By Jason Beck

The Mud Hens’ annual Fandemonium event isn’t officially part of the Tigers’ winter caravan, but it’s really the unofficial start for the media, since it usually features manager Jim Leyland and some players in a less formal setting than the larger-scale rallies and interviews that go on later in the week. Not surprisingly, Leyland was the highlight in wake of Tuesday’s news about Victor Martinez’s season-ending knee injury.

Leyland touched on a lot of topics, the vast majority of them revolving around the Martinez situation and what the Tigers do now. The overriding theme was that Leyland is trying to stay positive, as he did earlier in the day in an interview with MLB Network Radio on Sirius/XM.

“I don’t want to downplay it, but I’m positive,” he said later at Fandemonium. “I feel good about our team, and this is something where we have to make the adjustment and go forward. We have a good team.”

If the logistics allow, he plans on talking with the team at some point during this caravan about it.

“It’s always a catch-22 when you’re management. You don’t want to downplay the loss of Victor Martinez, but you don’t want to prey on that either all the time,” Leyland said. “I was thinking coming down here, during this caravan, I don’t know how it’s all going to work out, but just having a meeting: ‘Look, we’re going to discuss this today, and after this, I don’t want to discuss this anymore. And I don’t want to downplay Victor, but I want to get the message across: Look, fellas, this is the way it is. We can take a punch.

I wrote a lengthy article here, but couldn’t get to everything, so here’s the roundup: