THE TIGERS NEED TO CHANGE THEIR STRIPES

by Holly Horning

With all the recent national news stories about the Tigers’ rebuild, I was reminded of something Chris Ilitch said over a year ago:

“… We want not only a highly competitive team, but we want to be a playoff contender and we want to compete for championships and do it on a long-term, sustainable basis…. Our goal is not to be good one time but to be good over the course of time. We really are shooting for sustainable success and competitive baseball over time.”

Note the bolded text.

Flash-forward to just a couple weeks ago and Ken Rosenthal’s scathing article about the Tigers’ mess of a rebuild.  Ken said:

“Rival executives, however, question whether Avila is creative and savvy enough to build a consistent winner.”

Houston, er, Detroit, we’ve got a problem.

An owner who wants a successful, sustainable team.  And a GM considered by many of his peers to be incapable of delivering that.

It’s one thing for people to say that someone isn’t up to the task.  It’s another when it’s your peers.

I just hope that Chris has read this article.  At least once.

In addition to the Rosenthal article, I also recently wrote about the national article comparing the Giants and Tigers rebuilds.  Both started the same year but it took San Francisco only 4 years to reach their goal.  And they did it without tearing down the roster.

Over the weekend, there was another national article on the Orioles’ rebuild.  They started a year after the Tigers and it appears that they are coming out of their rebuild this year.  Five years for them.

So what do the Orioles and Giants have in common?

Great leaders who know how to rebuild. 

Of course, Farhan Zaidi for the Giants.  And Mike Elias for the Birds.  He was hired as the GM in 2019 to turn the team around.  He’s been their GM for not even 3 full years.

He worked for the Astros as Director of Scouting and is credited with finding 10 of the players on the World Champion roster, including Carlos Correa. 

Currently, their farm system is one of the best.  Out of their top 10 players, 5 of them are classified as having “elite”- level skills.

Elias also speaks of creating a “sustained winner” by building an “elite talent pipeline” via analytics, player development and scouting.

In less than 1 year after becoming the GM, Mike broomed much of the organization.   Over 2 dozen new hires just in the Front Office.  Over 65 new scouts, analysts and player development people, too.

After his second year, the Orioles last place analytics department (1 person) now matches Houston’s which is considered the best in MLB.

Elias also added an entirely new manager and coaching staff from outside the organization.  He kept 1 major executive and fired 8 others.

For the new Player Development department, 2 new directors and 25 minor league instructors came on board.  Several hold overs stayed while 17 were let go.

The Orioles then hired more than 12 new minor league coaches, replacing the entire staff at their A level and created 5 new divisional positions.

They also revamped their entire strength and conditioning staffs.

Elias even tackled the international and domestic scouting areas.  For the latter, 17 scouts were fired.

Like Theo Epstein with the Cubs, Elias broomed much of the organization and changed the entire corporate culture of the organization.

This is the key to success.  If you don’t have a winning organization, you need to look within and make significant changes. 

You need to ensure that everyone has the same vision. 

You need to ensure that everyone buys into the same plan. 

You need to ensure that everyone knows the goals and can meet them.

You need to ensure that every employee can successfully make the changes in order to meet the organization’s goals.

These points were originally emphasized by Epstein.  And every organization that has broomed their old culture and replaced it with proven attitudes and skills has gone on to win.

So what about the Tigers?

Even though they made changes to their manager and coaches, and hired several new heads (incl. Player Development), they haven’t done nearly enough.

The organization was not broomed.  Not even close.

A handful of employees were released.  But what is telling is that the team could not outright fire one of the Front Office’s major department heads and instead, demoted him to another position.

The Tigers recently sent David Chadd, Jim Leyland and Asst. Director of Amateur Scouting Eric Nieto, to scout players from IMG (a high school).  Nieto has been with the Tigers for 9 years.

Chadd was part of the Marlins clique, having been hired by Dave Dombrowski and working with both Al Avila and Jim Leyland. After a stint as a scouting director for the Red Sox (less than 2 years), Chadd was brought to Detroit by Al Avila where he has remained for the last 17 years.

At one point, Chadd was responsible for the draft but that job ended up being taken away and given to Scott Pleis to oversee.

Leyland is described as the “big dog”  for the Tigers when it comes to scouting players.  It was admitted that when there are serious players to evaluate, the Tigers send Leyland.

He’s admitted he doesn’t know how to do projections but that he (sic) “knows a good player when he sees one.”

Greeeat………

What are the chances that this Tigers trio were all pulling out their computers and checking the stats that other teams were analyzing?

While most teams are all using super computers to analyze the data, it appears that the Tigers are still just fine with employees still using the equivalent of abacuses and calculators. Or, “knowing a good player when he sees one.”

It’s these 3 who were asked to help contribute in deciding which players would be taken in the upcoming MLB draft.  Three of IMG’s high school students are expected to be drafted in the first 3 rounds of the draft.

You simply can’t make this stuff up.

And this is an indicator of how the Tigers believe they will create “sustainable success and competitive baseball over time.”

You know what they say about doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.

It’s also one of the reasons why this team is on year #6 in its rebuild and nowhere near close to becoming competitive anytime soon.

How many other teams will jump ahead of the Tigers in rebuilding?  How many other teams will it take for changes to be made?

(Editor’s Note: This story was revised to correct the information about David Chadd. Seems this author confused her “David”s and initially listed Dave Littlefield’s background under David Chadd’s name.)

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