kansas City for Wilson Betemit on July 20, and the Tigers have divested themselves of eight minor league prospects in the span of six weeks.

While Cruz, Rodriguez and Nelson were probably nothing more than organizational players, the other five were all among the organization's best youngsters. The preseason rankings of one website (BlessYouBoys.com) had the five all among Detroit's top 20 prospects — No. 5 (Martinez), No. 6 (Ruffin), No. 10 (Wells), No. 13 (Furbush) and No. 20 (Oliveros).

All but Martinez had at least one appearance in the majors this season.

You can look at that as a LOT to give up in 42 days, or you can look at it like the Tigers got a starting pitcher, a starting outfielder, a key reliever and a part-time infielder for the stretch drive in a pennant race. Depends on if you're glass half-full or glass half-empty.

Unfortunately, it hasn’t turned into two everyday players for the Tigers.

Despite the excitement when the Tigers traded for Betemit, he’s played in only 17 of 25 games since the deal. Don Kelly and Ryan Raburn have both started in that spot in the other games. Kelly was in the starting lineup at third for Wednesday's game.

Manager Jim Leyland said Wednesday that he felt Betemit — hitting .316 and slugging .474 as a Tiger — is a better player when only used as a part-time starter, rather than playing every day.

Brandon Inge, who was designated for assignment and sent to Toledo to work on his swing, has said it was promised that he’d return when the rosters expand on Sept. 1. Leyland said Wednesday that he was considering using Inge against left-handers in September.

(C'mon — I had to. You know I did. Stop rolling your eyes.)

After Sunday's game at Target Field, the Tigers announced they'd be sending Lester Oliveros back to Triple-A Toledo, and giving one of their two No. 1 picks from the 2010 draft — a kid named Chance Ruffin — his first Chance.

(OK, I'm done now. Seriously.)

What does it mean that Oliveros was sent down? Nothing much, really. Most of the writers who cover the Tigers were a tad surprised that he got through the past two weeks — which included a handful of agonizing transactions — unscathed.

Not that he'd pitched poorly. He hadn't. But while he hadn't earned himself a bus ticket out of town (trademark: Bobby Ross), he hadn't exactly made it impossible for him to be optioned out, either. In short, he'd been OK — nothing more, nothing less.

So what makes this transaction noteworthy — other than the symmetry with Chance making the majors just a year after being drafted, as had his father, Bruce, to start his own 12-year MLB career? The younger Ruffin was taken with the compensatory pick the Tigers got when they lost Fernando Rodney to free agency. Bruce Ruffin was a second-round pick of the Philadelphia Phillies in 1985.

Tigers manager Jim Leyland certainly didn't sound like he was the architect of the move. "I don't know anything about him," the manager told reporters in Minneapolis after the game. "I know nothing about him except he's tough, he's good and he's from Texas."

Think about it this way, then: If Oliveros hadn't really done anything to force the issue on being sent down, what did Ruffin do to earn the promotion at this point?

Well, he'd done well enough with both Double-A Erie and Triple-A Toledo, going 3-3 with a 2.09 ERA, 17 saves, 11.4 strikeouts per nine innings, and a WHIP of 1.209. Solid, but not spectacular.

He'd been accorded a special spot with the Mud Hens since his July 1 promotion, though, holding down the closer spot over guys with MLB experience in Daniel Schlereth and Ryan Perry — both former first-round draft picks — as well as Enrique Gonzalez, who leads the Hens in saves.

"Chance Ruffin is closer makeup and closer stuff," Hens manager Phil Nevin said, when asked by the Toledo Blade's John Wagner recently. "This is what we see him as down the line, and so far he's done nothing to deter anyone from thinking of him that way. He's someone we think very highly of."

Fair enough. But why bring him up to the big leagues on July 24, in the middle of a pennant race, especially when all of the short relief spots in the Tigers' bullpen are ably filled? Jose Valverde has yet to blow a save opportunity as the closer, high-priced free-agent acquisition Joaquin Benoit has settled into the set-up role just fine after a shaky start, and rookie Al Alburquerque, the seventh-inning guy, has arguably been one of the Tigers' four most pivotal pitchers this season.

In this case, think outside the box — or outside the organization.

This move — just like accommodating moves to pitch prospects Andy Oliver and Charlie Furbush in front of scouts from other teams — could very well just be a showcase of Ruffin's skills as a potential trade chip before the July 31 trade deadline.

If the Tigers don't want to move one of their blue-chip prospects, like Oliver, Furbush, Jacob Turner or Nick Castellanos, maybe a guy like Ruffin — a quick riser with a mid-90s fastball and a closer's disposition — would be next on the list of candidates for a swap to land the Tigers another starting pitcher for the stretch drive.

It was only a matter of time.

With as much as the Detroit Tigers’ bullpen has struggled of late, it was no surprise Saturday when the Tigers called rookie Charlie Furbush up from Triple-A Toledo, taking the place of lefty Brad Thomas on the active roster.

The veteran Thomas, who had his elbow “lock up” while warming up Friday, was sent to the 15-day disabled list with elbow inflammation. The move was retroactive to May 11, the day after Thomas’ last appearance.

Now the only question is, will Furbush — who International League in strikeouts (55) as a starter at Toledo — will move into Thomas’ spot in the bullpen to fortify the relief staff, or push reliever-turned-starter Phil Coke out of the rotation and back into last year’s role?
Thanks to the versatility of several Tigers fielders, the team was able to carry 12 pitchers on the roster coming out of spring training, and this move doesn’t change that ratio.
Having the extra arms has not helped so far, however.

The Tigers’ bullpen is dead last in the big leagues with a ghastly 5.91 ERA, with opposing batters hitting a sizzling .283 against it. It’s resulted in nine losses by the bullpen, third-worst in the majors.

And carrying the extra arms has meant that some relievers have gone more than a week without a call, necessitating the dreaded concept of “getting work” in games that have gotten out of hand.

That type of mop-up duty has been the primary role this season for the Aussie journeyman Thomas, who has had 10 of his 12 appearances come with the Tigers trailing. He’s not done well in those situations, however, sporting an ERA of 9.00 and allowing a ridiculous 10 of 12 inherited runners to score.

Furbush might not be the Tigers’ highest-ranking pitching prospect — right-hander Jacob Turner was No. 21 on Baseball America’s Top 100 Prospects list, while Furbush’s Toledo rotation-mate Andy Oliver was No. 87 — but he’d pitched like he was this season.

Second in all of Minor League Baseball in strikeouts last year, the 25-year-old Furbush had two complete games and a shutout among his eight starts at Toledo, sporting an ERA of 2.91 — a bit bloated by one bad outing — a strikeout-to-walk ratio of 55/14 and a WHIP of 0.93.

Oliver, who hasn't been far behind Furbush, will likely be the next call-up by the Tigers, as they continue to seek options for a bullpen that's been hemorrhaging runs.

There’s been a lot of chatter lately that the Tigers should — some blogs have even put a timetable on the proposition, labeling it a “will” instead of a “should” — put Phil Coke back in the bullpen, and bring up one of two minor-league lefties, Andy Oliver or Charlie Furbush, to take his spot in the rotation.

I know that seems like a consensus move, but consider me one that doesn’t think that will cure all the Tigers’ ills.

Coke gave up just three hits on just 78 pitches through seven scoreless innings against the Red Sox Wednesday, matching his longest career outing. In his last start, against the Twins, he went just 5 2/3, but Leyland considered it an improvement from his three previous starts — two rocky outings against the Mariners and one against the Indians — after two stellar outings to begin his career as a starter.

The lefty went toe-to-toe with Kansas City’s Bruce Chen in his first start of the season on April 9, then got his only win of the season by outdueling the Athletics’ Gio Gonzalez on April 14.

To recap, as a starter, Coke’s had three really good outings, three pretty bad outings and two that fall somewhere in the middle. Not bad for a guy in his first year as a starter at the MLB level, right?

What’s to say that either Furbush or Oliver would do the same, or better?

Granted, both are tearing up the International League at Triple-A Toledo.

And granted, both are probably more integral to the Tigers’ long-term plans for the starting rotation than Coke.

But why make a move that — at best — would be a wash on one end to incompletely fix a problem on the other. Coke was stellar out of the bullpen last year as a situational lefty, but that’s not what the Tigers’ biggest need is right now.

They’ve struggled all year long to find a seventh-inning guy (remember, that was supposed to be Joel Zumaya’s job, if he was healthy), and now high-priced free agent Joaquin Benoit has had to be moved out of the set-up role because of some inexplicable ineffectiveness.

And I’m not sure that you plug a lefty like Coke — who has an ERA of 1.83 and a batting average against of .172 against lefties, but is just 5.28/.287 against right-handed hitters — into a situation where lefty-righty matchups are at a premium.

Could it be a short-term patch? Sure.

Maybe you get two or three weeks out of it, and then Benoit magically gets his head right, and everything goes back to normal. The Tigers have 16.5 million reasons to hope that happens.

But do you really want to risk retarding the development of Furbush or Oliver — and possibly even Coke — as a starter to make that happen? Is it better to need Coke as a mop-up guy in the fourth inning, because of a confidence-crushing blowup by a rookie, than to hope that your starters — who’ve all done a pretty good job of it recently, by the way — go deep enough in the game to get it to closer Jose Valverde at the back end of the ‘pen?

If the long-term plan is to have Coke go back to the bullpen — i.e. he was just a stopgap for this year’s rotation — then you don’t worry about that part, and you only have to decide if one of the two youngsters is ready.

But that’s not what the Tigers have said they envisioned, when they asked for Coke to be included in the package from the Yankees in the three-team trade two offseasons ago. They saw an eventual starter, who could be a bullpen guy for now.

And, let’s face it: The bullpen, while maddeningly inconsistent, is not the Tigers’ ONLY problem.

The offense has been, at best, spotty.

The Tigers’ starters wouldn’t have to chew their fingernails when they turn a slim, one-run lead over to the set-up guys, if they’d gotten a bit more run support.

If the Tigers look to swing a trade in the next month or so, it could be for another bullpen arm — one better suited to the setup role than Coke — but it’s more likely to be a bat that ensures that you don’t have to use a bullpen arm to safeguard a 3-1 lead, simply by helping make it a 5-1 lead.

As they’re currently set up — and with current performance — the Tigers are admittedly incomplete. But making one paper switch to put Coke in the bullpen does not put the last puzzle piece in place.

It merely moves a puzzle piece from one hole to another.