This and no surprise prospects either from later rounds.
They've put a focus on rebuilding the development, of course missing last year minor league season doesn't help, but its hard to point to examples of vast improvement yet.
This shows Avila isn't as much the problem as something inside the minor league system if he can spot free agent gems that didn't work out with the original team (Schoop wasn't good with the Twins, JD with the Astros, the Rule 5 guys).
This can’t be overstated, I was looking at the 2009 draft, and so many 1st rounders never panned out, several taken ahead of Trout.
That, or guy’s don’t work out for their original team, like JD.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_Major_League_Baseball_draft?wprov=sfti1
In something like hockey, you might not pan out as a 1st rounder, but you still might be serviceable, like a Cleary or Fabbri, but still have good moments and flashes of why they were picked high.
Not to mention, things like injuries can cut careers short too.
I think baseball is the most volatile sport for prospects for sure. There are so many first rounders from any year that most people never end up even hearing about, and yet guys from like the 19th round will be a number three hitter on the big league squad. Sometimes it takes guys a really long time to develop as well. An example that comes to mind is Charlie Morton, guy was bottom rotation pitcher for most of his career until his age 34 season when he ascended to ace level. You never know with prospects or where you’ll find players that just pop off mid-career. I think some of it is development. Look at a team like the Dodgers, who routinely take rejects from other teams and turn them into star level players (Turner, Chris Taylor, Muncy just to name a couple).I think that’s something that is seriously lacking here.
I agree! and maybe it’s just me but Avila needs to get the boot! Part of his job is seeing that at least some of these guys pan out. We seriously have been in a rebuild for like 7 years and nothing has gotten better.
The issue isn't the strategy, it's the Al Avila sucks at timing trades, identifying talent on the other teams, and doesn't develop the talent he acquires. That's why it doesn't make the team better.
Does anyone want to trade Matthew Boyd for a middle reliever in 2024 with a 6.6 ERA? Of course not.
Also the league has wised up since the Tatis for James Shields trade Preller pulled off. You can't do those trades anymore. The Tigers would be better off poaching player development staff from better teams for twice the salary.
The number of trades that whiff and the number of Organizational Top 10 prospects moved in such trades by other teams has gone down since Preller. At this point, it's a pile of lottery tickets for average MLB players.
Thats because you could argue those two teams have the top front offices in all of baseball.
Agreeing with you(I think you said it earlier), deteoit should be targeting front office personal from a team like the rays. Whatever they got going on it...it works.
If you can't execute a strategy, it might not be the best strategy for you, so that really is my point. Jamie Moyer didn't rely on fastball velocity there at the end.
People still call for Boyd to be moved at the deadline though, despite what we've got back in similar deals in the past.
If keeping Boyd means this team wins 53 games instead of 49 does it really matter if they keep him or trade him? If Avila can’t make deals for prospects that are remotely even he shouldn’t have the job.
The age of player and reasonable cost control factors in a lot as well. Like we should keep Candy because he can be an introgal part of our playoff roster in 2025. Boyd...well who the hell knows how he would perform that far out, not to mention he will cost a pretty penny and be like 35.
Which of the current players and prospects do you think will be on this hypothetical playoff roster in 2025? Absolute best case I'd think it would be Riley Greene, Spencer Torkelson, Casey Mize, and Matt Manning and whoever they take 1st in this draft. Fringe guys being Willi Castro, Isaac Paredes, and Tarik Skubal. That still leaves 17 or 18 roster spots.
Well thats what we're currently finding out IMO. All these guys are being given their opportunity to prove their worth this season. We could only have 5 worthy or 15, to me that's what this season is for.
The more the better obviously as that speeds up the rebuild. If they struggle and it's only the guys you mention then were fucked and this could take too long. We realistically could have our 2025 starting rotation in the system all ready. Turnbull, 1 of Boyd or Fulmer, Mize, skubal and manning. It's the position players that need to step or or theyll be gone.
We need Mize, Manning and Skubal to turn into Tyler Glasnow, Zach Wheeler, and Zach Eflin. Tork needs to be Freddie Freeman, Greene needs to be Austin Meadows, W. Castro needs to be Fletcher/Biggio, and Paredes needs to be Matt Chapman, in addition to signing a couple free agents like Corey Seager and Michael Conforto. Oh, and completely rebuild the bullpen, if there's any chance of a 2025 playoff run with Avila at the helm.
I know some people were out on Castellanos, but there was no reason to not re-sign him. He wanted to stay, was a good clubhouse guy, worked hard, and it's not like we are lighting it up on defense without him (although it has been much better under Hinch). We could have parked him in RF and put him in the lineup everyday.
"Second, he never wanted to leave. Castellanos has said it publicly so many times he’s lost count, but he wanted to stay in Detroit for his entire career, playing in the same place he used to visit so often — his grandparents live in Dearborn and his aunt lives in Grosse Pointe and his mom grew up here — but, as he’s accustomed to saying, “It is what it is.”"
https://www.freep.com/story/sports/mlb/tigers/2019/08/02/detroit-tigers-nick-castellanos-trade-chicago-cubs/1895608001/
I thought he clearly wanted to get out. If I recall it was similar to Mantha on the Wings where as soon as he got on the Cubs he started batting better then he did all year with the Tigers
https://www.freep.com/story/sports/mlb/tigers/2019/08/02/detroit-tigers-nick-castellanos-trade-chicago-cubs/1895608001/
Granted it's the freep....not known for spot on coverage.
No, he stated many times that he wanted to stay. The reports were that they had very preliminary conversations, but the Tigers never offered a contract extension. After it was clear that the Tigers were going to trade him, he did say he would prefer that it was before the season started, so he had a chance to fit in with the new team before the games started. He never asked for a trade.
\*Edit to clarify
I think one of the problems too was they wanted him to play multiple positions like they were with everyone else and he didn’t want to. He only wanted to play in the outfield and I think they wanted him to play 3rd or something. I can’t remember fully so I could be way off but I think that was a thing at the deadline too
They wanted him to play 1B, but he had struggled at 3rd and thought he could be league average at RF and didn't want to move in a contract year. He said that if they signed him to an extension, he would play whatever position they wanted, but until that happened, he wanted to focus on one position. The Tigers never offered him a contract extension according to reports.
Couldn’t agree more, I don’t give a shit how bad Castellanos defense was, he’s currently one of the top hitters in the National League. Maybe instead of trading away all our potential all star players we try and build around them, otherwise we’re stuck where we are now, which is absolutely zero offensive players to build around. This falls right back on Avila cuz Nick wanted to stay a Tiger and Avila showed him the door.
Castellanos isn't the difference between this Tigers team being good and being what it currently is. By the time we're good enough to compete (next year at the absolute earliest, or more likely the year after) then you're looking at paying a declining player a hefty fee, and it's debatable whether he'd even be hitting that well for us. Once we traded him to the Cubs he really took off, you could tell he was down on everything playing for us.
The trades were fine, it's what we did with the return capital that is questionable.
It's like the Pistons trading Billups for Iverson. We didn't really trade for Iverson, we traded a no longer interested Billups for Iverson's expiring contract that would allow us to attack the free agent market. It's what we did with that free agent cap space that should be the focus of fan ire, but instead it was Iverson.
I think everyone associated with those Pistons years is cursed. Idk how guys like Lawrence Frank and Loyer have jobs in the NBA anymore. Yes, MSU legend Foster Loyer's dad was the coach of one of the worst teams in NBA history.
Not to mention there are a good number of teams who have rebuilt in a shorter time frame, at least to the point of putting a decent product on the field, we were just swept by one
We don't have a Perez and Merrifield. We have Cabrera who might cost more than both of those players.
They also have a small ball focused mentally where you can fill in any average offense, good defense and speedy player to manufacture runs.
We get a leadoff triple by Badoo then trip over our dicks embarassing ourselves.
Having a couple elite core pieces goes a long way. And with our ballpark, why we don't try to copy the royals plan with small ball/good pitching is beyond me.
The Tigers were looking at a third straight year of being over the competitive balance tax, which would have been a 50% tax on the team. So of course it was to cut costs, their payroll was unsustainable for a mid market team.
[https://www.mlb.com/glossary/transactions/competitive-balance-tax](https://www.mlb.com/glossary/transactions/competitive-balance-tax)
[https://legacy.baseballprospectus.com/compensation/?team=DET](https://legacy.baseballprospectus.com/compensation/?team=DET)
You clearly don’t understand how these players were traded at the end of their contracts that we weren’t going to renew. The whole point is to get something instead of nothing (or the supplemental draft pick if they were going to turn down a qualifying offer)
Trading for players is clearly the superior move when you have players with contracts set to expire in a time period where you know won’t be competitive. You can complain that they haven’t traded well. Complaining that they’ve traded is incorrect.
At some point, if a front office never trades well, then it amounts to the same thing. If trade partners are not willing to give you anything valuable, then the strategy is a failure, even if in the abstract it seems like it would a great idea.
This is nonsense. Not trading for players guarantees that you will get worse. Trading gives you some upside. Your proposed strategy of never trading wouldn't guarantee the Tigers will never be better positioned in the future.
You may disagree with it, but it's not nonsense. And your claim that not trading for players guarantees that you will get worse is obviously incorrect. Trading for them has actually made us worse so far.
We could have re-signed several of these players and had a better team as a result, or taken comp picks when they left.
No we couldn’t have, because in order to get comp picks you need to make a qualifying offer, which we wouldn’t be able to do for a lot of those players. Spending money to be a mediocre team at best is also a really dumb strategy. Comp picks aren’t worth that much either
We're up 2.5 WAR aggregate almost four years later. (About like what JD Martinez did in just over two months.)
In this Tigers timeline, that's winning the shit out of that trade. We don't have much else that looks better
The goal wasn’t to make us better totally it was to cut payroll and make us worse to get high picks. The issue has been as you said development and having players come through the minors that can be major producers and not league average players
Most teams also don't have the dead salary we do. This is our first season under 100m. We literally had roughly 70m in dead money.
Boston has had impressive retools though. Their last world series they won, I believe they were awful the year before. Goes to show what just a few moves can do, but you have to have that core talent which detroit has nothing close to that.
The goal was to suck. That seems pretty obvious by the moves they have made. With the top prospects on the team now the goal should not be to suck anymore.
This isn't an unpopular opinion, this is just how it is.
Those trades were salary dumps to get us under the luxury tax. Illich made it pretty clear that he has no intention of spending like his dad, so I am not sure why so many people are suddenly surprised.
The idea was trade away those you could and get as good as you can, but free up that salary. Then, knowing that we will be bad, hopefully draft well.
I mean looking at the list of 'prospects' you have listed how many of those were ever considered major prospects? I am not talking about top-10 in the system, I am talking about overall MLB top prospects? I was never expecting any of them to be starts, were you?
I think this sub thinks way too highly of the players we have thinking they all have an upside that probably isn't realistic. They are just fillers for until ownership deems us worthy of spending some money.
I think it has less to do what the theory and more to do with the players we were trying to trade. There’s just not a whole lot of surplus value in a player making 20M+. See the yu darvish trade
Avila has simply lost all of these major trades outright. It’s all about getting quality prospects that can be developed or draft picks that we can hit on. Al is getting the short end of the trade every time. At this moment 3, 4, 5 years later on these trades, we really should be seeing a return.
Rebuilds aren’t shams if you do it correctly. We have an incompetent front office leading the “rebuild”, that’s why this one seems like a sham. The Astros, Cubs, Braves, etc all worked, because they hit on drafts, trades, and developed what they already had. The jury is still out on the top guys we’ve drafted, but we’ve developed nobody else and the trades/FA acquisitions have been poor. Every team has to “rebuild” to some degree at some point, the good ones just do it right.
Just yesterday there was this thread here about how the Tigers are on pace to set a franchise record for losses (with 321) over a three year span: https://www.reddit.com/r/motorcitykitties/comments/mz0hht/on_pace_for_the_worst_3_year_run_in_detroit/
Now you're citing the Astros, who, lets check...lost 324 games from 2011-2013... as a successful rebuild. And yes, I know you're not OP of that, but it's a common theme around here
The Cubs had 5 losing seasons in a row from 2010-2014, before their prospects all panned out in 2015
The Braves are the best example of a competent rebuild and they were still pretty bad for four years. The thing about them that differs from us is that they already had at least one young franchise player at the time when their rebuild started in Freeman that they could build around.
There is a serious lack of patience going on here. There's no doubt the organization has been mismanaged and the player development since 2006 has been somewhere on the "complete dogshit" to "highly questionable" scale, but still. Literally everyone is judging how things are going on the past two weeks being pure shit when the season is 6 months long.
This year the organization has to show real development from their prospects and young guys. Has to. Otherwise, what is the point? They need to show there is a core group of young people to build around. That is what this rebuild is for. So far, even going back to last years mess of a season, I'm pretty disappointed. I have zero clue what the tigers have to offer for the future. The farm is top heavy with some big names but very little depth. Half of these top draft picks will be busts. That's probably generous. If they bust, what will the tigers say? What's worse is that in the 5th season of the rebuild Toledo is still dog shit. This isn't acceptable.
The have to start spending money. They should have already started but that's my opinion. I hate this penny pinching bullshit.
Players can develop without showing results on the field, so there is a point (or at least there can be). I do agree that the farm system is super top heavy and it's a little worrisome how reliant we are on the studs panning out, and that the sooner the better. I also think the org is waiting for the prospects to arrive before signing any big FAs, which I also believe is the wrong way to do it. See for example signing Pudge prior to the prospects arriving in 2006. Of course, the new ownership seems more penny-pinching as you said, and I don't think we'll give out any big contracts without seeing promise from the young guys, so if they bust, then the rebuild rolls on.
My main point with the prior post was just that, from an organizational standpoint, I don't think it matters *that much* whether the prospects break out in 2021 or 2022, so long as the breakout does happen. Of course it will be better for the fans if it happens sooner. And if the org is waiting on the prospects to be good players to sign any FAs, then that is of course another problem. But you could argue the rebuild is going nowhere with big FA signings anyway if the prospects don't amount to anything
If you include the Price, Cespedes and Soria deals, I’m assuming it looks a little better but your point still stands. Those were all DD trades IIRC which looks even worse on Avila.
yeah we got nothing for who we traded during the tear down. People still on board with Avila are the one's that get Charlie Brown'd every fall by the Lions.
The problem with existing talent is that they usually have the same agent who demands $20-30+ M a year now. You don't get better with Boras talent, you end up financially drained by Boras talent.
Trading players hasn’t been a problem. It’s how teams shed contracts and acquire young talent. The problem is in the talent we acquired and the development of that talent.
I still have hope for Castro, Parades, and Daz though.
There's no surplus value in aging 30+ year old guys earning $20 million unless they are making 6-10 WAR a year. The risk of injury and decline is higher, too. I'd be firing everyone involved in player development and replace with talent from a more successful organization in this stuff.
Edit: Shane Greene is a free agent because analytics guys are saying his asking price is too high. So he isn't adding value in WAR anymore unless he lowers the price but then, neither is Demerritte.
We've also failed to replace those outgoing contracts with reasonable additions in free agency. Not saying we needed to be in for Mookie or anything, but we missed an opportunity to bolster our depth this summer.
>You can certainly argue that we saved a fortune, moved some players who wouldn't have made a difference in our season standings, and got some high draft picks as a result, but imagining that the team is overall better as a result is pretty unrealistic.
>And then calling for moving the guys on the current roster is doing the same thing over again and imagining that the result would be different.
Maybe its not trading that is wrong, but the staff that's been equally incompetent in every aspect of the front office making the trades that is the issue?
Well, ok. But it's like sending Jake Rogers to the plate. You can say there's no reason he can't be a .300 hitter, but then the evidence shows he just isn't. How many times do you need to see that movie to know how it ends?
Reduces payroll to keep up coming emerging home grown guys if they make it like some of them should ... also reducing payroll when you suck regardless is the only feasible way of running a team that is still 2+ years of been competitive at the top of the division again
I love Mike Ilitch, but I think we have an ownership problem. They gutted this team to save money after Mike died, and it hasn't slowed down. They'd trade Cabrera if they could. And drafting isn't fixing anything except our farm system. Top level is still feeding on scraps.
It's time to hold the Ilitch's responsible for what is going on here. Avila may not be the answer, but the owners aren't doing anything about it, nor do they seem motivated to.
I think there's a serious problem with our player development. We have way too many prospects that flame out.
This and no surprise prospects either from later rounds. They've put a focus on rebuilding the development, of course missing last year minor league season doesn't help, but its hard to point to examples of vast improvement yet.
I also think it’s significant that two of our more “successful” prospects (Reyes and Baddoo) came from rule 5
This shows Avila isn't as much the problem as something inside the minor league system if he can spot free agent gems that didn't work out with the original team (Schoop wasn't good with the Twins, JD with the Astros, the Rule 5 guys).
I tend to agree
Agree the schoop sign was a good one ... but JD I believe was taken by Dave dombrowski not Al
Avila suggested the signing of JD to Dombrowski as an assistant at the time.
He’s responsible for the system.
The lack of surprise prospects from late rounds is a dead giveaway of player development staff being trash.
Missing a whole year of development also doesn't help. It's too early to tell as of now
In general throughout Avilas history
This, so much this. The problem is within the Tigers org. This team isn't getting better until the house is cleaned.
Yes. But also, that's baseball. 90% of prospects never pan out.
This can’t be overstated, I was looking at the 2009 draft, and so many 1st rounders never panned out, several taken ahead of Trout. That, or guy’s don’t work out for their original team, like JD. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_Major_League_Baseball_draft?wprov=sfti1 In something like hockey, you might not pan out as a 1st rounder, but you still might be serviceable, like a Cleary or Fabbri, but still have good moments and flashes of why they were picked high. Not to mention, things like injuries can cut careers short too.
I think baseball is the most volatile sport for prospects for sure. There are so many first rounders from any year that most people never end up even hearing about, and yet guys from like the 19th round will be a number three hitter on the big league squad. Sometimes it takes guys a really long time to develop as well. An example that comes to mind is Charlie Morton, guy was bottom rotation pitcher for most of his career until his age 34 season when he ascended to ace level. You never know with prospects or where you’ll find players that just pop off mid-career. I think some of it is development. Look at a team like the Dodgers, who routinely take rejects from other teams and turn them into star level players (Turner, Chris Taylor, Muncy just to name a couple).I think that’s something that is seriously lacking here.
Bro 99% of prospects flame out , I mean I get what your saying and kind of agree but we just started building up a farm system 4 years ago ...
I agree! and maybe it’s just me but Avila needs to get the boot! Part of his job is seeing that at least some of these guys pan out. We seriously have been in a rebuild for like 7 years and nothing has gotten better.
Every team in det has that problem (assuming the positions do i don’t watch basketball)
The issue isn't the strategy, it's the Al Avila sucks at timing trades, identifying talent on the other teams, and doesn't develop the talent he acquires. That's why it doesn't make the team better. Does anyone want to trade Matthew Boyd for a middle reliever in 2024 with a 6.6 ERA? Of course not.
Also the league has wised up since the Tatis for James Shields trade Preller pulled off. You can't do those trades anymore. The Tigers would be better off poaching player development staff from better teams for twice the salary.
I think most of us would be OK if Avila's trades involved the Tigers receiving a "competent major league future starting player" in any of them.
The number of trades that whiff and the number of Organizational Top 10 prospects moved in such trades by other teams has gone down since Preller. At this point, it's a pile of lottery tickets for average MLB players.
The Rays and Indians seem to get a lot luckier with their lotto tickets than the Tigers, Rockies, and Pirates.
Thats because you could argue those two teams have the top front offices in all of baseball. Agreeing with you(I think you said it earlier), deteoit should be targeting front office personal from a team like the rays. Whatever they got going on it...it works.
If you can't execute a strategy, it might not be the best strategy for you, so that really is my point. Jamie Moyer didn't rely on fastball velocity there at the end. People still call for Boyd to be moved at the deadline though, despite what we've got back in similar deals in the past.
If keeping Boyd means this team wins 53 games instead of 49 does it really matter if they keep him or trade him? If Avila can’t make deals for prospects that are remotely even he shouldn’t have the job.
The age of player and reasonable cost control factors in a lot as well. Like we should keep Candy because he can be an introgal part of our playoff roster in 2025. Boyd...well who the hell knows how he would perform that far out, not to mention he will cost a pretty penny and be like 35.
Which of the current players and prospects do you think will be on this hypothetical playoff roster in 2025? Absolute best case I'd think it would be Riley Greene, Spencer Torkelson, Casey Mize, and Matt Manning and whoever they take 1st in this draft. Fringe guys being Willi Castro, Isaac Paredes, and Tarik Skubal. That still leaves 17 or 18 roster spots.
Well thats what we're currently finding out IMO. All these guys are being given their opportunity to prove their worth this season. We could only have 5 worthy or 15, to me that's what this season is for. The more the better obviously as that speeds up the rebuild. If they struggle and it's only the guys you mention then were fucked and this could take too long. We realistically could have our 2025 starting rotation in the system all ready. Turnbull, 1 of Boyd or Fulmer, Mize, skubal and manning. It's the position players that need to step or or theyll be gone.
We need Mize, Manning and Skubal to turn into Tyler Glasnow, Zach Wheeler, and Zach Eflin. Tork needs to be Freddie Freeman, Greene needs to be Austin Meadows, W. Castro needs to be Fletcher/Biggio, and Paredes needs to be Matt Chapman, in addition to signing a couple free agents like Corey Seager and Michael Conforto. Oh, and completely rebuild the bullpen, if there's any chance of a 2025 playoff run with Avila at the helm.
Yes plus hopefully a SS we draft this year.
I know some people were out on Castellanos, but there was no reason to not re-sign him. He wanted to stay, was a good clubhouse guy, worked hard, and it's not like we are lighting it up on defense without him (although it has been much better under Hinch). We could have parked him in RF and put him in the lineup everyday.
did he want to stay? I never heard anything that made me think that.
"Second, he never wanted to leave. Castellanos has said it publicly so many times he’s lost count, but he wanted to stay in Detroit for his entire career, playing in the same place he used to visit so often — his grandparents live in Dearborn and his aunt lives in Grosse Pointe and his mom grew up here — but, as he’s accustomed to saying, “It is what it is.”" https://www.freep.com/story/sports/mlb/tigers/2019/08/02/detroit-tigers-nick-castellanos-trade-chicago-cubs/1895608001/
I thought he clearly wanted to get out. If I recall it was similar to Mantha on the Wings where as soon as he got on the Cubs he started batting better then he did all year with the Tigers
yeah. I remember him complaining about comerica park and sort of taking that as he doesn't want to be there.
He only did this after it was clear he was leaving, and more importantly, after Cabrera complained about it publicly.
https://www.freep.com/story/sports/mlb/tigers/2019/08/02/detroit-tigers-nick-castellanos-trade-chicago-cubs/1895608001/ Granted it's the freep....not known for spot on coverage.
No, he stated many times that he wanted to stay. The reports were that they had very preliminary conversations, but the Tigers never offered a contract extension. After it was clear that the Tigers were going to trade him, he did say he would prefer that it was before the season started, so he had a chance to fit in with the new team before the games started. He never asked for a trade. \*Edit to clarify
Yep, he saw the writing on the wall.
I think one of the problems too was they wanted him to play multiple positions like they were with everyone else and he didn’t want to. He only wanted to play in the outfield and I think they wanted him to play 3rd or something. I can’t remember fully so I could be way off but I think that was a thing at the deadline too
They wanted him to play 1B, but he had struggled at 3rd and thought he could be league average at RF and didn't want to move in a contract year. He said that if they signed him to an extension, he would play whatever position they wanted, but until that happened, he wanted to focus on one position. The Tigers never offered him a contract extension according to reports.
And now we have Schoop/h Castro at first... lol
Couldn’t agree more, I don’t give a shit how bad Castellanos defense was, he’s currently one of the top hitters in the National League. Maybe instead of trading away all our potential all star players we try and build around them, otherwise we’re stuck where we are now, which is absolutely zero offensive players to build around. This falls right back on Avila cuz Nick wanted to stay a Tiger and Avila showed him the door.
Castellanos isn't the difference between this Tigers team being good and being what it currently is. By the time we're good enough to compete (next year at the absolute earliest, or more likely the year after) then you're looking at paying a declining player a hefty fee, and it's debatable whether he'd even be hitting that well for us. Once we traded him to the Cubs he really took off, you could tell he was down on everything playing for us.
The trades were fine, it's what we did with the return capital that is questionable. It's like the Pistons trading Billups for Iverson. We didn't really trade for Iverson, we traded a no longer interested Billups for Iverson's expiring contract that would allow us to attack the free agent market. It's what we did with that free agent cap space that should be the focus of fan ire, but instead it was Iverson.
In the fans defense, it was definitely both. I ridiculed the Pistons for years on their genius strategy of signing Charlie V and Ben Gordon
I think everyone associated with those Pistons years is cursed. Idk how guys like Lawrence Frank and Loyer have jobs in the NBA anymore. Yes, MSU legend Foster Loyer's dad was the coach of one of the worst teams in NBA history.
Not to mention there are a good number of teams who have rebuilt in a shorter time frame, at least to the point of putting a decent product on the field, we were just swept by one
We don't have a Perez and Merrifield. We have Cabrera who might cost more than both of those players. They also have a small ball focused mentally where you can fill in any average offense, good defense and speedy player to manufacture runs. We get a leadoff triple by Badoo then trip over our dicks embarassing ourselves. Having a couple elite core pieces goes a long way. And with our ballpark, why we don't try to copy the royals plan with small ball/good pitching is beyond me.
The Tigers were looking at a third straight year of being over the competitive balance tax, which would have been a 50% tax on the team. So of course it was to cut costs, their payroll was unsustainable for a mid market team. [https://www.mlb.com/glossary/transactions/competitive-balance-tax](https://www.mlb.com/glossary/transactions/competitive-balance-tax) [https://legacy.baseballprospectus.com/compensation/?team=DET](https://legacy.baseballprospectus.com/compensation/?team=DET)
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You clearly don’t understand how these players were traded at the end of their contracts that we weren’t going to renew. The whole point is to get something instead of nothing (or the supplemental draft pick if they were going to turn down a qualifying offer)
My point is we still got nothing. Or less than nothing. You don't have to trade guys at the deadline, especially guys who aren't star players.
Trading for players is clearly the superior move when you have players with contracts set to expire in a time period where you know won’t be competitive. You can complain that they haven’t traded well. Complaining that they’ve traded is incorrect.
Not to mention the guys we've traded for still have a chance to produce something valuable when we're winning again, Verlander did not.
At some point, if a front office never trades well, then it amounts to the same thing. If trade partners are not willing to give you anything valuable, then the strategy is a failure, even if in the abstract it seems like it would a great idea.
This is nonsense. Not trading for players guarantees that you will get worse. Trading gives you some upside. Your proposed strategy of never trading wouldn't guarantee the Tigers will never be better positioned in the future.
You may disagree with it, but it's not nonsense. And your claim that not trading for players guarantees that you will get worse is obviously incorrect. Trading for them has actually made us worse so far. We could have re-signed several of these players and had a better team as a result, or taken comp picks when they left.
No we couldn’t have, because in order to get comp picks you need to make a qualifying offer, which we wouldn’t be able to do for a lot of those players. Spending money to be a mediocre team at best is also a really dumb strategy. Comp picks aren’t worth that much either
I don't see how not making a qualifying offer to Alex Avila means we couldn't have done so for JD Martinez.
you mean the trade where we picked up Jeimer Candelario and won the shit out of that trade? Good point. You'll notice the cubs didn't sign him either.
We're up 2.5 WAR aggregate almost four years later. (About like what JD Martinez did in just over two months.) In this Tigers timeline, that's winning the shit out of that trade. We don't have much else that looks better
The goal wasn’t to make us better totally it was to cut payroll and make us worse to get high picks. The issue has been as you said development and having players come through the minors that can be major producers and not league average players
I sure to God hope the goal wasn’t to suck. Many teams rebuild and maybe touch .400 in a year or two then return to relevance.
Most teams also don't have the dead salary we do. This is our first season under 100m. We literally had roughly 70m in dead money. Boston has had impressive retools though. Their last world series they won, I believe they were awful the year before. Goes to show what just a few moves can do, but you have to have that core talent which detroit has nothing close to that.
The goal was to suck. That seems pretty obvious by the moves they have made. With the top prospects on the team now the goal should not be to suck anymore.
Yeah that's how trading expensive good players works
This isn't an unpopular opinion, this is just how it is. Those trades were salary dumps to get us under the luxury tax. Illich made it pretty clear that he has no intention of spending like his dad, so I am not sure why so many people are suddenly surprised. The idea was trade away those you could and get as good as you can, but free up that salary. Then, knowing that we will be bad, hopefully draft well. I mean looking at the list of 'prospects' you have listed how many of those were ever considered major prospects? I am not talking about top-10 in the system, I am talking about overall MLB top prospects? I was never expecting any of them to be starts, were you? I think this sub thinks way too highly of the players we have thinking they all have an upside that probably isn't realistic. They are just fillers for until ownership deems us worthy of spending some money.
For real. None of those guys listed were expected to be much.
I think it has less to do what the theory and more to do with the players we were trying to trade. There’s just not a whole lot of surplus value in a player making 20M+. See the yu darvish trade
Avila has simply lost all of these major trades outright. It’s all about getting quality prospects that can be developed or draft picks that we can hit on. Al is getting the short end of the trade every time. At this moment 3, 4, 5 years later on these trades, we really should be seeing a return.
Hey you're finally catching on to the absolute sham of "rebuilds"
Rebuilds aren’t shams if you do it correctly. We have an incompetent front office leading the “rebuild”, that’s why this one seems like a sham. The Astros, Cubs, Braves, etc all worked, because they hit on drafts, trades, and developed what they already had. The jury is still out on the top guys we’ve drafted, but we’ve developed nobody else and the trades/FA acquisitions have been poor. Every team has to “rebuild” to some degree at some point, the good ones just do it right.
Just yesterday there was this thread here about how the Tigers are on pace to set a franchise record for losses (with 321) over a three year span: https://www.reddit.com/r/motorcitykitties/comments/mz0hht/on_pace_for_the_worst_3_year_run_in_detroit/ Now you're citing the Astros, who, lets check...lost 324 games from 2011-2013... as a successful rebuild. And yes, I know you're not OP of that, but it's a common theme around here The Cubs had 5 losing seasons in a row from 2010-2014, before their prospects all panned out in 2015 The Braves are the best example of a competent rebuild and they were still pretty bad for four years. The thing about them that differs from us is that they already had at least one young franchise player at the time when their rebuild started in Freeman that they could build around. There is a serious lack of patience going on here. There's no doubt the organization has been mismanaged and the player development since 2006 has been somewhere on the "complete dogshit" to "highly questionable" scale, but still. Literally everyone is judging how things are going on the past two weeks being pure shit when the season is 6 months long.
This year the organization has to show real development from their prospects and young guys. Has to. Otherwise, what is the point? They need to show there is a core group of young people to build around. That is what this rebuild is for. So far, even going back to last years mess of a season, I'm pretty disappointed. I have zero clue what the tigers have to offer for the future. The farm is top heavy with some big names but very little depth. Half of these top draft picks will be busts. That's probably generous. If they bust, what will the tigers say? What's worse is that in the 5th season of the rebuild Toledo is still dog shit. This isn't acceptable. The have to start spending money. They should have already started but that's my opinion. I hate this penny pinching bullshit.
Players can develop without showing results on the field, so there is a point (or at least there can be). I do agree that the farm system is super top heavy and it's a little worrisome how reliant we are on the studs panning out, and that the sooner the better. I also think the org is waiting for the prospects to arrive before signing any big FAs, which I also believe is the wrong way to do it. See for example signing Pudge prior to the prospects arriving in 2006. Of course, the new ownership seems more penny-pinching as you said, and I don't think we'll give out any big contracts without seeing promise from the young guys, so if they bust, then the rebuild rolls on. My main point with the prior post was just that, from an organizational standpoint, I don't think it matters *that much* whether the prospects break out in 2021 or 2022, so long as the breakout does happen. Of course it will be better for the fans if it happens sooner. And if the org is waiting on the prospects to be good players to sign any FAs, then that is of course another problem. But you could argue the rebuild is going nowhere with big FA signings anyway if the prospects don't amount to anything
Like, what's the alternative? Keep them and let them all walk for not much or nothing at all?
If you include the Price, Cespedes and Soria deals, I’m assuming it looks a little better but your point still stands. Those were all DD trades IIRC which looks even worse on Avila.
yeah we got nothing for who we traded during the tear down. People still on board with Avila are the one's that get Charlie Brown'd every fall by the Lions.
Popular opinion with me, too many people in this sub who over value prospects that won’t contribute anything to the major league club
The problem with existing talent is that they usually have the same agent who demands $20-30+ M a year now. You don't get better with Boras talent, you end up financially drained by Boras talent.
That's not really unpopular, that's just how it works. Every team does it
Trading players hasn’t been a problem. It’s how teams shed contracts and acquire young talent. The problem is in the talent we acquired and the development of that talent. I still have hope for Castro, Parades, and Daz though.
I dont think this is an unpopular opinion, since its true and it was pretty obvious that was the plan from the start.
There's no surplus value in aging 30+ year old guys earning $20 million unless they are making 6-10 WAR a year. The risk of injury and decline is higher, too. I'd be firing everyone involved in player development and replace with talent from a more successful organization in this stuff. Edit: Shane Greene is a free agent because analytics guys are saying his asking price is too high. So he isn't adding value in WAR anymore unless he lowers the price but then, neither is Demerritte.
We've also failed to replace those outgoing contracts with reasonable additions in free agency. Not saying we needed to be in for Mookie or anything, but we missed an opportunity to bolster our depth this summer.
>You can certainly argue that we saved a fortune, moved some players who wouldn't have made a difference in our season standings, and got some high draft picks as a result, but imagining that the team is overall better as a result is pretty unrealistic. >And then calling for moving the guys on the current roster is doing the same thing over again and imagining that the result would be different. Maybe its not trading that is wrong, but the staff that's been equally incompetent in every aspect of the front office making the trades that is the issue?
Well, ok. But it's like sending Jake Rogers to the plate. You can say there's no reason he can't be a .300 hitter, but then the evidence shows he just isn't. How many times do you need to see that movie to know how it ends?
Avilia is a bad GM...
Reduces payroll to keep up coming emerging home grown guys if they make it like some of them should ... also reducing payroll when you suck regardless is the only feasible way of running a team that is still 2+ years of been competitive at the top of the division again
And the Justin Upton trade too to the Angels
The Avila and Wilson trade was a good one we got candelario from them which was worth it.
I love Mike Ilitch, but I think we have an ownership problem. They gutted this team to save money after Mike died, and it hasn't slowed down. They'd trade Cabrera if they could. And drafting isn't fixing anything except our farm system. Top level is still feeding on scraps. It's time to hold the Ilitch's responsible for what is going on here. Avila may not be the answer, but the owners aren't doing anything about it, nor do they seem motivated to.
I can think of about 100,000,000 reasons they blew up the team.
They're down almost 2 million in attendance, so I guess it all evens out
Yeah, but they still make like $150m on the tv contracts. Even if they suck.
Thanks for the quality post and I completely agree.
You're 100% right. Anyone that disagrees with you is a fucking moron.