- [Narrator] The 2012 Detroit Tigers took a funky path
to the World Series.
After a crummy start,
they clawed their way back to the top of the AL Central,
winning their second consecutive division title.
The Tigers narrowly defeated Oakland in the ALDS,
then absolutely wrecked the Yankees in the ALCS,
to reach the World Series.
So who got them there?
Well, Mike Ilitch supplied the cash.
The Little Caesars pizza magnate had owned the Tigers
since the nineties.
He bought them from the founder of Domino's,
which I think is nice.
And Ilitch threw around a lot of cash.
Veteran executive Dave Dombrowski
had the green light to spend that pizza money,
with a "win now" mindset fueling over 130 million in salary.
Dombrowski had been the Tigers' GM since 2002.
He's the guy who brought the legendary Jim Leyland
out of retirement to manage Detroit in 2006,
a huge season that ended with World Series heartbreak.
Six years later, those guys made their fall classic return
thanks to this well-compensated, well-balanced roster,
a rotation of brilliant starting pitchers in their primes:
All-star Justin Verlander,
Max Scherzer, who gritted through late season injury,
recent acquisitions Doug Fister and Anibal Sanchez.
Young pitchers Rick Porcello and Drew Smyly
held great promise as future starters.
Detroit invested heavily in offense too.
Stalwart Miguel Cabrera wielded the biggest bat in baseball,
winning 2012 AL MVP
thanks to a historic triple crown season at the plate.
By his side, newly signed slugger and fellow all-star
Prince Fielder.
Austin Jackson was Detroit's prized prospect
in the outfield.
Delmon Young's ALCS heroics
helped make mince meat of the Yankees.
And this wasn't even Detroit at full strength.
Veteran slugger Victor Martinez had missed the whole season
because of injury.
Young catcher Alex Avila played through his injuries,
but clearly wasn't himself.
Even if the Tigers flopped in the 2012 World Series,
they could look forward to bigger, better
healthier years ahead,
or so it seemed.
The first thing definitely happened.
The second thing, not so much.
(sad music)
There's not a lot to say about that 2012 World Series.
Detroit looked overmatched
from the first inning of the first game,
when Justin Verlander promptly let
the San Francisco Giants pull ahead.
The Tigers' offense couldn't hang in game one
and disappeared in games two and three.
Detroit became the first World Series participant in decades
to lose consecutive shutouts.
Detroit went down in a sweep,
but their deep playoff run had been kind of surprising
to begin with,
so the vibes were fine.
With better health, the Tigers looked well positioned
to contend again,
and they did.
Yes, Delmon Young left in free agency,
but Detroit's lineup held strong
thanks to Victor Martinez's return from injury
and the addition of free agent Torii Hunter.
And that mighty starting pitching remained intact.
It's a hell of a thing when your ace, Verlander,
has kind of an off year,
so you just let the next guy step up and win
Cy Young himself.
That was Max Scherzer in 2013,
although Anibal Sanchez and his sparkling ERA got votes too.
The bats popped throughout the 2013 season as well.
Cabrera won his second consecutive MVP award
as centerpiece of one of the league's most productive,
hardest hitting offenses.
The Tigers mostly looked the part of the favorite,
but they had problems on the margins,
those critical edges you need to advance in the postseason.
The defense couldn't always make outs in big moments,
even after the addition of shortstop Jose Iglesias.
And the bullpen?
Well, the bullpen was the big one.
Detroit won 93 games and another division title,
survived another close series with the A's,
then took an early ALCS lead
after Sanchez dominated the Red Sox
to win game one in Boston.
Scherzer kept it rolling in game two,
helping Detroit enter the eighth inning
with a five-one lead.
Another road win in hand.
The Sox were doomed,
but then relief pitchers loaded the bases,
and David Ortiz cleaned them up
with a game-tying grand slam
that Torii Hunter could not snag, try as he might.
In the bottom of the ninth,
Boston devoured Rick Porcello
and stole game two on a walkoff.
After a split in Detroit,
games five and six brought Sanchez and Scherzer
back to the mound, but a little shakier this time.
And the offense failed to bolster them with clutch hitting.
Scherzer had the Tigers leading two to one late in game six,
but the Cy Young winner let a few Red Sox
reach base in the seventh,
setting the table for yet another crushing grand slam
off reliever Jose Veras.
Series over.
So that's quite a successful season
with quite a painful conclusion,
and the hits kept coming.
Mere days after the Tigers' elimination,
Jim Leyland announced he was done managing,
for good this time.
Pretty sudden end to an excellent eight year tenure,
albeit a tenure that fell short of a title.
To smooth out the roster for new manager Brad Ausmus,
team president Dave Dombrowski made some big moves.
Out went slugger Prince Fielder,
traded to Texas in a scheme to deepen the lineup
and improve the defense,
with newcomer Ian Kinsler taking second base
while Cabrera moved from third to first.
Out too went righty starter Doug Fister
in a deal that brought back a couple interesting prospects.
The Tigers felt Drew Smyly was ready to assume
Fister's spot in the rotation.
With some veteran signings,
Detroit hoped to make sure they didn't
miss Fielder too much,
improve the defense,
and, above all else, fix that damn bullpen.
Plans don't always go the way you want.
For one thing, Justin Verlander still wasn't himself
after undergoing core muscle surgery in early 2014.
More injuries held Detroit back
from being the kind of fast, versatile,
defensively snappy team Dombrowski envisioned.
In late July, the Tigers kind of counter pivoted
from the Fister trade,
dealing the young Smyly and Austin Jackson
for star lefty David Price,
another recent Cy Young winner for the rotation.
But again, if you had to pick one thing
that most haunted the Tigers and their fans,
it was that bullpen.
Even with big name closer Joe Nathan aboard,
even with Joba Chamberlain
and the mid-season edition of Joakim Soria,
relief pitching killed the Tigers.
In an ALDS against the Orioles,
the whole staff kind of struggled,
with the bullpen really blowing it at the ends
of games one and two.
Baltimore swept Detroit, a pretty discouraging outcome.
The Tigers wasted a great Cabrera series
and a breakout clutch performance from newcomer
JD Martinez.
They wasted that big pricey rotation.
They didn't even get to start two of these guys
in the playoffs.
Take a look at this rotation
because I'm gonna mention them again later.
Actually, I'm gonna mention them right now too
because that rotation immediately began to crumble.
The ace, Max Scherzer, walked away in free agency.
Dombrowski sacrificed another starter, young Rick Porcello,
for a hopeful lineup improving return
centered around Yoenis Cespedes.
But the same old problems bedeviled the 2015 Tigers:
injuries, bullpen failures...
Staring down a midsummer slump
and a record that dipped below .500
after the all-star break,
the Tigers became sellers.
Dombrowski thinned the payroll
by punting some of the big deal expiring contract talents
he'd acquired of late:
Price, Soria, and the recently acquired Cespedes.
In return, a gaggle of interesting prospects,
but the most important expiring contract of all
was that of Dombrowski himself.
Days after all that dealing,
the Tigers ditched the dealer,
releasing their team president of 13 years,
a period in which the Tigers failed to win at all
but got a hell of a lot closer than they had
in the decade or two prior.
Longtime assistant Al Avila,
father of catcher Alex Avila,
took over baseball ops,
presiding over the rest of a 2015 season
that concluded with a last-place finish
and Detroit's first missed playoffs in five years.
Avila's big addition before the 2016 season
was Justin Upton.
Other than that, the Tigers hoped to improve internally,
better health, different relievers,
and a re-imagined farm system,
crucial given all the recently arrived prospects.
Avila hoped to emulate those franchises
that instilled consistent culture and approach
all the way up the pipeline.
He called it "the Tigers Way."
I also have to mention that Avila
let his own son leave in free agency.
Alex Avila returned to the Tigers later, but still, damn.
Anyway, Detroit did improve, just not enough.
With somewhat restored health,
the resurgence of Verlander,
a bounce-back year at the plate for Cabrera,
and promising performances from the new young pitchers,
Michael Fulmer in particular,
the Tigers almost climbed back into contention.
But with some slippage elsewhere in the pitching staff,
the Tigers could not hang with Cleveland in the division.
On the last day of the season,
Detroit had a chance to snag the wild card.
They played at Atlanta that day
and got an absolute masterpiece outing from Verlander,
but generated nary a run.
Another season ended short of the playoffs
thanks to that sad, wet fart of a finish.
Avila responded by steering into the skid,
committing to a full rebuild.
Payroll stayed pretty high entering the next season,
but the first name on the checks changed.
Longtime owner Mike Ilitch died in February 2017
at the age of 87,
leaving governorship of the Tigers to his son, Chris,
who ran things a bit differently.
That 2017 season brought back more health issues,
back problems for Cabrera
and a frightening heart condition
that would push Victor Martinez away from the field.
The bullpen remained dismal.
Fans piled on the manager, Ausmus,
as Detroit's record plummeted.
The Tigers had been leaking for a couple years,
and as the trade deadline approached, Avila pulled the plug.
He traded JD Martinez for prospects.
He traded his recently returned son,
along with Justin Wilson, for prospects.
He traded away Justin Upton,
and you knew it was really real when,
right before the deadline,
the Tigers traded away the foremost of the Justins,
Justin Verlander himself.
At the end of a league worst 2017 season,
the Tigers fired Ausmus and let Anibal Sanchez,
the last fading piece of that once elite pitching staff,
depart in free agency.
Payroll slashed, World Series roster all but demolished.
Only Miguel Cabrera remained from the late, great Tigers.
Miggy stuck around for the the rest of the decade
and into the next one
while the team kind of stagnated around him.
Entering 2022,
the 10th anniversary of their World Series visit,
Al Avila still had the Tigers
in some version of rebuild mode, or not.
I don't know.
Whatever you wanna call it,
Tigers fans watched Cabrera chase records
as he approached retirement,
and they hunted for signs
that any of the post-demolition future investments
might turn around a losing record.
All those trades and all that losing
left Detroit with prospects,
some fizzling, some retaining promise.
And on that note, I'd like to revisit the pitching staff
from that 2014 Tigers team,
the last one to reach the postseason.
Each of these guys, every single one,
and we can actually throw Drew Smyly in there too,
has since won a World Series with another team.
Pretty wild.
It's not just that the Tigers failed
to recoup equivalent value
when they dismissed all those future champions.
It's that the new regime invested much, much less
in the team than the prior one did.
The Chris Ilitch-owned, Al Avila-run Tigers
that hit rock bottom in 2019
had a 25 man payroll of under 73 million dollars,
21st in the majors,
less than half of what Mike Ilitch was paying
with the contending Tigers.
Avila, by the way, received a contract extension
during that worst season.
By 2021, he'd further cut payroll by over $10 million,
a significant decline
even when compared who the average cheap-ass MLB franchise.
Ilitch and company seemed pretty fine with that,
willing to wait,
happy to spend that cash on other stuff.
The early twenties brought reason for hope,
just no clear payoff yet
from practicing the so-called "Tigers way."
Patience is a virtue.
A penny saved is a penny earned.
The people who invented those sayings
probably weren't signing a lot of free agents.
All of this makes one wish the Tigers
could have snagged one precious ring
back when they were spending money,
could have avoided just one of the playoff disasters
that preceded this big, long collapse.