Eight years ago, on Tuesday, August 4, 2015, the Tigers canned Dave Dombrowski and named Al Avila the General Manager. Since that day, the Tigers are 498-694 (.418), while Dombrowski’s teams in Boston and Philly have gone 624-482 (.564).
Courtesy Detroit Free Press
From 2006-14, Detroit Tigers fans luxuriated in some of the finest MLB baseball the city of Detroit has seen in its long history. For a brief, magical time, everything that David Dombrowski seemed to be woven with gold.
In contrast, from 1987-2006, the Tigers had a winning season record only four times. They have posted 11 winning season records since 1987. That’s 25 losing seasons during that duration.
It is still remarkable that at the most recent trade deadline, several of the biggest deals involved players from that 2014 Tigers team. The organization released the last player, not named Jake Rogers, who was traded to the Tigers for Justin Verlander in 2014 (Franklin Perez).
In 2015, when they traded David Price for Matthew Boyd and Daniel Norris, nobody thought the Tigers franchise would stink like fetid garbage for eight more long seasons. Everyone believed that it was a first step back towards reorganizing for success.
Instead, the Tigers continue to be lost in the wilderness, and they are now recovering from one of the costliest bouts of severe incompetence they have exhibited in the last 36 seasons. There is no reason to believe it’s getting better anytime soon.
