BACK TO THE FUTURE – PART ONE

by Holly Horning

“No man is truly great who is great only in his lifetime. The test of greatness is the page of history.”

– William Hazlitt

If you’re like me, you’re trying to get more hints about the latter stages of this Tigers’ rebuild.

What are their priorities?  When do they expect to be contending again?  How long will it take to build a championship-worthy roster?

But you’ve also been looking at the clues offered by the hiring of A. J. Hinch and his new coaches.  And, all those Dodgers.

You’ve been asking yourself why the team finally hired a competent manager who could effectively harness the talent he was given after 3 previous misses.  Why they are getting rid of the decades-old clique just this past year.  And why they are suddenly hiring Dodgers when Al Avila had ties to Los Angeles all along.

All great questions.  But no easy answers.

Let’s try to answer them, though.  At least, let’s try to offer some viable explanations.

And in order to do that, we need to go back in time.  Waaay back in time.

Because history often gets misinterpreted early in the making.  We need to give time and distance before returning to those earlier times in order to make sense of the present.

Time has the ability to allow us to see things more clearly.  To eliminate the assumptions we made early in the process.  To be able to stand back and view actions in a more detached manner.

To be able to detach from our emotions which may have clouded the entire process.

And that’s what we’re going to do today.  And Thursday.  And probably even next week as well.

Let’s make sense of how the Tigers rose and then fell.  And how they are trying to turn into that phoenix rising from the ashes.

Most of all, we need to get rid of the assumptions we’ve been making all these years.  Those stubborn beliefs that just may be holding us back in our honest assessments.

We need to erase the board and start over.  And if we come to the same conclusions, then so be it.

But if we see things differently, and consider more possibilities, we may just come to believe that there were different motivational factors at play.  Or at least, different strategies.

Most important? Correcting certain beliefs will also change how we evaluate others who came later.

In the end, isn’t it worthwhile to see and understand the different factors that may have had important roles in determining the Tigers’ path?

I think so.

But before we can try to make sense about what is going on now, we need to go back in time before Hinch was hired.  Even before Gardy and the rookie manager who shall not be named.  Before Dave Dombrowski and Chris Ilitch.

Yes, we need to back to when Mike Ilitch bought the team.

Since 2006, Mr. I has put on a pedestal by fans.  He was a godsend.  He spent money. He tried to build a championship team.

For many fans, he could do no wrong.

And Mr. I was the model upon which fans based their continued expectations when he passed.  They are frustrated with his son, Chris, for not being like his dad.  For how cheap he is.  For how he simply wants to make money and not build a championship team.  How he doesn’t care about the team the way his dad did.

They even believe that Chris has a duty to open his wallet as much as Mr. I did.

This is where we need to go back in time.  Ditching those rose-colored glasses and understanding Mr. I’s entire time as owner and what his motivation was.

To show the evidence that his moves may not have been solely based upon rewarding the fans.

Let’s start off with the early years which were quite different than the last 10 years of Mr. I’s ownership.  It’s really a tale of 2 different owners.  The first 13 years compared with the last 10.

After buying the Tigers, Ilitch made serious payroll cuts to the team and the Tigers spent a number of years sitting among the bottom 4 teams in terms of MLB’s lowest payrolls.  It was an agonizing 7 years later that the Tigers started to add payroll.

But in the early 2000’s, payroll decreased again and the Tigers were consistently in the bottom third, averaging $48- $58 million each year.  One year, payroll would go up but then the next year, it would go down.  This pattern continued for approximately 5 years.

Meanwhile, in Mr. I’s first 13 years of ownership, the Tigers had only 1 year (his first) finishing at .500. 

When you go that long, and spend 12 out of 13 years under .500, that’s a pattern.  It’s not a fluke.  It is intentional.

The first real change in pattern happened in 2005.  That’s when payroll started to go up significantly every year with the exception of 2011.   Payroll returned to previous levels for the 2012 season.

So why did it take Ilitch 13 years to start investing in the team?

Was it because his Red Wings were losing their hold on hockey championships?  Certainly the timeline matches.

Or was it due to age?  He was in his 80’s and still didn’t have that ring for both sports.

Or was it due to illness?  The sudden urge to spend did coincide with some serious health issues for Mr. I.  We all saw how frail he was in 2012 and how Dave Dombrowski had to hold him up at the AL championship ceremony.

Truth is, it was probably all 3 that inspired quick changes in spending habits and a sense of urgency in winning that ring.  It really wasn’t about the fans.

But the fact that out of 24 years of ownership (Chris was running the team at various points, incl. 2016), more than half of those years were horrible and underfunded.

Sixteen of the 24 resulted in under .500 performance records.  Eight of them over that.  Not exactly an admirable record.  Yet fans remember Mr. I for the latter years and forgot the first 13 of them.

He was an owner who also went through 3 GMs in a decade before hiring Dave Dombrowski.  And it’s no secret that Mr. I and Dave didn’t have an easy relationship.  However, and something we will address in another installment, Mr. I favored Al Avila.  Reports had Mike treating Avila like a son.

Mike and Dave often battled over who would be signed with Mr. I allowing his emotions to overrule strategic planning.  Undoubtedly, most of these moves probably wouldn’t have been made by Dave.

This owner’s decisions often messed with the roster.  The signing of Prince Fielder to one of baseball’s largest contracts that ended in poor performance and attitude.  The too-early and too-generous extensions of Justin Verlander and Miguel Cabrera.  The refusal to allow Victor Martinez to walk because he was like a “son.”

With the exception of Martinez and Miggy, these were all moves that the Tigers had to end up undoing at great cost. And for the past 5 years, Cabrera’s contract has been a drag on what the team was able to do with its roster. It may have even cost the Tigers extra years in the rebuilding process.

And Jordan Zimmermann?  A signing pushed by a desperate owner who saw one last chance for a ring.

Mr. I was not a benign owner.  He was an emotional one and driven by personal factors instead of statistics and advice.  And he was probably his own worst enemy.

And those emotions created an organization that lost millions of dollars every year for the last 10 years of his ownership.  Despite pulling in over 3 million fans every season.  The Tigers had MLB’s largest operating expenses.  Almost twice as large as the next team.

It was all unsustainable as we ended up seeing.

Don’t get me wrong.  We’ll take those really good years even though the ultimate goal was elusive and there’s still some lingering resentment over lots of phenomenal talent being wasted.

It’s just important to identify all the facts and understand everything that was in play.  All too often, recent good years have a tendency to cloud the real issues and patterns.

And it’s just as important to understand the owner, warts and all. To put it all into perspective and lay all the cards on the table.

Mike Ilitch was a complicated man and he was driven, as owner, by multiple priorities.  It wasn’t only about the Tiger fans.  In all honesty, it was probably more about his own goals than it was about others.

Why do we need to know this?

Because it helps to better define this team’s ownership.  And it will give fair context and an honest assessment to the contributions of Chris Ilitch.

Make no mistake about it.  Chris was left with an unsustainable mess that had already started collapsing before he took over.

And it will help us understand and re-evaluate his actions as he assumed the ownership role after his father’s passing. Because only when we understand where someone is coming from and what they have to deal with, do we truly understand their actions and can finally clearly evaluate their moves and intentions.

This will be where we pick up in Thursday’s blog. (Please save your comments on Chris for then.)

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What did you miss on our Twitter feed yesterday? (And why aren’t you following TT yet?)

• TT responds to national stories about the “imminent” return of Justin Verlander and Max Scherzer.

• MLB wonders why World Series viewership has gone done every year since 2017 but we know why.

• Carlos Correa is about to get even more expensive.

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