Baseball’s waiver trade deadline usually doesn’t make much of an impact. The Detroit Tigers made sure that the last chance for teams to add playoff eligible players this year was quite the opposite. It began in mid-July, but August 31st was the Tigers slamming their fist down on the reset button. It is something they probably should have hit a lot earlier.
Detroit won the AL Central four years straight from 2011-2014. The only time they didn’t win 90 games during that stretch was the one time they made the World Series. However, that one trip to the ‘ship ended in a sweep to the Giants. It is now sort of poetic that trip ended as such with the amount of housecleaning the Tigers are doing now.
During that period, the Tigers spent and traded like a team who didn’t care about the future. If that puts a couple trophies in the old showcase that may be fine, but for a club that couldn’t get over that hump, their current state of fiscal affairs were far from desirable.
But that lack of planning has the Tigers in a bit of a pickle. While the other big market clubs spent just as much, if not more, than Dave Dombrowski, who is now throwing Monopoly money around in Boston, they were cultivating farm systems that would allow them to restock the shelves in two different ways. They’d have a plethora of prospects to use in deals or call up those prospects to fill in the gaps on the big club.
It all began with a man who just became the 18th man ever to hit 4 home runs in a game. Of their core players, J.D. Martinez was always going to be the first to go. The 30-year-old former All-Star was in his final year of team control. There was little to no chance the team was going to re-sign him once he hit free agency. So off to Arizona he went for a trio of uninspiring infield prospects.
Next was the actual trade deadline. That day saw them play the game quite well flipping two of the most highly sought after commodities on deadline day. Alex Avila and Justin Wilson got them two more infielders and a player to be named later. The stockpiling of young infielders led many to believe that Ian Kinsler and Jose Iglesias were shoo-ins to go during the August waiver period.
But the month wore on. An unnamed team put a claim on Kinsler mid-month, but a trade could never be consummated. The same happened with Iglesias. Starter Michael Fulmer was also subject to claim but once again terms could not be negotiated sufficiently. The Tigers were having a yard sale but weren’t ready to put out that “FREE” table just yet in front of Comerica Park.
Then August 31st hit and all hell broke loose. They began the day as many of us east coasters were still stirring. Justin Upton was on his way to the Angels for a minor league pitcher. Hey, at least it wasn’t another infielder. That would have been enough for most teams, but the main event was still to come.
Like I said before, the August waiver deadline usually comes with little fanfare. The Upton deal alone was enough of a headline stealer for most seasons. But in the dying embers of August, the Tigers went from sitting on the edge of the pool to CANNONBALL!
Trading Justin Verlander always seemed like a pipe dream. It was that deal that the talking heads on ESPN, Fox, and MLB Network threw out there when they wanted to be edgy. He just made too much money and was too up and down since his Cy Young winning days. But late on the 31st, the Astros finally did it. Three minor leaguers netted them Verlander, a PTBNL, and some cold hard cash. Reset. Complete.
Now there will surely be more clearing out of players come the offseason. The Tigers have a club option on Kinsler and Anibal Sanchez. It would be surprising to see either option picked up. Iglesias and third baseman Nick Castellanos could be moved before going to arbitration. That is also a possibility for pitchers Fulmer and Daniel Norris, youngsters who have old man injury woes. Moving Verlander showed that Miguel Cabrera and Jordan Zimmermann‘s aren’t as unmovable as they used to be.
But who fills in the gaps? The Tigers are cutting costs on this reset, and doing so swiftly. That makes minor leaguers all the more important. That horde of infielders from their 2017 trades may get you one Major Leaguer the next two seasons. After not having a prospect in the preseason Top 50, they finally got one in the Verlander trade, right hander Franklin Perez, at #45. They’ve traded 2/3 of their starting outfield, yet still slugger Christin Stewart stays in the Minors.
Starting over is a hard thing to do for a big club. It’s even harder when you don’t adequately prepare for it. It’s hardest when you flub the execution. The Tigers are just beginning their rebuild, reset, remodel. But figuring out that you have to do that is vastly different from figuring out how to do it. Detroit is one task down, but they have a history that shows what can happen when they don’t get the second part.