The 2017 Post-Mortem

Your thoughts, my friends..............  

I think Al Avila & David Chadd should be out the door tomorrow.   I think Al has botched things fairly badly -  misreading things like Pelfrey, Lowe, showing his cards at the end of last season.   I don't think he got the type of returns he should have for JD and Verlander, but the Cubs deal looked pretty good.   Plus he had the opportunity to start anew with an experienced manager after the dismal 2015 season.   I think a better manager gets them to the playoffs in 2016.  It was a bad bet.   Brad was better this year with a lot of his in-game decisions, but I think he lost the team a long, long time ago.   I just don't trust Al Avila to hire the next manager. 

As far as David Chadd - either his scouting department is not recognizing long-term talent or something is and has been failing in the developmental department.   Maybe I am wrong since we saw some solid years from Avisail Garcia, Devon Travis, and Eugenio Suarez, but they didn't really develop until after leaving the Tigers.   Something is amiss there and it has been for awhile.   As far as upcoming position players it feels like Mike Gerber has some upside but is another Tyler Collins and Christin Stewart looks to me a lot like Steven Moya 2.0.    The pitchers do look promising with Franklin Perez, Matt Manning, Beau Burrows and Alex Faedo but they have an awful long way to go and I think we should be happy if two of them make it to the majors as plus players.   

I can't even bring myself to grade these guys because so many of them were disappointing.   Even the guys that put up decent year-end numbers like Castellanos and McCann seemed to do it well after the Tigers were out of it.  We need full seasons, not half seasons.  We've done this with guys like Tony Clark and Carlos Pena in the past.   A lot of guys put up some empty numbers.   Does anyone really care about Alex Presley's batting average?

And I hate the World Baseball Classic, I think it cost us two of our top 3 hitters.   Kinsler was not right and Miggy was hurt all year.   I wish they could demand that their veteran players not play in that silly exhibition tournament.   The Tigers are paying Miguel 30 million a year, not Venezuela.   

2015 was disappointing, but I am very angry with this organization right now.    There was talent on this team when the season started,  we know it was going downhill at some point but I didn't expect it this fast and I don't think they did much to reload their system.   Out of all the guys they got in these trades I am really only expecting Candelario and Franklin Perez to make any kind of impact.  Sorry if I am not excited about Lugo, Cameron, Rogers or the others.    I know Isaac Parades has a high upside but its a long way from A ball to the big leagues.  There's 50 other guys with his upside - maybe 10 of them make an impact and with the Tigers developmental staff, I wouldn't count on it.    I wasn't angry after 2003 - that team had maybe 4 guys that could play on any other team.    

I think the team needs pretty much a clean sweep in the GM's office, the scouting department and most of the minor league staff.   And I do think the team is for sale, regardless of what Chris Illitch says.  What else is he going to say?  

 

This season was just ugly. 

F  Across the board