FanPost

Does Avila suck? Al Avila and the State of the Tigers

Bob DeChiara-USA TODAY Sports

The 2017 Detroit Tigers were like a burning, on fire 2000 Chevy Silverado. You want to know more, but you're afraid to get too close. The Tigers finished with the worst record in baseball at 64-98, and won just six games in their last month. Not good.

Once the deadline ended, many fans felt underwhelmed by the returns of Wilson, and especially JD. The Tigers also traded our lord and savior Justin Verlander. Some fans have taken it a step further, offering to pay for a one-way ticket to Indonesia for their dear GM (sorry Indonesians).

But, has Avila been that bad? Should we send him as far away from Detroit as possible? Well, if you're going to fire a man, you need to first need to remember what type of situation he entered in.

The State of the Tigers, April 2016

The 2015 Tigers missed the playoffs but were highly successful in their "retooling." As a result, the Tigers had young rookies in Fulmer, Norris, Boyd, and a couple of other solid prospects. They still had Miggy. JV himself was about to enter a Cy-Young caliber season (I will hate Tampa writers forever).

However, baseball doesn't work like the NBA. You can't win it all with a couple of good players. You can’t even win it all with a bunch of great players. You need a team. You need MLB regulars at every position, and you need as many talented backups as you can get. The Tigers 2013 lost in the ALCS because they didn't have enough depth.

So, did the Tigers have enough depth in 2016?

They had McCann, Miggy, Kinsler, Iglesias, and Castellanos in the infield. J-UP, Maybin, and JDMart in the outfield. They had the runner up MVP in Vmart at DH. On paper, that looks pretty good. But how was their depth? What happened if someone got hurt?

Behind the starting lineup, we had Romine, Alives, McGehee, Aybar... I think you get the idea. There was no Javier Baez to fill in for anyone who got injured. Pitching was the same way, with the great Buck Farmer and Kyle Ryan as reserves.

Now, you might be asking, "If our depth sucked so much, why didn't Avila get anyone?!" The answer is simple: We were out of resources to acquire additional players.

In baseball, there are two forms of currency: prospects and actual money.

  1. The 2016 Detroit Farm system: ranked in the bottom 5 for farm systems by basically every prospect evaluation you could find.

  2. The 2016 Detroit Tigers Payroll: started with a payroll of $198,593,000, and finished the year with a total payroll of $212,044,266 (ref: baseball prospectus Cots), which ranked third in all of baseball.

With our limited resources, here are the moves the Tigers did make in 2016:

Jordan Zimmermann:

Signed for $110 million over five years, Zimmermann was supposed to be the marque' signing of the offseason. Many in the media speculated that he would sign for six years and about $130 million, but he ended up taking less to be in the Midwest, near his family. Unfortunately, he had shoulder issues in his first and second season in Detroit and has not lived up to expectations. He did have an injury history (Tommy John surgery in 2010), but he had averaged over 200 innings in his last fours seasons. If you anticipated Zimmerman developing neck issues, you should buy a lottery ticket.

Other SP options that year: David Price (signed for 217M and now has elbow issues), Zack Greinke (signed a 6-year $206M deal as a 32 year-old at the time), and Johnny Cueto (signed for $130M-was great for 2016, but isn’t looking pretty from 2017-on: 4.52 ERA in his second year and didn’t opt out).

J-UP:

Our late, dear Mr. Mike Ilitch wanted another bat in January. He was determined to get one last star for a championship in Detroit by any means necessary. As previously reported here, Ilitch was about to sign Chris Davis for $200 million, but Avila stepped in and influenced Ilitch to take his money to Upton instead. When his agent offered Avila to do a 7-year deal with Upton or a 6-year deal with an opt out, Avila took the opt out without hesitation.

Other options: Jason Heyward (signed an 8-year deal for $184M, and has an .ave of .239 and a .309 OBP since joining the Cubs), Chris Davis (as discussed above- signed to a crippling 161M over 7 years), and Yoenis Cespedes (who signed a 1-year deal for that probably wouldn't have been available to Detroit, and subsequently signed a $110M deal over 4 years the following deal-which is more of what we would have been offered; Yoenis is two years older than Upton, as well as more injury prone)

Rummaging through the Island of Misfit Toys: Pelfrey, Lowe, Maybin, K-rod

I don't have the stats with this, but I am pretty sure at least two of these players heavily contributed to the sale of alcoholic drinks in the Detroit area.

With our payroll being pretty maxed out from the Zimmermann signing, Avila had to find a center fielder, a closer, another late inning bullpen piece, and 5th starter out of the scrap box. As we unfortunately learned (looking at you Pelfrey!), not all of these deals pan out. All signings/trades don't have a 100 percent success rate-- just look at the Cubs with Heyward. Players on 1-2 year deals are especially risky, because if the player was better/less risky than that, they would cost more! Maybin actually worked out great, and so did K-rod for the first year. As for Pelfrey and Lowe, I don't want to think about it.

Avila hit on 50 percent of these deals. The production K-rod and Maybin gave us were crucial (especially given the lack of our other options), but Pelfrey and Lowe burned us. And again, Pelfrey and Lowe being bad wasn’t necessarily the issue (because we risked relatively little in terms of dollars), but our lack of depth made it an issue. Other teams, like the Dodgers or Cubs, can cut a player that can’t get outs against a middle school girl's softball team (Romo, Ramirez, etc.), but we had to stick with these bums. Why? Because Kyle Ryan and Buck Farmer were the "most talented" two players behind them.

With the flawed roster that Avila had, he took his team inches from the playoffs. We were the first team out, despite having huge holes on the roster. Going into the 2017 season, Avila, like most of us, realized this team is old, and has a bunch of expiring contracts that we don't have the money to replace. The next logical step was to try to trade some of our veterans and get something for them before they left the team anyways, which brings us to the 2017 season.

Next time: The 2017 Detroit Tigers: Al Avila and the State of the Tigers Part 2

This is a FanPost and does not necessarily reflect the views of the <em>Bless You Boys</em> writing staff.