LOOKING AT THINGS DIFFERENTLY

by Holly Horning

I think we are turning a corner with the Tigers, folks.

Positive signs are starting to appear.  And increasing in frequency.

It’s small stuff right now.  But the increasing number of them eventually leads to bigger stuff.

After literally decades as one of MLB’s most outdated teams, the Tigers have finally decided to enter the 21st Century.

More owners than I care to remember propped the team up superficially while allowing the foundation of the organization to decay and crumble.

Even Mr. I.

For the first 13 years of ownership, Mike Ilitch did nothing to invest in his team outside of building a new ballpark.  The team routinely had payroll sitting in the lower 4th of MLB every year.

It was only in 2005 that he started spending.

But his money went solely into the roster.  Nowhere else.

The farm system continued to rot.  And the team was among the last handful of organizations to adopt analytics and hi-tech.  Most teams had already been using these resources for over a decade. 

Mike’s son, Chris, inherited a team that had been losing money every year for the last 12 years of his father’s ownership.  Only now he had a roster filled with high-priced stars and free agents.  Most of whom had now become older and mostly untradeable.

The Covid years of 2020 and 2021 didn’t help, setting every MLB team back financially.

But during those 2 challenging years, things started to change.  First, the hiring of A. J. Hinch followed a year later by the addition of Ryan Garko.

Both brought into the fold by others not named Al Avila.  Both facilitated by Chris Ilitch.

The trickle of new talent was followed by Scott Harris in 2022 and now Jeff Greenberg just several weeks ago.

All 4 have no ties to the Tigers nor to the old boys network that ruled the organization for decades.

Given this, fans should expect that this team will now be run differently.  No more of the same old, same old.  No more assumptions about how the team will operate as they did in the past.

And this means that fans need to start thinking about the Tigers differently.  Their expectations need to change given that this organization is no longer the one they remember.

Today, we’re going to address 2 of those assumptions that fans have been making since the 2005 – 2017 seasons.

First, that Chris Ilitch is a cheap owner and won’t spend on the team.

Fans will point to the tear down and salary dumps of 2017 and 2018.  The shedding of some of our most beloved players.

Obviously, it’s something no one ever wants to see but it was Mr. I who put the team in that position, not Chris.  The Tigers had become no longer competitive yet still had 1 of MLB’s highest payrolls at over $200 mill.

When you have a business that is no longer successful, you don’t keep spending very large sums of money.  It doesn’t matter how much we disliked it and didn’t want it to happen.  When you have an owner who lived by the sword, it also meant the team would die by one, too.

And when your team is nowhere near a competitive level, combined with little to no attendance – and revenue – for 2 years, you also aren’t going to start adding free agents and supplementing your payroll.

But in 2021, Chris started to invest in the team.  Just not in the payroll. He became the first owner in decades to try to modernize the Tigers.

It was mostly all behind the scenes.  Expanding Front Office departments, esp. analytics and buying all the expensive hi-tech toys that all the other teams had.  Super computers, Rapsodo machines, high-speed cameras and much, much more.

Let’s not forget that he added the Tigers first President of Baseball Operations. An additional top job that cost Ilitch an extra $40 mill or so.

Almost all of these changes were not readily visible to fans.  None of it was exciting. And, of course, fans could not get pumped up over it.

Heck, the majority of fans had no idea what was happening off the field.

But it was the most important moves done in decades by new ownership.

Chris hired the first manager with no ties (the 27 games Hinch played in 2003 don’t count) to the Tigers past.  And this new hire, along with Chris Fetter and George Lombard, lured Ryan Garko on board.

The transformation of the team had officially begun.  The Tigers were evolving from a team that favored those with Tiger ties and friendships to going after top talent from across all of MLB.  The Tigers went from paying buddies and their unemployed/retired friends to investing much more payroll into the hiring of desirable and in-demand candidates.

In time for the 2022 season, Ilitch committed an additional $242 mill in signing 4 free agents to multi-year contracts.  The Tigers had spent the 4th most of all MLB teams that year.

You can’t say he won’t spend on payroll.  You can say he’ll spend when the time is right.

Since Scott Harris came on board, Ilitch has ponied up many more millions on improving, updating and expanding the Tigers’ infrastructure.  Hiring top people, brooming entire departments, tripling the number of Hinch’s coaches, adding more hi-tech, pitching and hitting labs, statcast, etc.  Most importantly, reformatting the entire farm system to include new positions and specialists at every level.

And now, they are expanding their Lakeland complex.  They are building a school/training center in the Dominican Republic.  They are resurrecting their scouting system in Latin America.

Again, none of this is sexy to the average fan.  But we’re starting to see results.

As they say, if you want a tree to continuously give you fruit (MLB-ready players), you have to pay attention to feeding the roots (developing prospects).

How Chris is overseeing this team is completely different from how his father did it.  It truly is an apples to oranges comparison in every sense.

This, of course, means that fans have to stop equating the amount of payroll with how serious the owner is about competing.  It’s a mentality that we became accustomed to seeing under the ancient regime.

Mr. I spent all those millions because the Tigers had very little talent in their farm system.  They had to go out and buy it.

And this is where he and his son are so completely different.

Things have changed in baseball.  And to prove it, studies show that there is little to no correlation between large payrolls and winning in October.

The money is being put into areas that will eventually pay off.  We’re just not seeing it yet.  It’s too early.

Don’t expect that Chris is going to start ramping up payroll to a very high level as his father did.  For multiple reasons. 

And it has nothing to do with him tightening the purse strings.

It has everything to do with practicing modern baseball strategy and creating a sustainable organization that will no longer have to put their fans through a rollercoaster of boom and bust years.

And significantly changes the way the Tigers have done business for decades.

The Tigers are building a core of players, some of whom are already in Detroit with others expected next year.  The dried-up prospect pipeline is again starting to flow.

The issue is how long it will take for all holes to be filled.  And as Scott Harris said, the Tigers aren’t going to go out and sign a free agent who will end up blocking a young player.  The better free agents don’t sign for 1-2 years.  They want 4-5 years.

Adding to that, this off-season is expected to be one of the weakest years for quality free agents.  Just 1 more reason why the team is not expected to go out and spend a lot.

But here’s the biggest reason why the Tigers’ payroll will continue to be on the lower side.

They will only have 2 players making above the MLB minimum next year.  The rest of the roster is team controlled.

You only have to look at the Houston Astros to see how this works.

From 2015 through 2016, the Astros had either the #29th or #30th lowest payroll.  And they were among the best teams during those years.

In 2017, the year they won the World Series, they ranked #18 – below the average MLB payroll.  They won 101 games that year.

In 2018, they won 103 games and were still not within the top 10 in payroll.  In 2019, they eventually crept up into the top third but that was primarily because of arbitration years that increased players’ salaries overall.

This is what happens when you invest in your farm system.

During all those years, Houston had 3/4th of their starting rotation home-grown.  Five of their top 6 hitters were also from the farm.  Six if you include Yordan Alvarez whom the Astros acquired as a prospect and developed him within house.

Houston had anywhere from 8 to 12 of their players from their farm system.  In 2022, it was 14.  Half of their entire roster.

Remember when the Tigers had their last significant core group of farm-raised talent?

They won the 1984 World Series.

And this is what we need to change about our expectations.  That the Tigers aren’t going to throw money at their problems.

They are going to solve their problems. Finally.

So how should fans look at all of this going forward?

Don’t look at the payroll.  Look at the actual talent instead.

And if everyone does their job, looking at the wins and losses will tell the most accurate story of all.

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