Writer: Gage O'Leary
Twitter: @det_news
Twitter: @DeepShotSports
Another embarrassing season of Tigers baseball:
It's getting extremely difficult to continue to watch the Detroit Tigers lose game after game for the 7th consecutive year in a row. It's embarrassing to have believed that this year would be any different. There is absolutely no reason to trust this front office, and definitely no reason to trust Christopher Ilitch. You don't have to look far to find the people within the organization most responsible for this tragic baseball team.
Who to blame?:
It's obvious who's to blame if you've followed the Tigers long enough, people outside of Detroit would quickly point fingers at A.J Hinch as Managers are almost always the one under heat for a failing baseball team, especially after recent events, such as the firings of two former world series champion Managers, Joe Madden (Angels) and Joe Girardi (Phillies). Quickly giving Managers the boot after things get rough is trending this season and fanbases outside of the Tigers are probably thinking A.J Hinch is the next former World Series championship winning Manager out the door... We'll revisit this later.... It's hard to point fingers as fans watching behind the scenes but it's easy to see that Chris Ilitch has failed this franchise and Al Avila has NOT earned another chance after this season.
What should be the next step?:
There's no doubt in my mind and many other Tigers fans minds (as proven on social media) that the next move SHOULD be firing Al Avila... Since being hired in August of 2015 the Tigers have won just over 40% of their games in Avila's tenure. That averages out to around 66.4 wins a full season (162 games). Al Avila started his role as Tigers GM' with a winning franchise underneath him, the Tigers haven't been the same since. He's not responsible for all that's wrong with this franchise though... Mike Ilitch, also known as MR. I... Sadly passed away just before the start of the 2017 season. His son Christopher, who as mentioned earlier took over the Detroit Tigers and Detroit Redwings (as well as many successful businesses, most famously Little Ceasers Pizza) has proven to fail as owner of the Tigers and Redwings organizations. No excuse for a rebuild to last 5+ years, none what so ever. His first step to try and fix this mess is letting Avila go...
Is A.J Hinch on the hot seat?
This is a difficult subject to elaborate on. I like A.J Hinch as a Manager, I really have faith that he's the man for the job. I don't believe he's high on the list of people to blame for this disaster. Plus... You don't see any #FireAJ post's/tweets on social media. I don't see Chris as the kind of person to start booting people out the door all together, we'll be lucky to see Avila get lost, if it even happens... I'm guessing A.J Hinch's job is safe right now, but I still believe it's in the realm of possibility that we see a move at Manager, atleast if things, somehow, get worse than they already are and especially after what we've seen this season. Chris Fetter's (pitching coach) job is beyond safe, he deserves an early extension in my opinion, he's done some incredible things since leaving the Michigan Wolverines to join the Detroit Tigers staff, but I think other staff members could be fired in this process. Detroit's focus now aside from Al Avila's future with the organization is to get healthy and get some important pieces back and something to look forward to is Riley Greene's MLB debut, which hopefully we'll see soon.
Thanks as always for reading and have a great weekend.
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