FanPost

Hope is more than prospects

Matt Marton-USA TODAY Sports

2019 has been a difficult season, which was confirmed to me in the TSA line at the airpor... oh wait. Rebuilds are difficult. Half the fan base acts like they understand they aren't supposed to be winning, then gets angry that they aren't. What we're all looking for, however, is hope. A reason to believe that watching Brandon Dixon will be a badge of honor when we're hosting a championship parade.

Hope generally comes in the form of "the young guys" or prospects. Anyone following this team is aware of the current crop of prospects that the Tigers have, and that they're very heavily weighted toward pitching. We are all screaming for more position player prospects. Many got upset at the wasted opportunity to acquire more position player depth at the recent trade deadline. They proclaimed Al Avila should be fired. Others called him the worst GM in the league.

As a GM, Al Avila has focused on acquiring as much talent as possible regardless of position and brought the farm system from one of the bottom three in the league to somewhere between the 10th and 15th best. A vast improvement, but he's also been given resources like high draft picks and tradeable assets to reinforce the system. Many believe with the resources he's been given, we should have a top-five system by now. That's all debatable.

The point of this post isn't to make a decision on Al Avila, or even to judge his body of work. It's simply to offer hope.

My formative years of Tigers fandom were miserable. I remember the hope that came with Scott Alfred and Brian Dubois in the early 90's, to watching Seth Greisinger in the Olympics (I think that was a thing?). The cliché names of Nate Cornejo, Milt Cuyler, Eric Munson and Kenny Baugh.

The draft and scouting have come a long way since then. The draft is still a massive crap shoot, but seems slightly more stable. But the hope prospects bring is always the same.

There is no question the Tigers system is pitching heavy. Outside of Daz Cameron, Isaac Parades and Riley Greene, you could make the argument the rest of top 10 are all pitchers. This is compounded by the fact that the strength of the current major-league club is starting pitching. Unless we're going to have a 10-man rotation of Mize, Manning, Boyd, Skubal, Faedo, Fulmer, Wentz, Turnbull, Burrows, and Perez covering some infield spots on their off days, we're going to need more top end position prospects. Right? RIGHT?!!!!!

Not necessarily. Sure, it's nice to have a guy like multi World Series Champion Mike Trout, or four-time Finals MVP Francisco Lindor in the system. That's real hope. But the fact is we don't have those type of guys. Yes, I cherry picked great players that haven't won anything while plenty of homegrown guys on other teams have. But there is more than one way to skin the proverbial feral hog.

Post 2003, the Tigers were at their absolute bottom. You know what else was awful then? Our prospect list. There wasn't a lot of hope on the farm. Seriously, go look. The number two prospect was Brent Clevlen in 2004. Even the most optimistic of us knew that Brent Clevlen was Andy Dirks and Clete Thomas before there were an Andy Dirks and Clete Thomas.

Yet within two years we were in the World Series and beginning a 10-year run of relevance. We did it without top-end offensive prospects. As it turns out, an athletic center fielder a little further down the prospect rankings in Curtis Granderson would go on to have a pretty good career. The years leading up to it, though, offered little positional hope. Jeff Frazier, Tony Giarratano, and Kody Kirkland did not contribute.

There's reason for hope. The 2006 Tigers were without question the most magical team in my sports viewing life. Do you know how many homegrown bats on that roster were Tigers' "prospects?" Three. That's it. The aforementioned Granderson, third basemen Brandon Inge, and our utility infielder Omar Infante. The rest of that team was minor league castoffs from other organizations like Chris Shelton, Craig Monroe and Marcus Thames, free agent signings the market left behind like Ivan Rodriguez and Magglio Ordonez, and major league players acquired in trades that became available only because of circumstance like Carlos Guillen and Placido Polanco.

The pitching depth was better at the time, with Justin Verlander and Joel Zumaya and the rest of the heralded prospects that made up the prospects lists from 2003-2005 like Kyle Sleeth, Rob Henkel and Jay Sborz. Those five 7anchored a strong rotatio.... oh no. Even the pitching staff was was populated by lesser pieces received in trade like Nate Robertson, Zach Miner and Jeremy Bonderman. The middle of the road low risk free agent signings like Todd Jones and Kenny Rogers filled out the meat of the staff.

In the decade that followed other position prospects came through the system, some were dealt and some panned out to various degrees. But those weren't the guys on the radar during the "rebuild" of the Detroit Tigers.

The longest sustained period of success in modern Tigers history was done without a lot of top end prospects. It was done without many of our minor leaguers becoming anything more than productive ballplayers, at best. It was done through free agent signings of players the market didn't want, shrewd mid-level trades and building of minor league depth via signings of minor league free agents and Rule 5 guys.

You could make the argument that the farm system is significantly stronger today than it was during rock bottom in 2003 or the subsequent years. While it may seem like as a system we're lacking with no hope for the future, that feeling is just that. A feeling. It can turn around quickly, even without the budding superstars we think we need.

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