How the Detroit Tigers built a sinking ship over four years

These are the Detroit Tigers.

They’re bad. Among the worst teams in the Major Leagues, with poor pitching and a grim outlook for next season. What once was a “retooling” is now a “rebuilding,” and we know why general manager Al Avila didn’t want to use that last word in the first place.

Rebuilding is the lowest point on the baseball mountain, and it’s where the Tigers will sit for the foreseeable future.

The ship sank in six months. Heading into the regular season, the Tigers were considered contenders in the American League Central division. By mid-July, the front office committed to closing perhaps the most prosperous chapter in team history. On Aug. 31, they traded ace Justin Verlander to Houston, and Friday they announced manager Brad Ausmus would not return in 2018.

What’s left of that wreckage is a nearly unrecognizable roster. And when you trace back the team’s steps, a better perspective can be gained on the path they took to get here, with inexperience at the top resulting in two fruitless seasons — and a much tougher rebuild.

July 30, 2015

The day after former general manager Dave Dombrowski declared the Tigers sellers heading into the July 31 non-waiver trade deadline, they dealt ace left-hander David Price to the Blue Jays for prospects, including lefty starters Daniel Norris and Matt Boyd.

The trade was the team’s first move for the future in quite some time. The Tigers farm system was terribly thin and their overpriced superstar players were aging. Though second-year manager Brad Ausmus pled to stay the course after ace Justin Verlander showed signs of a resurgence against the Rays, playing for a wild-card spot with a poor bullpen wasn’t enough for Dombrowski to hold onto the soon-to-be free agents.

The next day, Dombrowski traded leftfielder Yoenis Cespedes to the Mets for righty pitching prospects Michael Fulmer and Luis Cessa.

The pitching package has stood an early test of time: Fulmer, who just underwent right elbow surgery, is a front-line starter when healthy. Boyd has shown enough to project as a back-end starter and Norris still has enough promise to be the pitcher the Tigers dreamed of. Together, they’ll make up most of the rotation next season.

The moves were necessary, an opportunity to get young players who are close to Major League ready into the farm system while keeping the pillars of the team intact. But the moves cost Dombrowski his job.

Aug. 4, 2015

Late owner Mike Ilitch fires Dombrowski and hires Avila.

Avila was Dombrowski’s right-hand man, his chief assistant general manager since their days with the Marlins. Avila rose up the scouting ranks and was sought after for other GM positions.

Avila knew the organization in its current form was in need of long-term stability.

Dombrowski’s departure left a large void in experience. He had 27 seasons of GM experience, including 13 under Ilitch. Avila was in his first year on the job.

With a week left in the season, he announced the Tigers would retain Ausmus as manager. In the off-season, while trying to deliver the championship to Ilitch that Dombrowski couldn’t, Avila signed the wrong players.

More Tigers coverage:

2015 off-season

Avila was hired to win the World Series. It didn’t matter how much the Tigers needed to beef up their farm system or if the team’s way of winning was stale. Ilitch’s quest won out.

Permitted to spend big money on pitching, the Tigers signed righty Jordan Zimmermann to a five-year, $110 million deal and righties Mike Pelfrey and Mark Lowe for a total of $26 million for the next two seasons.

The Tigers were aware of Zimmermann’s red flags. In two seasons, his numbers have sharply declined. After bad 2016 seasons, both Pelfrey and Lowe were released.

Avila executed solid win-now trades, parting with prospects for closer Francisco Rodriguez, centerfielder Cameron Maybin and lefty reliever Justin Wilson, but it depleted the system of a hidden gem in righty reliever Chad Green, who has emerged as a top reliever with the Yankees.

[Ex-Tiger Francisco Rodriguez's impact on young pitchers was missed]

Around Christmastime, Ilitch asked Avila for a leftfielder. A month later, the Tigers signed Justin Upton for six years, $132.75 million.

The Upton signing proved to be good. He nearly hit them into the postseason in 2016 and was stellar this season.

For as much experience Dombrowski had working under Ilitch, not even he could sway his owner from certain signings — Prince Fielder, Anibal Sanchez and Victor Martinez were all signings the Tigers knew they would regret.

Instead of continuing on the path Dombrowski charted by selling at the previous trade deadline, the Tigers doubled down, taking two steps away from the business model they again adopted in 2017.

May 14, 2016

The season was slipping away.

The Tigers lost three straight to the Orioles, their 11th loss in 12 games. For a second time, Ausmus is firmly on the hot seat and admitted as much after getting swept by the Rangers at home the weekend before, saying, “When you have a payroll like ours, the manager’s the guy that’s in the crosshairs.”

The losses mounted, and so did the speculation about Ausmus’ job.

After the 9-3 loss, one veteran player was asked about Ausmus’ job status and declined to address it, saying quite frankly, he didn’t care. All he cared about was winning.

Before the next day’s game, one coach said he did not have a good feeling about the week ahead. It’s unclear if the Tigers’ eighth-inning comeback against the Orioles on Aug. 15 saved Ausmus’ job. Either way, a change wasn’t made.

Hurt for the first six weeks of the season, centerfielder Cameron Maybin joined the team two days later and gave the clubhouse a much-needed jolt. Ausmus showed his most fiery side that day, leaving his hooded sweatshirt on home plate following an expletive-laden ejection for arguing balls and strikes.

Avila’s patience paid off: The Tigers won seven of their next nine games at home and remained in the postseason race for the rest of the season. This might have been Ausmus’ best stretch of managing: Faced with long-term injuries to key players J.D. Martinez, Zimmermann and Nick Castellanos, the ship remained steady until the end, when the Tigers ultimately fell 2 1/2 games out of the second AL wild-card spot.

Caption this!: Brad Ausmus is leaving the Detroit Tigers, share your opinion

One former player said he knew early in his Tigers tenure why the team, so talented from afar, had underachieved. The team had a strong veteran contingence, but none of those veterans had anyone to lead them.

Pleased with Ausmus’ performance in his third season, Avila exercised his contract option for a fourth season, 2017, when the team slowly spiraled out of control.

Aug. 24, 2017

The Tigers’ private clubhouse rift reveals itself publicly.

Their frustrating season festered to the point of in-fighting, when television cameras caught an animated exchange between Verlander and Victor Martinez following a benches-clearing episode with the Yankees.

During the exchange, Martinez advanced towards Verlander and was held back by third baseman Castellanos.

Prior to the exchange, Martinez was seen playing peacemaker with Yankees catcher Gary Sanchez – who threw punches at both Castellanos and first baseman Miguel Cabrera during the sixth-inning brawl – and righty reliever Dellin Betances, who had just hit catcher James McCann in the head with a fastball.

The situation pitted a pair of veteran players who are publicly seen as team leaders. It also illuminated a reality about Martinez: for the past two seasons, according to those inside the Tigers clubhouse, the 38-year-old designated hitter became an entitled player and a clubhouse problem whose positive influence diminished as his performance declined.

Asked if he wanted to comment on this story prior to the team’s Aug. 25 game against the White Sox, Martinez said, “You can write whatever you want.”

A night later, he experienced irregular heartbeat symptoms for a second time and was placed on the 10-day disabled list. He underwent cardiac ablation surgery on Sept. 11 and will not return this season.

Martinez’s exchange with Verlander came almost a year to the date of his behavior reaching a breaking point in the clubhouse in the aftermath of an Aug. 27 loss to the Angels last season. In that game, four Tigers were ejected for arguing balls and strikes, including Martinez.

According to multiple people with first-hand knowledge of the situation, Martinez left Comerica Park early and was nowhere to be seen when the team entered the clubhouse after the game. The people requested anonymity because they were not authorized to speak on clubhouse matters.

The early departure became a talking point inside the clubhouse, and when Martinez learned of that, he singled out a teammate for leading a whisper campaign, sources said. Martinez confronted the player, and they needed to be separated.

On Aug. 25, Martinez declined to answer questions about the clubhouse incident.

Ausmus also declined to answer questions that day, saying, “What happens in the clubhouse, stays in the clubhouse, for me.”

The incident is considered the point when Martinez detached himself as a leader, and the way he handled the matter did not sit well with the clubhouse, a source said.

Martinez was a problem Ausmus was unable to solve and one the front office showed no desire to solve by simply releasing him, though the topic had been raised by the coaching staff. Martinez is owed $18 million in 2018, the final season of his four-year deal, but with his recent medical issues, his return is uncertain.

Either way, the Martinez situation was an all-encompassing example of the accountability issues that had taken root. Those issues, from Martinez to Rodriguez to righty reliever Bruce Rondon, fell on Ausmus, a players’ manager who didn’t have the kind of personality to put veteran players in their place.

[With ailing heart, Victor Martinez should consider retirement]

Eyes on the future

Avila has announced Ausmus would not return as Tigers manager.

It marked the latest change in a series of changes that began two seasons ago when Ilitch fired Dombrowski, and it will continue until Avila deconstructs the aging, over-priced roster he was handed.

There is plenty of blame to go around. Dombrowski left the cupboard bare and started the restocking process in his final moves. Avila knew restocking was the right way to go but couldn’t go against Ilitch’s wishes. In retrospect, Ilitch can be blamed for keeping the pedal to the metal, at all costs. But an owner cannot be blamed for trying to win a World Series.

Avila’s truest test has begun: By accepting a rebuilding phase, he is finally in a position that baseball executives believe he can succeed in building a sustainable, winning organization. The Tigers’ long-term future is brighter than it was at this time last season.

In the present, an era has ended for the Tigers, the days of jam-packed crowds at Comerica Park done.

Fenech: Tigers parted ways with Brad Ausmus 2 years too late

Contact Anthony Fenech: afenech@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @anthonyfenech.

Download our Tigers Xtra app for free on Apple and Android devices!