BACK TO THE FUTURE – PART THREE

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

Today, we continue the discussion that helps to explain the Tigers’ rebuild and sheds more light about what may be expected down the road.

We want to know exactly how all of this is going to play out.  We want to know about the team’s priorities, timeline and when that championship roster will finally be completed.

We want to know when the Tigers will be contending again.

We wonder why it took so long to finally hire a competent manager who could effectively harness the talent he was given.  And why it has taken so long to start saying “buh-bye” to members of the decades-old clique.

In Parts One and Two, we started to get some logical explanations.

But with all the new clues, they are generating even more questions.

Last week, I wrote about the need to go back in time and analyze the ownership under both Mike Ilitch and his son, Chris.  If you didn’t read them – or need to review the issues – here they are again because it’s important to know both owners in order to help us understand why the present and future are playing out in the manner that they are.

BACK TO THE FUTURE – PART ONE

BACK TO THE FUTURE – PART TWO

What we also need to understand is that history is constantly open to evolution and interpretation.  For many actions, it takes time for everything to play out and come to fruition. 

Because history gets misinterpreted early in the making.  Often, we need to experience 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.

With the Tigers, we need to take a step back and reassess what has happened with this team.

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.

Considering the Tigers, we may just make sense of moves made in the past that didn’t seem logical back then – but now do.

It’s time to move past the possible motivations of both Ilitchs and turn our attention to those who have guided the organization on a daily basis.

The GM.  One in particular.

What do we know?

Al Avila had worked with Dave Dombrowski for almost 25 years, starting with the Marlins.  After a brief stopover in Pittsburgh to work with Dave Littlefield, he re-joined Trader Dave in Detroit back in 2002.  He’s known and worked for the Ilitch family now for 2 decades.  And when you’ve been with one employer than long, it means you like each other.

It also means that a certain amount of loyalty will be in play.

There were more than a couple reports that Mike Ilitch was close to Al Avila.  Stories that had him treating Al like a son.  Stories that also pointed out that Mr. I got along more easily with Avila than he did with Dave Dombrowski.

There were also reports in which Mike had told Al he would be eventually rewarded with the GM job.  Back in the early 2010’s, at least 1 baseball team was interested in interviewing Al for a position but Mr. I refused to grant permission.

Thus it should come as no surprise when Dombrowski was released from his contract (world’s worst secret in that he was job-hunting and talking to Boston while still the Tigers’ GM) and Avila was promoted.

In Part One, I pointed out that Mr. I was guided by his emotions.  And you can see it happening here, too, by hiring someone to whom he was close.  And when you are too close to someone, you don’t see the issues.  Your beliefs are clouded.

Lesser known is Chris Ilitch’s relationship with Al.  But you’ve got to assume that there is some long-forged connection.

Chris inherited a team that was a mess both roster-wise and financially.  Under his father, the team lost money for each of the last 10 years despite the success and solid attendance.

He came into ownership of a team that had one of MLB’s largest payrolls at $200 million and had lost 98 games.

No one in their right mind is going to throw good money after bad.  No one is going to continue to invest in a team that wasn’t going to get better for years to come.

And if your team is going to continue to be horrible, even slicing off a small amount of payroll isn’t going to be a good business decision.

Chris only had 1 option.  An option that no fan was going to like.  But an option that needed to be taken.

The team needed to be dismantled.  Things had gotten too far out of hand.  Favorite players needed to be traded away.  Payroll needed to be cut drastically.  It really needed to be halved at the very least.

It was going to be messy.  It was going to be ugly. 

But it needed to be done.  And it didn’t mean that fans had to like it.

The process in which to do it was also very clear cut.  Chris was going to be the decision-maker but someone else was going to implement the plan.  His GM.

Chris had multiple very sound reasons for keeping Avila as his GM.

First, it doesn’t make sense financially to broom your Front Office as you start a tear down.  Primarily because the replacement process is very expensive and you don’t spend more money when you’re trying to cut expenses.  And you don’t spend money on a new staff years in advance of starting a rebuild.  You don’t spend until you have to……..

And if you’re simply tearing down, why do you need to hire new people?  There’s no planning going on during a tear down.  The primary goal is to simply dump contracts and salary.  It’s a destruction process, not a building one.

But this may be the only time since Chris took over that he should shoulder some of the blame.

Al Avila did a horrible job unloading contracts for solid returns.  Someone else should have been performing this task.

But was it just Al?  Could he have been influenced too much by Dave Littlefield?

Littlefield hired Al after he left the Marlins and before he moved to Detroit.  Dave was the Pirates’ GM and a horrible one at that.  He had a reputation as being a very difficult trade partner and a bad judge of talent.  After he was fired, Pittsburgh undid every trade he oversaw.

Doesn’t his m.o. sound familiar?  Couldn’t it be used to describe what the Tigers did in breaking down the roster and dumping salary?  Could Avila have been listening too much to Littlefield?  Did he emulate Littlefield’s strategies from working with him in Pittsburgh?

Remember when Avila said that he could find no trade partners for Nick Castellanos because there was no team interested in him?

This is the same Castellanos who has had some very solid years since leaving and is considered to be 1 of the top 10 free agents available this off-season.

Could that sense of loyalty between those two be at least partially responsible for all those bad moves? (And we continue to see it with the refusal to “fire” Littlefield and instead “move” him into another position which really is a demotion.)

Which brings us back to the “L” word.  (No, not that one…)

Loyalty is highly valued in this organization.  So much so that the ability to perform or achieve goals more often takes a backseat to friendship.

We’ve seen it ever since Mr. I bought the team.  Loyalty and protecting your friends is a key characteristic of this organization.

We saw Dave Dombrowski move from Montreal to the Marlins and take a lot of employees with him.  And when the Marlins had their fire sale, Dave came to Detroit and brought his entire Front Office, manager and other key department heads with him.  Another group headed to the Pirates temporarily and it’s not hard to connect the dots and believe that Jim Leyland made that happen.  He still has ties to Pittsburgh and acts as an unofficial advisor.

Underneath all these key people are coaches, scouts, managers and the close friends of each of these groups who had connections to them in the past.  A lot of these guys were teammates or roommates of each other in the minors.  And they all stick together.

Look no further than Jim Leyland being put in charge of finding his successor.  He received input from good friend and coach, Gene Lamont, who recommended Brad Ausmus, with whom he worked.  When Ausmus got hired, Lamont got rewarded with continued employment as his bench coach.

Manus manum lavat.

But maybe, just maybe, having a GM make poor trades wasn’t a top priority for Chris Ilitch.  Maybe what he really wanted was simply to dump salary, hold a fire sale and right the books.  Maybe he was thinking about selling the team and thus not caring what level of talent was on the roster.  (I’ve written before that the team was exploring a sale given the evidence but health problems of the potential new owner, combined with the pandemic and upcoming reward of hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue from team expansion appears to have now changed the original plan.)

So if a team is in the process of gutting itself, as Ilitch had planned, who exactly is going to accept that job other than Al Avila?  Who is going to come in and happily spend years slashing and burning a roster and payroll?

Absolutely no one.  At least no one with a modicum of talent.  Current or future GMs aren’t going to take this job because it will reflect badly upon their resume.  They want to build a team, not spend their years tearing one down.  Having that on their record isn’t going to get them another job anytime soon once the fire sale is over.

No, the logical thing to do is to continue working with the person you know.  Someone who won’t cost anything more.  Someone who doesn’t need to get up to speed on the organization or establish a track record.  Someone who can hit the ground running. 

Someone you already trust.  All of this saves money.

But Avila also served another purpose.  He was the lightning rod.

It’s understood that the GM takes all the hits for the owner.  He absorbs all the negativity and deflects attention away from the actions dictated by the owner.

Which is what Al did for 4+ years.

He took the bullets for his boss and was duly rewarded with a contract extension of unknown length in 2019.

When Chris took over, you’ve got to assume that he and Al met to discuss the future of the team.  To discuss the current situation and Chris’ vision for the future.

You’ve got to assume that he told Avila what needed to be done.

And you’ve got to assume that Avila asked questions about his future and the timeline.  And you’ve got to assume that he asked for things in return.

If Avila was going to have 4+ years living in a tear-down hell, he had to know there would be something nice waiting for him down the road.

And Chris gave us the first hint by extending his contract.  MLB’s first GM contract in which the details in terms of salary and length are unknown.

It was done with intent.  Because maybe Ilitch’s plan is to eventually promote Avila for all the dirty work he did tearing down the team.  Maybe this contract will evolve into a promotion to President of Baseball Operations.

It certainly sounds logical.

If you are loyal to this organization, you get rewarded.

Combine this with stories about A. J. Hinch desiring to become a GM, the Tigers could be putting into play a situation in which both Hinch and Avila get promoted.  And George Lombard, the bench coach, has interviewed for manager positions.  It’s believed that he will be ready to manage sometime soon.

All three of them could get promoted at the same time.  We just don’t know when.

Now that we’ve covered the top decision-makers of the organization, it’s time to address the future of the team and the men in charge of guiding it.

I know we have lots of questions about priorities and timing.

And speaking of timing, we’ll leave those questions for next week when BACK TO THE FUTURE – PART FOUR is published.  (So please keep your comments focused on ownership and GM for this week and save your questions about player development, Hinch and all the new personnel and changes for next week.)

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

• Justin Verlander got a QO from the Astros. But why will he turn it down?

• JV also had a successful throwing session today for 20 teams. Who was there?

• What kind of a contract is JV looking for?

• Why are the Tigers no longer a good fit for JV other than the money and the age factors?

• The bad predictions about where free agents will sign has started in earnest. Why are these pundits so wrong about the Tigers?

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