Baseball. It's back.
Remember when the Tigers were good? They won 95 games in 2011, behind MVP level performances from Miguel Cabrera and Justin Verlander (who actually won the award.) They weren't a flash in the pan. They went all the way to the World Series the following season. They didn't win it, of course, and they then fell short in the post-season in 2013 and 2014 although they posted a pair of 90 win seasons.
The trouble began in 2015. Max Scherzer was gone, signing with Washington as a free agent. Austin Jackson had been lost in the trade that brought David Price to town, and Anthony Gose was not up to the task of replacing Jackson in centre field. Nick Castellanos' bat was not yet productive enough to make up for his defense at third base. DH Victor Martinez got old all of a sudden - he'd been the MVP runner-up the previous season, but at age 36 he hit just .245/.301/.366. An injury kept Justin Verlander off the mound until mid-June. They were sitting at .500 at the All-Star Break, 9 games behind the first place Royals, and Dave Dombrowski started selling his pending free agents. Yoenis Cespedes went to the Mets for a pitching prospect (Michael Fullmer); closer Joakim Soria went to Pittsburgh for a backup infielder; David Price went to the Blue Jays for three LH pitching prospects. And four days later, on 4 August, Dombrowski himself was relieved of his duties as the Detroit GM.
Some of us wondered briefly if Dombrowski might wind up in Toronto. Team president Paul Beeston was ready to shuffle off into the sunset and GM Alex Anthopoulos was obviously on his last legs. Rogers had to be looking for replacements, surely. Of course, the Blue Jays were about to embark on the best month in franchise history, the Red Sox would hire Dombrowski two weeks later, and the Blue Jays hired Mark Shapiro to fill Beeston's shoes at the end of the month.
The Tigers bounced back somewhat in 2016 - Verlander had a strong season, Fullmer was Rookie of the Year - but the bottom fell out, completely, in 2017. Miguel Cabrera and Ian Kinsler got old, all at once. And despite solid work from Verlander and Fullmer, they had by far the worst pitching in the major leagues. Oh, it was an abomination. So Dombrowski's replacement, Al Avila, began selling what he could. J.D.Martinez was a pending free agent - he went to Arizona in mid July for three infielders who never would play regularly in the majors. At the end of the month Alex Avila and Justin Wilson went to the Cubs for Jeimer Candelario and Isaac Paredes. And at the end of August, Avila made the biggest moves of all. Left fielder Justin Upton had a player option at the end of the season - he was in the midst of what would be the best season of his career, and he finished it in Anaheim. The Tigers received pitching prospect Grayson Long, whose remaining professional career consisted of one game for Detroit's AA team in Erie. That same day, Avila traded Justin Verlander - who was under contract through 2019 - to Houston for Jake Rogers, Daz Cameron, and Franklin Perez. That dropped the bottom out completely - they finished up 64-98 and were rewarded with the first pick in the 2018 draft. Good news, right? After all, they had obtained Verlander with the second pick back in 2004. So they selected another RH college pitcher. Casey Mize, out of Auburn, probably isn't going to have Verlander's career.
Well, it wasn't all that great a crop that year. But the Tigers duplicated their 2017 64-98 record in 2018. Unfortunately, they were so bad they didn't really have anything to sell at the deadline. And they had to settle for the fifth pick in the 2019 draft, which meant that Adley Rutschmann and Bobby Witt Jr were gone before their turn came around. They did end up with outfielder Riley Greene, who's still just 23 and made the All-Star game this year, but probably isn't going to be a franchise changing player.
And then, they got really bad. Really, really bad. Sixteen years earlier, the Tigers had lost more games than any team in AL history. The 2019 team gave that non-performance a run for its money. They were a wretched 47-114, which at least guaranteed they'd get the first pick the following June. They didn't have much to sell, but with Nick Castellanos approaching free agency, they sent him to the Cubs for Alex Lange. They also unloaded closer Shane Greene, in exchange for no one that would ever amount to anything.
They had the first overall pick in the draft, for the second time in three years, and this time they came away with Spencer Torkelson. In 2021, with the third overall pick, they chose high school pitcher Jackson Jobe, who has now made it to AA where he's pitching very well. At least one of their draft picks began to pay off. That was southpaw Tarik Skubal, taken in the 9th round back in 2018, the 255th players chosen. Didn't need to tank for him.
What does it all mean? Why, what Joaquin always used to say. Youneverknow.
Matchups
Fri 19 July - Flaherty (6-5, 3.13) vs Bassitt (8-7, 3.52)
Sat 20 July - Olson (4-8, 3.30) vs Kikuchi (4-8, 4.42)
Sun 21 July - Montero (1-2, 5.47) vs Gausman (7-8, 4.50)
https://www.battersbox.ca/article.php?story=20240719161416427