The 2019 Detroit Tigers are not going to win very many baseball games. While my ability to predict the future is limited, the evidence is basically as definitive as you can ever be about this kind of thing. Could the Tigers defy the odds entirely? Stranger things have occurred in baseball’s long history. Anything can happen, but it usually doesn’t.

The Tigers are coming off two miserable seasons of fewer than 70 wins. They made virtually no effort to improve their club this winter and their best pitcher is about to undergo Tommy John Surgery and miss the entire season. A rosy prediction would probably estimate the Tigers miss the wild card by 15 games.

Save Miguel Cabrera—who is coming off a year lost to injury and is about to turn 36—the Tigers will field a roster without any superstars. The bottom-line-be-damned owner is gone. The can’t-build-a-bullpen-but-is-otherwise-great GM just won a World Series in Boston. Jim Leyland no longer holds court after each game. The team’s long-time TV broadcast crew was fired after an altercation last year that the team and network have still not publicly discussed.

After a decade of competitive teams—championship caliber in some cases—the Tigers are firmly in the middle of their decline. It was understandable in 2017 and inevitable in 2018, but the malaise lurks in year three. The brass has made clear that they do not even intend to build a winner until 2021 (even though, as I’ve argued, they could build one more quickly).

By every indication, there will be essentially zero Tigers games with playoff implications over their next 162 contests.

In essence, nothing matters.

So how do we cope this fact? We used to manage just fine, before the revival. But that was before we had experienced the feeling of actually caring. Before we knew the rush of pennant chases and heartbreak of Nelson Cruz, and of Torii Hunter flipping over the right field wall in Boston.

When the rebuild began, I was ready. The team needed to develop a new generation and I was being pulled in other directions in my non-baseball life. It was refreshing to be focusing less on the day-to-day triumphs and more on the growth of the Tiger cubs. After a decade or more of watching nearly every inning of nearly every game, it was kind of nice to be able to step back and allow myself to detach a little.

But it’s 18 months later. The farm is better but the club didn’t make use of any of its financial savings this winter when it could have gone a long way and they don’t seem keen on even pretending. Even if I didn’t win the argument about signing Harper, Gio Gonzalez just got a minor league deal for $3 million!

There isn’t going to be meaningful baseball. So how do we fight the drift towards ambivalence about baseball in general? If the organization doesn’t care, and isn’t going to care for two more years, how do we fight the atrophy of our baseball muscles?

I’ve never needed the team to win the World Series to care. It’s not disappointing for me to watch a team miss the playoffs by three games or run into a wall in the LCS. But finding a way to stay engaged when you know how it ends from the beginning is another matter. It’s one thing for that to be an occasional thing, but this is a four-year promise from management.

One of the things I really like about baseball is that each individual game is relatively unimportant and that the real story unfolds across the individual contests. An intentionally bad team ruins that vibe. Any given day, it could be fun to watch, but the sum total of the product will be subpar.

I am going to try to take two approaches to dealing with this. The first is that I’m going to try to watch more full games that don’t involve the Tigers. I’ve always watched a lot of background baseball but following a single team demands a lot of time and if you give three hours a day to one team, it’s hard to find time to watch other games in full. So sometimes I’m just going to do that. If I can’t follow a single interesting team over an entire summer, I should at least make some of the individual games more exciting.

The other thing I’m going to do is try to watch baseball at a very micro-level. This is easy to do in person when your neck is the camera operator, but I’m going to try to get myself to focus more closely on small things. The batter’s hands. The shortstop’s footwork. The catcher’s stance. I really admire people who can notice detail amid chaos, so I’m going to try to get better at it.

I’ve written a few times in the last couple of years about how it’s getting harder for me to like things as I’ve gotten older because it’s gotten harder for me to ignore the bad parts. It’s harder to like baseball because of the way the league treats minor leaguers. It’s hard to like the Tigers because Al Avila doesn’t care the Derek Norris abused his wife. It’s hard to like art because so many people who make it are terrible.

I don’t want to become a person who just suspends their contempt for something to allow myself to selfishly enjoy it, but it’s probably also too simple to just say anything poisoned at all is poisoned in full. The world is too complicated for that. Liking the good parts of a thing doesn’t prevent you from hating the bad parts as long as you stay angry when it’s required.

This era is going to require that we carry out our fandom differently, both in terms of how we watch games and in terms of how we confront the storm gathering around how the league’s owners are behaving. A few years ago I was content with where the game was. There will probably never be baseball I enjoy more than I enjoyed the early 2010s.

I’m still going to care about the Tigers but I’m going to give myself permission to care differently. Being a Tigers fan was a lot of who I was in my teens and early 20s. It’s probably not going to be that way in my 30s. I’m okay with that. I’ve made peace with it. But just because something is different doesn’t mean it can’t provide meaning.

The Tigers have arrived in Lakeland in preparation for the 2018 season. In a clear sign of the times, Justin Verlander will not be among the players playing long toss or running sprints. The only connection to the powerhouse days of the late aughts and early teens is the first baseman coming off a career-worst season. It’s a new day.

This winter, the Tigers made very little news. Ron Gardenhire replaced Brad Ausmus and brought with him a mostly new coaching staff. The club traded Ian Kinsler to the Angels. They signed Leonys Martín and Mike Fiers, and also approximately one-hundred thousand minor league free agents, including domestic abuser/replacement level catcher Derek Norris.

If you run the numbers, fingers off the scale, the Tigers line up for a very bad year. A 70-win season seems a reasonable bet. A healthy Miguel Cabrera can still be a superstar and a healthy Michael Fulmer remains worthy of a mention in your AL Cy Young preview, but otherwise the Tigers do not have anyone who is a good bet to be above average in 2018. That is not to say they have no one who will be above average this year, just that that the roster is full supporting actors and not many leads.

This is by design, of course. The Tigers emptied the larder last year and made no effort to sign any of the talented free agents. The club will pick first in the June draft and is lining up to pick near the top again in 2019. They are in the midst of rebuilding and have deliberately chosen this path.

It’s not clear how long they intend to be bad. They could presumably be back in buying mode as soon as next offseason. While the team has been known for big contracts tied up in aging players, after 2018 they will only owe such monies to Cabrera (through 2023) and Jordan Zimmermann (through 2020). If the prospects develop well, they could be ready to contend in 2019, and certainly by 2020.

This year is the only year of certain infamy. It will be just the second year since 2007 that we will enter the season expecting to watch a bad team. That will be both frustrating and freeing. Success will be limited but it will all be house money.

There are lots of plausible ways the 2018 Tigers could be decent. Cabrera could be Cabrera. Candelario could break out. Mahtook and Martín could do well, Castellanos could grow. Norris and Boyd could be more consistent. Zimmermann could be healthy. Joe Jimenez could become a relief ace. If it all goes well, they could be on the fringes of the wild card, a mid-80s win team. It’s unlikely to all go well, but this shouldn’t be 2003 reimagined. They will look respectable. And as opposed to last year, there will be a sense of beginning rather than a sense of ending.

I made no secret that the owner and front office lost a lot of my respect through their handling of the Derek Norris acquisition. In terms of their stewardship of the franchise on moral and respectability grounds, I have levied my vote of no confidence. But in terms of their purely baseball pursuits, there is potential. The farm system is looking up and most of the payroll has been cleared to allow for big signings in the next two offseasons. Whether Ilitch the younger follows in his father’s footsteps will determine the arc of the team beyond this year.

I also wrote this winter about disillusionment with a sport full of problems like embarrassing minor league wages, lacking front office diversity, poor response to players who commit violence against women, and nonsense codes of honor surrounding head hunting. I thought a lot about whether I should just let my fandom wither on the vine or whether I should remain and demand better. That’s not the kind of thing that calls for a final decision, but rather constant evaluation.

So much of the game is good, even if specific people currently in charge have lost my faith and respect. But the game will outlast them and it’s important that people rising in all parts of the game today are given the tools to make things better.

I have a small corner of the arena, but I will continue to do my part so that in the future the good decisively outweighs the bad. In Detroit, we are in a moment of genesis. In every respect let us build something about which we can be proud.

On Tuesday, the Tigers announced a number of signings. The headliner was outfielder Leoyns Martín, but the notable minor league name was Derek Norris. Norris is a catcher who last year was suspended for the final month of the season after his former fiancé described him as physically and emotionally abusive, and detailed a time in which he put her in a choke hold, grabbed her hair, and restrained her as she tried to get away.

This is the man the Tigers have chosen to sign.

Now I have heard reasonable and evidence-based arguments against a zero tolerance policy. In certain situations, harsh sanctions on abusers can put victims in more danger, and ultimately any policy from MLB should focus on victim safety and changing societal attitudes ahead of simply punishing the player. I understand that banishing players from the game entirely may not be ideal or reasonable, even if that’s what my gut wants to do. The problem I have seen time and time again is that it’s not just that MLB can’t get the punish right, it’s that MLB teams don’t take domestic violence seriously.

The Tigers are no different. Here are some quotes from Tony Paul’s story:

“When we consulted with (MLB), they were like, ‘The guy served his penalty, he should be able to sign, that’s the way the process works,’” Avila told The News. “We do know the guy, David Chadd has known the guy for a long time, he knows the father, he knows the issue.

And:

“We signed a good kid.”

And:

Norris, as Avila pointed out, was not charged.

“We know this kid,” Avila said. “It’s not his character.”

Avila makes a couple of major mistakes in those comments. The first is that he essentially denies Norris’ fiances’ claims. Avila does nothing to indicate he thinks the claims are true, and hints that he doesn’t believe they are consistent with who Norris is.

Second, Avila says good things about Norris’ character and does not say anything negative about his actions. It’s one thing for a baseball executive to say “this guy is good at baseball,” but he specifically calls him a “good guy.” I don’t expect baseball teams to care more about morality than they do about winning, but they should at least be willing to discuss the moral failings of the people they employ to play baseball.

Al Avila is not a politician, a clergyman, or a public intellectual. I don’t expect Avila to solve the problem of domestic violence. He wasn’t selected for his ability to do that. But he is a public figure who has been given stewardship of one of our most treasured institutions.

Avila’s comments reflect a man who does not take domestic violence seriously. Full stop.

As I said, general managers aren’t responsible for solving the problem in society but it’s hard to root for a team that doesn’t even seem to care about the issue. Avila dismissed the victim’s experience, lauded Norris’ character, and didn’t even say anything about how domestic violence is bad in general. This is all compounded by the fact that the Tigers are going to be bad this year and that Derek Norris, excuse my language, kind of fucking sucks. What’s even the point? This isn’t like Miguel Cabrera, who provides immense value on the field and brings with him significant personal flaws. This is a bad player and a bad guy. And the Tigers signed him without seemingly giving it much thought.

Believing women and working to stop domestic violence are important. Sports franchises have the power to shift public opinion. I’m not naive enough to say Al Avila taking a stand on Derek Norris would have changed the world, but meaningful change is always the product of a lot of small actions.

From a fan perspective, though, the only way I feel comfortable cheering for an organization is if they demonstrate they understand the seriousness of the offense. You don’t have to sacrifice winning for the sake of your morals (although I’d respect the hell out of that), but there’s no reason you can’t be forceful in your language and clear in your message that what Norris did was wrong and doing what he did makes him a bad person.What I want to hear is “Player X did a horrible thing. An unforgivable thing. But he insists he wants to change and he is doing A, B, and C to work toward that goal. We want to support his efforts to become a better person.” I don’t want to hear about “mistakes” or that he’s a “good guy” or that “well we don’t really know what happened.” No victim blaming. No discussion of baseball as a road to salvation. No “obviously I don’t condone it, but…” No efforts to minimize what he did.

I want institutions like MLB and the Tigers to use these cases as an opportunity to model behavior. And I understand there are people who say it’s not the job of teams and leagues to police society. That’s a fine position. There’s a difference between a quasi-judicial approach and simply taking the time to learn about domestic violence and how to speak about it intelligently. I don’t need players to be blacklisted automatically, but if I’m going to cheer for their team, I need to know the team is on the right side of the issue — that they care about the victim and the millions of victims who aren’t in relationships with pro athletes.

When you defend Norris or minimize his actions, you are essentially saying what he did isn’t a big deal and that attacking women is acceptable. You don’t have to send him to Siberia where he can never play again, but please, please, please take this seriously. Devote some time to learning about this problem and how to talk about it in a way that makes the world a better place to live.

Avila and the Tigers have failed that test. When you combine this with other previous problems on similar issues (i.e., Simon, K-Rod, Reed, Cabrera), it gets harder and harder to wear the Old English D with any sort of pride. Maybe someday soon I will simply stop wearing it.

Twelve years ago I watched Jason Johnson get shelled in Cleveland on the Fourth of July. Scott Elarton threw a complete game. Our tickets were good for the second game of the doubleheader, but had only planned to go to one game and my father was eager to get back on the road. He did not grasp the importance of staying. It’s hard to blame him, as this was before everything, but it will always hang over me. We had tickets to Justin Verlander’s MLB debut but instead listened to the game on I-80. I was 15.

In the intervening years, the Tigers have been to the playoffs five times, the World Series twice, sported eight winning records, three MVPs, and two Cy Youngs. I graduated high school, met my wife, graduated college and graduate school. I’ve lived in three states and written for more than a half dozen publications. I’ve voted in three presidential elections and said goodbye to childhood pets. In the dozen years since I didn’t get to watch Verlander’s debut in person most everything has changed. Nearly every important moment in my life has happened between his debut and his final outing in the Old English D.

It’s probably worth recounting Verlander’s career in Detroit in a detached and analytic fashion. He’s been a near-Hall of Famer and has as many signature moments as any other pitcher of his era. But I’m not quite there yet. Where he fits in Tigers history is a question for later.

What’s important now is where he fits in our history. The history of what I now think we can safely call the Verlander Era. Ilitch bought the team in ’92 so that’s no good. Dombrowski was there from 2002-2015. Leyland from 2006-2013. Cabrera from 2008 to forever. Magglio and Pudge were gone much too early.

But Verlander covers the era perfectly, from the first season of the renaissance to the deadline when they decided it was really all over. The Tigers were Verlander and Verlander was the Tigers.

Tonight, the Tigers brought the Verlander era to a close by trading him to Houston, reportedly one minute before midnight after the deal had nearly fallen through. 

For Verlander, the Tigers got Franklin Perez, Daz Cameron, and Jake Rogers. Perez is a good pitching prospect, but he’s a couple years away. I’ve seen scouting folks put him in the #3 category with a rival source saying he sees him as a #2 or #3. Cameron has had growing pains but could be the center fielder of the future. His bat is far from a sure thing, but there’s room to dream there. Rogers is reportedly an excellent defensive catcher, but is he going to hit like a backup or a starter? These are questions we can answer going foreword because we have all the time in the world. The club is heading for a rebuild and the prospects will have time to sort themselves out. 

The main question to ask analytically is whether trading Verlander tonight made sense relative to trading him this winter. It’s a tough call because the Astros were anxious to add a starter for October, potentially leading them to drive up the price. But on the other hand more teams would be in on Verlander this winter, potentially driving it up more. There’s no way to know, and with the Tigers only chipping in about $16 million, it seems unlikely they were going to get a much better return than they got tonight. Verlander is still a good pitcher but with such a large contract you weren’t going to get the world. The Tigers seemed to do well give the circumstances.

I think it hasn’t really sunk in and it won’t until I see Verlander suit up for another team and take the mound in the postseason. It’s going to be jarring. It was a joy to watch Verlander pitch for my favorite team all these years and I am glad he’s going to get a chance to win the ring he didn’t win here in Detroit. I hope I’m not asked to choose between cheering for him or Scherzer in the World Series. 

I’ll probably have more to say but for now I’ll crib from my piece earlier this year about the decision to rebuild:

One hundred and twelve years ago a fire destroyed much of Detroit. Father Gabriel Richard took that moment to declare the city’s motto to be “Speramus meliora; resurget cineribus.” Translated, it means “We hope for better things; It will arise from the ashes.”

Well, Speramus meliora; resurget cineribus.

On the last real day that teams could acquire players who would be eligible for the postseason, the Tigers accelerated their rebuild. Justin Upton is heading to the Angels in exchange for pitcher Grayson Long and what sounds like a PTBNL. Reports indicate the unknown player is not a substantial addition to the deal. 

Trading Upton made plenty of sense once the Tigers decided it was time to rebuild. He was very likely going to opt out and handing him off to another club a month early gives the Tigers a chance to get something in return. 

The Tigers got 23-year-old Grayson Long, a starter currently having a strong year in AA. He only threw 65 innings across three levels last year due to injury, but he does have the appearance of an innings eater if you buy into the archetype scouting. Based on the public scouting views and one source I spoke with this afternoon, Long’s fastball is solid in the low 90s but his secondary stuff is a bit questionable with opinions ranging from fringe to flashes of above average. He has a change and slider but it’s not clear they will play at the major league level to the point at which he could be a successful starter. That might lead him to a bullpen role, but he has pitched well so far in the minors and I’m a big believer in letting a player keep going until the performance tells you to stop. There’s definitely potential for something really exciting but even the floor seems perfectly fine given the cost. 

There’s not a lot to unpack here. The Tigers grabbed an interesting prospect who seems like to at least provide some MLB value, even if he doesn’t cut it as a starter. With Upton sure to opt out and the club looking to rebuild, the only question is whether someone else would have offered more. Given that the Tigers have been open for business for six weeks, it’s hard to imagine there was a better offer available. 

The question now shifts to whether the club will make more deals tonight or wait until the winter. Upton was the only urgent issues, but teams might start calling now that the gates have opened. 

Al Avila has begun his first deadline as a seller, delivering JD Martinez to the Diamondbacks for Dawel Lugo, Sergio Alcantara, and Jose King. With the Tigers six games back of Cleveland and underwater in both wins and runs, selling makes sense and JD Martinez was the best rental on the roster.

During his time as a Tiger, JD was the 9th best hitter in baseball, posting a 146 wRC+ in 1886 PA. Cabrera was barely better over that period and all the names above Martinez on the list are bona fife offensive stars. The Tigers got him for a song before the 2014 season and he mashed he way out of AAA and onto the big league roster. He was an anchor, he delivered in big moments, and was a joy to watch at the plate. Martinez was a late bloomer but he made up for lost time. 

With a huge payday coming this winter and a franchise seemingly on the verge of rebuilding, a trade made all the sense in the world. Another team will surely offer him nine-figures this offseason and he will have earned it. It’s sad to seem him leave, but an acceleration in that departure brings back players who will likely wear the Old English D before long. 

For Martinez, the Tigers acquired Dawel Lugo, Sergio Alcantara, and Jose King, infielders all. Lugo has shown some power and has good arm, but his approach is going to be the big question. He hasn’t struck out much in the minors but his walk rate is quite low. Alcantara runs well and can really play defense. I’ve seen some public scouting reports that were unimpressed with his bat but I heard from a source in another organization tonight that he thinks there’s a chance he hits enough to avoid a utility role. King is young and has struggled in rookie ball this year, but his wheels certainly make him interesting. 

The sense I get from public prospect folks and conversations I’ve had with people in the game is that the Tigers didn’t exactly get the package you’d like to see for someone like Martinez. It’s not clear if the Tigers have a really good report on one of these guys or if the industry was down on Martinez for some reason. My sense from talking to folks is that the Tigers are higher on more than one of the prospects than the industry and that the market was relatively small for Martinez given the lack of buyers looking for corner outfielders. I’ll withhold judgment on exactly how the Tigers did until after the deadline wraps and we can see the going rate for other players. It feels light but the Tigers had to move JD this month and we won’t know if this was the best they could do until we see what else happens. 

Call the grade Pending and the farewell bittersweet. 

Alex Avila will always carry two curses. The first is that his father was a high level executive with the team that drafted and developed him. Even though Alex clearly rose to the majors on his own merits, there will always be people who see his career through the lens of nepotism. 

His second curse is 2011. Avila was incredible that season. It was a career year. All players have a best season but Avila’s came at 24 during his first full year as an MLB starter. This hurt him so much because 1) Leyland ran him into the ground down the stretch because VMart couldn’t catch and 2) fans were routinely disappointed that Alex didn’t hit to his potential in the following campaigns. He hit 140 wRC+ and when he settled in as a slightly better than average hitting catcher from 2012-2015, he looked like he had failed.

But if you take a step back and look at Avila through objective eyes, he’s had a fine career and is a terrific signing at $2 million for his age 30 season. The Tigers have a big question mark at catcher and some stability from a veteran like Avila makes all the sense in the world if they weren’t going to go out and make a trade for a legitimate upgrade at the position. James McCann is a great thrower and his receiving has improved, but the development of his offense is still a work in progress. At this point, he’s a below average player at the position. 

Avila brings with him a respectable bat that can handle work against the RHP than give McCann the most trouble. Avila walks a ton and can hit for extra bases. He won’t set the world on fire but a 95-100 wRC+ is probably in the cards. After being well-regarded statistically for his receiving in his youth, Avila’s numbers have dropped off over the last two or three years. It’s hard to parse the specifics of year to year changes to know exactly what’s up but in watching Avila he still possess some of the skills necessary to steal strikes even if he’s not quite as consistent as he once was. On the other hand, Avila has always been a good game manager and smartly shepherds pitchers through lineups. That’s the kind of thing that only gets better with age. 

If you want Avila to be some kind of star 3 WAR catcher you’re asking too much. But he’s not being paid to be that kind of player. He signed for next to nothing. The minimum salary is just south of $600,000 and he’s going to provide the Tigers with maybe 1 WAR for just $1.4 million more. There aren’t a lot of better ways to spend such a small amount of baseball dollars. If you could acquire Lucroy or Posey or some distant Molina cousin that would be one thing, but the market was very thin and getting Avila at this price is a no-brainer. 

Separate from the dollars and cents, I’m pleased to see Avila coming back. I’m personally fond of Avila’s style and enjoy his even-keel demeanor. He seems like a genuinely good person and I’d rather root for someone like that than someone who’s a little better but kind of a jerk. Also the beard.