Casey to Detroit: Color me surprised

Littlefield will make at least one move before 4 today: he's traded Sean Casey to Detroit as the Tigers have- get this- demoted Chris Shelton to AAA. Meanwhile, we get Brian Rogers, who is described by Rotoworld thusly:

Rogers has had an excellent season in Double-A, but the 2003 11th-round pick is a 24-year-old reliever with less-than-exceptional stuff. He's not very likely to be a successful setup man in the majors.

I'll try to find out more about Johnson and the salary figures in this deal, meanwhile you can check out trade deadline stuff from Dejan and Rob Rossi, while keeping in mind that neither predicted this deal (not to fault them... no one did).

UPDATE (12:34 PM): This Rob Rossi article on Casey's time in Pittsburgh, which was posted to the Trib's site last night, is written in the past tense and now seems strangely prescient.

UPDATE (1:16 PM): David Pinto at Baseball Musings says Rodgers is a nice pick-up for us. This is true, if we're planning on moving a serious volume of relievers in the next two and a half hours. He also says that Casey is an upgrade over Shelton at first... I'm not sure I agree there, even knowing Shelton's recent numbers. You have to actually play to be an upgrade and there's no guarantee Casey will do that.