2022-23 Detroit Tigers Offseason Thread

[casimir]

1 hour ago, Tenacious D said:

Why argue this point now?

Because there are no game threads to argue in.

[casimir]

1 hour ago, sabretooth said:

You *know* for a fact that Chris is going to spend at least an average amount on team payroll?  Great!  Glad to hear it.  Can't wait to see what Harris does with those kinds of resources.

Rock on dude.

He did have CAPS LOCKED, so tread lightly.

[RatkoVarda]

Harris was a common name for openings and he did not have to take this job; if the Tigers did not hire him, he would have gotten other opportunities, this winter or next; one of the questions he had to have for Ilitch should have been, what level of payroll can you consistently support in this market? that question needed to be asked in some form; hopefully it was and was answered to Harris' satisfaction.

a $180M payroll in 2024 will be 76% of the first luxury tax tier (or $56M below limit in total dollars)

Edited November 1, 2022 by RatkoVarda

[KL2]

3 hours ago, sabretooth said:

Theres no evidence that Chris will spend an average or better payroll consistently (or at all).

He did increase his spending in 2022, I supported that openly, but it was still a below average level of spend even with Miggys huge $$.

I will believe it when I see it.

There's no evidence he won't either. But you just refuse to acknowledge that so you keep projecting your made up beliefs as fact 

[Tigermojo]

Schoop did not win the gold glove. Dump him.

[oblong]

I think hiring Harris, and before that Hinch, tells me Ilitch won’t be a cheapskate. Will be be like his dad and go ape shit?  No.  And I wouldn’t ask that as a fan.  I’m now convinced he doesn’t want to just ride this org as a cash cow with as little risk and effort as possible.  I think they will be payroll competitive.  That doesn’t mean they have to be in the conversation for every big name free agent. 

[casimir]

I’m excited to see what happens over the next few offseasons, drafts, international signings, etc.  I want to see how a new regime attacks team building.

Chris Ilitch’s era hasn’t been good.  There’s obviously room for improvement.  This was the same at one point under Mike Ilitch’s ownership.  For some reason, I get the impression that while folks fondly recall the good times under Mike, the bad times are forgotten.  So, yeah, the Chris era hasn’t been good to date.  But we’ve seen things change before.  It doesn’t mean it necessarily will, but I think that the revamping front office is cause for hope.

[Edman85]

FWIW, I talked to a former Rays scout on another forum, and he said Metzler likely got paaaaaaaid to leave his situation in Tampa.

(Also told me a hilarious story about when he interviewed with the Tigers at Winter Meetings, involving a random bloody nose and Jim Leyland running to the suite bathroom to get toilet paper to help him and laughing his ass off)

Edited November 2, 2022 by Edman85

[chasfh]

3 hours ago, gehringer_2 said:

all I would add on the debate about Chris Ilitch is the question of how much resource he is willing to commit pales in proportion to the question tof whether he has put management in place capable of winning with any resource level.  

Going all the way back to when Tom Monaghan bought the franchise from Fetzer, FO competence has always been a bigger road block than ownership resourcing.

Fair and proven out by fairly recent experience.

[chasfh]

43 minutes ago, oblong said:

I think hiring Harris, and before that Hinch, tells me Ilitch won’t be a cheapskate. Will be be like his dad and go ape shit?  No.  And I wouldn’t ask that as a fan.  I’m now convinced he doesn’t want to just ride this org as a cash cow with as little risk and effort as possible.  I think they will be payroll competitive.  That doesn’t mean they have to be in the conversation for every big name free agent. 

I ran down Chris Ilitch as hard as anyone else here. I accused him of being a dilettante at best and as uncaring at worse. I feared he was going subsume the Tigers under all his other businesses because of the cash cow nature of owning a baseball team. I basically accused him of being a hockey guy only. I believed all this based on the relentless losing under the apparently protected Avila regime, exacerbated by the hiring of Ron Gardenhire even after touting this computer program called Caesar that he claimed would basically bring the Tigers into this century.

Like you, the moves Ilitch made to first hire A.J., and then to dump Avila and hire an exec from a forward-thinking organization, has turned my thinking some. I now have confidence that he does care about this team after all and is willing to put the team in a position to win, versus just letting whatever happen and cashing the checks.

I’m not going to project onto Ilitch what I would like him to in terms of signing this or that free agent this winter, or spending X hundred million on payroll. I don’t know what Ilitch is going to do when we get certain pieces into place and we are just a move or two away from being favorites to play into November, in a few years I presume. But I do feel better about the idea that he’s not going to just go cheap as possible on the team and just accept whatever result happens and simply bank the loot. I guess that’s still somewhere in the range of outcomes, but I feel better that it occupies a small sliver and not a healthy chunk of that pie.

I want the organization to do what it takes to win, whatever that may be, and I don’t care how much Ilitch ultimately spends on payroll, just so long as it doesn’t make the difference between winning pennants and losing out on wild cards.

[sabretooth]

5 hours ago, Tenacious D said:

Why argue this point now?  We’ll know within a few months time if ownership is interested in increasing payroll.

A fair point.

[sabretooth]

2 hours ago, KL2 said:

There's no evidence he won't either. But you just refuse to acknowledge that so you keep projecting your made up beliefs as fact 

There is six years of low payroll as evidence.  There are zero years otherwise.

Disagree based on your hope but your hopes are not facts.

[chasfh]

The housecleaning continues apace.

 

[gehringer_2]

1 minute ago, chasfh said:

The housecleaning continues apace.

 

LOL - somehow, someway, he'll be back in the org somewhere by July.

[sabretooth]

1 hour ago, Edman85 said:

FWIW, I talked to a former Rays scout on another forum, and he said Metzler likely got paaaaaaaid to leave his situation in Tampa.

(Also told me a hilarious story about when he interviewed with the Tigers at Winter Meetings, involving a random bloody nose and Jim Leyland running to the suite bathroom to get toilet paper to help him and laughing his ass off)

thats cool

[chasfh]

Just now, gehringer_2 said:

LOL - somehow, someway, he'll be back in the org somewhere by July.

Betcha a sawbuck on that one?

[mtutiger]

8 hours ago, sabretooth said:

There is six years of low payroll as evidence.  There are zero years otherwise.

They fell slightly below league average in payroll during the 2022 season. Spending almost the same as the team that went ape shit signing Corey Seager and Marcus Semien.

So I wouldn't say they were "low payroll" in 2022. The fact that the payroll increased as it did, even if folks didn't like who they signed, suggests to me that he will spend to a degree

[mtutiger]

11 hours ago, Edman85 said:

FWIW, I talked to a former Rays scout on another forum, and he said Metzler likely got paaaaaaaid to leave his situation in Tampa.

This sounds right, just from the press reports at the time it seemed more like a lateral move with an additional title (AGM) handed out (maybe I'm wrong tho). Which logically would suggest the Tigers had to make it worth his while.

[sabretooth]

1 hour ago, mtutiger said:

They fell slightly below league average in payroll during the 2022 season. Spending almost the same as the team that went ape shit signing Corey Seager and Marcus Semien.

So I wouldn't say they were "low payroll" in 2022. The fact that the payroll increased as it did, even if folks didn't like who they signed, suggests to me that he will spend to a degree

I was typing that on my phone...."low payroll" was short-hand for "below average payroll".

I do agree that he will spend to a degree, he did increase payroll in 2022, and I supported that whole-heartedly and I thought along with the projection systems that they would be an OK team. 

That having been said, I seriously doubt that he will spend an average amount consistently or more than average amount in any given season.

I hope I'm proven wrong.  I'm really tired of seeing shitty teams (or at best shitty teams aspiring to mediocrity) year after year after year.  

[Tenacious D]

3 minutes ago, sabretooth said:

I was typing that on my phone...."low payroll" was short-hand for "below average payroll".

I do agree that he will spend to a degree, he did increase payroll in 2022, and I supported that whole-heartedly and I thought along with the projection systems that they would be an OK team. 

That having been said, I seriously doubt that he will spend an average amount consistently or more than average amount in any given season.

I hope I'm proven wrong.  I'm really tired of seeing shitty teams (or at best shitty teams aspiring to mediocrity) year after year after year.  

Avila had convinced him that signing expensive free agents was not sustainable and that the team needed to be built via the draft.  This differentiated himself from Dombrowski’s approach, where we routinely sacrificed draft picks when signing veterans.

I have a buddy who knows Chris—he told him the plan was to build a foundation through draft (basically tanking), and spend  when the time was right.  Apparently both Al and Chris believed that the progress made in 2021 warranted last offseason’s free agent investments.

I’m cautiously optimistic.  Won’t be a bunch of impulse purchases, like signing Fielder long-term because V-Mart got hurt, but that’s probably a good thing.

[sabretooth]

12 hours ago, oblong said:

I think hiring Harris, and before that Hinch, tells me Ilitch won’t be a cheapskate. Will be be like his dad and go ape shit?  No.  And I wouldn’t ask that as a fan.  I’m now convinced he doesn’t want to just ride this org as a cash cow with as little risk and effort as possible.  I think they will be payroll competitive.  That doesn’t mean they have to be in the conversation for every big name free agent. 

I never expected nor need to see Mike I level payroll. 

For what it's worth, the apparent collapse of the regional cable TV model nationwide probably means that guys like Chris have to focus more on building a winning product to make profit, and cannot take the low-risk road to modest profits that the cable TV model provided to every team (even the bad ones like the Tigers) before COVID.  At least I hope that's the case going forward. 

Winning = $$ = happy owner + happy fans.  That's how it should be. 

No tanking to get cheap top-5 picks to save the owner $$, and no leaning on shared revenue or other sources to make a safe little profit.  

In a word, just win, baby.  And nobody except the Rays and A's wins without at least an average payroll.

I want to **see** that Harris has the resources to compete.  No disrespect to anybody here, but your hopes are not facts until Chris proves it.

Chris absolutely increased payroll in 2022 but team payroll was still below average in 2022; and while Miggy's $30M (or whatever exact $$ figure it was in 2022) had PR pizzaz and some ticket/jersey sales, nevertheless it was known before the season that he would contribute nothing or next to nothing to winning games in 2022, so the effective payroll from an on-field performance standpoint went from bottom 5 in 2021 (again, discounting Miggy's $$ as basically non-contributory) to still wayyyy below average.

[sabretooth]

9 minutes ago, Tenacious D said:

Avila had convinced him that signing expensive free agents was not sustainable and that the team needed to be built via the draft.  This differentiated himself from Dombrowski’s approach, where we routinely sacrificed draft picks when signing veterans.

I have a buddy who knows Chris—he told him the plan was to build a foundation through draft (basically tanking), and spend  when the time was right.  Apparently both Al and Chris believed that the progress made in 2021 warranted last offseason’s free agent investments.

I’m cautiously optimistic.  Won’t be a bunch of impulse purchases, like signing Fielder long-term because V-Mart got hurt, but that’s probably a good thing.

Sure, I'm hopeful about what Harris can do relatively speaking, my point is simply that there's a pretty clear limit to what a good GM can do on his own without at least average $$.  There's also a limit to what $$ can do, that's not an answer in and of itself, though spending a lot of money consistently like the Yankees does at least ensures a pretty consistently good team -- though of course the Yankees and Dodgers and Red Sox are the few teams that can do this due to their market bases, and success in W/L is never exactly proportional to $$. 

The answer to all of these questions (scouting v stats, $$ vs development, development v trading, etc.) is that the answer for sustaining success is at least a good amount of each thing.  For what it's worth, I've been saying that the answer is in a balanced approach since at least 2015; my consistent suppport for any owner willing to spend his or her $$ and my opposition to the tanking crowd makes me a target for some who want to paint me as a spend-first/spend-big advocate. 

I always supported Mike I's spending in the heyday, and it should be noted that a billionaire can spend whatever he wants if he's willing to use resources from Pizza Business X to support winning for Team Y, but I also have consistently acknowledged that a balanced approach is more sustainable.

Edited November 2, 2022 by sabretooth

[1984Echoes]

12 hours ago, chasfh said:

The housecleaning continues apace.

 

WORLD SERIES, HERE WE COME!!!

[1984Echoes]

12 hours ago, sabretooth said:

There is six years of low payroll as evidence.  There are zero years otherwise.

Disagree based on your hope but your hopes are not facts.

LOL.

During a rebuild. What were you expecting during a rebuild, a top 5 Payroll?

Seriously, where does your logic come from? Which planet?

[alex]

13 hours ago, oblong said:

I think hiring Harris, and before that Hinch, tells me Ilitch won’t be a cheapskate. Will be be like his dad and go ape shit?  No.  And I wouldn’t ask that as a fan.  I’m now convinced he doesn’t want to just ride this org as a cash cow with as little risk and effort as possible.  I think they will be payroll competitive.  That doesn’t mean they have to be in the conversation for every big name free agent. 

IMHO, this sounds and reads about right.