Al Avila Is Out in Detroit. What Will the Tigers Do Next?
On Wednesday, the Detroit Tigers fired general manager Al Avila. Mired in last place in the American League Central in what was supposed to be a resurgent season, the firing fit the mood around Detroit. This was meant to be the Tigers’ triumphant return to postseason contention, a culmination of seven years of stockpiling and honing. Instead, it’s been another lost season, adding to the gulf that separates today’s Tigers from the perennial World Series contenders of a decade ago.
It didn’t have to happen this way. Going into the year, we projected the Tigers as a 76-win team. That projection felt conservative; they won 77 games in 2021 and added Javier Báez and Eduardo Rodriguez to a promising core of young talent. Casey Mize, Tarik Skubal, and Matt Manning all stood ready to anchor the rotation. Spencer Torkelson and Riley Greene, two of the top prospects in all of baseball, would give the offense a boost. On the eve of the season, they added Austin Meadows. All of the arrows were pointing up.
Four months later, all of that optimism has disappeared. Báez is having one of his worst years as a professional. Rodriguez got hurt early in the year and then hit the restricted list while dealing with a personal matter. He last pitched in the majors on May 18; when he took the mound for Single-A Lakeland this past Saturday, it was his first game action since June 9. Meadows, the third piece of the team’s major league talent trifecta, has missed extended time with a laundry list of injuries, and playing hurt when available has resulted in sub-replacement-level production.
That alone would hurt the offense, but it gets worse. Torkelson, who came into the season as our fifth-ranked prospect overall, made the Opening Day roster. To put it mildly, things haven’t gone according to plan since. His .197/.282/.295 line led to a demotion to Triple-A, where he’s also scuffled. Greene broke his foot in spring training and hasn’t lit the world on fire since joining the big league club in June.
The returning players haven’t helped out much either. Put it all together, and the Tigers lineup has fallen far short of what was expected of them before the year, creating a historically bad offense:
| Position | Player | Proj wOBA | wOBA | Proj WAR/600 | WAR/600 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| C | Tucker Barnhart | .285 | .224 | 2.1 | -1.7 |
| C | Eric Haase | .295 | .304 | 0.6 | 1.6 |
| 1B/DH | Miguel Cabrera | .306 | .287 | -0.2 | -1.3 |
| 1B/DH | Spencer Torkelson | .351 | .252 | 2.8 | -2.0 |
| 2B | Jonathan Schoop | .320 | .240 | 2.0 | 1.4 |
| SS | Javier Báez | .320 | .275 | 2.9 | 1.2 |
| 3B | Jeimer Candelario | .332 | .273 | 3.0 | 0.2 |
| LF | Robbie Grossman | .329 | .275 | 1.9 | -1.1 |
| CF | Riley Greene | .335 | .300 | 2.9 | 0.3 |
| RF | Austin Meadows | .344 | .307 | 2.4 | -1.2 |
The underperformance is both staggering and broad-based. In a full season, that would be something like a 23-win shortfall relative to what we expected coming into the year. That doesn’t even cover the injuries and demotions; Harold Castro, Willi Castro, Victor Reyes, Akil Baddoo, and Derek Hill have covered a combined 929 plate appearances of playing time for the team. They’ve compiled a .251/.287/.347 line, good for a 79 wRC+ and -0.6 WAR.
The hitters have been the biggest problem, but the expected pitching boost hasn’t quite arrived either. Skubal’s new sinker is helping him break out (3.52 ERA, 2.97 FIP, 3 WAR) and the bullpen has been solid, but that’s where the fun stops. Mize had Tommy John surgery in June, and Manning hurt his shoulder in April and didn’t make it back to the majors until August 2. Rodriguez has been absent, while fellow free agent signee Michael Pineda has a 5.27 ERA (5.82 FIP) and is on the IL as well.
How does this all relate to Avila? There’s one very obvious way – he built the team. Avila joined the Tigers as an assistant general manager in 2002, served as Dave Dombrowski’s top lieutenant for years, and took over the general manager role when Dombrowski was fired in 2015. More than anyone else in the organization, ownership included, Avila has been one constant throughout the Tigers’ 21st-century team.
As Brandon Day detailed at Bless You Boys, Avila’s tenure as general manager was highlighted by inaction. The team was clearly headed for a down period when he took the helm; they’d lost some stars to free agency and some to aging. 2016 was a last hurrah – rookie Michael Fulmer and Justin Verlander led the pitching staff while Miguel Cabrera and Ian Kinsler authored excellent seasons. By 2017, the team was in full rebuilding mode.
Rebuilding doesn’t appear to have been in Avila’s DNA. He generally kept his best performers, which is an admirable goal but doesn’t work as well when the rest of the team around them can’t measure up. Fulmer was a hot commodity after his sterling debut, and intermittently in the years to follow, but Avila held onto him until this year, when he traded him for a flier of a pitching prospect, Sawyer Gipson-Long. Nick Castellanos was rumored to be on the move one year before he was actually traded as a rental. Verlander left town as a salary dump rather than as Justin Freaking Verlander.
Amusingly, the team’s best trade of the Avila era was the one that sent the GM’s own son, Alex Avila, out of town. That trade returned Jeimer Candelario and Isaac Paredes in exchange for the younger Avila and reliever Justin Wilson. Candelario leads the team in WAR since the start of the 2019 season, while Paredes was the key piece in the trade that netted Meadows. Aside from that, the team mostly got little out of the roster during its lean years.
To Avila’s credit, the Tigers drafted extremely well. The team’s first round picks have turned into top prospects at an impressive rate. Manning, Mize, Greene, and Torkelson were all drafted under Avila’s watch. Alex Faedo, another first round pick, reached the majors this year. Jackson Jobe looks like a potential difference-maker. Sure, the Tigers drafted at the top of the first round in many of those years – both Mize and Torkelson were first overall picks – but that’s still an enviable track record. Skubal was a ninth round pick, to boot.
Still, the Tigers never supplemented that top-end talent with effective minor league development, Skubal notwithstanding. Heck, even the four gems of the system have combined for exactly 1.5 wins above replacement in the majors so far, though brighter days are hopefully ahead. With all four having graduated, Detroit’s farm system is 24th in our current rankings, giving the team the dispiriting combination of a bad major league squad and no reinforcements coming.
The next Tigers general manager will have to balance between pressing with the current major league roster and looking to the future. Choosing which to tilt in favor of isn’t an easy decision; Detroit just spent six years building for the future, but so far the team they constructed has a historically bad offense and the third-worst record in the game. Projection systems didn’t think they were any great shakes heading into the year, and those projections will all look meaningfully worse when folding in this year’s data.
Tearing down again, exactly zero years into a successful window of contention, will be a tough sell for Tigers fans. The alternative, though, would be to run back a squad that just put up a historically inept offensive season, and one with scant help coming up from the minors. There’s probably some room to add in free agency, but they already did that this past offseason, and to make matters worse, plenty of the free agents they’d be competing for play shortstop, where they just signed Báez.
No matter which direction the next general manager chooses, the next year looms large for the Tigers. How they evaluate their young core will go a long way towards determining their best next steps. If those four marquee prospects are future stars, the Tigers might be in much better shape in 2023. If they’re more average than transcendent, there’s probably not enough on the rest of the roster to contend for the playoffs. To some extent, that will come down to belief; that quartet’s minor league numbers have been excellent across the board, but the major league numbers haven’t shown up yet, and balancing those two in making predictions about an unknown future is the name of the game.
That’s far from the only question the next GM will need to answer. Choosing which pieces of the major league roster to retain, rough 2022 and all, will play a big role in determining the 2023 team’s fate. Choosing how to overhaul the development system in an attempt to nurture more major-league caliber talent will be nearly as important next year, and more important in the long run. The Tigers are at a crossroads – just not the kind they hoped to find themselves at before this season started.
Ben is a writer at FanGraphs. He can be found on Bluesky @benclemens.
What a magnificent division, the AL Central
Both Centrals are embarrassments.
Oh hush. Carve the megamarket super rich teams out of the east and west divisions and they don’t look any different.
I basically agree with because an enormous number of the smaller markets are in the central divisions. That said the AL West lacks a true behemoth on the scale of the Cubs even though their market sizes are way larger on average.
Ah yes, can’t forget about the infamous big-market bullies like the Baltimore Orioles and Tampa Bay Rays
And the Padres
Ok AL east ? What teams are you going to carve out ?
Oh stop. Atlanta is not a mega market and neither is San Diego. Stop being so defensive about your team. Fact is the Central Divisions duck and would be even worse if they didn’t get easy wins against each other
Yeah, and the Cardinals and Brewers have had a similar amount of recent success as the Padres and the Braves save for the Braves actually managing to go all the way last year.
Good writeup.
Dumb question- Who are the 4 gems of the farm system? Going into 2021, they had 5 top 30 guys- Mize, Manning, Skubal, Tork, Greene. Which one doesn’t count among the gems?
Manning has lost a lot of his shine. A bad rookie year and his strikeout rate is below 6 K/9 this year. If I had to pick one, it’s him. Tork looks like he’ll bounce back if nothing else.
Manning looked like the best of the bunch too. I still think the raw ingredients are there and it’s possible it will eventually come out a la Giolito but the chances of that happening now are now very unlikely.
Skubal is a graduate, since he has been realizing his potential. Others are still potential gems.
I’m a Tiger’s fan and here’s some thoughts I wanna throw out here. I think that Mize’s mechanics are terrible and that it’s only natural he would get injured. Manning has an incredibly underwhelming fastball that his other offerings won’t be able to compensate for. Skubal has a similarly underwhelming fastball but has secondary pitches that make him a decent mid rotation guy but nothing more. Tork should bounce back. Greene is going to be good but he’s not a CF long term. Manning is by far the worst prospect out of the 5 though so I would assume he’s the one not counted here.
Skubal does not have an ‘incredibly underwhelming fastball’
It’s still a below average fastball which limits his ceiling.
It’s well above average. He’s consistently 95-96 touches 98 from a lefty SP. that’ll play
.308 xwOBA against his 4-seamer isn’t below average
Oof. So much for the one bright spot. Hope he’s OK long term.
To me this looks like a confluence of bad luck.
There’s probably some truth to this. The Giants were the beneficiaries of good luck in 2021, finishing 37 or so wins above projection. They have regressed to the mean this year. With the Tigers on pace for 23 losses below projections this year, there is some hope for them to regress the other way in 2023.
The poor player development track record speaks for itself. That can’t just be put on bad luck
Some is. The pitching injuries this year are bad luck.
However, a lot of it is not:
Other than the 4 or 5 “gems”, the farm system had little to no depth. They needed all 5 to work out to at least their 50th percentile projections right away & a couple of them to be 90th percentile. Skubal has, but,of the others- Mize got hurt, Manning has been hurt/not the same, Tork struggled, jury still out on Greene, etc.
The complete inability to develop hitting.
Terrible FA signings (Pelphrey, Jordan Zimmermann, Upton, Baez, etc)
Holding on to players for way too long. Put it this way, they basically got ZERO for Justin Freaking Verlander because they traded him at a low point (& he immediately found a new gear once traded). Nothing for JD Martinez because they waited until he was going to be a FA. Held on to Fulmer, Castellano, Soto way too long.
Deleted; how I managed to misread Upton’s stats that badly is beyond me
Verlander had already found that gear before the trade. He was phenomenal leading up to the deadline.
He had gone from a middling starter to occasionally showing flashes of his old self. Even if you want to be generous about it he didn’t look like he did after the trade.
That said dealing him at his low point would have been a month earlier. Of all the many things that went wrong that’s one of the least objectionable.
Exactly. Maybe it wasn’t exactly rock bottom, but, they sure didn’t sell high, either. He was coming out of the valley & no idea how sustainable it was.
I remember some thinking Houston got jobbed because of JV’s salary & actually giving up legit prospects.& remember, the trade was in late August, so JV had to clear waivers & Detroit also had to eat some salary to make it happen.
To be fair it is unclear whether Verlander would have made that leap if he hadn’t gone to Houston. And what he did the year after was almost certainly Houston’s work (and potentially sticky-stuff-based).
I still maintain they got a fair deal for him in isolation and given the circumstances. If it wasn’t for all of the other prospects not panning out I’d say they got unlucky here. But of course all the other prospects in other deals didn’t pan out either. It’s one of those things where the pattern is pretty overwhelming even if the individual deals can be chalked up to basic prospect attrition.
Agreed on all. & yes, alot Detroit’s moves looked good on paper, but, didn’t pan out for one reason or another.
Franklin Perez becoming a China doll certainly hurt & was bad luck..but, every other pitcher Detroit has had (Mize, Manning, Faedo, Skubal, Brieske, Wentz) has had injury issues, so was it bad luck or something systemic?.
I remember thinking Shane Greene for Joey Wentz was a good deal for Detroit & they actually traded Greene when they should have.
It’s one of those cases where the sample size is big enough that even if some of it was bad luck some of it was also flawed scouting and development. There’s a signal in there and it’s not good. None of the moves are a smoking gun and you can chalk up every single one to bad luck.
But when you zoom out the luck explanation doesn’t pass. How is it that every part of the rebuild except Skubal and Candelario failed? It’s mind-boggling. It can’t just be bad luck.
Bingo. & now Skubal is out for the rest of the year & seeing an elbow specialist. If he needs TJ, won’t see him again til 2024.
Right. Houston fixed him. The fact that Houston was able to do this while Detroit wasn’t is a big strike against them.
Yeah. You can’t always blame the GM, but the problems on this team can be traced there. Avila’s made too many mistakes for this to be just “bad luck”. Replacing him though won’t fix the player development issues. Even good systems have prospects fizzle out, but they are the exception and not the rule. That’s just not the case here.
Neither retaining nor recouping from Verlander and Castellanos (or JD Martinez, etc.) is not bad luck
They also didn’t trade Boyd, who had a ton of trade value at the 2019 deadline. Nothing for him either.
See, he on the other hand had been awful leading up to the deadline. His HR rate spiked.
There were like 6 teams interested in him, and the reporting was that the Tigers’ ask was completely unreasonable. Hard to know, but he didn’t get traded.
Did they really draft extremely well though? Seems the jury is out on that one. You don’t say a guy was a good draft pick because he was a top prospect, you say he was a good draft pick when he actually produces something good in the majors
A lot of these prospects were highly drafted, and so that they didn’t have to wow us quite the same way to keep their position as long as the tools were still there. I never quite understood the desire to keep Mize that highly ranked when it became clear he wasn’t missing bats and looked more like a 4th starter. This was true to a lesser extent to the other guys too.
going Jobe over Mayer is going to look soo sooooo sooooo bad
That’s probably true, although that’s largely because they selected Jobe rather than passes on Mayer. Amazingly the best guy in the top 10 of that year so far looks like Colton Cowser, even if Lawlar and Mayer are close behind.
High school arms will break your heart. I mean, all prospects will break your heart but you still have to pick someone, and in the top 10 it probably shouldn’t be a high school arm.
& they were the 3 picks right after Jobe. Ouch!
Detroit was in on Mayer, Lawlar, House, other than Jobe. Preferred Mayer.
They made a pre-draft deal with Jobe, thinking Mayer was going to be taken at #2 by Texas. When Texas took Leiter instead, they kept the deal with Jobe, instead of moving to Mayer. Admirable to keep your word, but, probably not the best move for the franchise.
I can’t remember if it was Kiley or Eric who said that some huge number of MLB stars were drafted as HS shortstops, making them a preferred demographic. And we know that HS pitchers are among the worst demographics, probably on the same level as HS catchers. I know Jobe’s spin metrics were outrageous but we’ve seen so many supposedly “safe” HS pitchers blow up that you really are rolling the dice. And for some reason, it’s right-handed ones that are the worst.
You don’t get ‘no’ credit for a top-5 draft pick becoming a top prospect, but where orgs should really get credit is other draft picks turning into prospects or at least decent role players. They’ve had basically nothing from rounds 2-20 (or 5, or 40).
Other than Skubal & Beau Brieske. The hitting development has been atrocious.
Your not wrong, but a GM should get some credit for taking the best prospect. We’ve seen GMs in recent history fail to do this for completely indefensible reasons. He didn’t make any Moskos over Weiters moves or anything like that.
This team passed up big chances to trade both Fulmer and Boyd to speed up the rebuild, whiffed on virtually all of their picks outside of the top 15 or so, and had two number one picks who have been in the majors and have big question marks. And so you get this result, a nearly unwatchable offense and one or two good pitchers amidst the wreckage.
Lots of these things look like bad luck in isolation—I mean any single draft pick is likely to bust, especially after the first round. But when you take a look at things together it increasingly looks like the worst front office in the league. Most teams probably only hit on 3 players in the top 10 rounds and maybe less but they’re at probably one. They need to find the most promising guy in Cleveland‘s or Houston‘s front office and give them the keys.
Leave my Cleveland front office along, Sadtrombone!!!
It’s gonna happen in some form. Would you rather that Cleveland’s #2 wind up running the show in KC or DET?
Let him go to Miami.
KC. It’s not even close. Detroit has shown a willingness to spend money that KC has never shown. A good GM in Detroit would be more dangerous than one in KC.
Also, to Ben’s point about rebuilding after the last one failed—this is legitimately not a question. The Tigers who have trade value are either barely removed from being prospects themselves and Skubal and he has another four seasons with the team. I think it’s worth listening on him but unless someone blows them away their rebuild will be determined entirely by how well their other guys play.
Candelario, Baez, and Meadows all can be part of the core of a contending team but they’re streaky so they can’t wait once they are playing well, and Candelario is a free agent soon anyway. Rodriguez is a pitcher and has an opt out so he is in the same boat. Every reliever needs to go except Lange, and it’s baffling that the ones who were pitching well weren’t traded at this deadline. If Trumbull recovers he will be traded. If Schoop and Castro show their old form they also need to go.
But since most of these guys are performing badly or are relievers there’s almost nothing to do this off-season. There’s no market for them. So next deadline is going to be super busy. Probably the one after that too. There are probably only 6 or 7 guys on the 40 man worth keeping but almost none of the other 33 or 34 are tradeable this off-season.
This feels like a preview of Mike Rizzo getting fired in 2024.
If and when new ownership takes over there will probably be a relatively amicable parting of ways. It’ll probably be to soon to know if the rebuild failed at that point. This Tigers rebuild has been going on for something like 5 years.
5 or 7 depending on how you view things.
7 years since they traded Price & Cespedes for Norris, Fulmer, Boyd. (& immediately fired Dombrowski)
Then tried a silly “re-set” for 2016 & signed Jordan Zimmermann (oof!), Justin Upton (oof!), & Mike Pelphrey (oof) & lost a 2nd rd pick in the meantime (1st rd pick was #9, so protected). They barely missed the playoffs in 2016 in Cabrera’s last elite year & a year JV should have won the Cy Young.
Then, it all came crashing down in 2017.
A lot of teams that were in similar positions in a similar timeframe (White Sox, San Diego) or later (Baltimore, Toronto, SF) have bottomed out & re-emerged. Even KC has a brighter future then Detroit does now, I think.
I would probably take a foundation of Witt and their array of defensively limited sluggers and average type pitchers over the Tigers right now just because Witt is more likely to stay healthy than Skubal (because he’s a pitcher) and I because Greene and Tork also project as defensively limited sluggers. If I’m the Royals I could sign Witt to a 10 year deal and feel pretty good about it. But it is pretty close.
I would say the only team with a definitely worse outlook now is the Rockies because the Rockies still have their old team in place. The Tigers have been rebuilding for a while and the new FO is basically starting from scratch, but at least there’s a shot the new group will be able to do something better.
Maybe the A’s are also worse off since they haven’t finished tearing down, they’re still terrible, and their ownership is a major problem but the FO does have a decent track record.
The Nationals are going to be wretched for awhile and now also have uncertain ownership. I’d say they have a definitively worse outlook.
Yeah, it’s a crowded field.
IDK. They got a nice return for Soto. They are, however, unlike the other bad teams, badly handicapped by bad contracts.
Yeah, I’d go Nats as clear worst outlook. Then a group of Tigers & Rockies. Billy Beane has proven he can get the A’s out of the abyss, I’d put them 5th worst (see below).
The other “worst” future has to be the Angels. Terrible farm system,Rendon contract is an anchor, Trout is getting injury prone. If Ohtani leaves after next year, it’s going to be UGLY.
Mike Trout is going to be the best player to never win a playoff game. He’s already the best player to never win a playoff game, but it looks like it’s going to stay that way. Moreno will never trade Trout because he’ll be the only draw for the team.
Yeah, things look real bad there. Still funny how FG ran that interview with the GM bragging about team chemistry and then suddenly they hit a swoon so bad they fired their manager. There’s a deep, deep hole here.
Has he already surpassed Ernie Banks?
As others have posted before me, no “crossroads” here really. No choice but to stay on this same path next year too.
At a minimum they’ll regress to 70+ wins. And say ‘goodbye’ to Miggy. Just in time to get serious about competing in ’24.
Yeah, more likely to not work than to do so. But it’s really their only option. And not THAT! unpromising a one.
How was the Verlander trade a salary dump?
The Tigers ate almost half of his remaining deal and he had to pass through waivers unclaimed for it to happen since it was past the non-waiver trade deadline.
One good pitching prospect, a whiff machine whose value relied on draft pedigree, and a future backup catcher was a bad talent return for 2+ years of Verlander at the time, and it has only looked worse in hindsight
Doesn’t the fact that Verlander cleared waivers indicate that his value was not all that high at the time? Any team in the league could have had him for free.
His son retired from baseball just in time to be hired as the new GM of the Tigers.
Time for poetic justice.
Didn’t his dad trade him?
Yes, that’s mentioned in the article.
Some aspects of club’s internal working are opaque to me. So it’s hard to know why a team’s young players aren’t developing. I guess you hang that failure on the GM’s door, but its not as obvious as some other failures.
For me the poor timing of trading veterans for prospects is really alarming. Player after player’s value eroded with these delays, and only one commenter mentioned Boyd – a stark case.
I must have had the 2 worst predictions, and I deserve to get punched:
I apologize
I thought Baddoo was going to blossom this year. Zoinks!
It happens.
His trades have been…bad.
I always thought whoever signed Baez would wind up heavily regretting it once his bat speed started slowing down due to his horrible hitting approach. I just didn’t expect for it to happen right away.
& the other thing is he is shockingly error prone at SS & his defensive metrics have taken a step back this year. His arm is scattershot, bounces a LOT of throws.
So now they may have a below average hitting, erratic,slightly above average range (at best) SS in a couple of years, who’s entire game is made up above average, but, fading, athleticism. Maybe can move him to 2B at that point..Of course, that would be easier if they had drafted Mayer or Lawlar & had a stud young SS on the horizon.
The good news is that if history is any guide Baez will hit a hot streak in 2023 or 2024. The Tigers need to hope some other team bails them out. And the defense probably isn’t gone either, and that was his real calling card anyway.
He’s the kind of player who works far better as a guy who you can hit 7th than is the centerpiece of the lineup because his cold streaks are so ridiculously cold. He’s still a major leaguer and probably can be a good one in spurts but if you’re relying on him to any real extent for offense something is wrong.
Right – Baez is the same player he’s always been. He’s been this bad before, he’ll be this bad again. When he’s on, he’s valuable, when he’s bad, his glove can keep him in the lineup even on a good team.
They are currently a team that cannot turn their draft pieces (1st round or otherwise) into legitimate major league contenders. Whatever development system they have in place is not servicing the organization. The new GM & staff need to get that house in order or they will continue to hemorrhage talent. If I were a player coming out of high school or college or internationally, I’d hope to not land here because I could almost guarantee I learn nothing. If I’m any good, I’ll get rushed to The Show and feel wildly unprepared… I say all this out of love, but beef that development system up, yesterday!
The Tigers have NOT drafted well. None of the top prospects has established themselves as a major league difference maker. Some still may, but none are apparently close and Mize is gone all next year. They were all consensus high picks, Avila doesn’t get bonus points for taking Torkelson #1 when anybody would have. Jobe may end up being good, but for an organization desperate for position players, and SS in particular, it was foolhardy to pass on Mayer and/or Lawlar, both of whom are ranked ahead of Jobe by Fangraphs. The draft record after the first round is abysmal aside from Skubal. Tigers had top picks in every round of every draft basically since 2016. With the graduation of Torkelson and Greene this year, both of whom are struggling mightily, they have one top 100 prospect.