No. 23: Detroit Tigers
Why hasn’t the crash-and-rebuild model worked in Detroit (yet?)
From 2011 to 2014, the Detroit Tigers won the American League Central every year. That 2011 team was really good (Justin Verlander’s MVP season, Miguel Cabrera’s first of four batting titles, Max Scherzer came on, etc.), and they won the division by 15 games.
The next three champs were not quite as cohesive; the 2014 Tigers won 90 games but were actually one of the great underachievers of recent vintage. That team had Verlander, Scherzer, Rick Porcello, David Price, Miggy, J.D. Martinez, Victor Martinez, Nick Castellanos, Ian Kinsler, even a young Eugenio Suarez; they should have done more with that. But they did win the division by a game.
After that year, things began to take a downturn… and after 2017 (when Detroit had the fourth-highest payroll in baseball), the Tigers decided to do an Astros—you know, tear it all down, lose a bunch of games, spend a lot less money and try to rebuild bigger, stronger, faster. The Astros lost 106-plus games three straight years in the early 2010s, got Carlos Correa and Alex Bregman with super-high draft picks, made a few shrewd acquisitions, hit some garbage cans and became the dominant team in baseball. The Tigers wanted in on some of that action.
But here’s the funny thing: They were not the ONLY team that wanted in on that action. Because, right around 2017, another team that had been pretty good—the Baltimore Orioles—decided to do exactly the same thing. It’s actually quite striking how their plans mirrored each other:
The Orioles won 89 games in 2016; the Tigers won 86.
Both teams had top-10 payrolls going into 2017 (Detroit 4th; Baltimore 10th).
Both teams had hugely disappointing 2017 seasons (Detroit more so)
Over the next five seasons, both teams stopped trying to win, dropped to near-the-bottom in payroll. The Tigers played .392 ball, the Orioles played .367 ball.
Now you look up—the Orioles are perhaps the most exciting young team in baseball and the Tigers are, well, definitely not the most exciting young team in baseball. What’s the difference?